Right on the heels of thousands of layoff notices sent to California teachers, "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's blue-ribbon committee on education released a list of sweeping recommendations Friday to overhaul California's public school system at an additional annual cost of $10.5 billion."
The end of the article gives results of a statewide survey. One of the results I have real issue with is : 64 percent believe that increases in teacher pay should be based on merit, including student performance, rather than seniority.
These administrators and survey takers have obviously never spent time in an urban classroom. Some things I do that are not in my job description: social worker, crisis counselor, nutritionist, medical triage, mediator...Social and emotional needs of children need to be met before a child can actually learn. If a child is living with addicted parents, witnessing violence in his community, not eating breakfast ever, sent to school unclean and in dirty clothes, etc. how is that child going to perform on the standardized test? Then my salary will increase if the kids do well on a test? That means I'm doing a good job? What about all the other things I do that really can't be measured and are, imo, more important than test taking skills? I think we should have merit pay for some of the parents, so they will step up to their parenting responsibilities.
I've posted about this before, but I will do it again. If I was paid minimum wage to simply babysit each student for six hours a day, it would work out to over $172,000 for the 180 days I'm contracted to teach. God, I'd be happy with even half of that in this economically bloated city. I get less than 1/4 of that, and I'd like to think my students are actually learning something. Firemen start in the $80,000 range. We value our firemen and give them a nice salary. We don't lay them off. Same for police officers. I don't think this country's, let alone state's, education system will change for the better until we start valuing teachers, including paying them what they are worth.
**stepping off soapbox now**
*Are We Putting too Much Pressure on Puppies to Learn Obedience too Soon? *
*Originally published in slightly different form at PsychologyToday.com, on
11/...
2 comments:
Angela - this is a great piece - i think you should send it to the SF Chronicle or somewhere else - maybe to Obama and Hillary?? I couldn't agree with you more...teachers are on the frontlines ,expected to deal with the fall-out of a dysfunctional society - and they are still paid peanuts! Meanwhile, the military budget continues to swell...Another reason NOT to vote for McCain, who says we might stay in Iraq for 100 years !!!!
Don't even get me started, Caroline! Stay tuned, there will be more, soon, LOL, as I fight to keep my job!
Seriously, you don't see the firemen and police officers having bake sales and book fairs to raise money. I don't see any of them being laid off. Gavin Newsom's transportation manager is making over $300k a year! Again, I say, WTF?!
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