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In addition, workers who have earned seniority have managed to find their way in systems that often force out up to 80% of first year employees. They are prone to thinking about the safety and security of others and bear responsibility for the same. They are required, in most cases, to continue in education and professional development in order to maintain professional liscences. They are subject to performance review at least annually and have learned to deal with the bipolar involement of the community, who are prone to only providing very specific things and then only for a short period of time.

Also, did I hear the parent on this show say she should be as involved in teacher evaluation as other teachers are? Cool. Can I join the committee that evaluates her parenting and the conditions under which she parents, because I actually think she probably has less contact with students than most teachers do, she provided no qualifications of education or expertise in the field, and she didn't once actually talk about the importance of evidence in education and I would at least treat her that fairly when evaluating her ability to parent her children even though I'm not actually a parent myself, nor an expert on parenting skills, and I don't have any actual experience with her children. I'll get my friends in on it, even though they have no experience with children other than having been one themselves. Oh, maybe we can also take over her medical care this way, even though my background is in physics. I have done some evaluating, so that's close enough to do medical evaluations, right?

posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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Looking at the people I know in unions... yes they are happy with their jobs. They are upset that they have to fight every year to keep things that are considered basic human rights in other countries, and in the case of public employee unions, they are upset that they have seen wages stagnate for 20 years while the public and management villify them for being part of a group that asks for respect, but when I talk to employees at safeway, they are happy. When I ride the bus, 90% of my drivers are pleasant and satisfied with their jobs.

I know former lawers who are glad they no longer have to defend "evil", and my friends in non-union retail are uniformly unhappy with arbitrarily rotating sleep schedules, or concerns that they will suddenly not be covered for the cost of an injury. Those that I know who work in tech live sling-shot lives where they work 80 hour weeks for one year and then are paupers (or facing loss of identity) the next, as seemingly secure jobs dry up.

I understand that businesses work differently, and that government is even more different. I think, however, that when voters aren't willing to pay for long term investment in services, when we vote put ourselves billions of dollars in debt because of military operations and pay-outs to big business (I'm talking about subsidies AND tax breaks) and still provide services to even the richest americans at very low cost to them then we can't complain about unions keeping the government down. In fact, if the government wants to opperate more like a business, the first order should be to increase prices, especailly to those best served by subsudies, emergency response, stable marketplaces, well managed currency, rule of law, recourse against fraud... perhaps you are getting the idea that I think that someone on wellfare is neither best served or most costly to the system.

Before we start to point fingers at unions, social equity measures and the results of agreeing to fair compensation for work done for one's country and people as the problems in this country, let's ask who the real leeches of society are. I'm willing to bet they are the ones full of blood, not the ones who join thankless professions where everyone thinks they can do better (but is still miraculously not filling the need by stepping in as a private contractor) because they believe in evidence, that it is the governments job to protect the weak from the strong, and because some measure of national (and personal) stability is important to them.

Finally, unions are businesses. Employees of other businesses are their main customers, but they just happen to serve people outside the unions as well. Unions exist to fill a niche left very open by other structures and if you think that this niche is unfair to managers or customers then maybe you should consider the circumstances that make so many employees feel they need this service in the first place.

posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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3) We can fix schools without spending more on them

FALSE: I'm not advocating for merit pay but the teachers I know don't get paid as well as other professionals with similar or lesser educational backgrounds and responsibility (bluntly, many earn less than city bus drivers). Whether it is right that teachers accept this, it's certainly not right that we also so readily put them down, and more so, continually reduce their resources. The expectation that every teacher be able to create an advanced lab with a bit of string and a lens, be able to know and meet every possible individual need of every child, and be morally beyond reproach is a very high bar, and instead of dividing our teachers, we should recognize them for -all- the incredible job they do by making their work environments as pleasant as possible, and providing a support structure that allows teachers to ask, guilt free and without outside superiority, for advice and guidance when they need it.

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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Emily Harris is usually a thought-provoking, interesting and intelligent host. Today, though, I have to agree with your assessment: instead of addressing the original questions, she persisted in trying to follow the idea of "getting rid of bad teachers". A couple of particularly annoying misconceptions she perpetuated are:

1) We can fix the schools by splitting up teachers into good and bad

FALSE: Teachers need time to learn too. In no other industry are you expected to perform at your best game days after your hire date. With more than 50% of teachers leaving in their first five years, the problem is not about getting rid of teachers, but rather about improving all teachers. Administrators that support and take part in their teaching communities can do this, administrators and support staff that get caught up in paperwork cannot.

2) Everything teachers do should lead to scientific evidence of improvement.

Somewhat false: New teachers are being taught to look at existing evidence to inform their practice, and good teachers are contributing to this body of evidence. How, though, are teachers with no budget and 60 hour work weeks (of which they get paid for 40 if they are lucky) supposed to do a full case study? Should we hire evaluators out of our negative state budget, ask administrators who already work 80 hours a week to take up the slack, or blame institutions of higher education who actually are collecting this data to the best of their ability?

Perhaps the reward for being an effective teacher should not be extra pay (speaking of science, a recent study shows that merit pay only increases performance to a point and even then with rapidly diminishing returns) but a year off of teaching students where instead the teacher gets to work one-on-one with other teachers to inform and improve practice across the board.

Also, I object to the hypocrisy of this assumption. Do reporters ask business owners to back their claims with scientific evidence collected on their business? Do reporters ask writers to produce facts on why people like their books? I support efforts to look for scientific goals (and agree to their necessity) but teachers and administrators look to others for research simply because of time and workload, just as many other professionals do, and this is more than reasonable on their part. 

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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Perhaps you don't understand what "burnout" means? It means that teachers are doing exactly that- leaving because they are not justly compensated for the job they are trying to do. Right now Wilson High School, the second largest public school in the Portland Public school Distric has only one Physics teacher, who, just this year had to take on AP physics as well. Next year four of the top level science and math teachers at Wilson will be retiring. Who will replace them? There are not that many high quality science and math teachers lined up. Will we hire part time teachers out of the middle schools like we have for the art and music programs in the past? Will we shortchange another school so that Wilson can continue to have teachers? Will we get parents, who certainly have the money but never have the time, to actually participate in getting new high quality teachers?

We probably will not. The seniors will graduate, feeling lucky to have slipped out before things got worse (like I feel every time I fill my car with gas), the younger children will not know what to expect, and the parents will solve their problems with teachers by yelling at them during conferences and demeaning the administrators who will not remove them immediately. It comes with the territory, but if you want teachers who do not care about being able to support themselves and pay off debt, then what kind of person do you think will fill that job?

posted 5 years ago
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When they get their evaluations, are you willing to pay what they are worth?

posted 5 years ago
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A quick reality check:
You asked if the pay is comparable to similar jobs. In terms of training needed to become a teacher, the salary is certainly low, but I think even in terms of the basic responsibilities, regardless of expectation, the income level is pretty low. In fact, there is a great job comparison ready and waiting:


Tri-Met drivers earn about $20 per hour at near top pay (which takes about 2-3 years to get to). At full time they are paid for a minimum of 40 hours a week, so a full time driver is earning $21/hour*40hours/week*52weeks/year= $43,680/year, if we don't count overtime. In fact, many full time drivers will make at least 5,000 more than that in overtime alone.

Drivers do have performance expectations but they are basic safety oriented expectations, and they are afforded the same kind of union benefits as teachers. They have a similar level of responsibility to teachers but a -much- lower level of expected education and experience. While a driver has the option of refusing to work more than 12 hours in a day, a teacher is often expected to more than that. Drivers also accrue annual vacation, and while teachers have significant time off in the summer, they don't earn paid vacation time like most occupations.

Should a teacher get paid more than a bus driver? I think so. Also, if some teachers are making 50 grand a year (like the first guest on the show estimates he is making), then others are making far less than the 30 or so grand that is the average. Even counting for part time teachers, this number is too low. No wonder teachers burn out or will not look into the field in the first place.

We like to relate performance to pay, but perhaps it is valid to take a step back and link pay to performance. If teachers generally earned more many would spend that money on their own continuing education. Others might spend the money on stress relief or even put that money back into the school system to improve the conditions of their work environment. Teachers would have money to travel in the summer, and come back enriched in world cultural views. Some might take the opportunity to pay out of their own pockets to bring in experts from the field they teach.

I have been seriously investigating teaching as a profession, and I remember one teacher telling me I should not go into the profession if I wanted to own a house in the city. While this simply encouraged me to look into ways to improve personal situation, the general idea is entirely too true. While and while tutors get paid more than $30 per hour per student, teachers are getting paid about $1 per hour per student. If we want more investment than that in our youth, then we WILL have to pay for it, one way or another. Paying what we do for the requirements normal teachers fulfill is abusive to them and ultimately to society.

posted 5 years ago
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I have to disagree and say that there are plenty of people in the work force who are not paid directly related to performance, or who are paid in a way such that they are only evaluated on part of their performance. I also disagree with the idea that teachers are not evaluated on performance. If administrative evaluations do not match up with community expectations, then we should be talking more about how high paid administrators facilitate education.

posted 5 years ago
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