(Download) "Comparable Worth: Salary Data Fail to Account for the Shorter Workday and Work Year in Teaching. Once Adjusted, Teacher Salaries Look About Right. (Forum)." by Education Next * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Comparable Worth: Salary Data Fail to Account for the Shorter Workday and Work Year in Teaching. Once Adjusted, Teacher Salaries Look About Right. (Forum).
- Author : Education Next
- Release Date : January 22, 2003
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 211 KB
Description
IT IS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH AMONG MANY SUPPORTERS OF public education that teachers are underpaid. As Gayla Hudson, a former National Education Association official, once put it, "Until you start paying teachers at the level that other professions receive, recruiting will be a problem." Some respected academics have argued similarly. For instance, Peter Temin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (see "Low Pay, Low Quality" on page 8) claims that the opening of new job opportunities for women has drained the most promising candidates from the pool of potential teachers. In this view, higher pay is necessary to lure high-quality applicants away from more lucrative alternatives, Most new teaching positions typically attract numerous applicants, especially in elementary schools, in subjects like English and social studies, and in the suburbs, where school districts frequently draw 100 applications for a single slot. But the mere ability to fill positions is a poor measure of whether pay is adequate. The question is whether salaries are high enough to draw applicants of the caliber parents and policymakers desire. Furthermore, the benefits of higher salaries must be weighed against the benefits of other reforms that the money could be put toward. For instance, say a school district could raise its average test scores by one point by spending an extra $1 million on teachers' salaries. But what if the school district could induce a two-point increase in scores by spending the same amount on nonprofessionals to tutor struggling students? Or what if reforms outside education, such as better prenatal care, incentive-driven changes to public assistance programs, or job training, provided mor e bang for the buck in raising student achievement? In either case, public funds would be better spent on reforms other than increasing teacher salaries.