Sunday, March 27, 2011

How to Raise the Status of Teachers

Another "Room for Debate" er, Debate

New York Times
March 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/27/how-to-raise-the-status-of-teachers

Topic: Debate

Key Point: This is a collection of 9 short written segments by 'debaters' answering the question, "how to raise the status of the status of teachers". Each writer has links and references to other articles, organizations, and studies, so it makes for a great start to branch off to other resources.

States around the country are looking to trim their budgets, and public school teachers are feeling unfairly attacked. At the same time, the United States continues to fall behind other countries in student performance rankings.

In high-scoring countries like Finland, Japan, The Netherlands, Canada and South Korea, teachers have higher status and are typically paid better relative to other workers. It also noted, "countries that have succeeded in making teaching an attractive profession have often done so not just through pay, but by raising the status of teaching."

1 comment:

  1. An outstanding set of articles, and an interesting way to arrange a "discussion." For those of you who haven't read it, it's a great summary of -- especially from the perspective of neophyte teachers -- encouraging ideas and calls to action for a public that complains without doing anything. Like Sean mentioned in class, at the same time the "teacher bashing" is discouraging, the fact that articles like this come out in response to the negativity is heartening. Hopefully it will outlast the usual media attention span and evolve into a continuous, low-level hum of debate, discussion, and actual movement towards reform, just like so many other issues have done.

    One or two of the articles in particular stuck out. "Improve Teacher Training" (http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/27/how-to-raise-the-status-of-teachers/improve-teacher-training), for obvious reasons, had some words that resonated with me. I like to think that I ended up choosing a very good teacher training program, but with the sheer number of programs out there, they can't ALL be this good, right? I'm sure someone else in the class got that feeling when they were looking around trying to decide on one to apply for. From the perspective of administrators (i.e. our potential bosses), too, it is important to understand if a program is a strong one, or generally produces strong candidates; besides the grapevine and hiring statistics, I don't see anything in place to rate programs. Does that mechanism exist? Is it necessary?

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