Diana Senechal
"The myth of the super teacher"
Washington Post
March 15, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the_myth_of_the_superteacher/2011/03/14/ABfRM4V_blog.html?wprss=rss_education
Topic: “Super teachers”.
This is a discussion about a program where teachers were given greater incentives to be extraordinary teachers. In this case, a salary of $125,000.
Key Points: The results reported here were somewhat negative however, I wondered why better teachers would not be attracted by better pay. If we capped baseball player salaries at some arbitrary level, say, $40K per year, would the level of competition remain the same? If you want to consistently be in the hunt for the world series, you will have to be able to pay for the New York Yankees. Why would that not be true for a school trying to put together the best team of teachers?
Relevance: Improving education and how to do that is a topic that will continue to be debated.
The whole thing about truly great teachers is that they usually do it for the expereince of changing student lives, and not for the money. Those who are most passionate about teaching understanding that the pay not be exessive, but they teach anyways because of the reward.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that by offering such an incentive as $125K, that is essentially broadcasting for people to come teach for all of the wrong reasons. If someone offered me $125K for doing a job I wasn't really interested in, I would still probably accept the task. In some jobs this may be ok, but in the business of education we do not need teachers who just "settled" on becoming teachers because the pay was good.
I wouldn't mind, however, earning that kind of salary after proving my skills and gaining experience...That would be great!