Double Teachers' Salaries

Slate has an article today from a Professor who no longer writes letters of recc. for Teach For America.  Her reasons? Studies clearly confirm that poor and marginalized students are best served not by inexperienced, uncommitted, untrained kids of privilege padding their resumes, but by professional teachers with years of experience. In retrospect, that was embarrassingly obvious. My goodness, even The Onion knew that!

A very antiquated, classist, patronizing and condescending idea undergirds TFA: it's that old European Aristocratic notion that somehow the privileged are innately qualified to instruct the lower-classes.  Not even contemporary Europeans believe that anymore--and we're supposed to be the free, egalitarian United States of America!

But TFA is even more insidious than that--as the Slate article explains, TFA is part of the de-professionalization of American schools, wherein we replace highly-trained, experienced teachers with what amounts to a bunch of young temps who bail out before they actually become effective at their jobs.  Higher education (especially my field, English) is likewise plagued by "Adjunct-ification," wherein highly-paid, full-time professors are replaced with poorly-paid, part-time workers.

And then we have the nerve to complain that our schools are failing our children! 

I have a solution, and it's something that Japan, Finland, and every other Industrialized Democracy that regularly trounces us in education already knows: you need to make Teaching as respected a career as, say, Medicine or a Law; you need to attract top minds to the field who will take it seriously; you need to keep the dedicated teachers from being poached away to private schools or private sectors; that is:

You need to double teachers' salaries.

Across the board.  Kindergarten teachers through College Professor.  Middle-School, High School, community college adjuncts: double their salaries.  Whatever it is now, double it.

Inner-city public school teachers?  Pay them triple.

I've noticed that the sort of folks who favor cutting education budgets tend to be free market advocates.  This logic should be right up their alley: the better you pay teachers, the better talent you'll attract.  That's the logic behind ludicrously inflated CEO salaries, right?  You get what you pay for, Public Education not excepted.

Those better-educating countries?  They don't waste time with these ridiculous Public-vs-Charter debates.  They just pay their teachers better.  Finland doesn't even have private or charter schools--or even standardized tests--and their students are the best performing on Earth.   Not coincidentally, their teachers are also better paid.

"But teachers shouldn't be motivated by profit!"  Actual students of mine have argued that to me.  And I quite agree with them: the best teachers are motivated by a higher sense of purpose.  So are the best doctors, but certainly no one advocates paying them a public school salary, right?  Of course not, they're highly trained professionals that perform an essential labor.  As are teachers.  Pay them as such.  Double their salaries.

Certain blessed souls will be teachers no matter what the pay.  It's their calling.  We've all had at least one in our lives.  A truly skilled teacher is as thrilling to behold as a Michael Jordan in action.  But they're also just as rare.  We need more of them.  Attract them.  Cultivate them.  Reward them.  They do more to help America than, say, the CEOs of Enron.

"But we can't solve the problem by just throwing money at it!"  A tired argument; who said anything about throwing money at teachers?  They're an investment.  You get the teachers you pay for.  "But it's those Teacher Unions!"  Gain concessions from the Unions, make it easier to fire bad teachers, by offering to double their salaries.  Double.  Whatever it is now, double it.

"But the problem is so much bigger than just teachers!"  I know. Systematic poverty and growing income inequality keeps many students trapped. We can't claim to be a free and equal land of opportunity if not everyone begins at the same starting line. To truly address the American education crisis, we'd have to fundamentally restructure America from the ground up, granting all American children equal access to quality education, healthcare, and basic services.   

But I follow the news: we can barely get health-care to those with pre-existing conditions without shutting down the government.  Forgive me if I'm a tad pessimistic.

We can't change America overnight.  But we can double teachers' salaries.  Maybe right now we can't help all students yet, but a good teacher can make all the difference in the world for one failing student--this is not an aphorism or a Hallmark card, but a fatally important fact.  We know this.  We need more good teachers.  But when we pay them terribly, we discourage them out of the field.  This is a disservice to students, to teachers, to America.  Fix it.  Double teachers' salaries.