As recent articles have pointed out, public school teachers sometimes moonlight because they cannot afford to live on their teacher salaries. It is a sad state of affairs when a profession that everyone “says” is the most important is given little respect and often-inadequate remuneration.
With the new administration’s push for educational reform and accountability, and the country, especially Chicago and Illinois, facing a severe teacher shortage, we need to find ways to attract qualified people into the profession and keep the truly good ones, who are leaving the profession in alarming numbers.
We all tiptoe around the real issue, but the truth is that there are too many better-paying opportunities, and thus the relatively lower salaries in teaching are often viewed as unattractive. And unfortunately in an effort to improve teaching, some politicians and educational professionals appear to be driving teachers away instead of helping them.
The truth of the matter is that the best way to attract and keep qualified teachers in the profession is to improve their economic status.
Oops! I can hear the outcry now. “More money won’t make them better teachers,” the pundits will scream. Perhaps not always, but it will attract more highly qualified people and, it is hoped, keep them teaching.
Others argue that the love of children and dedication are far more important than money.
True. Good teachers do love children and are dedicated, but they have their own children and college tuitions and mortgages, and we should not make them choose one over the other.
“Teachers make too much money now because they have too many days off as it is and what about summer?” may be heard. Many of the teachers I know, including myself, have had to teach summer school and add an extra class to make more money.
Now with the Illinois State Board of Education’s confusing, mandated five-year recertification process for all Illinois teachers, those same teachers will have to fork over a portion of their paychecks to return to school or take special classes so they will not lose their certificates–and thus, their jobs.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not have a problem with continuing education for teachers as with other professions. It can, obviously, help teachers improve their skills. But in other professions, the company helps defray the cost because corporations understand that a better-educated, skilled worker contributes to the overall success of the company.
Such should be the thinking and policy of school boards. To put it all on a teacher’s already over-extended back seems almost punitive.
I also do not have a problem with accountability, again as in other professions. Mandated tests and standards are here to stay, though almost everyone agrees that students are now overtested; and unfortunately too much classroom time is taken up teaching to those tests, which neither improves skills nor fosters independent thinking.
I do not even have a problem with the termination of teachers who cannot teach. If teachers cannot do their jobs and remediation is unsuccessful, then termination is absolutely called for, again, just as in other professions.
Yes, teachers should be accountable, but so should students and parents. A teacher cannot always be a miracle worker.
I am also not saying that teachers should be paid tons of money, just more. Well-intentioned mentoring, accountability, recertification, etc., do not honestly address the problem. America is losing the best and brightest to more financially rewarding opportunities. Until we address that and somehow, someway, make teaching more lucrative, the problem will only continue and worsen. Pay them and they will come.
