A big flaw in OP's plan is that it is based on a false premise: that the people with the best grades and test scores make the best teachers.

I was a good teacher. I had excellent grades and great test scores. I was not always the best teacher at my grade level--and, surprisingly, some of the really great teachers were not anywhere near as "smart" as I was. Some people have instinctive abilities that enable them to observe and relate to kids better than others.

And, yes, there were some really dumb teachers who did okay. There were also some sorry teachers who were quite intelligent--but, frankly, just didn't care. Fortunately they were few.

I do think that high school teachers need to be subject matter experts. However, look at the foreign language department in your local high school. It is frequently the weakest department filled with native speakers who are quite expert in their language. However, they cannot relate to the kids.

Wish I had the solution--but OP does not have it.

High standardized test scores for future teachers aren't enough--surely we've all had the genius professor who can't teach to save his/her life?

The worst teacher in my building is brilliant at his subject, graduated with a 4.0 from college, but a terrible teacher. He goes too fast, thinks it's all "so easy", and gets frustrated when students don't get it.

The best teacher in the same department dabbled around in community college/retail for a bunch of years, finally got a degree, and is amazingly patient and wonderful at explaining to kids a reason/purpose behind the curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I missed it in the thread but isn't the OP describing a high-end private school? Surely there already exists a private school out there where they pay fat salaries to teachers because they are so awesome.

Is there a case study on such a school that could be discussed:
- how did they identify and recruit their teachers?
- did they come out of particular college programs?
- what kind of metrics do they use for hiring and are they used to calculate starting salaries?
- how is performance measured and how is it tied to pay?
- how many teachers do they fire every year?
- year round schedule?
- how does it all get paid for: how much is the endowment and what is the tuition?

Does anyone know of such a school and how it is working?

Yes. The Equity Project Charter School in NYC does this. It's a public charter school.

There are some studies that have been published on it and I've heard mixed reviews. The teachers work very long hours (7:30-5pm contractually), work during summer as well, but get paid 125,000 a year. The test scores (which I don't believe measure much anyways) are not great and the school is not highly rated.

They got rid of a bunch of the supports to pay teachers that much and keep classes at 30 students. Typically, low income students need a lot more services to be successful. Their school has very meager facilities. I think if parents had a choice between this and a fancy private school with all the bells and whistles, or public school in a wealthy neighborhood (which probably has tons of nice facilities and specials) they would choose the fancier option.

Interesting. Large class sizes and a high number of low-income students make it a challenge. Trying a new model like this is a useful application of the public charter school system. I hope they get better as they gain experience with it.

I guess I was hoping to hear that one of the high-priced private schools around here had tried paying big bucks to their teachers to see what happened.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My idea is more year-around schools, mostly play-learning in the summer. Parents pay small tuition for the summer time. I already pay for summer care, so why not pay a few teachers interested in extra pay?

Isn't that day care?

I read it as the being more in line of an academic summer camp. So, no grading or testing, but imparting knowledge and teaching content in more innovative ways like field trips and interesting projects etc. More hands-on learning. I think we need to not have long summer breaks, instead have a break of two weeks after every quarter. This will allow kids to make up on content they did not understand or missed etc.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I missed it in the thread but isn't the OP describing a high-end private school? Surely there already exists a private school out there where they pay fat salaries to teachers because they are so awesome.

Is there a case study on such a school that could be discussed:
- how did they identify and recruit their teachers?
- did they come out of particular college programs?
- what kind of metrics do they use for hiring and are they used to calculate starting salaries?
- how is performance measured and how is it tied to pay?
- how many teachers do they fire every year?
- year round schedule?
- how does it all get paid for: how much is the endowment and what is the tuition?

Does anyone know of such a school and how it is working?

Yes. The Equity Project Charter School in NYC does this. It's a public charter school.

There are some studies that have been published on it and I've heard mixed reviews. The teachers work very long hours (7:30-5pm contractually), work during summer as well, but get paid 125,000 a year. The test scores (which I don't believe measure much anyways) are not great and the school is not highly rated.

They got rid of a bunch of the supports to pay teachers that much and keep classes at 30 students. Typically, low income students need a lot more services to be successful. Their school has very meager facilities. I think if parents had a choice between this and a fancy private school with all the bells and whistles, or public school in a wealthy neighborhood (which probably has tons of nice facilities and specials) they would choose the fancier option.

Almost all private schools pay less than public schools.

Maybe I missed it in the thread but isn't the OP describing a high-end private school? Surely there already exists a private school out there where they pay fat salaries to teachers because they are so awesome.

Is there a case study on such a school that could be discussed:
- how did they identify and recruit their teachers?
- did they come out of particular college programs?
- what kind of metrics do they use for hiring and are they used to calculate starting salaries?
- how is performance measured and how is it tied to pay?
- how many teachers do they fire every year?
- year round schedule?
- how does it all get paid for: how much is the endowment and what is the tuition?

Does anyone know of such a school and how it is working?

Agree with much of the previous.

I have a degree from MIT and was a high school teacher for 5 years. I loved teaching high school. Seven years ago, I left, went to grad school and I'm now a professor. I still miss the energy of high school and that age group.

I didn't leave because of the bad pay, but it didn't help. Some of the reasons I left were:

1. The school I taught at was falling down, there were never enough books or chairs or desks or whiteboard markers or kleenex. It seemed as though no one cared that the students were being denied basic things (functioning bathrooms). It was a slap every time I submitted a FORM asking for a box of kleenex and was told I had reached my quota for the month. Sometimes, it's the small things.

2. The testing. The standards. I was an expert in my content area and am even more so now. The multiple choice exams weren't measuring anything I would consider important. The standards were unreasonable, ensured that I couldn't meet my students needs, and couldn't improvise or do any fun projects, etc.

3. Class sizes. I was in California. I had over 40 kids in most classes and 7 classes per day. If you have just a few disruptive kids per class, it gets crazy. They were packed in like sardines. For our giant school we had only a few counselors and admins - we needed double the number we had.

4. The hours. The grading alone killed me. I don't remember a weekend or holiday I didn't work. Grading, lesson planning, meeting with parents, meeting with admins, helping students after school.... it all adds up. I shouldn't have to wreck my life and be some sort of martyr just to get my job done. My relationships suffered, I was eating out too much, and not exercising.

5. I was sick of hearing how teaching is a bad profession. I was sick of hearing parents say, "Oh my god, you went to MIT? Why are you here?" I was tired of getting told how teachers are lazy and bad at their jobs.


Basically, I feel like everyone loves to complain about how horrible public education is. In the end, one thing that would help fix schools is money. Reduce class sizes and work loads to reasonable amounts. Hire some more counselors and support staff for the kids that need help. Fix the infrastructure. Pay teachers more. Then, start giving them some respect. Sadly, no one is going to put their money where their mouth is. They're just going to keep bitching about lazy, dumb teachers .

When I look at teaching now, I wonder how it would feel to be held accountable for ALL the problems that my students had. The focus on assessing teachers by student test scores seems insane to me. There were so many systemic issues I had no control over.

Teachers leave because not only is there low pay, there is zero respect for their professional knowledge and experience. The trend has been to micromanage what goes on the classroom--much of this is coming from legislators, most of whom have zero experience teaching.

We don't tell doctors or lawyers what they need to do in every situation--there are broad guidelines that they can work within to make decisions that are appropriate for that particular situation. We trust them, but not teachers.

Get out of the way and let teachers teach! That will go a long way. (And if you can get more money headed their way, that will help too)

Exactly. If you want to get more professional teachers, treat them like professionals.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see a requirement that teachers score above the 75th percentile in both the verbal and quantitative sections of the GRE before they can be licensed. You could set a lower percentile for the very lowest grades.

Teaching suffers as a profession because it is thought one doesn't have to be very smart to become one--witness the low bar for entering a school of education.

The profession has never recovered from the outflow of all the best and brightest women once they were able to join the work force as scientists, doctors, lawyers, and business executives and were no longer limited to just nursing, secretarial work, and teaching.

NP here. I'm a teacher and these sorts of predictable comments are always so infuriating. I was Phi Beta Kappa at an Ivy, then went to Harvard for grad school. I have never scored less than the 99th percentile on any standardized test I've ever taken going all the way back to the SAT. Over my long career, I've taught in public and private schools in three states, and my colleagues have almost all been highly educated--at least as educated as my friends in other professional fields. Sure, this is anecdotal, but MANY, MANY teachers are extremely intelligent and highly educated. This sort of disdain is unhelpful.

First off, thank you for going into teaching. With your scores and education you could easily have gone into a number of other more remunerative fields. people are lucky to have someone as intelligent and dedicated as you as a teacher.

But I am puzzled that you seem fine with the overall low level of academic achievement of many of your fellow teachers. A Business Insider article from 2014 gave the mean SAT scores for a long list of majors. Here are the ones for education majors with percentiles I took from the SAT site:

Critical reading 482 (41%ile) Math 482 (35%ile) Writing 474 (42%ile)

These seem low to me. I too am a Phi Beta Kappa from an Ivy and, frankly, sometimes I have found it difficult to communicate with some of my kids teachers who are 400 scorers. I have also met a few teachers who are very, very impressive, for the understanding of their subject and for their emotional intelligence. But they have been few and far between.

Maybe I am just very disappointed. I want teachers to be viewed as an elite as our children deserve. But as long as the profession is dominated by people who got 400s on their SATs (a crude shorthand I admit) I don't see how this is possible.

The scores aren't a great indicator. There are people say that they want to major in education, or actually do major in education, who never become teachers or who stop teaching within the 1st year or 2. These tend to be people who think that teaching ends at 3:00 and is a 9 month job. They aren't very motivated and the say that they want to major in education because they think that it is easy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see a requirement that teachers score above the 75th percentile in both the verbal and quantitative sections of the GRE before they can be licensed. You could set a lower percentile for the very lowest grades.

Teaching suffers as a profession because it is thought one doesn't have to be very smart to become one--witness the low bar for entering a school of education.

The profession has never recovered from the outflow of all the best and brightest women once they were able to join the work force as scientists, doctors, lawyers, and business executives and were no longer limited to just nursing, secretarial work, and teaching.

NP here. I'm a teacher and these sorts of predictable comments are always so infuriating. I was Phi Beta Kappa at an Ivy, then went to Harvard for grad school. I have never scored less than the 99th percentile on any standardized test I've ever taken going all the way back to the SAT. Over my long career, I've taught in public and private schools in three states, and my colleagues have almost all been highly educated--at least as educated as my friends in other professional fields. Sure, this is anecdotal, but MANY, MANY teachers are extremely intelligent and highly educated. This sort of disdain is unhelpful.

Thank you for being a teacher. I apppreciate teachers. The pp who became a dr has very valid points. I could never be a teavher or a doctor.

The way to get more top-notch people into teaching (along with the pay, which I agree is a pie-in-the-sky idea--that money will need to come from somewhere and it will take more than changing an ed. degree program to get people behind that) is to GIVE TEACHERS RESPECT for knowing their profession. Teachers leave because not only is there low pay, there is zero respect for their professional knowledge and experience. The trend has been to micromanage what goes on the classroom--much of this is coming from legislators, most of whom have zero experience teaching.

We don't tell doctors or lawyers what they need to do in every situation--there are broad guidelines that they can work within to make decisions that are appropriate for that particular situation. We trust them, but not teachers.

Get out of the way and let teachers teach! That will go a long way. (And if you can get more money headed their way, that will help too)

Anonymous wrote:

The profession has never recovered from the outflow of all the best and brightest women once they were able to join the work force as scientists, doctors, lawyers, and business executives and were no longer limited to just nursing, secretarial work, and teaching.

+1 But teaching will not be a high paid profession as long as it is seen as a "female" profession. More men need to enter this profession.

It will not be a higher paying job until it becomes a full time job. In the real world, 1980 hours on the clock (plus prep) is the minimum. 2300-2500 is normal.

I have a degree in education. It's not just the pay. It's the schools I don't want to teach at

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see a requirement that teachers score above the 75th percentile in both the verbal and quantitative sections of the GRE before they can be licensed. You could set a lower percentile for the very lowest grades.

Teaching suffers as a profession because it is thought one doesn't have to be very smart to become one--witness the low bar for entering a school of education.

The profession has never recovered from the outflow of all the best and brightest women once they were able to join the work force as scientists, doctors, lawyers, and business executives and were no longer limited to just nursing, secretarial work, and teaching.

NP here. I'm a teacher and these sorts of predictable comments are always so infuriating. I was Phi Beta Kappa at an Ivy, then went to Harvard for grad school. I have never scored less than the 99th percentile on any standardized test I've ever taken going all the way back to the SAT. Over my long career, I've taught in public and private schools in three states, and my colleagues have almost all been highly educated--at least as educated as my friends in other professional fields. Sure, this is anecdotal, but MANY, MANY teachers are extremely intelligent and highly educated. This sort of disdain is unhelpful.

First off, thank you for going into teaching. With your scores and education you could easily have gone into a number of other more remunerative fields. people are lucky to have someone as intelligent and dedicated as you as a teacher.

But I am puzzled that you seem fine with the overall low level of academic achievement of many of your fellow teachers. A Business Insider article from 2014 gave the mean SAT scores for a long list of majors. Here are the ones for education majors with percentiles I took from the SAT site:

Critical reading 482 (41%ile) Math 482 (35%ile) Writing 474 (42%ile)

These seem low to me. I too am a Phi Beta Kappa from an Ivy and, frankly, sometimes I have found it difficult to communicate with some of my kids teachers who are 400 scorers. I have also met a few teachers who are very, very impressive, for the understanding of their subject and for their emotional intelligence. But they have been few and far between.

Maybe I am just very disappointed. I want teachers to be viewed as an elite as our children deserve. But as long as the profession is dominated by people who got 400s on their SATs (a crude shorthand I admit) I don't see how this is possible.