A couple weeks ago I expressed my distaste for the cheap patriotism of some of my neighbors who flip out at the idea of soldiers not getting their paychecks but bat not one online eyelash at the prospect of teachers losing their jobs.
Dave Eggers and NÃnive Clements Calegari come at the lack of respect for teachers from a similar angle:
When we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers. We don't say, "It's these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That's why we haven't done better in Afghanistan!" No, if the results aren't there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.
And yet in education we do just that. When we don't like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don't like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.
Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives [Dave Eggers and NÃnive Clements Calegari, "The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries," New York Times, 2011.04.30].
Anticipating the retirement of a whole lot of baby-boomers from teaching, Eggers and Calegari say we need a moonshot-style plan to recruit good replacements. One sure way to do that, say they and the market, is offer darn good pay. And maybe a little more respect.
See also this thoughtful treatment of the Eggers-Calegari article on The Displaced Plainsman (who I knew would post on this topic!)
Thank you and the NYT for your attention to the parallels of military and teacher pay. Equally important is the often overlooked problem of morale. It always seems to be about how we can make do with less or improvise while solving the problems the public has no idea even exist. Public educators try to mask how difficult it is to maintain morale year after year. Our tour of duty doesn't end in the summer like most people believe!
It is important that educators be treated as professionals and be paid acccordingly. When it comes to a choice of treating a teaching team with stagnant pay and lack of respect or with adequate pay and honest respect, we need to choose the latter. We should demand that a educational product when presented to our youth be of high caliber and morale. You can spend taxpayer monies wisely and obtain excellent results-the alternative is investing on the cheap and head down a slippery slope of mediocracy. When it comes to play in businessman terms, you invest to bring about respectable returns, not to spend what few dollars you have on the cheap and see nothing in tangible outcomes. As the old saying goes, "penny wise but dollar foolish!". That seems to sum up GDD views on how he runs his ship.
Oh by all means treat teachers like soldiers. As instructed by Napoleon; "There are no bad regiments, only bad colonels."
The problems with the South Dakota system begin and end with the compliant school boards and the status-quo protecting superintendents, and to a lesser extent, the state school administrators, board of regents, and even the governor and legislators.
My position was riffed (after 20 years!) My tour of duty is over in three weeks and I have to say, I'm not sorry to be moving on to greener pastures.
Sorry to hear that, Shelly. What position did you have?
If we are short of good soilders we hire contractors(mersenaries) for $100,000 each per year. Republican capitalism at work there.
Shelly, my sincere condolences to you and to the students who will be deprived of your talents. And Roger, you keep Blackwater or Xe or whatever name they use now away from my kids!