for better schools, make it harder to be a teacher

[mominatrix]

Higher Calling

To improve our schools, we need to make it harder to become a teacher.



By Amanda Ripley







If taxpayers, politicians, parents, and—especially—kids know that teaching is a master profession, they begin to trust teachers more over time.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.










So far this month in education news, a California court has decimated rigid job protections for teachers, and Oklahoma’s governor has abolished the most rigorous learning standards that state has ever had. Back and forth we go in America’s exhausting tug-of-war over schools—local versus federal control, union versus management, us versus them.



But something else is happening, too. Something that hasn’t made many headlines but has the potential to finally revolutionize education in ways these nasty feuds never will.



In a handful of statehouses and universities across the country, a few farsighted Americans are finally pursuing what the world’s smartest countries have found to be the most efficient education reform ever tried. They are making it harder to become a teacher. Ever so slowly, these legislators and educators are beginning to treat the preparation of teachers the way we treat the training of surgeons and pilots—rendering it dramatically more selective, practical, and rigorous. All of which could transform not only the quality of teaching in America but the way the rest of us think about school and learning.



Selectivity sends a message to everyone in the country that education is important—and that teaching is damn hard to do.


Over the past two years, according to a report out Tuesday from the National Council on Teacher Quality, 33 states have passed meaningful new oversight laws or regulations to elevate teacher education in ways that are much harder for universities to game or ignore. The report, which ranks 836 education colleges, found that only 13 percent made its list of top-ranked programs. But “a number of programs worked hard and at lightning speed” to improve. Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas now have the most top-ranked programs. This summer, meanwhile, the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation is finalizing new standards, which Education Week called “leaner, more specific and more outcomes-focused than any prior set in the 60-year history of national teacher-college accreditation.”



Rhode Island, which once had one of the nation’s lowest entry-bars for teachers, is leading the way. The state has already agreed to require its education colleges to admit classes of students with a mean SAT, ACT, or GRE score in the top one-half of the national distribution by 2016. By 2020, the average score must be in the top one-third of the national range, which would put Rhode Island in line with education superpowers like Finland and Singapore.



Unlike the brawls we’ve been having over charter schools and testing, these changes go to the heart of our problem—an undertrained educator force that lacks the respect and skills it needs to do a very hard 21st-century job. (In one large survey, nearly 2 in 3 teachers reported that schools of education do not prepare teachers for the realities of the classroom.) Instead of trying to reverse engineer the teaching profession through complicated evaluations leading to divisive firings, these changes aspire to reboot it from the beginning.



To understand why this movement matters so much, it helps to talk to a future teacher who has experienced life with—and without—this reform. Sonja Stenfors, 23, is a teacher-in-training from Finland, one of the world’s most effective and fair education systems. Stenfors’ father is a physical education teacher, and she’s training to be one, too.



In Finland, Stenfors had to work very hard to get into her teacher-training program. After high school, like many aspiring teachers, she spent a year as a classroom aide to help boost her odds of getting accepted. The experience of working with 12 boys with severe behavioral problems almost did her in. “It was so hard,” she told me, “I worried I could not do it.”



By the time the year ended, she had begun the application process for the University of Turku’s elementary education program. After submitting her scores from the Finnish equivalent of the SAT, she read a dense book on education published solely for education-school applicants. Several weeks later, she took a two-hour test on what she had read. The content of the book was beside the point, Stenfors says. “I think it really measures your motivation.”



After she passed the test, Stenfors sat down for an intense in-person interview with two education professors. They described a real-world classroom scenario involving disengaged students and asked how she would respond. They probed her experience in the classroom. Stenfors went home worried, unsure how she’d done. Unlike most American students, she knew many people who had been rejected from education schools.



A month later, she got her letter. Like all of Finland’s teacher-training colleges, the university accepted only about 10 percent of applicants for elementary education in 2010, and Stenfors was one of them. “I was so happy and excited. I called everybody,” she remembers.



By accepting so few applicants, Finnish teacher colleges accomplish two goals—one practical, one spiritual: First, the policy ensures that teachers-to-be like Stenfors are more likely to have the education, experience, and drive to do their jobs well. Second (and this part matters even more), this selectivity sends a message to everyone in the country that education is important—and that teaching is damn hard to do. Instead of just repeating these claims over and over like Americans, the Finns act like they mean it.



Once received, that message has cascading benefits. If taxpayers, politicians, parents, and—especially—kids know that teaching is a master profession, they begin to trust teachers more over time. Teachers receive more autonomy in the classroom, more recognition on the street and sometimes even more pay. As one American exchange student told me about her peers in Finland, “The students were well aware of how accomplished their teachers were. I got the feeling the students saw school not as something to endure but something from which they stood to benefit.” Without those signals, teachers suffer deep cuts that go beyond salary.



This school year, after three years of studying in her Finnish university, Stenfors came to America to study abroad at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Right away, Stenfors noticed a subtle but powerful distinction. It happened whenever she met someone new in America—in her apartment complex, at parties, wherever she went. “Every time I told them I am studying to be a teacher, people said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ ” They nodded politely and moved to other, less dreary conversational territory.



“I was very proud when I said it,” Stenfors says. “But they were not so excited.” She noticed that when her friend told people she was studying business, the friend got asked follow-up questions about what she wanted to do with her degree. “I didn’t get any extra questions.”



In a blog post she wrote from Kansas City, Missouri, Stenfors reported her finding home: “Here it’s not cool to study to be a teacher,” she wrote in Finnish. “They perceive a person who is studying to be a teacher as a little dumber. … Could you imagine [being] ashamed when telling people you are studying to be a teacher?”



Stenfors felt this rebuke like a polite slap to the face. Without realizing it, she’d grown accustomed to people finding her studies impressive in Finland. There, studying to be a teacher was equivalent to studying to be a lawyer or a doctor. Even though teachers still earned less than those professionals, prestige served as its own kind of compensation—one that changed the way she thought of her work and herself.



Why did the Finns respect teachers more? Well, one reason was straightforward: Education college was hard in Finland, and it wasn’t usually very hard in America. Respect flowed accordingly. The University of Missouri–Kansas City admits two-thirds of those who apply. To enter the education program, there is no minimum SAT or ACT score. Students have to have a B average, sit for an interview, and pass an online test of basic academic skills.



Once enrolled, Stenfors’ American peers had to do just two semesters of student teaching—compared to her four semesters in Finland. They had a lot of multiple-choice quizzes (a first for Stenfors). Unlike her Finnish professors, her American instructors encouraged discussion, which Stenfors admired. But overall, the university offered less rigorous, hands-on classroom coaching from experienced teachers—the most important kind of teacher preparation.



The good news is that Finland used to be a lot like the U.S. In 1968, Finland had far more training programs for teachers than it needed. (The U.S. educates twice as many teachers as we need.) That year, Finland shut down those schools and reopened them in the eight most elite universities in the country. In time, Finland’s education schools became places where teachers conducted original research in order to graduate and spent hundreds of hours planning, practicing, teaching real students, and discussing what they had done right and wrong with veteran teachers.



Today, Finnish teachers have more freedom and time to collaborate and innovate than they did in the past—without the burden of top-down accountability policies common to low-trust systems. Parents and politicians in Finland do not pity teachers or treat them like charity cases the way so many do in the U.S. They treat them like grown-up professionals with a very hard job to do.



The lesson for America is obvious: No one gets respect by demanding it. Teachers and their colleges must earn the prestige they need by being the same kind of relentless intellectual achievers they’re asking America’s children to be.



Amanda Ripley is the author of The Smartest Kids in the World—and How They Got That Way, and a Senior Fellow at the Emerson Collective.



www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/06/american_schools_need_better_teachers_so_let_s_make_it_harder_to_become.single.html

[ttt]

I almost posted this yesterday tagged asdfjkl. This is what she says all the time.

[katfco]

I agree we need to raise the standards of who becomes a teacher, but in making it harder to become a teacher, we need to make it easier for teachers to actually teach.

[Deleted]

I definitely think we need to make it harder to become a teacher. Like this article says, a lot might flow from that. I think if becoming a taecher requires more training, maybe even more schooling, higher salaries would be a logical response. It won't happen overnight, but I could definitely see it happening. As more people perceive teachers as the "best and the brightest" it could change everything about how we as a country view teachers. It won't be next year, or the year after. But in 20 or 30 years? sure.

Right now so often you hear "well sure YOU'RE a good teacher, but look how crappy the rest are" or "well sure YOU went to an ivy league school, but most teachers in your school didn't" or whatever. But if all teachers went to highly-ranked colleges, or had intense internships, or whatever? I think it would affect how we view teaching.

I mean my SIL was an elementary teacher and graduated from a state university with an elem ed degree. I think she was probably an excellent teacher (although I never actually saw her teach) but part of the reason she chose her college was because "there's no reason for me to go anywhere else if I want to be a teacher" and when she told me at one point she graduated with a 4.0 and I was impressed, she was like "yeah but it was in elementary ed, you wouldnt believe how easy my classes were." I dont know if she said that to downplay her accomplishment or if it was true, or a combination of both.

[pixy0stix]

Jun 17, 2014 12:28:40 GMT -5 katfco said:

I agree we need to raise the standards of who becomes a teacher, but in making it harder to become a teacher, we need to make it easier for teachers to actually teach.

And pay them what they're worth.

[Deleted]

Jun 17, 2014 12:53:43 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Jun 17, 2014 12:28:40 GMT -5 katfco said:

I agree we need to raise the standards of who becomes a teacher, but in making it harder to become a teacher, we need to make it easier for teachers to actually teach.

And pay them what they're worth.

I really think that making it harder + better salaries is the key to improving our education system.  If you pay teachers better, more people will want to be teachers (not everyone, but maybe more than now) and then you can get choosier about who gets into the education programs.  If people begin to perceive teaching as harder, with more intensive training, they'll be more on board with paying teachers more. 

[NewOrleans]

This is what I've been saying.

[NewOrleans]

Jun 17, 2014 12:28:40 GMT -5 katfco said:

I agree we need to raise the standards of who becomes a teacher, but in making it harder to become a teacher, we need to make it easier for teachers to actually teach.

(wilted)

[Deleted]

If you make it harder/higher standards, you will have to pay more.

Also, new teachers need an excellent support system or mentoring program to gain confidence, experience and succeed. When I student taught with my Masters program I no undergrad teaching courses/experience. I had 100 hrs of observation (with about 5hrs of standing in front of a class working with a teacher's plan for the day). For my first student teaching assignment, I met with my co-op teacher 2wks before classes. He told me the class was 100% mine from the get go, and after the first week and a half, he pretty much left me alone. I know I messed up, and I feel like the students were left to be my guinea pigs, but he was assuring me the lack of student interest and grades were typical. I had much more support with my second assignment, but learned even more about the challenges of trying to reach all the students when they had a wide range of ability and support at home. Never mind that student teaching is essentially the all the work and stress of working a full time job without income, plus continuing classes. I did one more semester for my Masters in Ed, knowing I never, ever wanted to teach; and bless those who can do it under today's environment. It can already be tough to become a teacher; it needs to be supportive.

[lasagnasshole]

This seems like such a no-brainer to me.

Not that there are no bad doctors, but it's a model that generally works overall for medicine. Becoming a doctor is hard. Doctors are, on the whole, respected and compensated well for their hard work.

I think Teach for America has the right idea on part of this - recruiting some of the best and the brightest from top universities. But the focus should be on developing excellent career teachers, not churning through people every 2 or 3 years who use it as a stepping stone to law school and Wall Street and other more lucrative things while using the organization to destroy teachers' unions.

[PinkSquirrel]

What would be a good salary for a teacher?

I just pulled up the average teacher salary for the town I working in; it's $73k a year. They get 4 weeks off during the school year in larger chunks (.5 weeks for Thanksgiving, 1.5 for December and one week each for February and April vacation), all of the one day/regular holidays, and they get some time off in the summer. My boss's daughter right out of college was making 50k+. The average HOUSEHOLD income in the town is $77k. Nothing about that feels like we're not paying people decently well to be teachers especially because it's not like the current pool of teachers is made up of the best and brightest.

[hopecounts]

Jun 17, 2014 15:06:52 GMT -5 PinkSquirrel said:

What would be a good salary for a teacher?

I just pulled up the average teacher salary for the town I working in; it's $73k a year. They get 4 weeks off during the school year in larger chunks (.5 weeks for Thanksgiving, 1.5 for December and one week each for February and April vacation), all of the one day/regular holidays, and they get some time off in the summer. My boss's daughter right out of college was making 50k+. The average HOUSEHOLD income in the town is $77k. Nothing about that feels like we're not paying people decently well to be teachers especially because it's not like the current pool of teachers is made up of the best and brightest.

Avg. pay is not really informative (lies, damn lies, and statistics. An avg tells you nothing real because you could have 25 admin board staff making 100,000 and 100 teachers making 30,000). What is more interesting is the first year and 25 yr pay rate for teachers.
And how do you expect to attract the best and the brightest when we pay them for a tiny amount of the time they put in, most have to spend personal  money on supplying their classrooms, and they get paid for 10 months so they also have to save for the months they are not paid/working. 

[hopecounts]

Jun 17, 2014 15:29:20 GMT -5 @evelynrichards said:

Jun 17, 2014 15:18:08 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Avg. pay is not really informative (lies, damn lies, and statistics. An avg tells you nothing real because you could have 25 admin board staff making 100,000 and 100 teachers making 30,000). What is more interesting is the first year and 25 yr pay rate for teachers.
And how do you expect to attract the best and the brightest when we pay them for a tiny amount of the time they put in, most have to spend personal  money on supplying their classrooms, and they get paid for 10 months so they also have to save for the months they are not paid/working. 

I never understand this part of the argument. Yes, teachers must save for the two months they are not working. I know our district allows teachers to spread out their paychecks over 12 months so they don't have to budget without a salary for two months. Does that not occur everywhere?

That is not the case in my Mom's district. and it was a struggle every year, By August about the time she would need to be stocking her classroom we would be eating Peanut Butter sandwiches and Mayo Sandwiches until her paycheck came through. 
Granted that was as much an issue with my Dad as her Pay but still.

[PinkSquirrel]

Jun 17, 2014 15:18:08 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Jun 17, 2014 15:06:52 GMT -5 PinkSquirrel said:

What would be a good salary for a teacher?

I just pulled up the average teacher salary for the town I working in; it's $73k a year. They get 4 weeks off during the school year in larger chunks (.5 weeks for Thanksgiving, 1.5 for December and one week each for February and April vacation), all of the one day/regular holidays, and they get some time off in the summer. My boss's daughter right out of college was making 50k+. The average HOUSEHOLD income in the town is $77k. Nothing about that feels like we're not paying people decently well to be teachers especially because it's not like the current pool of teachers is made up of the best and brightest.

Avg. pay is not really informative (lies, damn lies, and statistics. An avg tells you nothing real because you could have 25 admin board staff making 100,000 and 100 teachers making 30,000). What is more interesting is the first year and 25 yr pay rate for teachers.
And how do you expect to attract the best and the brightest when we pay them for a tiny amount of the time they put in, most have to spend personal  money on supplying their classrooms, and they get paid for 10 months so they also have to save for the months they are not paid/working. 

So, even though this says average teacher salary and defines average teacher salary as "Total teaching salaries, divided by the number of full-time equivalent teachers, equals the average teacher salary." They lumping non-teachers in? Bastards.



I think we can all agree that teachers shouldn't be the ones paying to stock their classrooms, they should have the option to be paid over 12 months (around here that is not uncommon) and that we're certainly not attracting the best and brightest with 30k a year salaries, but a 50k a year starting salary for first grade feels pretty damn good for 10 months a year and that was the starting salary here 3 years ago. Am I wrong or should we legitimately be looking to go even higher than that? How high? 

[hopecounts]

Jun 17, 2014 15:44:20 GMT -5 PinkSquirrel said:

Jun 17, 2014 15:18:08 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Avg. pay is not really informative (lies, damn lies, and statistics. An avg tells you nothing real because you could have 25 admin board staff making 100,000 and 100 teachers making 30,000). What is more interesting is the first year and 25 yr pay rate for teachers.
And how do you expect to attract the best and the brightest when we pay them for a tiny amount of the time they put in, most have to spend personal  money on supplying their classrooms, and they get paid for 10 months so they also have to save for the months they are not paid/working. 

So, even though this says average teacher salary and defines average teacher salary as "Total teaching salaries, divided by the number of full-time equivalent teachers, equals the average teacher salary."   They lumping non-teachers in?   Bastards.    

I think we can all agree that teachers shouldn't be the ones paying to stock their classrooms, they should have the option to be paid over 12 months (around here that is not uncommon) and that we're certainly not attracting the best and brightest with 30k a year salaries, but a 50k a year starting salary for first grade feels pretty damn good for 10 months a year.    Am I wrong?   

For starting salary no 50,000 is good, however the max pay most teachers in most districts will receive is far below that of someone who goes into something like law/medicine/etc. You are not going to attract the brightest minds who can do the math and realize that they can go into a far more lucrative field.

OK that descriptor helps clarify the average, I still say the average can be misleading since depending on your ratio of 25 yr vs first year teacher you will get very different averages. 

[pinkdutchtulips]

Jun 17, 2014 15:18:08 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Jun 17, 2014 15:06:52 GMT -5 PinkSquirrel said:

What would be a good salary for a teacher?

I just pulled up the average teacher salary for the town I working in; it's $73k a year. They get 4 weeks off during the school year in larger chunks (.5 weeks for Thanksgiving, 1.5 for December and one week each for February and April vacation), all of the one day/regular holidays, and they get some time off in the summer. My boss's daughter right out of college was making 50k+. The average HOUSEHOLD income in the town is $77k. Nothing about that feels like we're not paying people decently well to be teachers especially because it's not like the current pool of teachers is made up of the best and brightest.

Avg. pay is not really informative (lies, damn lies, and statistics. An avg tells you nothing real because you could have 25 admin board staff making 100,000 and 100 teachers making 30,000). What is more interesting is the first year and 25 yr pay rate for teachers.
And how do you expect to attract the best and the brightest when we pay them for a tiny amount of the time they put in, most have to spend personal  money on supplying their classrooms, and they get paid for 10 months so they also have to save for the months they are not paid/working. 

my mom didn't crack the $72k/yr mark until she had been teaching for almost 20 years ! 1st year teachers were earning 35-40k/yr in her district - HCOL SF/Bay Area.

[redheadk]

We need to provide more support for new teachers and not just throw them in the classroom. IME, the most support they get are a few extra meetings with admin each year and a master teacher assigned to them. Well, that master teacher is teaching all day, too, and gets just a tiny stipend, if anything. To me, it would make more sense to have them coteach for a year or have some sort of model where the master teacher can spend significantly more time with the new teacher, including time in the classroom during instructional time.

[erbear]

I agree X1000. It is absurdly easy to become a teacher and there are some dumbasses in the classroom. Add in that you're allowed to teach without having passed the Praxis as long as you're trying (in PA at least - I know someone who was on her EIGHTH try!), no wonder teachers get no respect.

I would like to see my profession get a little more professional.

And then pay me accordingly

[erbear]

Jun 17, 2014 14:25:56 GMT -5 lasagnasshole said:

This seems like such a no-brainer to me.

Not that there are no bad doctors, but it's a model that generally works overall for medicine. Becoming a doctor is hard. Doctors are, on the whole, respected and compensated well for their hard work.

I think Teach for America has the right idea on part of this - recruiting some of the best and the brightest from top universities. But the focus should be on developing excellent career teachers, not churning through people every 2 or 3 years who use it as a stepping stone to law school and Wall Street and other more lucrative things while using the organization to destroy teachers' unions.

And understanding that being smart does not necessarily make you a good teacher, by itself.

[erbear]

I'm 15 years in and my salary has increased a grand total of $15,000 in those years. Not a lot of upward mobility in teaching in some places, even with experience and advanced degrees.

[hopecounts]

Jun 17, 2014 16:16:07 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Jun 17, 2014 15:50:29 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

For starting salary no 50,000 is good, however the max pay most teachers in most districts will receive is far below that of someone who goes into something like law/medicine/etc. You are not going to attract the brightest minds who can do the math and realize that they can go into a far more lucrative field.

OK that descriptor helps clarify the average, I still say the average can be misleading since depending on your ratio of 25 yr vs first year teacher you will get very different averages. 

This is a circular argument though. It's lower than law or medicine because there's no exclusivity or rigor (or let's say, considerably less than in law or medicine).

Which is why I agree that teacher training/education needs to be more rigorous. 
teaching should be a profession and should have similar educational expectations and with that similar pay.

[auntie]

Jun 17, 2014 15:29:20 GMT -5 @evelynrichards said:

Jun 17, 2014 15:18:08 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Avg. pay is not really informative (lies, damn lies, and statistics. An avg tells you nothing real because you could have 25 admin board staff making 100,000 and 100 teachers making 30,000). What is more interesting is the first year and 25 yr pay rate for teachers.
And how do you expect to attract the best and the brightest when we pay them for a tiny amount of the time they put in, most have to spend personal  money on supplying their classrooms, and they get paid for 10 months so they also have to save for the months they are not paid/working. 

I never understand this part of the argument. Yes, teachers must save for the two months they are not working. I know our district allows teachers to spread out their paychecks over 12 months so they don't have to budget without a salary for two months. Does that not occur everywhere?

NO.

My mother's one school allowed this, another divided pay by 10 months. My father's divided by 12 months, but gave a lump 3 month sum in June.

Years ago I read an essay that said what was wrong with education "these days" is equality for women. Back in the day, teaching was about the only respectable profession in which a well bred woman could work. Given that the pool of teachers included very bright women who would have been physicians, attorneys, clergy, engineers, architects, etc if they'd had a chance- you had a superior workforce in schools.

[Michelle]

A parent of one of my girl scouts asked if I'd be interested in becoming a teacher because she says I'd be good based on how I teach the girls in our meetings. Here is the pay in our district: www.pearlandisd.org/files/filesystem/14-15_Teacher_Salary.pdf

As the primary wage earner for my family, we cannot afford those salaries and live in our district.

And the max of the range is $70k? WTF?

[mominatrix]

I think teachers ought to be paid much better than they are.
The problem is that I think that MOST public employees are tragically underpaid.

I was a state government lawyer, and after many years was making less than most first year associates in biglaw. Like, lots less.

Compared with private sector jobs, government jobs of pretty much every kind are paid a LOT less... much of that has to do with the benefits, the work-life-balance issues that ordinarily allow people to make the lower-pay decision, and budgets that honestly don't let people be paid more.

...but you can't get blood from a stone.

Is it possible to increase teacher pay, to 'professionalize' teaching (not that it's not a profession now, but to increase it like Sam says in the WW clip) and NOT do so for other (non-federal) government employees?


(I just looked it up. I was an attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Counsel I jobs (non-supervisory attorney) start at $47,500. Boston teacher pay starts at $49,611). They're both pretty well capped if you're not moving into supervisory positions.




Not trying to mess... just trying to say that I think the underpayment of teachers is emblematic of a much bigger thing in terms of public employee pay...

[RoxMonster]

Re: Teacher Pay--it is so dependent upon what district you teach in. I know this can be said for salary differences in any field. But, for example, in my district, a first year teacher earns about $34,000. That is higher than many other districts I know of. In my district, if you have an MA+40 and over 20 years experience (highest category on the pay scale) you max out around 75K.

I agree with making teacher education more selective and rigorous. But the pay has to back that up. I went to a school that was big in engineering, and many of my friends who are engineers made around 75K straight out of Undergrad. A new science teacher in our district who is a good teacher (I have seen her teach) said she is only 4 courses away from an engineering degree where she can make over double what she is teaching, so she is quitting teaching after one year to go back to school for engineering. She is a good teacher, esp. for a first year teacher, but little support and all the hoops we have to jump through led her to want a different field where she can get compensated more. If she was making more money as a teacher, we could have probably kept a good science teacher in the classroom.

[RoxMonster]

One more thing and then I'll shut up. I think our society's opinion/viewpoint on teachers needs to change in order to get better teachers in the classrooms and in education programs, which will allow us to make the program more challenging and selective. I don't know how we can do this--if it needs to start with paying teachers a little more and making the programs selective and that will beget a change in view, or the other way around.

I honestly don't feel that teachers are valued that much where I am. I know the saying "If you can't do, teach" is not true, and most of you I'm sure don't feel that way, but even though this is said sarcastically or humorously for many people,  there is a good chunk of people in my community who truly feel this way. I am not a teacher martyr and find any "profession martyr" to be kind of annoying, but I will just say that it is hard to want to go into a profession that not only doesn't compensate very well, but one in which you might constantly be put down or criticized by community members or even family members in some cases. Until we can change the outlook on teaching, I don't know if we will attract the best and brightest to the profession. But again, it's kind of a Catch 22.

[hulley]

I love this idea. Love it. It was WAY too easy to become a teacher. I graduated with a 4.0. My course work required little to no rigor. More importantly, I left the program with no idea how to teach. I graduated with people who still cannot pass the licensure exam, which is elementary level content. Not easy, but not incredibly difficult, either, if you had made any bit of effort.

Let's make it harder to become a teacher and,as a result, we won't have to micromanage and supervise every single step because we will have actually trained people to do this very important job.

[Deleted]

And who is going to make communities care about rigorous standards and intensive training? When all the community really wants is a football coach from the community?

I think teacher training should be more rigorous and selective but you have to change the perceived value of a teacher first.

Doctors get paid the way they do because they save lives. American culture has long said that anyone can teach.

[Deleted]

Or what RoxMonster said.

[Deleted]

You know, I think teaching should be easier if you want good teachers.

I don't know that I would be a good teacher, but I never even considered it--dealing with parents would be the worst. I put up with half as much bullshit for twice the pay.