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> Playing by the game can have financial benefits. If an evaluation score is high enough to reach the "highly effective" status, teachers and administrators can

by _rpd 9y ago

> Playing by the game can have financial benefits. If an evaluation score is high enough to reach the "highly effective" status, teachers and administrators can receive $15,000 to $30,000 in bonuses. Fraud can pay very well.

peterwwillis 9y ago
If their base pay is just above the poverty level, not really. There is not some mass of people out there clamoring to be teachers. The only ones teaching are the ones who will submit themselves to humiliation and abuse and work 80 hour weeks for the reward of barely reaching a middle class existence. Then they get told they will lose their job unless they pass people they know they shouldn't, and are routinely told that tests that students aced 10 years ago are so difficult the students can no longer pass. I agree that teachers should not put up with the charade, but it's totally unfair to put teachers' livelihoods at risk just because parents refuse to accept any responsibility and administrators cow down to political pressure.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  I think it's unfair to blame the parents, en masse. Of course there are some crappy parents. But in many cases, they are just yesterday's underserved children, born into a situation where the prospects of escape are extremely slim. The cycle thus continues to their children. If we actually care about today's children, we have to acknowledge the reality that not every parent is fully equipped to help their kids succeed and commit to trying to intervene this generation, to hopefully help many future generations of children. As a teacher in Baltimore, I met parents and guardians of just about every stripe you can imagine. Almost every one of them wanted the best for their kids. A lot of them lacked the savvy, wealth and social capital to navigate a better path for their kids.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    I blame the parents, even when they aren't directly to blame, when they abuse teachers and administrators for not passing their obviously unqualified child. Parents don't seem to care if their child learns as much as whether they can leave the school system. Really though, the politicians are exacerbating the problems. Not only do they abandon communities in need, they cut education funding across the board, and then put price tags on the schools - pass students in my district or we cut the money even more. Meanwhile, they spend more on the military and kick the can down the road.
    - acjohnson55 9y ago
      I never once had pressure from a parent of a failing student. The only time I was pressured by a parent was from one of my more well adjusted students. The "what can we do to make this B an A type thing". Most of the parents I had put a frightening amount of faith in me to open opportunities for their kid and trusted my judgment. I also went out of my way (as is typical in impoverished schools) to let them know as early as possible if their kid was falling behind. As the teacher, it's on you to figure out how to make time to try to coach kids back on track. It's unbelievably overwhelmed to try to do this for a couple dozen kids at a time, each with unique failure patterns to address. The pressure comes from administration, whose asses are on the line to have good looking metrics.
- _rpd 9y ago
  > The median annual Teacher High School salary in Washington, DC is $65,020, as of January 30, 2018, with a range usually between $51,518-$76,373 not including bonus https://www1.salary.com/DC/Washington/high-school-teacher-Salary.html https://www1.salary.com/DC/Washington/high-school-teacher-Sa... A $30,000 bonus is almost 50% of the median salary. It's a significant temptation to commit fraud.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    This assumes you could even get the bonus, and that a single bonus would be worth committing fraud. They're teachers, not idiots.
- JackFr 9y ago
  Salarys: https://dcps.dc.gov/node/1057802 https://dcps.dc.gov/node/1057802 Bachelors degree with no experience (but presumably a teaching certificate) 56K. Tops out with a Phd and 20 years in at about 135K (not including bonuses). Not the end of the world, but median household income in DC & PG County is around 75K, Montgomery County 85K and Fairfax VA 105K. Unmarried, or with a family in a two income home, that's solidly middle class income. > The only ones teaching are the ones who will submit themselves to humiliation and abuse and work 80 hour weeks for the reward of barely reaching a middle class existence. That overstates it a bit, but that is the crux of the issue. DC public schools are administered so poorly, with such a legacy of failure, despite the great pay they cannot attract decent teachers, and they have outrageously high rates of turnover, as anyone who can get a job elsewhere does.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    Those figures are for 2019, and certainly there are extremely few (if any) teachers that have a PhD and stick around for 20 years. DCPS loses about 25% of its teachers every year, with the highest poverty DCPS schools losing 40% per year. The rate nationally has been increasing over the past decade. But let's assume six years of experience, which puts their salary with a bachelors at $62,771. The median cost of a home in DC is $545,000 according to Zillow, with property tax approximately $8,992.50. A 30 year mortgage minimum plus the property tax would be around $3,535 a month. Around 68% of the teacher's gross salary is going to housing. This is over double the suggested amount anyone should spend on housing, and definitely not middle class. If they live outside of DC (almost no teacher can afford to own a home alone in DC) the median cost of a home goes down to only $385,000. But state taxes vary; they're generally higher in Maryland, whereas in Virginia you pay more tax to own a car, for example. The monthly mortgage plus property tax in Montgomery County would be only $2,320 per month, so a more affordable 37% of salary. Now we can start adding on the extras, like insurance, transportation, food, etc in an expensive metro area. Speaking of turnover, it's nice that teachers in DC are allowed to live in surrounding areas. In states such as NJ, all public employees must live in the state, and NJ property taxes are the highest in the country. After adding on home insurance (which might already be high) and then extras like mandatory flood insurance (depending on where you live), this leaves teachers faced with potentially paying more on property tax and insurance than their mortgage, or renting an apartment. This is one of many potential reasons for a high turnover rate. Around the country, teachers face not only low salaries and completely unreasonable expectations, but various challenges like the above. I don't think administration is the sole cause of these problems, as administration is usually responding to outside pressure.
- gowld 9y ago
  and because governments refuse to accept any responsibility for slavery and Jim Crow and the legacy of generational poverty it created.

by _rpd 9y ago

peterwwillis 9y ago

If their base pay is just above the poverty level, not really. There is not some mass of people out there clamoring to be teachers. The only ones teaching are the ones who will submit themselves to humiliation and abuse and work 80 hour weeks for the reward of barely reaching a middle class existence. Then they get told they will lose their job unless they pass people they know they shouldn't, and are routinely told that tests that students aced 10 years ago are so difficult the students can no longer pass. I agree that teachers should not put up with the charade, but it's totally unfair to put teachers' livelihoods at risk just because parents refuse to accept any responsibility and administrators cow down to political pressure.

acjohnson55 9y ago
I think it's unfair to blame the parents, en masse. Of course there are some crappy parents. But in many cases, they are just yesterday's underserved children, born into a situation where the prospects of escape are extremely slim. The cycle thus continues to their children. If we actually care about today's children, we have to acknowledge the reality that not every parent is fully equipped to help their kids succeed and commit to trying to intervene this generation, to hopefully help many future generations of children. As a teacher in Baltimore, I met parents and guardians of just about every stripe you can imagine. Almost every one of them wanted the best for their kids. A lot of them lacked the savvy, wealth and social capital to navigate a better path for their kids.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  I blame the parents, even when they aren't directly to blame, when they abuse teachers and administrators for not passing their obviously unqualified child. Parents don't seem to care if their child learns as much as whether they can leave the school system. Really though, the politicians are exacerbating the problems. Not only do they abandon communities in need, they cut education funding across the board, and then put price tags on the schools - pass students in my district or we cut the money even more. Meanwhile, they spend more on the military and kick the can down the road.
  - acjohnson55 9y ago
    I never once had pressure from a parent of a failing student. The only time I was pressured by a parent was from one of my more well adjusted students. The "what can we do to make this B an A type thing". Most of the parents I had put a frightening amount of faith in me to open opportunities for their kid and trusted my judgment. I also went out of my way (as is typical in impoverished schools) to let them know as early as possible if their kid was falling behind. As the teacher, it's on you to figure out how to make time to try to coach kids back on track. It's unbelievably overwhelmed to try to do this for a couple dozen kids at a time, each with unique failure patterns to address. The pressure comes from administration, whose asses are on the line to have good looking metrics.
_rpd 9y ago
> The median annual Teacher High School salary in Washington, DC is $65,020, as of January 30, 2018, with a range usually between $51,518-$76,373 not including bonus https://www1.salary.com/DC/Washington/high-school-teacher-Salary.html https://www1.salary.com/DC/Washington/high-school-teacher-Sa... A $30,000 bonus is almost 50% of the median salary. It's a significant temptation to commit fraud.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  This assumes you could even get the bonus, and that a single bonus would be worth committing fraud. They're teachers, not idiots.
JackFr 9y ago
Salarys: https://dcps.dc.gov/node/1057802 https://dcps.dc.gov/node/1057802 Bachelors degree with no experience (but presumably a teaching certificate) 56K. Tops out with a Phd and 20 years in at about 135K (not including bonuses). Not the end of the world, but median household income in DC & PG County is around 75K, Montgomery County 85K and Fairfax VA 105K. Unmarried, or with a family in a two income home, that's solidly middle class income. > The only ones teaching are the ones who will submit themselves to humiliation and abuse and work 80 hour weeks for the reward of barely reaching a middle class existence. That overstates it a bit, but that is the crux of the issue. DC public schools are administered so poorly, with such a legacy of failure, despite the great pay they cannot attract decent teachers, and they have outrageously high rates of turnover, as anyone who can get a job elsewhere does.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Those figures are for 2019, and certainly there are extremely few (if any) teachers that have a PhD and stick around for 20 years. DCPS loses about 25% of its teachers every year, with the highest poverty DCPS schools losing 40% per year. The rate nationally has been increasing over the past decade. But let's assume six years of experience, which puts their salary with a bachelors at $62,771. The median cost of a home in DC is $545,000 according to Zillow, with property tax approximately $8,992.50. A 30 year mortgage minimum plus the property tax would be around $3,535 a month. Around 68% of the teacher's gross salary is going to housing. This is over double the suggested amount anyone should spend on housing, and definitely not middle class. If they live outside of DC (almost no teacher can afford to own a home alone in DC) the median cost of a home goes down to only $385,000. But state taxes vary; they're generally higher in Maryland, whereas in Virginia you pay more tax to own a car, for example. The monthly mortgage plus property tax in Montgomery County would be only $2,320 per month, so a more affordable 37% of salary. Now we can start adding on the extras, like insurance, transportation, food, etc in an expensive metro area. Speaking of turnover, it's nice that teachers in DC are allowed to live in surrounding areas. In states such as NJ, all public employees must live in the state, and NJ property taxes are the highest in the country. After adding on home insurance (which might already be high) and then extras like mandatory flood insurance (depending on where you live), this leaves teachers faced with potentially paying more on property tax and insurance than their mortgage, or renting an apartment. This is one of many potential reasons for a high turnover rate. Around the country, teachers face not only low salaries and completely unreasonable expectations, but various challenges like the above. I don't think administration is the sole cause of these problems, as administration is usually responding to outside pressure.
gowld 9y ago
and because governments refuse to accept any responsibility for slavery and Jim Crow and the legacy of generational poverty it created.