Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

[phoenixgirl]

I really don't know what I think about this topic. I do think that if teachers were paid more, our children would have better teachers . . . more competition for the jobs, especially in harder to staff schools. There are always people willing to work for less to teach at a great or prestigious school.

In my 8 years as a public school teacher, I was frustrated that my pay was not commensurate with my performance or job responsibilities. In my final year, my base salary was only $1k more than a first year teacher with no experience (I earned a stipend which was mostly just a gesture for running the newspaper and the school won a grant which applied to my AP classes). At that time I was teaching three sections of AP lit, running the school newspaper, teaching three levels of journalism in one class, and preparing remedial tenth graders for the difficult state writing test. I'd guess it was probably 10 to 20 hours a week of work on top of the 40 hours I was at school, sometimes more when there were big papers to grade or the newspaper to prepare for print. I loved my job (until I became a parent and wasn't willing to work 60 hours a week), and I was lucky that the money wasn't an issue. So I'm not going to join the chorus of "all teachers deserve $100k a year" or anything like that. But I believe that it's not a very good strategy to hope that enough highly qualified, passionate, patient, and engaging people will want to be teachers in every school in America for maybe $40k a year. No way. A lot of my colleagues were less than stellar, and there was a lot of turn-over. If we care at all about our society or our youth (which can be a self-interested concern since we all suffer if our society goes down the tubes), then we should care about education.

The one part of the "stop whining teachers" argument that annoys me personally is the reminder about the time off in the summer. Working 55 hours a week for 40 weeks a year equals more than 40 hours per week with no weeks off over the course of a year. I just did all of my work for the entire year in spurts.

Now, granted, I don't think most of my colleagues worked as many hours as I did, which brings me to point number one . . . my annoyance that the pay is just based on some scale and that there is no consideration given to workload or performance. Most people need incentive beyond the desire to pat themselves on the back to work beyond the minimum required.

 

[stringtheorygirl]

I thought of this thread as I was watching a 60 Minutes segment last night on a charter school ("TEP") that pays teachers $125,000/year. As an educator myself, I found it fascinating and thought I would share.


Link to article & video: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/10/60minutes/main20041733.shtml

 

[LtlFirecracker]

Hypothetical question. Do you think that if teachers were paid DECENTLY, the numbers of schoolchildren prescribed stimulants would decrease? Or, the time of the first prescription would move from elementary to middle or even high school?

Underpaying teachers and not investing enough money into public school system has unmeasurable consequences.

I am not against stimulants. Not at all. But there is a huge difference in getting your first prescription at 6, when the brain is just developing, or at 16, when it is much safer.

Coming from someone who prescribes these meds, here is my prospective. Although I realize these medications are over prescribed in the US, I want to start by saying that I do think these medications are beneficial when used on the right patient in the right context.

I don't think you can put the teacher's influence into one homogeneous group. Yes, there are some teachers who have memorized the questionnaire I use and know exactly how to answer it to get the child a diagnosis. But that is pretty easy to figure out, and I give less weight to to the opinions of the teachers who do that. Than there are some who go above and beyond to try to prevent a child from needing medications. I have many patients who have been accommodated by their teacher for 2-3 years, and the parent is bringing them to me because either they are worn out spending 4 hours doing homework that takes 30 minutes or because the child realizes they are unable to do things their peers can do and it is starting to affect their self esteem.

The group of children with ADHD that tend to come to me at a young age are the ones that have a large element of hyperactivity to their ADHD. If they are under 5, I will not medicate them as that is out of the scope of my practice as a general pediatrician. I don't have a single parent who would have let their child be medicated under the age of 5. Most of my new evaluations are between 8-11 years old. With every child, you have to consider other things besides ADHD. For example, a 4 year old was sent to me by both a teacher AND a private speech therapist. I explained to the mother that the child is globally delayed, and therefore to expect him to have an attention span of a 4 year old is unrealistic.

I don't think teachers are the primary problem, I think the way our society deals with any "mental health" issue is the main problem. For the younger children especially (but ideally I would like all kids to have this) I would love to get them into cognitive behavioral therapy. The problem is that we have so few psychologist and LCSCs in the local area that I can't get them into one. When I do they repeat the evaluation I have already done and suggest medications!! On the doctor side, I see a lot of kids come in for an "ADHD" eval when they are actually depressed, anxious ect. In medical school, I saw a few doctors not even bother to take the time to tease these out and just prescribe them meds even if things do not fit. I really try to do my best to look at other medical and psychological problems that would contribute to lack of attention, but this is time consuming. Being that doctors are paid by seeing x patients a day (usually in 15-20 minute time slots), it much easier in general to give a pill rather than figure out the problem. I am not excusing that behavior, but it is something to keep in mind when looking at this issue.

My point? You can't scapegoat one group when it comes to our society's use of medications for ADHD. The problem is much more complicated than that.