All Kids Can Have Great Teachers (Without Firing Any Teachers

The best teachers should be able to rise far above average teachers on the salary scale — and they should have far more responsibility.

All Kids Can Have Great Teachers (Without Firing Any Teachers

By Maura Larkins 

Voice of San Diego

September 7, 2012

No one really knows what’s going on in individual public school classrooms. Observations by principals tend to be fleeting and few. We don’t need to fire anybody, but we do need to use highly-skilled teachers and ordinary teachers where they can do the optimal good.

The truth is that the critical moments in learning don’t happen continuously five hours a day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less.

The rest of the time an ordinary teacher can handle lesson reinforcement, computer activities, art projects, silent reading, etc.

The best teachers should be able to rise far above average teachers on the salary scale — and they should have far more responsibility. In my plan, each classroom would have a full-time regular teacher.

Several classrooms would share a master teacher, who would be responsible for student progress, teaching lessons part-time and guiding the regular teacher.

Gifted regular teachers would be eligible to become master teachers. Instead of bringing in vendors selling the latest gimmick for tens of thousands of dollars, master teachers would do all necessary training.

Here’s the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $100+$50+$50+$50+$50 = $300 (minus exorbitant cost of education vendors)

If we add more money, we could have more master teachers. Meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless.

My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, who would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics at bay. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to pick up new ideas.

Alpine teachers, who began strike on Thursday Feb. 20, 2014, reach accord with district

See all posts re Alpine Union School District.

UPDATE Feb. 25, 2014:

Alpine teachers, district reach tentative accord
By Karen Pearlman
SDUT
Feb. 25, 2014

ALPINE — A tentative agreement between striking Alpine teachers and the Alpine Union School District was reached in the earliest hours on Tuesday after a fourth day of negotiations.

The agreement, announced by Alpine Union School District Superintendent Tom Pellegrino and Alpine Teachers Association president Gayle Malone at 1:20 a.m. Tuesday, was promptly disseminated to the 91 teachers represented by the union for a vote.

"TA reached! Strike ended," Pellegrino wrote in a text message.

"I think it's the best deal we can do right now at this point in time," said Alpine Teachers Association president Gayle Malone at 1:35 in the morning.

A ratification meeting for Alpine teachers began at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday at Joan MacQueen Middle School.

By 8 a.m. when the voting was over, 69 votes have been cast with 96% in favor of the proposal and 4% against.

The details include:

For the 2013-14 school year, teachers will take a 5.58 percent salary cut effective April 1. For 2014-15, they will take a 3.78 percent cut effective July 1 if gap funding reaches 28 percent. The school district had imposed a 7.58 percent pay cut at the end of January when contract talks stalled.
Staff will have two development days paid at a daily rate.
The district will contribute a maximum of $9,500 in health care benefits retroactive to Jan. 1, 2014.
Furlough days will be six this academic year and seven in 2014-15.
The work day is not to exceed seven and a half hours.
The retirement incentive, nonexistent before, is now $8,000 if teachers submit a letter by March 5.

Teachers union bargaining member Theresa Horton, at the ratification meeting said, "We have to leave the path and move forward. You can't heal if you keep picking at the scabs. These kids need to be in their seats so the district can collect their ADA."

More than six proposals were batted back and forth just on Monday, according to Robbi Skovmand, a bargaining member for the teachers union and a Joan MacQueen Middle School teacher.

“We’ve never worked so hard for a pay cut,” she said. “For ATA, it was to restore salary and get as high a health cap as we could. Our goal was restoration.“

Skovmand said that both sides remained respectful and worked hard throughout the negotiations that totaled nearly 40 hours in the past four days.

“It’s an insanely slow process coming together on issues and talking them through. Our goal was to get kids back to the classroom and teachers back to the classroom.”

After casting his vote to return to the classroom, Joan MacQueen Middle School eighth grade teacher Brendan Casey said, "I am actually feeling pretty happy. I believe the restorations are fair for both sides. It's a complex web, not just about one particular issue. I am heading to my classroom in six minutes."...

"The district and teacher leaders worked into the early morning on Tuesday, Feb. 25 and reached an agreement that both parties can stand behind," Pellegrino wrote in a statement to parents of students in the rural district. "The strike has ended! We know that your child will be extremely happy to see our Alpine teachers back. We are too! We are committed to maintaining the high level of education that you have grown to expect and deserve. Teachers will be back in the classroom Tuesday."...

CORRECTION Feb. 23, 2014: This post originally incorrectly stated that Fred Kamper was involved in Alpine Unified. He was not.

UPDATE Feb. 21, 2014: Alpine district teachers strike goes into a second day

Alpine teachers strike for a 2nd day
By Amanda Shotsky
Channel 6
Fri, 21 Feb 2014

(ALPINE) - A war of words and wages continues in Alpine. It's day two of a strike involving dozens of teachers who say they are being treated unfairly.

"We all have lost sleep and we are stressed," says teacher Candy Melon.

Teachers staged protests at 5 area schools.

"We have fabulous teachers that need to be paid fairly," says teacher Wendy Yoshinaga.

Friday the Alpine Teachers Association agreed to sit down with the district for another round of negations.

This coming one day after a heated board meeting where parents voiced concern over their kids attending school amid chaos.

It's the latest chapter in a long battle over budget woes. Back in July the district imposed a 7.58% salary cut for teachers and significantly trimming health benefits.

The ATA is accusing the district of underestimating the amount of state funding allotted for this year. But Superintendent Tom Pellegrino says that's not the case.

"There isn't more money," says Pellegrino. "If we would have accepted the ATA's last proposal it would have bankrupted our schools."

According to Pellegrino, the district's proposal would have actually restored more than 4% of the original pay cut by July.

"We'll go back to the table in June," says Yoshinaga. "We want to settle this and get back into the classroom now."

UPDATE:

Alpine school district, teachers to return to negotiations
By Caroline Dipping
SDUT
Feb. 21, 2014

ALPINE — After one day of a teachers strike, the Alpine Union School District has asked the teachers union to come back to the table. A bargaining session is set for 11 a.m. today at the district office on Administration Way in Alpine...


Alpine teachers launch strike
By Karen Pearlman
SDUT
Feb. 20, 2014

Teachers in the Alpine Union School District began their strike Thursday morning, the latest chapter in a more than year-long conflict over how to balance the district's budget.

It's the first teachers strike in San Diego County since 1996. The main disagreements between the Alpine district administration and the teachers union include how much state education funding the district expects to receive this year, how much of a salary reduction teachers should bear and how much the district should contribute to teachers' health-care benefits.

On Jan. 31, the district imposed a 7.58 percent salary cut for teachers and trimmed its maximum contributions to employee health benefits from $13,500 to $8,000 a year.

These cuts are projected to bring down the deficit in the district’s nearly $14.7 million operating budget from $1.05 million to $623,000. Similar cuts proposed for nonteaching employees, who will begin negotiations Friday, along with anticipated new state revenue are expected to get Alpine out of the red by June 30.

The Alpine Teachers Association contends, among other things, that district officials are underestimating the amount of state funding scheduled for this year and have decided to disproportionately harm teachers instead of considering other expenditure cuts. The district's administrators maintain that all other reductions have been considered, and that the teachers union is unwilling to make necessary sacrifices.

The controversy reached a new threshold with Thursday's strike.

Shortly after 6:30 a.m., nearly 100 teachers from Alpine and other school districts, some members of the California Teachers Association and other supporters marched down Tavern Road in front of Joan MacQueen Middle School to launch the strike.

They held signs, shared stories and waved to passing motorists.

MacQueen seventh-grade teacher Lori Hernandez said she and her colleagues are not being unreasonable.

"This is not about a raise for teachers," she said. "We are actually striking for a fair pay cut."

Parents soon began dropping off their children at the campus for the school's 7:35 a.m. start of classes, and many of them gave the "thumb's up" sign to the protesters.

...On Tuesday, Alpine Superintendent Tom Pellegrino had written in an email that proposals by the Alpine Teachers Association would “bankrupt the district.”

“The district has continued to make concessions with proposals that stretch as far as humanly possible to reach an agreement,” Pellegrino wrote. “At the same time, union leadership continues to demand more money and move away from the tentative agreement that the ATA negotiating team agreed to on Jan. 31.”

Alpine teachers who join the walkout won't get paid for any strike days, and they can't use vacation or sick time, according to Bill Guy, spokesman for the California Teachers Association.

A strike relief fund — currently at more than $20,000 — made up of voluntary contributions from teachers associations and individuals throughout the state may be distributed to some Alpine teachers, Guy said. Typically, this assistance is reserved for those who most need it in the short term.

As of Thursday morning, officials with the Alpine district and teachers union had not ventured an estimate on how long the strike might last. They also had not scheduled any further negotiation meetings.

Pellegrino said the district is up for further negotiations and he is "saddened by the fact the kids are put in the mix of employer/employee disputes." He entreated the teachers to return to their classrooms and said, "If I could pay them double, I would do it today, but I will not put forward a deal that would bankrupt the district."

Outside of Joan MacQueen Middle School on Thursday morning, the striking Alpine teachers were joined by instructors from South County, Ramona and Imperial County.

Gayle Malone, president of the Alpine Teachers Association, said she heard further support would be coming later Thursday from teachers in Bakersfield and Riverside counties...

Orleans parish school system could easily have made things better rather than making them worse, now owes back pay to 7,000 fired teachers

The 2013 Orleans Parish School Board meets for the first time Jan. 14, 2013, at Hynes elementary in Lakeview. Danielle Dreilinger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

Dear folks at Orleans parish school system:

You could so easily have made things better rather than making them worse.

The Orleans parish school system sounds remarkably similar to the school systems in Chicago and in Chiapas, Mexico--and here in San Diego. Like board members and administrators across the US, you have been shamefully cowardly when it comes to fixing schools.

Firing legions of teachers isn't the answer. First of all, the problem runs deeper than individual teachers. Second, you made a mess without fixing the huge problem in your schools. Of course, that just means that you're doing what the National School Boards Association expects from all board members.

The problem could be solved easily.

American schools are wasting resources. We under-utilize the top 10 % of teachers, and we over-utilize mediocre and incompetent teachers.

If New Orleans had properly used the skills of its top teachers, and at the same time allowed less competent teachers to play roles that they are fully capable of playing, it could have a superb school system today.

You New Orleans board members probably had some sincere desire to provide better teachers. But the only changes you would consider were those that had powerful political backers. So you probably deluded yourselves into thinking you were doing good for kids as well as for yourselves.

Why do most school board members refuse to do anything unless they get a political or personal advantage? Obviously, we keep electing the wrong people to school boards--people willing to play ball with the powerful usually get elected.

Sincerely,
Maura Larkins

Hey, New Orleans, You Probably Shouldn’t Have Fired Those 7000 Teachers After Katrina. #Payup
by Doktor Zoom
January 17, 2014

So it turns out that Louisiana’s attempt to “remake” public education after Katrina — which mostly consisted of opening up the state’s coffers to grifty charter schools and handing out vouchers for religious schools, regardless of their quality – has run into just a teensy bit of a problem: in their zeal to screw teachers’ unions, they also fired over 7000 teachers without due process, and a court in the teachers’ class-action suit has found that the teachers are entitled to damages. Not the full 5 years’ back pay and benefits the teachers sought, but 2-3 years’ pay, plus benefits for those who were enrolled in them before being fired:

The decision validates the anger felt by former teachers who lost their jobs. It says they should have been given top consideration for jobs in the new education system that emerged in New Orleans in the years after the storm.

Beyond the individual employees who were put out, the mass layoff has been a lingering source of pain for those who say school system jobs were an important component in maintaining the city’s black middle class.

It shouldn’t have happened in the first place, of course, but in the chaos following Katrina, pushers of charter schools and other schemes to privatize public education were quick to jump in and “help” — mostly helping themselves to large pools of money for “rebuilding.”

And just to add insult to catastrophe, the influx of new reformers have changed the, shall we say, complexion of New Orleans schools, not to mention siphoning public money into private education companies:

More young, white teachers have come from outside through groups such as Teach for America. And charter school operators often offer private retirement plans instead of the state pension fund, which can discourage veteran teachers who have years invested in the state plan.

Though many schools have made a conscious effort to hire pre-Katrina teachers and New Orleans natives, eight years later, people still come to public meetings charging that outside teachers don’t understand the local students’ culture.

And just to underline the message that a new boss was in town, the 7,000 teachers were first put on “disaster leave without pay,” and then unceremoniously fired in 2006. For an extra kick in the teeth, the terminations themselves were often badly botched:

Notices were delivered to teachers’ old addresses, sometimes to houses that no longer existed, and they directed teachers wanting to appeal the layoff to come to the School Board’s building, which Katrina had destroyed. This happened even though state-appointed consultants Alvarez & Marsal had set up a hotline to collect teachers’ evacuation addresses.

The charters rushed in, able to pick and choose their students and with no obligation to hire teachers displaced by Katrina. The public school system was largely taken over by the state-run “Recovery School District,” leaving only 6 schools in the Orleans Parish School Board, down from 120. But hey, it was good for kids, and cost-effective… as long as the fired teachers didn’t win their class-action suit. Now that the teachers have won, the back pay and benefits may cost the state and the city $1.5 billion, according to an estimate by attorneys during the appeal. Oops, stupid due process. (Also, yes, that is billion with a b. We mathed it.)

Golly, it’s almost as if treating contracted employees as a bunch of storm-damaged debris to be carted off to the landfill was not such a cost-effective strategy after all.

[NOLA.com via Charles Pierce]


7,000 New Orleans teachers, laid off after Katrina, win court ruling
Danielle Dreilinger
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
January 16, 2014

In a lawsuit that some say could bankrupt the Orleans Parish public school system, an appeals court has decided that the School Board wrongly terminated more than 7,000 teachers after Hurricane Katrina. Those teachers were not given due process, and many teachers had the right to be rehired as jobs opened up in the first years after the storm, the court said in a unanimous opinion.

The state is partly responsible for damages, according to Wednesday's ruling from Louisiana's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal. However, its five-judge panel did reduce the potential damages certified by the District Court: Instead of five years of back pay plus fringe benefits, the appeals court awarded the teachers two to three years of back pay, with benefits only for those employees who had participated in them when they were employed.

During the appeal, lawyers said the damages could amount to $1.5 billion.

The class-action case applies to all School Board employees who were tenured as of Aug. 29, 2005, the date that Katrina blasted up the Louisiana-Mississippi line and New Orleans levees failed, flooding much of the city. Many employees were members of the United Teachers of New Orleans, but the appeals court ruled that an earlier settlement with the union did not prevent this case from being tried.

The decision validates the anger felt by former teachers who lost their jobs. It says they should have been given top consideration for jobs in the new education system that emerged in New Orleans in the years after the storm.

Beyond the individual employees who were put out, the mass layoff has been a lingering source of pain for those who say school system jobs were an important component in maintaining the city's black middle class. New Orleans' teaching force has changed noticeably since then. More young, white teachers have come from outside through groups such as Teach for America. And charter school operators often offer private retirement plans instead of the state pension fund, which can discourage veteran teachers who have years invested in the state plan.

Though many schools have made a conscious effort to hire pre-Katrina teachers and New Orleans natives, eight years later, people still come to public meetings charging that outside teachers don't understand the local students' culture.

The 7,000-plus educators were initially placed on "disaster leave without pay" then terminated, a decision that was made final on March 24, 2006.

The circumstances of those layoffs rubbed salt in the wound, plaintiffs said: Notices were delivered to teachers' old addresses, sometimes to houses that no longer existed, and they directed teachers wanting to appeal the layoff to come to the School Board's building, which Katrina had destroyed. This happened even though state-appointed consultants Alvarez & Marsal had set up a hotline to collect teachers' evacuation addresses.

Meanwhile, the state took over almost all the city's public schools and radically expanded the opportunity to charter them. The tragedy of the storm offered the opportunity, reformers said, to make big changes that would give the children the education they deserved.

Schools reopened one at a time or in handfuls, in a decentralized system. The charters had complete control of their own hiring.

The defendants in the suit sought to justify the layoffs by saying they had no idea when or how many schools would reopen, and that they could not keep paying teachers for jobs that no longer existed. Almost all its schools had been taken over by the state Recovery School District, and the few remaining Orleans Parish public schools were dependent on state per-pupil funding to operate. With no students, there was no money.

In the end, the Orleans Parish School Board directly ran only six schools, down from more than 120. As of last year, the School Board directly employed only 600 people.

Civil District Court Judge Ethel Simms Julien initially ruled for the teachers in 2012. The appeal was argued in May.

The reduction in force

The appeals court panel that ruled Wednesday was composed of judges James McKay III, Edwin Lombard, Paul Bonin, Daniel Dysart and Roland Belsome, who wrote the opinion.

It said the School Board had the right to institute a reduction in force. But the method used by the board denied teachers their constitutionally protected right to be recalled to employment, the court said. Even with the schools closed, the School Board was legally required to create a "recall list" of teachers who were available to return to work. The board did not, even though it had that information.

Furthermore, the School Board should have used that list to rehire employees for jobs as they opened for the next two years.

"In failing to create the recall list, the appellees lost the opportunity for employment for a minimum of two years," Belsome wrote.

The court's decision did not address the question of whether employees had been properly notified of the layoffs or given a meaningful opportunity to appeal.

The state's role

During the appeals hearings, the judges challenged the plaintiffs to explain why the state was liable. The judges suggested the plaintiffs targeted the state for fear the local School Board wouldn't be good for the money.

Julien, the trial judge, had ruled the state was responsible for two reasons: Officials interfered wrongly with the teachers' employment contracts, and the state was a partner in managing the schools at the time. Cecil Picard, the state education superintendent at the time, had signed a memorandum of understanding with the School Board to overhaul the local board's finances, which resulted in consultants Alvarez & Marsal coming in.

The appeals court overturned both arguments. It said the memorandum of understanding did not create a broader legal partnership, and state law gave Picard the authority to take over New Orleans' schools, which resulted in the layoffs.

However, the appellate judges did think the state had some role: It should have rehired some of the teachers itself for the schools it commandeered for its Recovery School District. The law governing the state district says that when schools are taken over, existing teachers "shall be given priority consideration for employment in the same or comparable position."

Wrote Belsome: "There is absolutely no evidence that qualified appellees were provided the consideration mandated by the statute. To the contrary, the record clearly shows that the state advertised for these positions nationally and contracted with Teach for America to hire inexperienced college graduates (who) did not have teacher certification."

For that reason, the state is responsible for an extra year of back pay and benefits to teachers who would have met the criteria to be rehired. That's much lighter than Julien's initial ruling, which made the state equally responsible with the Orleans school system for five years of back pay plus benefits.

Brent Barriere, lead attorney for the School Board, said he thought employees would not get paid if they had found other jobs.

Reaction

Willie Zanders, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said the unanimity of the decision indicated the strength of their arguments.

"I'm very pleased and humbled at the same time," he said. "We have experienced, through the funerals and the phone calls, a lot of the hardships these educators have had to endure." Gwendolyn Ridgley, one of the seven lead plaintiffs, died in 2012.

He added, "It's a victory for them even though it's not the final step," referring to the state and School Board's right to appeal.

Barriere said the School Board was not ready to discuss the likelihood of an appeal. State Education Superintendent John White did not respond to a request for comment.

As expected, the union's parent organization, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, was thrilled with the Fourth Circuit's ruling.

"These employees suffered a dual tragedy: Once when the levees broke and another when their livelihoods were taken from them," said federation attorney Larry Samuels.

But Carter, of United Teachers of New Orleans, said he thought the anger among veteran educators had begun to subside as newer teachers -- some of whom have joined the union -- understood "it wasn't the educators who were here who were the problem" before the storm. He supported what he called the "renaissance" in New Orleans education.


Orleans Parish School Board swears in members, chooses president
Danielle Dreilinger
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on January 14, 2013

Orleans Parish School Board members were sworn in for a new four-year term on Monday, including three new representatives, Sarah Newell Usdin in District 3, Leslie Ellison in District 4 and Nolan Marshall II in District 7. The board also unanimously elected Ira Thomas as president and Ellison as vice president.

The Orleans Parish School Board currently oversees about one quarter of the parish's 80-odd schools, including Lusher, Ben Franklin and McMain. No schools have returned to OPSB control since the state created the Recovery School District to take over failing schools after Hurricane Katrina.

The new additions return the board to majority black membership. They may also shift the board's political leaning to a slightly more conservative stance, though where Marshall stands remains unclear. Though he is a lifelong Democrat, his father was a Republican and he has expressed measured support for the charter school movement.

The highest-profile new member is Sarah Newell Usdin, who led the reform incubator New Schools for New Orleans. She raised over $150,000 for her school board bid, far outpacing other candidates, much of it from supporters outside the district.

Ellison, a religious conservative, replaces liberal Lourdes Moran on the West Bank.

This spring, the board is set to choose a permanent superintendent to replace interim Superintendent Stan Smith.

Chicago should guarantee each child a great teacher--without firing any teachers

Chicago sounds a lot like Chiapas to me. At the bottom of this post is a plan for effectively utilizing all teachers. I think Chicago schools would benefit from the same plan I suggested for the teachers in southern Mexico.

Illinois Pension Reform
By Rosita Chatonda
Chicago Alliance of Urban School Educators

To be delivered to: The Illinois State Senate
Senator 13th District
111 Capitol Building
Springfield, IL 62706

Dear Senator Raoul,

My name is Rosita Chatonda and I am the Founding President of an upstart organization called C.A.U.S.E.., Chicago Alliance of Urban School Educators. CAUSE organizers teachers that are non-union and union members as well as parents and community. Since you are Senator of the 13th District and Pension Reform Sub-Committee Chair, I am contacting you with a pressing and urgent problem due to pension reform.

Please find enclosed information regarding the crisis facing many veteran teachers. In the last year there have been over 3,000 veteran teachers terminated. Many of these teachers pay into the pension system. Of the over 50 schools closed and 6 turn-arounds, 90% of the schools closed last year and 99% of the schools closed in previous years have been in the African American communities on the South and West Sides. In the last 4 years at least 6,000 African American teachers have lost employment. In addition, since these firings were spontaneous many teachers were left with the only option of survival, pulling their pensions down. Most of these teachers were near retirement will never be able to accumulate substantial years of service again. Hardest hit by this crisis are single parent educators.

The option for paying back into the pension fund and buying back years of services is that teachers will work in reciprocal systems in the State of Illinois for two years to buy their pensions back. Many teachers have reported trying to get jobs but cannot be rehired by CPS or any other reciprocal system. Many have the money to pay back but cannot find work for two years to fill the requirement under the pension contract.

We at CAUSE have been asked to bring this matter to the attention of the Illinois General Assembly and the Chicago Teachers Fund. We would like the two year restriction for buy-back of service to be lifted. We are asking that if teachers have the monies and are able to pay back, that they would be allowed to do so without working in a reciprocal system for two years. We would like teachers to have that option of buying back their pension since jobs in these reciprocal systems are virtually non-existent for thousands of veteran teachers.

As I have stated above, the African American Community has lost many teachers, since the late nineties, when Jackie Vaughn was CTU President, we have lost over 12,000 teaching slots. Our community has suffered a tremendous economic loss and well as the cost of human dignity. Please consider amending the pension reform laws to include a buy back for teachers needing to recover their pensions.

Sincerely,
Rosita Chatonda
Founding President of C.A.U.S.E. rcchatonda@yahoo.com



All Kids Can Have Great Teachers (Without Firing Any Teachers)
By: Maura Larkins
Voice of San Diego
September 7, 2012

No one really knows what’s going on in individual public school classrooms. Observations by principals tend to be fleeting and few. We don’t need to fire anybody, but we do need to use highly-skilled teachers and ordinary teachers where they can do the optimal good.

The truth is that the critical moments in learning don’t happen continuously five hours a day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less. The rest of the time an ordinary teacher can handle lesson reinforcement, computer activities, art projects, silent reading, etc.

The best teachers should be able to rise far above average teachers on the salary scale — and they should have far more responsibility. In my plan, each classroom would have a full-time regular teacher. Several classrooms would share a master teacher, who would be responsible for student progress, teaching lessons part-time and guiding the regular teacher. Gifted regular teachers would be eligible to become master teachers. Instead of bringing in vendors selling the latest gimmick for tens of thousands of dollars, master teachers would do all necessary training.

Here’s the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 + $50 = $300 (minus exorbitant cost of education vendors)

If we add more money, we could have more master teachers. Meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless. My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, who would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics at bay. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to pick up new ideas.

See more of my plan in the yellow column on the right of this page.

The $4 Million Teacher

The $4 Million Teacher
South Korea's students rank among the best in the world, and its top teachers can make a fortune. Can the U.S. learn from this academic superpower?
AMANDA RIPLEY
The Wall Street Journal
Aug. 3, 2013


Kim Ki-hoon [above] earns $4 million a year in South Korea, where he is known as a rock-star teacher—a combination of words not typically heard in the rest of the world. Mr. Kim has been teaching for over 20 years, all of them in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies, known as hagwons. Unlike most teachers across the globe, he is paid according to the demand for his skills—and he is in high demand.

Kim Ki-Hoon, who teaches in a private after-school academy, earns most of his money from students who watch his lectures online. 'The harder I work, the more I make,' he says. 'I like that.'

Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).

I traveled to South Korea to see what a free market for teaching talent looks like—one stop in a global tour to discover what the U.S. can learn from the world's other education superpowers. Thanks in part to such tutoring services, South Korea has dramatically improved its education system over the past several decades and now routinely outperforms the U.S. Sixty years ago, most South Koreans were illiterate; today, South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading, behind Shanghai. The country now has a 93% high-school graduation rate, compared with 77% in the U.S.

Tutoring services are growing all over the globe, from Ireland to Hong Kong and even in suburban strip malls in California and New Jersey. Sometimes called shadow education systems, they mirror the mainstream system, offering after-hours classes in every subject—for a fee. But nowhere have they achieved the market penetration and sophistication of hagwons in South Korea, where private tutors now outnumber schoolteachers.

Viewed up close, this shadow system is both exciting and troubling. It promotes striving and innovation among students and teachers alike, and it has helped South Korea become an academic superpower. But it also creates a bidding war for education, delivering the best services to the richest families, to say nothing of its psychological toll on students. Under this system, students essentially go to school twice—once during the day and then again at night at the tutoring academies. It is a relentless grind.

The bulk of Mr. Kim's earnings come from the 150,000 kids who watch his lectures online each year. (Most are high-school students looking to boost their scores on South Korea's version of the SAT.) He is a brand name, with all the overhead that such prominence in the market entails. He employs 30 people to help him manage his teaching empire and runs a publishing company to produce his books.

To call this mere tutoring is to understate its scale and sophistication. Megastudy, the online hagwon that Mr. Kim works for, is listed on the South Korean stock exchange. (A Megastudy official confirmed Mr. Kim's annual earnings.) Nearly three of every four South Korean kids participate in the private market. In 2012, their parents spent more than $17 billion on these services. That is more than the $15 billion spent by Americans on videogames that year, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. The South Korean education market is so profitable that it attracts investments from firms like Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group and A.I.G.

It was thrilling to meet Mr. Kim—a teacher who earns the kind of money that professional athletes make in the U.S. An American with his ambition and abilities might have to become a banker or a lawyer, but in South Korea, he had become a teacher, and he was rich anyway.

The idea is seductive: Teaching well is hard, so why not make it lucrative? Even if American schools will never make teachers millionaires, there are lessons to be learned from this booming educational bazaar, lessons about how to motivate teachers, how to captivate parents and students and how to adapt to a changing world.

South Korean students prepare to take the standardized exam for college admissions on Nov. 10, 2011. The country has a 93% high-school graduation rate.

To find rock-star teachers like Mr. Kim, hagwon directors scour the Internet, reading parents' reviews and watching teachers' lectures. Competing hagwons routinely try to poach one another's celebrity tutors. "The really good teachers are hard to retain—and hard to manage. You need to protect their egos," says Lee Chae-yun, who owns a chain of five hagwons in Seoul called Myungin Academy.

The most radical difference between traditional schools and hagwons is that students sign up for specific teachers, so the most respected teachers get the most students. Mr. Kim has about 120 live, in-person students per lecture, but a typical teacher's hagwon classes are much smaller. The Korean private market has reduced education to the one in-school variable that matters most: the teacher.

It is about as close to a pure meritocracy as it can be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers are free agents. They don't need to be certified. They don't have benefits or even a guaranteed base salary; their pay is based on their performance, and most of them work long hours and earn less than public school teachers.

Performance evaluations are typically based on how many students sign up for their classes, their students' test-score growth and satisfaction surveys given to students and parents. "How passionate is the teacher?" asks one hagwon's student survey—the results of which determine 60% of the instructor's evaluation. "How well-prepared is the teacher?" (In 2010, researchers funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found classroom-level surveys like this to be surprisingly reliable and predictive of effective teaching in the U.S., yet the vast majority of our schools still don't use them.)

"Students are the customers," Ms. Lee says. To recruit students, hagwons advertise their results aggressively. They post their graduates' test scores and university acceptance figures online and outside their entrances on giant posters. It was startling to see such openness; in the U.S., despite our fetish for standardized testing, the results remain confusing and hard to interpret for parents. Once students enroll, the hagwon embeds itself in families' lives. Parents get text messages when their children arrive at the academies each afternoon; then they get another message relaying students' progress. Two to three times a month, teachers call home with feedback. Every few months, the head of the hagwon telephones, too. In South Korea, if parents aren't engaged, that is considered a failure of the educators, not the family.

If tutors get low survey marks or attract too few students, they generally get placed on probation. Each year, Ms. Lee fires about 10% of her instructors. (By comparison, U.S. schools dismiss about 2% of public school teachers annually for poor performance.)

All of this pressure creates real incentives for teachers, at least according to the kids. In a 2010 survey of 6,600 students at 116 high schools conducted by the Korean Educational Development Institute, Korean teenagers gave their hagwon teachers higher scores across the board than their regular schoolteachers: Hagwon teachers were better prepared, more devoted to teaching and more respectful of students' opinions, the teenagers said. Interestingly, the hagwon teachers rated best of all when it came to treating all students fairly, regardless of the students' academic performance.

Private tutors are also more likely to experiment with new technology and nontraditional forms of teaching. In a 2009 book on the subject, University of Hong Kong professor Mark Bray urged officials to pay attention to the strengths of the shadow markets, in addition to the perils. "Policy makers and planners should…ask why parents are willing to invest considerable sums of money to supplement the schooling received from the mainstream," he writes. "At least in some cultures, the private tutors are more adventurous and client-oriented."

But are students actually learning more in hagwons? That is a surprisingly hard question to answer. World-wide, the research is mixed, suggesting that the quality of after-school lessons matters more than the quantity. And price is at least loosely related to quality, which is precisely the problem. The most affluent kids can afford one-on-one tutoring with the most popular instructors, while others attend inferior hagwons with huge class sizes and less reliable instruction—or after-hours sessions offered free by their public schools. Eight out of 10 South Korean parents say they feel financial pressure from hagwon tuition costs. Still, most keep paying the fees, convinced that the more they pay, the more their children will learn.

For decades, the South Korean government has been trying to tame the country's private-education market. Politicians have imposed curfews and all manner of regulations on hagwons, even going so far as to ban them altogether during the 1980s, when the country was under military rule. Each time the hagwons have come back stronger.

"The only solution is to improve public education," says Mr. Kim, the millionaire teacher, echoing what the country's education minister and dozens of other Korean educators told me. If parents trusted the system, the theory goes, they wouldn't resort to paying high fees for extra tutoring.

To create such trust, Mr. Kim suggests paying public-school teachers significantly more money according to their performance—as hagwons do. Then the profession could attract the most skilled, accomplished candidates, and parents would know that the best teachers were the ones in their children's schools—not in the strip mall down the street.

Schools can also build trust by aggressively communicating with parents and students, the way businesses already do to great effect in the U.S. They could routinely survey students about their teachers—in ways designed to help teachers improve and not simply to demoralize them.

before a teacher even enters the classroom.

No country has all the answers. But in an information-driven global economy, a few truths are becoming universal: Children need to know how to think critically in math, reading and science; they must be driven; and they must learn how to adapt, since they will be doing it all their lives. These demands require that schools change, too—or the free market may do it for them.

—Ms. Ripley is an Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from her forthcoming book, "The Smartest Kids in the World—and How They Got That Way," to be published Aug. 13 by Simon & Schuster.

How much do California Teacher Association executives make?

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Carolyn Doggett, Lee Lipps and others are doing quite well!

Here's how every child can have an excellent teacher--without firing any teachers!

WHY WE NEED TO USE CLASSROOM TEACHERS DIFFERENTLY

"There’s very good evidence that teacher quality matters a lot in terms of student performance in school and success later on in life. The economist Raj Chetty of Harvard, for example, has found that students randomly placed with more experienced kindergarten teachers not only perform better on tests but earn more and save more for retirement as adults, are likelier to go to college, and go to better colleges than their peers with less experienced teachers. Eric Hanushek of Stanford estimates that a good teacher – defined as at the 84th percentile, or one standard deviation above the mean for you stats nerds – provides students with test scores associated with an increase of between $22,000 and $46,000 in lifetime earnings."--Washington Post

Lots of kids get stuck for years with various incompetent teachers, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can fix the problem. And not spend any extra money!

Am I crazy to think this?

HERE'S THE MATH:

Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 + $50 = $300

HERE'S THE PLAN:

An excellent teacher could come into each classroom for just a few hours a week and make a huge difference--if that teacher had responsibility for student success and authority to make decisions.

Parents should not need political clout to get a good teacher for their child. Every student should--and could--have a great teacher, without wasting time and energy on the losing battle to fire incompetent teachers.

The truth is that the critical moments in learning don't happen continuously five hours a day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less. The rest of the time an ordinary, mediocre teacher can handle the skill practice and lesson reinforcement, computer activities, art projects, silent reading (how much skill is needed to be in charge of that?) and so on.

GIVING SUPPORT TEACHERS A REAL JOB

At my old school we were paying a top salary--well over $60,000, for a computer teacher who was very nice, but her job was merely to familiarize kids with computer programs. An aide could have done the job. When the principal (Ollie Matos) tried to switch that computer teacher to giving basic reading and math lessons, the teachers went ballistic. The story became a sensation in the San Diego Press, and a group of angry teachers were named the "Castle Park Five" by San Diego Union-Tribune editor Don Sevrens. Basically, what the teachers wanted was 45 minutes a week in which they could send their students to another teacher. But in my plan, classroom teachers would have this kind of help and relief for more than an entire day each week! The nice computer teacher could become a master teacher!

Resource teachers like computer teachers and language and math support teachers could become master teachers. And let's face it: how much good are those resource teachers able to do? They go around and offer suggestions, but they are really doing the equivalent of passing out band-aids. I would never want such a job. It might be relaxing not to have direct responsibility for student learning, but isn't that the point of being a teacher?

NO MORE ABUSIVE TEACHERS

Academics would not be the only thing that master teachers would be responsible for. Abusive, immature teachers with a habit of undermining students could be overruled and guided by the master teacher.

WE COULD SAVE MONEY!

Why do we pay bad teachers the same amount of money as good teachers? It makes no sense!

Excellent teachers should be paid much more than average teachers, and could be responsible for all students in several classrooms.

Each classroom could have a full-time regular teacher who be paid a lower salary, but would be eligible to become a master teacher. The master teacher would also be responsible for helping and guiding the regular teacher.

Here is a chart of average teacher salaries in the US.

In California the average teacher salary is roughly $60,000 (with a starting salary of $35,000.)

We could allow regular teachers to rise in salary to an average of $45 thousand, and allow master teachers to rise to an average of $90 thousand--for overseeing four classrooms.

Money for support teachers and teacher aides would be switched to master teacher positions in the classrooms. (Of course, special education would still require teacher aides.) Some people who are currently teacher aides could become regular teachers.)

Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $92 + $47 + $47 + $47 + $47 = $300

MEANINGFUL EVALUATIONS OF TEACHERS WOULD BE REQUIRED

Of course, meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted to make this plan work. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless. My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, but they would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics out of the process as much as possible. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to get pick up new ideas.

I believe it would be good to use student test scores when choosing who is to be a master teacher, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. The good thing about it is that it would take some of the politics out of teacher evaluation. It should be noted that although student test scores vary widely from year to year for most teachers, some teachers do get consistently high scores from their students year after year.

Here's how every child can have an excellent teacher--without firing any teachers!

There’s very good evidence that teacher quality matters a lot in terms of student performance in school and success later on in life. The economist Raj Chetty of Harvard, for example, has found that students randomly placed with more experienced kindergarten teachers not only perform better on tests but earn more and save more for retirement as adults, are likelier to go to college, and go to better colleges than their peers with less experienced teachers. Eric Hanushek of Stanford estimates that a good teacher – defined as at the 84th percentile, or one standard deviation above the mean for you stats nerds – provides students with test scores associated with an increase of between $22,000 and $46,000 in lifetime earnings.--Washington Post

Lots of kids get stuck for years with various incompetent teachers, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can fix the problem. And save money!

Am I crazy to think this?

HERE'S THE MATH:

Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 + $50 = $300

HERE'S THE PLAN:

An excellent teacher could come into each classroom for just a few hours a week and make a huge difference--if that teacher had responsibility for student success and authority to make decisions.

Parents should not need political clout to get a good teacher for their child. Every student should--and could--have a great teacher, without wasting time and energy on the losing battle to fire incompetent teachers.

The truth is that the critical moments in learning don't happen continuously five hours a day. They add up to at most a couple of hours each day, and probably much less. The rest of the time an ordinary, mediocre teacher can handle the skill practice and lesson reinforcement, computer activities, art projects, silent reading (how much skill is needed to be in charge of that?) and so on.

GIVING SUPPORT TEACHERS A REAL JOB

At my old school we were paying a top salary--well over $60,000, for a computer teacher who was very nice, but her job was merely to familiarize kids with computer programs. An aide could have done the job. When the principal (Ollie Matos) tried to switch that computer teacher to giving basic reading and math lessons, the teachers went ballistic. The story became a sensation in the San Diego Press, and a group of angry teachers were named the "Castle Park Five" by San Diego Union-Tribune editor Don Sevrens. Basically, what the teachers wanted was 45 minutes a week in which they could send their students to another teacher. But in my plan, classroom teachers would have this kind of help and relief for more than an entire day each week! The nice computer teacher could become a master teacher!

Resource teachers like computer teachers and language and math support teachers could become master teachers. And let's face it: how much good are those resource teachers able to do? They go around and offer suggestions, but they are really doing the equivalent of passing out band-aids. I would never want such a job. It might be relaxing not to have direct responsibility for student learning, but isn't that the point of being a teacher?

NO MORE ABUSIVE TEACHERS

Academics would not be the only thing that master teachers would be responsible for. Abusive, immature teachers with a habit of undermining students could be overruled and guided by the master teacher.

WE COULD SAVE MONEY!

Why do we pay bad teachers the same amount of money as good teachers? It makes no sense!

Excellent teachers should be paid much more than average teachers, and could be responsible for all students in several classrooms.

Each classroom could have a full-time regular teacher who be paid a lower salary, but would be eligible to become a master teacher. The master teacher would also be responsible for helping and guiding the regular teacher.

Here is a chart of average teacher salaries in the US.

In California the average teacher salary is roughly $60,000 (with a starting salary of $35,000.)

We could allow regular teachers to rise in salary to an average of $45 thousand, and allow master teachers to rise to an average of $90 thousand--for overseeing four classrooms.

Money for support teachers and teacher aides would be switched to master teacher positions in the classrooms. (Of course, special education would still require teacher aides.) Some people who are currently teacher aides could become regular teachers.)

Here's the comparison for four classrooms and one extra salary (in thousands):

Currently: $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 + $60 = $300

New plan: $92 + $47 + $47 + $47 + $47 = $300

MEANINGFUL EVALUATIONS OF TEACHERS WOULD BE REQUIRED

Of course, meaningful evaluations of teachers would have to be instituted to make this plan work. Current evaluation systems are worse than useless. My plan would call for frequent observations by both master and regular teachers, but they would observe classrooms in other districts to keep school politics out of the process as much as possible. The observations would have a beneficial side effect: they would allow teachers to get pick up new ideas.

I believe it would be good to use student test scores when choosing who is to be a master teacher, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. The good thing about it is that it would take some of the politics out of teacher evaluation. It should be noted that although student test scores vary widely from year to year for most teachers, some teachers do get consistently high scores from their students year after year.

Teachers Earn Too Much, Study Argues

Teachers Earn Too Much, Study Argues
November 2, 2011
By John O'Connor
State Impact

Teachers are paid 52 percent more than their market value, according to a new study.

Teachers, did you know you are overpaid by 52%?

That’s the conclusion of a new study by conservative-leaning think tanks The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

Taxpayers, they conclude, are “overcharged” $120 billion each year from the difference in teacher salaries and compensation compared to similarly credentialed private sector workers. Teacher benefits are often far more generous than the private sector, the study notes.

Other conclusions from the study:

The wage gap between teachers and non-teachers disappears when both groups are matched on an objective measure of cognitive ability rather than on years of education.
Public-school teachers earn higher wages than private-school teachers, even when the comparison is limited to secular schools with standard curriculums.
Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid.

The study reveals a divide among those pushing for changes in public schools.

Raising teacher salaries is a foundation of school reformers, which includes Republicans, such as former Gov. Jeb Bush, and Democratic President Barack Obama. Better pay is more likely to attract better teaching candidates, they argue, and better teachers mean students will learn more.

Former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee disagreed with the study, in a statement printed by Politico:

We can accomplish the goal of attracting and retaining the best teachers and be fiscally responsible at the same time by moving money out of bloated bureaucracies that doesn’t improve student learning and into the classroom where it can.

San Diego Union-Tribune Watchdog highlights this question: "Should there be any pension for [teacher] retirees?"

Clearly, Les Birdsall of San Diego is not interested in attracting the best and brightest to work as teachers in San Diego. Since teachers don't pay for, or receive, Social Security benefits, Mr. Birdsall seems to be asking if retired teachers should perhaps live in homeless shelters and collect food stamps. Why would the SDUT Watchdog print such a silly comment while at the same time failing to investigate costly shenanigans of insurance companies and lawyers at the San Diego County Office of Education? Has the Watchdog received any rabies shots? Is it mad?

See Slaying the Mythical Tax-Fattened Hog regarding public sector pay.

Educator pensions report raised questions
“The average education pension in $40,663. Is this too high?“
By Maureen Magee
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
January 31, 2011

Underfunded public pensions have made big headlines in San Diego and elsewhere, igniting a debate over the cost of retirement packages that often pits taxpayer groups against public employees, with the public somewhere in the middle.

A recent report by The Watchdog on educator pensions contributed to the debate. Some readers wrote to raise questions and voice their views — from outrage over what they call excessive pensions to sympathy for public employees whose retirement packages they believe have been unfairly called into question.

Mary Jean Word, a retired San Diego teacher, objected to our report claiming the educator pension system, like other public funds, offers “high benefits with no clear way to pay them.” She said the broad brush was unfair to those on the lower end.

“Do not include administrators with teachers,” said Word, who retired with 25 years service credit in California and receives an annual pension of $24,000. “They do not teach 20 to 150 students a day.”

Public educators from counselors to superintendents pay into the California State Teachers Retirement System. The program does not classify them by position, however, so separate data analysis was not possible. Although the top pension for a retired San Diego County educator is $281,034, the average retired educator in the county takes home just over $40,000 annually.

Much of the response to our story centered around whether that is a high number. For perspective, recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates show the average person of retirement age receives about $19,000 from retirement, pension and/or Social Security benefits.
Teacher fund status

Jim Wirt of San Diego wanted to know more about the state of the teacher pension fund. “You could have at least mentioned that CalSTRS assets have fallen...”

The fund reported good news last month when it posted 12.7 percent investment returns for 2010, raising its portfolio to $146.4 billion. The fund peaked at $180 billion in 2007 and had fallen to $112 billion in early 2009.

Even so, the system is expected to go broke by 2045 unless contributions are increased by the state, school districts and California educators. Officials say the fund needs a 15 percent hike in employer contributions this year. Only the state Legislature has the authority to approve such an increase. Since the state faces a $20 billion budget deficit, many say it’s unlikely to happen this year.
Who’s to blame?

Marty McGee of La Jolla wants to know how California got into this mess. She wrote, “In order for your watchdog reports to lead to meaningful changes, the people need to know who did it.”

Some of the blame goes to California voters.

“A little-known ballot measure a quarter century ago, Proposition 21 in 1984, opened the door for much of the current controversy over California’s public employee pensions,” former Union-Tribune reporter and pension expert Ed Mendel wrote last year. The measure passed with 53 percent of the vote.

Before Proposition 21, pension funds had been required to put most of their money into bonds. The ballot measure allowed pension funds to shift most money to stocks and other riskier investments. Some have said that public pensions would be more manageable today if the funds had stuck with safer investments.

Other changes to CalSTRS have also contributed to the funding gap.

In an effort to address teacher shortages and convince veteran educators to put off retirement, CalSTRS benefits were sweetened about a decade ago under AB 1509, legislation sponsored by Mike Machado, D-Stockton.

To fund the added benefits, the legislation took a fourth of the money teachers had been contributing to their pensions and used it to seed the added benefit. The teachers no longer pay into the supplemental benefit fund, but they draw from it.
What about Social Security?

Tom Helmantoler, a retired Julian High School teacher, asks this: “What about Social Security? Why can’t someone who has qualified for Social Security in the private sector turn to teaching as a second career and keep the Social Security benefit they earned?”

More than two decades before the Social Security Act was signed, the Teachers’ Retirement Law took effect in California in 1913. Public educators decided to continue to opt out of Social Security in 1955 because CalSTRS offered better benefits. California teachers do not pay into Social Security while they pay into CalSTRS. But some have paid enough toward Social Security to qualify for the benefit from other jobs. Those retired educators see a significant reduction in Social Security benefits under a law designed to prevent double-dipping. Similarly, retired educators who qualify for Social Security as the spouse or widow/widower of a worker who was covered by Social Security also see a reduction in that benefit under the law.

Should taxpayers contribute anything?

Les Birdsall of San Diego asked broader, philosophical questions. “The story tells us the average education pension in $40,663. Is this too high? What would be a reasonable pension? Should there be any pension for retirees?”

Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said governments must compete with private sector salaries and benefits or it will not attract a qualified work force. And that means offering a decent retirement.

“It’s very easy to say that public sector defined benefit programs are more generous than what most people get in the private sector,” she said. “But it’s really hard to say.”

Districts Try Out Revamped Teacher-Pay Systems

November 9, 2010
Districts Try Out Revamped Teacher-Pay Systems
By Stephen Sawchuk
Education Week

A handful of districts, some with the approval of their local teachers’ unions, are experimenting with alternatives to the fundamental components that govern teachers’ base-pay raises.

Ranging from a long-standing plan in Eagle County, Colo., to a contract ratified earlier this year by teachers in the Pittsburgh district, the systems tie raises more closely to classroom evaluations, rather than granting automatic increases for each year of service or the completion of an advanced degree.

The moves have generated some strife as well. Eagle County officials overhauled their plan recently, and teachers in the 82,000-student Baltimore school system last month rejected a tentative contract that would have codified the changes to their pay system.

Teachers like Frank Bispo ($129,885) in Modesto are extremely well paid

Apr. 03, 2010
Modesto's educators compensated well versus rest of state
By J.N. Sbranti

Teachers have a reputation for being underpaid, but that certainly isn't the case in Modesto City Schools. Its teachers have some of the top salaries in all of California.

Last year, 98 of the district's 1,600 teachers and counselors earned more than $100,000, including 25 who earned more than $110,000. (See our database of who makes $100k at bottom of the story).

On average during the 2008-09 school year, teachers earned $80,686 in base pay for working 185 days.

* Stanislaus Districts seeking to reduce payroll, leave wages alone
* How Teacher Pay Stacks Up
* Top 25 Teacher Salaries (2008-09)
* 2009 Modesto City Schools 100K employees

Many of the district's educators were paid extra for things such as teaching additional classes, coaching sports and academic teams, and overseeing independent study students.

About two dozen teachers boosted their earnings by $20,000 or more last year by taking on such added duties.

Even without those stipends, Modesto City Schools' educators on average earned nearly $14,000 per year more than teachers elsewhere in California. Their base pay was more than double the median salary for full-time Modesto workers in the private sector, most of whom worked 240 days or more.

"We're well-paid, but I do not believe we're overpaid," said Barney Hale, longtime leader of the Modesto Teachers Association.

Teacher salaries and potential pay cuts for all employees, including administrators, have become an issue this spring as Modesto City Schools struggles to slash $25 million — about 10 percent — from next year's budget.

Twenty-two of the 25 highest-paid district employees are administrators, led by Superintendent Arturo Flores at $228,166.25. In all, 79 administrators make more than $100,000.

Highest-paid teacher

The highest-paid teacher is Downey High School's Frank Bispo, who made $129,885 in 2008-09. Included in his 2008-09 compensation was $42,750.86 in stipends.

Hale said Modesto City Schools' educators earn more primarily because they have been teaching for more years than those elsewhere in the state and because their district contributes less toward their health and welfare benefits.

Hale said it's not fair to compare their salaries with what Modesto's privately employed workers earn because teachers are more educated.

But even when the value of benefits are added in, Modesto's teachers are significantly better compensated than their California counterparts. The average total compensation including benefits during the 2008-09 school year was $82,484 for Modesto educators, compared to the $76,212 statewide teacher average.

It is uncommon for Modesto workers to earn more than those doing similar work elsewhere in California.

The U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey, for example, calculated that Modesto residents with postgraduate or professional degrees earned a median $62,003, while the California median for such highly educated residents was $74,664.

In its initial contract offer for the 2010-11 school year, Modesto's school board proposed teachers take a 12.5 percent pay cut and reduce their work year by seven days, which would shrink salaries an additional 3.5 percent.

...

Hale noted that teachers took a 1 percent pay cut and eliminated three workdays this year, which resulted in salaries shrinking 2.6 percent.

But in reality, many teachers in the district actually got raises — or made about the same this year as last — because of how the pay scale is structured.



Teacher/sports enthusiast Frank Bispo
A special day for talented Bispo clan
Modesto Bee
Oct 21, 2008 ... Packed schedules are business as usual for the clan of Frank and Deanna Bispo and their five children, but this Saturday sparkled more than most...
Twenty-six years ago, Frank Bispo -- Brad's father -- started at fullback for the Aggies and caught a 92-yard touchdown pass from Chris ...




The Modesto Bee
...Frank Bispo was head football coach at Downey for 10 years...



Mr. Bispo throws considerable support to accused child molester:

Sep. 17, 2009
Coach pleads to sex charges
20 counts for King, who trained swimmers at SOS, Bay Area clubs
By Linda Goldston
Modesto Bee

SAN JOSE — The former head swim coach at Modesto's SOS Club and at numerous swim clubs in the Bay Area over the past 40 years has pleaded no contest to 20 felony child molestation charges that could keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

Andy King's plea Friday came as a surprise within the swim communities he served, including Stanislaus County. King was the SOS coach from 1998-2000 and was credited with increasing the team's membership fourfold during his stay.

King, 61, has been held in Santa Clara County Jail in lieu of $3 million bail since his arrest in April on charges he molested a 14-year-girl he coached at San Jose Aquatics. He was arraigned in July on additional charges that he sexually abused two East Bay women he coached in 1988 and 1989.

This year, investigations in San Jose and the East Bay turned up 12 people who said they were victims, including one from Modesto, but only three of them are included in the charges because of the statute of limitations.

The weekend before his arrest, King was coaching some of his athletes at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in College Station, Texas. One of those athletes, competing for the University of Texas, was Modesto's Karlee Bispo, whose father, Frank Bispo, was with King for much of that weekend.

"I found out about the charges the day after we left the NCAA meet," said Frank Bispo, a teacher and former athletic director at Downey High. "I visited him in jail about a month ago. I know he pled no contest, but I know for certain he never did anything improper with my girls, and I'm not aware of anything he ever did, except for what's mentioned in the charges.

"I'm not going to say anybody's not telling the truth, but he treated my girls well. He was a tough coach and winning was his profession and his life. I don't know the ghosts in his closet, but I trusted my kids with him."...

[Maura Larkins comment: Actually, people who behave inappropriately with children get a remarkable amount of support from schools and school personnel. See the Fred Kamper case.]

Terry Grier has good idea in Houston: no more big bucks for master's degrees

See all Terry Grier posts.

A teacher I knew went through a masters degree program that was remarkable for both the minuscule effort required and the very large amount of money demanded by a "diploma factory." I was amazed when she recounted a conversation she had with someone, ending the story with the words, "But I didn't mention that I have a masters degree." I thought it was astounding that she believed she had a real masters degree.

Research has recently shown that advanced degrees do not improve teaching.


Districts Consider Ending Salary Perk for Teachers
By Ericka Mellon, Houston Chronicle (MCT)
February 10, 2010

Houston-area school districts spend tens of millions of dollars a year on teachers with advanced degrees that studies show don't produce better student achievement.

But with money tight, a handful of districts are considering ditching the traditional salary bump for teachers with master's degrees in favor of pay based more on student learning. The Houston Independent School District and the top-rated YES Prep charter school chain are among those looking to experiment.

"I would like us to look with our teachers and see whether or not those dollars could be spent in a more productive way," HISD Superintendent Terry Grier said...