Archives for category: Teacher Pay
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Mike Klonsky: On the Chicago Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2019 //
3

 

Mike Klonsky just posted this as he was leaving to bring coffee and donuts to striking teachers, including his daughter.

I hope this strike has a good outcome for both the teachers and the new mayor. She is not Rahm Emanuel. She inherited the debt for Rahm’s two terms of hostility to the city’s public schools and their teachers.

Mike included this quote:

Yesterday, the parent group, Raise Your Hand, issued a statement on the strike which made a lot of sense.

Please remember to be good to each other out there. At the end of this contract negotiation, we are all parts of school communities that are part of a larger community, the Chicago Public Schools. Our children need all of us working together.

 

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Unions

Chicago Charter School Prepares to Join CTU Strike

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2019 //
2
Chicago Teachers Union

NEWS ADVISORY:
For Immediate Release| ctulocal1.org

CONTACT: Chris Geovanis, 312-329-6250, 312-446-4939 (m), ChrisGeovanis@ctulocal1.org

  • 7:00 a.m., Thurs. Oct. 10: Sharkey, charter teachers to announce strike date
    Passages charter school, 1643 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., Chicago

CTU president to join charter teachers as Passages announces strike date

CEO for lone CPS-funded charter earns equal to CPS CEO who oversees 500+ schools, as management undermines special ed, English language supports and sanctuary for immigrant/refugee students.

CHICAGO—After months of fruitless negotiations, CTU bargaining team members at Passages Charter School will announce a strike date at 7:00 a.m. this Thursday, October 10 at the school, located at 1643 W. Bryn Mawr. They’ll be joined by CTU President Jesse Sharkey, as tens of thousands of CTU members in CPS district-run schools brace for a possible strike next week.

Passages’ students speak dozens of languages, and come from across Mexico, Central and South America, Asia and the African continent. Close to 70 percent are low-income. Over half are Black, Latinx or other children of color. Almost four in ten have limited English skills, and the school has one of the highest percentages of refugee students in CPS.

Yet charter holder Asian Human Services, which owns and runs the school, continues to refuse to even bargain over, let alone agree to, sanctuary language to protect the school’s immigrant and refugee students.

“Last year, every union charter school we bargained with agreed to sanctuary language,” said CTU-ACTS Chair Chris Baehrend. “The CTU has even reached a tentative agreement with CPS around sanctuary language in district-run schools. But Asian Human Services, which has a mission of helping refugees and immigrants, refuses to even bargain with us over this critical issue. Many of our students come from immigrant and refugee families. They need these protections—especially in the era of Trump and with the huge carve-outs that remain in Rahm Emanuel’s ‘Welcoming City’ sanctuary ordinance.”

Staffing is also a critical issue. The school’s chronic shortage of teachers and paraprofessionals for English language learners and special education students is approaching a crisis level for students, creating high and destabilizing turn-over and harsh working conditions for remaining educators. Those educators voted unanimously to authorize a strike on September 23.

According to IRS data for the charter holder, Asian Human Services, CEO Craig Maki made $247,725 plus $16,000 in additional compensation for the latest year available. Yet Passages pays teachers at the school 28% less than their colleagues at CPS district-run schools.

# # #

The Chicago Teachers Union represents nearly 25,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in schools funded by City of Chicago School District 299, and by extension, the nearly 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third-largest teachers local in the United States. For more information, please visit the CTU website at www.ctulocal1.org.
Categories Accountability, Chicago, Teacher Pay, Union

Ted Dintersmith: Why We Must Invest in a New Vision for Education

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2019 //
45

 

Ted Dintersmith was honored by the NEA for his advocacy on behalf of public education.

In this article, which appeared in Forbes, he urges support for a national commitment to investing in education and the future of our society.

He writes:

Education is the single most important issue determining our democracy’s future.  If we continue to get it wrong, we’re headed for collapse.  But if we bring the vision and courage to get it right, we will rescue the American Dream. Now more than ever, we desperately need a compelling blueprint, an Education Imperative.

Education sits in a context. Machine intelligence (computers, software, robotics, artificial intelligence) is advancing at a blistering pace, posing profound career and citizenship challenges for our population. Within a decade or two, machines will outperform humans on almost any physical or cognitive task, eliminating almost all routine white- and blue-collar jobs. To his immense credit, presidential candidate Andrew Yang is sounding alarm bells about this economic tsunami heading our way.  And if economic upheaval isn’t enough, technology-driven social media and deep-fake videos are now weapons with the power to manipulate and disrupt civic engagement, to undermine democratic processes…

In the past, America was at its best when faced with an existential crisis. Hell, we saved the free world during World War II.  We rebuilt Europe.  We put a man on the moon.  What better cause than fighting for our children’s futures by rallying around an aspirational view of what our schools could be, by stepping up to an Education Imperative.

Our Education Imperative should start with our babies and toddlers. There’s no better economic investment, nor higher moral imperative, than ensuring that our youngest children receive high-quality early-childhood care. Too many of America’s kids grow up in desperate circumstances.  Every child, not just every rich child, deserves a decent start in life.  

The vast majority of U.S. kids attend our public K12 schools, one of our country’s most vital resources. These schools need more financial support.  We need to offset the outsized role of local property taxes in funding education, which results shortchanging the kids who need the most. If you’re looking for heroes in America, you’ll find them in our classrooms. Our teachers fight daily for their kids, even risking their lives to protect children from shooters armed with NRA-endorsed assault weapons.  They deserve a fair salary, better professional development support, and trust.

You may not agree with all his prescriptions but in general he is on the right track.

Time for a massive investment in children and teachers and education.

Testing and choice have been a wasteful and harmful distraction.

 

Categories Accountability, Creativity, Funding, Teacher Pay, Testing

Florida: Teachers in Orange County Overwhelmingly Reject New Contract

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2019 //
22

Just in: Teachers in Orange County, Florida, defeated a contract proposal by a vote of 4-1.

The contract would have raised wages but increased health care costs which would have left many teachers with less income overall.

The average teacher pay in the county is $49,000.

It is outrageous that teachers are paid so little, and that the state continues diverting public money to charters and vouchers.

What does the future hold for Florida, where education is a political football and held in such low regard?

 

Categories Florida, Teacher Pay, Unions

Mercedes Schneider: Do Teachers Make a “Reasonable” Salary?

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2019 //
54

Mercedes Schneider wrote a post about the abysmal failure of Measure EE in Los Angeles, which needed a 2/3 vote to pass but did not receive a majority. The turnout was shockingly low. Probably the measure should have been added to a general election. Special one-issue elections always have low turnout. That could cut either way but in this case it cut against the needs of children to have a quality education.

She zeroes in on the issue of teacher salary. The average pay for teachers in Los Angeles is $74,000. She notes that Rick Hess of the rightwing think tank American Enterprise Institute sees that number as “reasonable,” and that sets Mercedes off.

In his June 06, 2019, Forbes piece about the failure of Measure EE, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) career think-tanker Frederick Hess does not address the issue of low voter turnout. Instead, he focuses mostly on the teacher salary component.

Hess implies that the average LAUSD teacher salary of $74,000 a year “strikes a lot of Americans as pretty reasonable.”

Let us take a moment to contextualize AEI and Hess.

The mission of AEI as listed on its tax forms is as follows:

The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. AEI pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the highest standards of research and exposition.

It should be noted that in 2018, Hess drew a comfortable $235K (up from $197K in 2013) as an AEI “resident scholar,” which has our armchair educator hovering nowhere near that “pretty reasonable” $74K he mentions. Furthermore, AEI president Arthur Brooks garnered an amazing salary boost from 2017 to 2018, doubled from $1.1M to $2.2M, and executive VP David Gerson also doubling his salary, from $526K to $1.1M.

At the end of 2018, AEI listed total net assets of $321M.

Hess pens his think-tankery about education from a plush perch.

Is $74,000 a “reasonable” salary for a professional in Los Angeles (or for those professionals who make less)?

Mercedes says she makes $60,000 after many years of teaching in Louisiana. Is that reasonable? It would be unreasonable in Los Angeles or D.C. or New York City.

Well, read it. It’s Mercedes doing what she does best: using her razor-sharp intellect to dissect condescension.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Teacher Pay

Michigan: The New State Superintendent Brings Hope for Real Change

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2019 //
14

Michael Rice, the new State Superintendent in Michigan, is an experienced educator, not an ideologue or a politician.

His plans are sensible. He wants to steer the state back to responsible policies.

He was most recently Superintendent in Kalamazoo, which has one of the best school systems in the state. Itis terrific not because of its demographics or it’s scores but because of the Kalamazoo Promise, which has brought many students back to the public schools and led to systemwide improvements. The Promise, anonymously funded, guarantees that every high school graduate will receive a full scholarship to college. The longer a student is in the system, the more generous the scholarship.

School reform measures, such as Michigan’s third-grade retention law and the state’s A-F rating system; a statewide push to improve literacy and increase early childhood education; the publication of multiple research papers supporting increased funding for Michigan’s K-12 schools and the precarious future of the teaching profession all have been pushed to the education forefront in the state.

And they are all issues Rice says he is ready to work on.

“I feel differently in 2019,” Rice told The Detroit News in his office in Kalamazoo. “Those issues made me feel it was a moment. A generational moment in the state, and I wanted to contribute to that moment….”

While in Kalamazoo, and with the Kalamazoo Promise in place, Rice started full-day pre-kindergarten, more than doubled the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses and boosted high school graduation rates, school officials said…

Rice becomes superintendent at a critical time for Michigan’s 1.5 million students. Michigan ranks in the bottom third of states for fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and college attainment, and it’s 43rd out of 47 in school funding equity.

According to officials at Education Trust-Midwest, Michigan ranks in the bottom third of all states overall in early literacy and among the bottom states for every major group of students: African American, Latino, white, low-income and higher income students. In eighth-grade math, only about 1 in 10 African American students and 2 in 10 Latino students are proficient.

Rice says more spending on public schools is critical, especially to address the chronic underfunding of English language students, poor students and special needs students.

He says he wants to increase pay, benefits and professional development for teachers. New data from the National Education Association found the average salary for Michigan teachers declined last year, continuing the 12% decline over the last decade when adjusted for inflation. Only Indiana, West Virginia and Wisconsin have had worse declines in teacher pay.

Starting teacher salaries in Michigan rank 32nd in the nation, according to the report. Nationwide, 37% of districts have a starting salary of at least $40,000. In Michigan, only 12% of districts meet that threshold, according to the data.

“It is an existential moment for the profession and the profession of public education in the state of Michigan,” Rice said. “As goes the teaching profession so goes public education in the state.”

Rice opposes the “punitive” retention requirements of the state’s third-grade reading laws and the dual accountability system created when state lawmakers passed the A-F grading system during the lame duck session in December. 

There is hope for Michigan.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Michigan, Teacher Pay

Economic Policy Institute: Teacher “Wage Penalty” Reaches a Record High

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
10

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! If you believe that teachers are important and that they change lives, become an advocate for higher pay for teachers.

The Economic Policy Institute is one of the very few think tanks in D.C. (maybe the only think tank) that is not funded by billionaires. It focuses on economic issues affecting working people and issues of economic justice.

In this post, Sylvia Allegretto and Lawrence Mishel document the wage gap between teachers and their peers with similar education.

Teachers are not paid equitably. They have good reason to strike for higher wages. In most states, teachers are unlikely to get higher wages unless they strike.

Providing teachers with a decent middle-class living commensurate with other professionals with similar education is not simply a matter of fairness. Effective teachers are the most important school-based determinant of student educational performance.1 To promote children’s success in school, schools must retain credentialed teachers and ensure that teaching remains an attractive career option for college-bound students. Pay is an important component of retention and recruitment.

The deepening teacher wage and compensation penalty over the recovery parallels a growing shortage of teachers. Every state headed into the 2017–2018 school year facing a teacher shortage (Strauss 2017). New research by García and Weiss (2019) indicates the persistence and magnitude of the teacher shortage nationwide:

The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought. When indicators of teacher quality (certification, relevant training, experience, etc.) are taken into account, the shortage is even more acute than currently estimated, with high-poverty schools suffering the most from the shortage of credentialed teachers. (1)

García and Weiss explain why the teacher shortage matters:

A shortage of teachers harms students, teachers, and the public education system as a whole. Lack of sufficient, qualified teachers and staff instability threaten students’ ability to learn and reduce teachers’ effectiveness, and high teacher turnover consumes economic resources that could be better deployed elsewhere. The teacher shortage makes it more difficult to build a solid reputation for teaching and to professionalize it, which further contributes to perpetuating the shortage. In addition, the fact that the shortage is distributed so unevenly among students of different socioeconomic backgrounds challenges the U.S. education system’s goal of providing a sound education equitably to all children…

Teacher wage and compensation penalties grew over the recovery since 2010

  • The public school teacher weekly wage penalty grew from 13.5 percent to 21.4 percent between 2010 and 2018.
  • Teacher benefits improved relative to benefits for other professionals from 2010 to 2018, boosting the teacher benefits advantage from 4.8 percent to 8.4 percent. Despite this improvement, the total compensation (wage and benefit) penalty for public school teachers grew from 8.7 percent in 2010 to 13.1 percent in 2018.

The wage penalty is a result of state policy, not the recession of 2008. Legislators cut taxes and revenues.

Teacher weekly wage penalties vary across the states

  • We report teacher weekly wage penalties for each state for the period 2014–2018. State wage penalties are based on regression-adjusted analyses using a sample of college graduates in each state. Teacher penalties range from 0.2 percent to 32.6 percent.
  • Four of the seven states with the largest teacher wage penalties—Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Colorado—were, unsurprisingly, ground zero for the 2018 teacher protests, helping to draw national attention to the erosion of teacher pay. In these states, teachers earned at least 26 percent less than comparable college graduates.
  • In 21 states and D.C., the teacher wage penalties are greater than 20 percent.
Categories Accountability, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

Teachers! Please Help Tim Slekar with His Research into the Reasons for the Teacher Shortage!

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2019 //
16

Tim Slekar, dean of Edgewood College in Wisconsin and consummate education activist, is writing a book about the teacher shortage and he needs your help if you are or were a teacher.

He wrote:

Attention Teachers. According to the media we are facing a teacher shortage. I disagree. We have a teacher exodus that is the result of 30 + years of “accountability.”
I need your voices.
Can you take a moment and answer these questions and send them to me on email (timslekar@gmail.com). Anonymity is promised. But I want to tell your story.
1) Why did you go into teaching?
2) What has changed during your time as a teacher?
3) Are you being asked to do things that do not benefit kids? Name some.
4) Have you thought about leaving teaching? Have you left teaching? Why?
5) What would it take to remoralize you and stay in the profession and or make you want to get back into it?
Please respond using this survey.

We are far from perfect
But perfect as we are.
We are bruised, we are broken
But we are god damn works of art!
Rise Against

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Bernie Sanders’ Staff Called Me to Talk About Education Policy

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2019 //
186

 

I got an e-mail recently from Senator Bernie Sanders’s education advisor. She said she reads the blog and wondered if we could talk. I said sure but I was not ready to endorse anyone in the Democratic primaries.

I asked for and got her permission to share that this conversation occurred. As everyone knows who ever gave me confidential information, I never write or speak about what I was told in confidence.

We set a date to speak on the phone since I am in New York and she is in D.C.

She called and conferenced in the campaign’s chief of staff.

Here is what happened.

I told them that I was upset that Democrats talk about pre-K and college costs—important but safe topics—and skip K-12, as though it doesn’t exist. Every poll I get from Democrats asks me which issues matter most but doesn’t mention K-12.

I expressed my hope that Bernie would recognize that charter schools are privately managed (in 2016, he said in a town hall that he supports “public charter schools but not private charter schools). No matter what they call themselves, they are not “public” schools. They are all privately managed. I recounted for them the sources of financial support for charters: Wall Street, hedge fund managers, billionaires, the DeVos family, the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, ALEC, and of course, the federal government, which gave $440 million to charters this year, one-third of which will never open or close soon after opening. (See “Asleep At the Wheel: How Athens Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride,” Network for Public Education).

I proposed a way to encourage states to increase funding for teachers’ salaries. I won’t reveal it now. I think it is an amazingly innovative concept that offers money to states without mandates but assures that the end result would be significant investment by states in teacher compensation, across the board, untethered to test scores.

I recommended a repeal of the annual testing in grades 3-8, a leftover of George W. Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind. I pointed out to them that all the Democrats on the Education Committee in the Senate had voted for the Murphy Amendment (sponsored by Senator Chris Murphy of Ct), which would have preserved all the original punishments of NCLB but which was fortunately voted down by Republicans. I suggested that grade span testing is common in other developed countries, I.e., once in elementary school, once in middle school, once in high school.

We had a lively conversation. Our values are closely aligned.

They are in it to win it. I will watch to see if Bernie moves forward with a progressive K-12 plan. No one else has.

My options are open. My priorities are clear.

Let’s draw a line in the sand. We will not support any candidate for the Democratic nomination unless he or she comes out with strong policy proposals that strengthen public schools, protect the civil rights of all students, curb federal overreach into curriculum and assessment and teacher evaluation, and oppose DeVos-style privatization (vouchers, charters, cybercharters, for-profit charters, home schooling, for-profit higher education).

Silence is not a policy.

Democrats support public schools.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Sanders, School Choice, Teacher Pay, Testing, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

#Red4Ed Keeps Moving On: North Carolina and Oregon

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2019 //
8

 

Teachers in North Carolina are planning a mass action for May 1 according to this email from high school teacher Stuart Egan.

“We have already closed down six systems for that day and more will be announcing soon.

“The numbers we have so far are much more than last year’s march at this time and far more organized.
“Five specific issues.
  • Provide $15 minimum wage for all school personnel, 5% raise for all ESPs (non-certified staff), teachers, admin, and a 5% cost of living adjustment for retirees
  • Provide enough school librarians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, nurses, and other health professionals to meet national standards
  • Expand Medicaid to improve the health of our students and families
  • Reinstate state retiree health benefits eliminated by the General Assembly in 2017
  • Restore advanced degree compensation stripped by the General Assembly in 2013”

Teachers in Oregon are considering a strike. 

“Educators across Oregon are planning to walk out of class Wednesday, May 8 should the Oregon Legislature not add an additional $2 billion per biennium needed to maintain and improve K-12 schools.

“Over the last two decades, the state has financed schools at 21 to 38 percent below what its own research suggests districts need to be successful.

“Many educators argue the lack of funding has resulted in teachers having to do more with less. They say this is reflected in the state’s low graduation rates, high dropout and absenteeism rates, as well as rising issues with disruptive behaviors, mental health needs and large class sizes.”

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Teacher Pay, Teachers
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