The benefits:
I doubt that the lowest possible turnover rate is compatible with the best possible education. Turnover has costs, but it also has benefits: fresh blood, lower burnout rates, and an incentive for teachers to keep performing. The whole idea of hiring someone in their early twenties and employing them forever seems like an unhealthy organizational structure to me–in the military and old-school law firms as well as teaching, though the military and law firms do more to weed out the number along the way. It breeds an organization that is insular–resistant to new ideas, suspicious of outsiders, resentful of its nominal clients. We should be looking for ways to make teaching more open to part-timers and people in second, third, or eighth career cycles, and to make it easier for teachers to move around between schools and districts, and between teaching and other industries.
It will never happen, though, as long as the NEA retains its power, because it’s never about the children with them. And it’s another good argument against public-employee unions.
I’ve been fired a few times, and while I am quite confident I was one of the best at what I did, I was more than a little disruptive enough to make those who were good enough less capable.
Getting rid of “one of the best” for the benefit of the generally good was the right choice. I deserved getting canned.
Not by accident the private sector has, in a competitive environment, generally adopting a high wage low benefit remuneration system. It seems very unlikely that the same remuneration approach would not also work better for teaching. I would suggest taking away teacher benefits and job security, and increasing there wage as the market requires. Add a little more freedom and direct remuneration into the teacher job market.
Teaching is a job (that’s why pay is involved.) Arguing that it’s a ‘special kind of job that needs to be treated differently from others’ is hogwash.
I think everyone is underpaid, but logically, how is that possible? Wouldn’t anyone underpaid seek a better paying job? If teachers are underpaid, there would be less of them. If there were less of them, wouldn’t pay be raised to attract more?
It’s all a bunch of hand waving crap. This is why special interest is a dirty word.
Let’s remove merit from all jobs and see how that works.
If teachers can’t be fired, besides the obvious of keeping rotten teachers on the payroll, it also kills the incentive to listen to the parents concerns about the direction and content of lessons – particularly political content.
The other difference in teaching and the military is the mandatory upward mobility. I know several people who started teaching, and with a few, periodic continuing education credits can keep teaching, at the same level for 40 years. And bragged about at gatherings we attended.
You simply cannot do that in the military. And there are other vast differences.
Most people leave the military at 20 years IF it was a career. (the grand majority of us do just one enlistment how many people teach for just 4 or 6 years and move on) Those who opt for more time generally get out at 30 years. There a few exceptions of course. But there, to my knowledge, Admirals or Generals who stay on Active Duty until they are 65.
That means the grand majority of even senior officers are gone and ‘change jobs’ at 50 to 55 and go to work in civilian industry, but regardless, they are making way for younger blood.
Most importantly for differences sake, those who do not progress UP the command chain, cannot usually stay in the military. There are damned few opportunities to stay in the military just by showing up and doing the same level job, at the same level of responsibility in the military. If, after a few years at “X” paygrade you can’t advance on your own skills and test scores, to the next paygrade, you won’t be allowed to re-enlist at the end of that current enlistment.
How many teacher EVER get fired or aren’t allowed to start the next semester? Having fought local school boards over poor teachers, they defend them, coddle them and talk about ‘unions’ when there’s a problem.
I realize that not everyone starts out teaching 1st Grade and works tries to work up, through the grades, to become a principal. And there aren’t the same kinds of command structure in teaching as in the military. But if you are a 1st Grade teacher and for 10 years your kids are performing at a sub-par level compared to other teachers IN THAT SAME school, there’s a problem and you should go. But they don’t get canned.
You can’t go into the military, as an E-3, doing beginning level work, with beginning level responsibility, and stay there at that level for 40 or 45 years and retire never having moved up. Some teachers do just that.
And last but not least, ANYONE who compares teachers careers to military careers is not thinking IMHO. And I expect this writer is another person who was never in the military, doesn’t know anyone who was, and thinks the difference in the military and McDonalds is the uniforms!
A job is a job, unless you are a teacher. That’s really hard!
thought to keyboard error!!
that should have read,
.
.
But there, to my knowledge, NO Admirals or Generals even who stay on Active Duty until they are 65.
.
.
Der Schtumpy
[[[how many people teach for just 4 or 6 years and move on]]]
50% according to NEA statistics. I guess its not all that great a job as you folks think 🙂
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/08/AR2006050801344.html
Half of Teachers Quit in 5 Years
Working Conditions, Low Salaries Cited
By Lisa Lambert
Reuters
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Teachers who move on after 4 to 6 years may do so for a number of reasons — the brain-dead administrators who insist on the title of “educator” so their paper-pushing, bean-counting fiefdom-defending phony-baloney job can stowaway on the public support for actual teachers, for example; or the brutal politics of the teacher’s union at ground level.
Hell, my mother-in-law was a teacher for about that many years. If you were to ask her what she thinks of the public school system in which she used to work, you’d best be clutching your handkerchief in one hand and smelling salts in the other, because you’ll need them both.
Half of Teachers Quit in 5 Years
Working Conditions, Low Salaries Cited
This doesn’t surprise me. I used to consider teaching after I reached a point that I could live with less earnings and pass on what I learned as a professional. However, it’s bad enough working with millenials, who think their fresh college education gives them the wisdom of the ages yet are protected by HR from being set straight. Imagine working with teenagers, who think their amazing accomplishment of passing elementary school and pwning the other team in Halo means they already know what they need, so just give them their A or talk to their parents about it.
Yeah, you couldn’t pay me enough to do it, at least not in a public school. A private school, where parents pay for their childrens education rather than drop them off for someone else to deal with them, might be acceptable working conditions.
I found that after finishing college, I had to go to work for minimum wage minus for almost 4 years before I finally learned the “business” well enough to be worth my salt. Believe me when I say a degree is only a license to try to find a job. I worked as a fire extinguisher sales and serviceman, a dance teacher, a plumber’s apprentice, taxi driver, and a proofreader (3k wpm), prior to and during my early work in my field. They were some dark days.
My educators had gone to work in education right out of college and knew nothing of the field of work and its requirements. Later, the degree stood me in good stead.
TM,
then comparing it to the military still doesn’t stack up. If they were re-enlisting 50% to a second tour, you’d be able to smell the happy sex funk coming outta the Pentagon Retention Offices all the way to Alaska.
And people don’t generally become a teacher intending to quit in 4 to 6 years. Most people go into the military with just that intent.
I got a job as a taxi driver because I was about to become an air traffic controller and wanted experience communicating on a radio (boy scouts was long ago so I didn’t count that.) I did it for one day. After paying my own gas and making no money I just could not continue. Years later one of my sisters told me she made good money as a taxi driver (I can’t imagine. She’s four foot nothin’.)
A rule of thumb we had was no newly hired programmer was worth anything for about six months. Then s/he would either be promoted or fired.
Just noticed…
I guess its not all that great a job as you folks think
That’s just the kind of crappy thinking that is the foundation of more crappy thinking.
It does not matter how good or bad a job is. People choose the job they do.
Are you getting the implication?
Who decides when there are not enough teachers? Those being served by them. With that decision they will raise pay.
Who decides to accept whatever pay is offered. Those that have a choice to become a teacher.
It’s not complicated. They aren’t special. The quality of the job is not an issue other than being one of many factors a person choosing the job has to consider.
When politics and unions (and those introducing irrelevant crap) get involved they screw up these basic economic realities.