Low starting salaries seem to reward people who don't have very high professional expectations and also try to account for teaching's high burnout rate by keeping the financial losses of burnout as low as possible. The rewards go to those who manage to hang in there for decades.

What you'd want to do is make teaching more like engineering: high initial starting salary to attract those who are smart and want financial rewards right now. But unlike engineering, you get better job security.

The flipside is that schools need to figure out a way to reduce the burnout rate or just be prepared to take a financial hit knowing that half the people you're paying 40k-60k/yr on starting salaries aren't going to be there in 5 years.

Also, you don't want to make it a "social justic-oriented profession." You want to make it a "profession" in the same way that accounting and engineering are "professions"-- the sort of thing that people who are intelligent and concerned about their financial future go into to give themselves both middle-class credibility as a "professional" as well as the ability to support a family. Turning something into a "social justice-oriented profession" just ends up attracting the upper-middle classes who are more likely to leave.

What Tyro said.

Teach for America is the wrong model if you are looking to get more prestige into teaching as a field. Many of the Ivy-leaguers going into TFA are looking for a boost on their grad school applications and don't plan to make teaching a career. You get energy and idealism from them, but very little of the life/teaching experience and expertise that is so desparately needed in poor-performing schools.

This idea is laugable in so many ways.

The only sense in which something called the 'urban teaching corps' wil ever, ever, have prestige is among like-minded public interest types. In other words, among almost no one.

Do you think that we might actually fund very high-paying slots for teachers in distressed urban schools? I can't think of a policy less likely to come to pass in this country.

Let's set that all aside. You want to send non-union, Ivy-educated do-gooders to work in the same building with normal teachers? With their own, 'special' supervisory regime? And they're going to be paid more than anyone else???

... could be more easily fired ...

Why do so many discussions of issues alway have to include the idea that somebody must be punished? Fire the teachers, kick the sick out of the hospitals faster, let the welfare bums starve if they can't feed their kids on $6.50 an hour. I think we need to examine how much we have internalized the conservative meme that things are bad because we just haven't made things unpleasant enough for "those" people.

I remember an article in the Atlantic years back proposing a "two track" system for educators: the low-salary tenure track and the non-tenure path for young professionals looking for prestige and higher wages.

Hmm. Here it is: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200307/miller

dude, the unions would fight such a thing tooth and nail.

it would not be pretty

justawriter, for the professional laid-off at 50 who has rather ambiguous professional duties, losing your job is a horrible experience. But an under-35 teacher losing his or her job because the whole relationship between the teacher and the school isn't a good fit just gives both parties a chance to reevaluate what they want and what they're looking for. Not being asked to come back for the following school year isn't some horrible, angry punishment, any more than being turned down for a job after you interview for it is "punishment."

The only flaw in the "can be more easily fired" argument is that all new teachers can be easily fired. It's the long-time, tenured teachers that are untouchable.

Actually, TFA does promise a profession of teaching -- the whole point is to recruit a corps that will later enter any number of other professional sectors. There, outside the education "establishment," they are expected to leverage their influence and experience in the school system to change the way their peers perceive education reform. (And raise student achievement in the schools themselves, or whatever.)

In fact there already is a model for such an urban teaching corps -- KIPP, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools. These charter networks cultivate the notion that teaching is a profession in which one can make a career, with advancement. In fact, they consult their teachers frequently to understand what more they could be doing to recruit such candidates into the field long term. They pay their teachers better (for more hours, but for the most part these recruits would be working them, anyway). And in New York, where such charters have shown measurable results in raising student achievement, the United Federation of Teachers has begun to follow suit: Under the current teacher contract the city pays new teachers more, and under that contract membership in the New York City Teaching Fellows and TFA New York City has expanded.

I'm skeptical for the above reasons. However, I believe NYC Teaching Fellows is more career-oriented than TFA: They subsidize your masters of ed while you're in the program.

NYC Teaching Fellows specifically taps mid-career professionals looking to change careers and go into teaching. It is very competitive, though it doesn't pay better than other teaching jobs. I also understand that (particularly unlike TFA) it provides a lot of support to its new teachers, and encourages creative innovations in their teaching. And, like Other Ezra said, it subsidizes your Education degree, mandating that as a part of the program. Pay aside, this seems like a good blueprint for making teaching more palatable as a career to ambitious idealists. By all accounts, it has been quite successful so far.

Also worth noting that very comparable programs exist in (at least) Philadelphia and DC. I hope these programs continue to expand.

"The rewards go to those who manage to hang in there for decades."
"It's the long-time, tenured teachers that are untouchable."

Tyro, not sure the world you're living in, but having a whole extended family of teachers I can tell you neither of these are true, well, in at least three states.

My mother has gotten three raises in the past 15 years of teaching! I am sure she is making less, adjusted for inflation, than she was when she first started 30 years ago!

She has long-time teaching friends who have gotten fired for trying to resolve their grievances (sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination) in court. Others have gotten the sack because they didn't get along with an administrator, the district had to cut jobs, declining enrollments, etc. Outside of college and university professors I don't know of any tenure system in public K-12 schools.

The problem with Ezra's approach is that there will never be money to actually pay teachers what they are worth. We can't even pay our soldiers a decent wage and they are the supposed darlings of half of our political spectrum, no way teachers, who are reviled by the right, will ever get a fair shake and therefore there is no way that our future generations will see improved, much less adequate, education.

I actually think more tests should be given, not less. Even once a week giving a 30-45 minute test, varying the subject matter would be ok.

The point is to track the improvement of the students, not their specific level. Spread over time we have more information. Also, no specific test is ever high stakes or particularly high pressure.

Using computers, we could actually have nationally standardized test yet test individual students at their particular level. Buy tracking the level a student a new test can be calculated centered around that students abilities.

Schools shouldn't be judged by the absolute value of student scores, but by their ability to help student progress.

Maureen makes a good point. Of my friends who have Taught For America, a couple totally burnt out, but several have gone on into KIPP and into other education-related roles, though not necessarily as teachers. Also, there are programs popping up that look at TFA and try and fill some of the gaps. The Boettcher Teachers Program in Colorado is a competitive five-year program that involves getting your Master's degree from the University of Denver for free while also earning a teacher's salary. It's smart and has some prestige attached to it. And it's kind of like TFA for people who plan to work within a traditional public school framework. Point is, one of the ancillary benefits of TFA has been folks saying, "this is kind of a good idea, how can we make it better?" If we had some of those people working WITHIN the government as well as without, everyone would be the better for it.

One of the issues with teaching at the primary and secondary teaching in the current environment (exacerbated by NCLB but not originating with it) is that the teachers I know feel that they have less and less autonomy in their classrooms due to the pressure to teach to the test. This is one of the obstacles to making teaching a prestige profession, I think. In a prestige profession, you want to feel that you have the ability to be creative, and that you are trusted to know what you're doing.

Er, that should be "teaching at the primary and secondary level."

Interesting point, Azelie. And I think that also gets back to Maureen's point above. TFA alums come out of the experience keenly aware of the ways that our public school teachers are bound in by the system. So a good number of them are motivated by a desire to circumvent those limitations in some experimental ways in order to inject some creativity and innovation into education.

Do we really want to divert our brightest minds to teaching? Don't they have more profitable uses of their time?

There is very little reason to assume that a teacher's intelligence is relevant to his ability to teach small children basic math.

Instead of figuring out very expensive(in terms of opportunity cost)ways of convincing potential physicists and doctors to babysit teenagers, focus attention on developing and implementing better teaching techniques, and developing new incentive structures for both teachers and students.

Or god forbid, we could learn from France and other European countries and consider implementing a Voucher system.

David Shor, are you aware that we have way more physicists than we know what to do with?

And you regard teaching as "babysitting teenagers"? Cripes, when I was a teenager, I did nothing but benefit from having teachers who were pretty darn intelligent.

Don't they have more profitable uses of their time?

Isn't that the point? If people don't consider it a profitable use of their time, it should be.

There was a time when the village teacher was considered a fairly prestigious position. We'd do better to return to that mindset. The question is how to get there.

Moving from high stakes tests to measure whether or not a student is at "grade level" to a system that measures how much improvement a student has done over a year of teaching would be one way to lessen the burden of teaching the hardest students. If you are a 5th grade teacher who has a class of students who have less than a 3rd grade reading level, you might not get them to "grade level" but if you get them a few months beyond 4th grade reading level you've done a years worth of work and then some.

Some tests measure [Grade level].0 to be exactly at grade level, with .1 being one month beyond grade level .2 being 2 months up to .9. If you want to use testing to reward teachers with bonuses beyond their base pay, a fair way to do that would be pre-test the average score of their class and then compare it to the average score of their class. So a 4th grade teacher who has an average level of 4.1 gets base pay if at the end of the year they are 5.1 or lower . . . but if they are 5.3, she would get 2 months salary as a bonus. A 4th grade teachers whose class had an average level of 3.1 but got them to 4.9 would get 8 months bonus pay. Obviously the numbers could be tweaked, but the idea would be if someone does 2 years of teaching in 1 year, pay them more than 1 years worth of salary.

The idea is that you would entice your most skilled, most ambitious teachers trying to help the students who were furthest behind catch up. Teachers would seek out the children most in need of expert teaching.

Beyond pay, the most important thing (maybe even more important than pay) is working conditions specifically the quality of the school principal. We have too many crappy principals. A good principal will have a good school and teachers will want to work there. You can't pay teachers enough to go work at a bad school. Seriously, you have to offer on the order of 2 months salary difference to get teachers to leave a school with a great principal to go to one with a weak principal, and even then there aren't many takers. Good principals are worth their weight in gold.

Other ideas: give teachers rock solid health care. Give the children of teachers free college education at state supported colleges, and/or allow children of teachers to attend out-of-state schools as in-state students. Offer sabbaticals for teachers. Create more opportunities for teachers to voluntarily work as 12 month employees.

Have effective support systems for teachers. Have administrators that fairly discipline students and do not tolerate disrespect of teachers. Have school leadership that encourages community support of schools, pride in student achievement, and respect for teaching.

I work with top students from elite schools that want to become teachers. They have "social justice" leanings, but they also have "self-respect," and "want to get paid" leanings. Most of them would work for less money. The problem, the thing that pushes them out of the career is that schools generally provide a disincentive for excellence. You are rewarded for sticking around FOREVER, regardless of how hard you work, how long you stay, or how well your students perform. First year lawyers are generally OK with putting in their 80 hour weeks because that translates into promotion and results. Teachers are able to reach kids in need, but it requires extra investment. The young teachers that make this commitment (many go through our program as undergrads) are often discouraged by the tenured teachers that make more money and don't want to look bad. The school sure isn't going to give them a bonus for actually addressing the students' needs.

To say that top young people don't want to be teachers is just wrong - the truth is that the more you learn about how schools work, the less attractive it seems. Thousands do it anyway. Undergrads and high school students give up their summers to teach with us, and they're desperate to help.

"David Shor, are you aware that we have way more physicists than we know what to do with?"

Yes, but we have a huge shortage of jobs that require the analytical skills that physicists learn (Financial math is the most profitable, though might not last long). Overall, we have a huge shortage of educated people in this country.

But if I had to choose, I think that subsidizing employment for physicists is a good idea, and a better investment than paying the huge opportunity costs of getting Ivy-League students to be teachers(roughly 400 k per teacher).

"And you regard teaching as "babysitting teenagers"? Cripes, when I was a teenager, I did nothing but benefit from having teachers who were pretty darn intelligent."

I'd can say that if a teacher has adequate and full knowledge of the subject matter(A very low bar to meet for anything but the most advanced classes), then the marginal effect of additional education is negligible.

A good teacher is someone who can empathize with students and detect when students are losing attention, prepares good lesson plans, and has the ability to break down complex concepts into simple ones.

None of these traits has anything to do with intelligence.

"Isn't that the point? If people don't consider it a profitable use of their time, it should be."

It's not, because intelligence is not strongly related to teaching ability.

And any marginal benefit from increased intelligence that might exist is outweighed by the massive cost.

Decreasing the amount of tests would, in addition to decreasing student stress (which is unproductive re: student learning) would also make working conditions better for teachers, who would actually be able to, y'know, TEACH instead of test-prepping. If you think these two are the same thing, you have obviously never been in a classroom when a second-grade teacher tells her students, "alright, put your independent reading books away; it's time to practice for the reading test." (no, seriously). With less of a focus on testing, teachers can take some extra time if necessary to make sure that all their students genuinely understand the concept of a main idea, or of adding fractions, instead of just being able to do the process. Students can learn more deeply, making it more likely they will retain the information, and because they are being taught something that means something to them instead of being a random process, they may well find it more interesting and engaging.

After all, pretty much the biggest predictor of job satisfaction is degree of perceived autonomy (which is why, in at least one survey, hairdressers were the second-happiest profession), and right now, teachers have very little of that. Especially, probably, in third grade, when students are already being tested, and teachers are already being pressured (often) by principals to do test prep, while meanwhile kids are still young enough that learning through more free, less structured ways should be a valuable part of their education.

A good teacher is someone who can empathize with students and detect when students are losing attention, prepares good lesson plans, and has the ability to break down complex concepts into simple ones.

None of these traits has anything to do with intelligence.

Hoo boy. On the one hand, I agree with you that none of these traits--which are, in fact, yes, the most important for teachers, I think (well, that and a huge dose of patience and a sense of humor)--directly have anything to do with academic ability, and a lot of people who might be brilliant physicists would make terrible teachers because they would lose it if a kid doesn't understand something the second time through.

On the other hand, I know of a lot of teachers and other people who work with kids who have trouble getting kids to understand certain math concepts because they themselves don't really understand them. I don't think this is a matter of "intelligence" necessarily, but rather a result of the process-oriented instead of understanding-oriented way math is taught, often even in the "best" schools. A good example of this is: many people remember that to divide fractions, you flip one and multiply, but how many people can explain why? For that matter, how many people understand exactly what they are doing when they "carry the one"? To a student who struggles with rote memory, the conceptual understanding could be a huge benefit in learning how to do math--but a lot of bright, college-educated adults can't explain that (especially, let's be honest, humanities majors, who are I suspect--but have no data to back up I admit--more likely to look into teaching as a profession).

You're right that teaching arithmetic shouldn't require special expertise in math--but sadly, to be at its most effective, given the way most people are currently taught math--it might.

Erm, that previous comment wasn't meant as a stab at the intellectual capacities of humanities majors--I just meant that generally, people who like mathy things are more likely either to grasp the underlying concepts on their own (people often being drawn to the things they are naturally better at) or else to spend enough time on working on them (because they like them) to arrive at an understanding which people who don't care for math just wouldn't have bothered to look for.