I think I've read of other, similar experiments. For example, if you decide that sunlight is really important to plants, and you move your plants away from a water source so they can have full sun...that always works. Or if you decide that vitamin e is important to good skin health, and you sacrifice all your money to buy and ingest vast quantities of vitamin e, so have no money left over for ordinary meat, fruit, and vegetables you generally might expect to leave a good looking corpse, fast.

In other words--the basic premise (high teacher pay is important to attracting great teachers) is good. But the correllary that you can cut everything but teacher pay and get a good result in terms of student education (you might get happy teachers, but that isn't the result you were going for) seems utterly wrongheaded. Sounds like someone didn't go to a very good school, or perhaps they cut logic to teach something else.

aimai

I'm glad someone's advocating for higher teacher pay, but I don't understand the logic that cuts arts, P.E., counseling, drama, and other aspects of schooling that are supposedly not part of a "core" curriculum. I'm willing to accept that this school should be given a chance, but somehow it reminds me of Wal-Mart: when prices/salary are all you care about, you will inevitably sacrifice other benefits.

If it's successful, though, it will be difficult to isolate teacher salary as a factor.

This is the problem with most ed reform, no? It's darn near impossible to isolate anything and as such it's been incredibly difficult to replicate successes.

Are teachers more skilled than nurses? Do they provide a service with more value? My quick answer would be NO but a salary of $120,000 per year is 50% more than a well paid nurse.

I don't think high teacher pay (top 5% of all incomes) is the answer. If a teacher is paid the median income + benefits + 2 months vacation schools should be getting excellent quality people for the well-paying positions.

A neverending debate on raising teacher pay is the bizarro version of the neverending debate on tax cuts. At a certain level, it's a counterproductive measure made because of ideology, not reason.

My response to joejoejoe is that we should be raising pay for nurses, not surpressing teacher pay to keep it level with nursing. Both jobs require college education and a great deal of patience and ingenuity. The real question is - why don't both jobs paid better? In addition, teaching had a terrible retention rate, especially at schools in low-income communities. We need to do more to encourage teachers to stay in the profession.

I agree with others that counseling, extracurriculars, and other services are needed in low-income schools. However, Vanderhoak had to do this in order to afford the high teacher salaries. A better, broader solution would be to take a look at our national priorities. If we gave a little more money to education (the defense budget could use some trimming anyway), we would be able to offer salaries that teachers deserve, along with all the other services students need to be successful.

txteacher - I used $80,000 per year as a good salary for teachers and nurses. I'm just questioning the fact that you get the same bang for the buck with 2 teachers @ $120K that you get with 3 teaches at $80K.

On average, the highest paid nurses in the US (California - $80K) make about 1/3 more than the highest paid teachers in the country (Connecticut - $60K). That sounds about right to me.

I don't care if you live in the wealthiest community in the nation, 4 x $60K is a better deal than 2 x $120K in terms of value if you are talking about teachers. A BMW offers very little added utility over a Honda yet people justify paying 50% more for a similar sedan. I'm suggesting schools disabuse themselves of the notion that buying a fleet of BWMs is a good idea.

I'm not saying buy junk, I'm saying buy utility, not greatness.

joejoe joe,
this is one school, one experiment. The whole point of this experiment is that other schools don't pay nearly what an educated, devoted, full time salary should be for a great professional doing a difficult job. and they never will, because teachers and teachign aren't seen as worth it.

aimai

Even at today's largely insufficient teacher salaries, society and especially the children aren't getting what we're paying for from teachers or from the whole apparatus. It's just too damned hard to fire incompetent and disinterested teachers (and administrators) even now. In the case of teachers this is of course thanks to the giant job-creation and ass-saving operations known as teacher's unions. Nobody (except a few propagandists) claims unions, such as the UAW, are focused on improving the product. The same is true of the NEA et al.

His name is Zeke! Looks like I'm not the only one after all.

His name is Zeke! Looks like I'm not the only one after all.
yeah you are right

comparing nurses to teachers is absurd - it's like putting the cart before the horse; nothing in the civilized world happens if not for teachers - nurses need teachers, not the other way around and they are not on an equal plain when it comes to their contribution to society; teachers ensure the integrity of society for new generations and nurses clean bed pans for dying people; c'mon!

Simple math:
1 kid = $5 an hour x 30 kids=
$150 and hour.
6 hours a day = $900 a day.
I work 190 days a year= 171,000.

maybe 125,000 is a bargain after all

I love how most of you feel teachers don't deserve that much money. Why do you think teachers are so underpaid? Its because we (the adults of society) seem to care more about paying athletes and actors millions upon millions but couldn't care less that most teachers make chump change in comparison to most other professional careers that require a degree and an exorbitant amount of patience, understanding, and skill.

Teachers shape our children and future for at least 12 years of their lives!!! They deserve the best pay they can get for such an important position and yet people posting here think they aren't even on the same level as a nurse.

If you can read this post and every other post than you should probably thank a teacher for that skill. Maybe if you were making as little as the average teacher does you would have a different opinion on salary?! Ya, that's what I thought.

Higher salary will go a long way to motivating teachers and bringing more male role models into schools. But 30 students in a classroom is still a poor school and the kids will know that. You can't give children a better future with a switch or a pill.
Are you one of the 80% of 'poor' Americans that share 50% of the income and less than 33% of the wealth? Think about whether districting/educational gerrymandering really helps your children.