Teachers and the public perception

[mcm1610]

I started this in the +/- thread figuring no one would care, but let's see. These are the first few posts:

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- I feel the need to rant and have no where else, so... it's so utterly demoralizing being a teacher and being unappreciated. I get it, everyone wants to be patted on the back sometimes, but teaching is arguably your most important profession. Who in their right mind wants to be a teacher when every politician and public conversation bashes the fuck out of your job?

(everything in today's $$)

In NYS, I cannot teach if I don't have my master's degree. My district pays well, and the starting salary is just over $35,000 + benefits that we used to only pay 3% of, now we pay 7%. Oh! I can feel your outrage already. How dare they only pay 7%?! With my education level (a BA from Syracuse University and an Ed.M from SUNY Buffalo) I could start a job tomorrow and fully expect to make in the upper $60k's (average private sector starting salary for that edu). I could rocket up to over $100,000 in less than a decade and if I suck stay around that pay, but if I'm good, be easily over $200,000 before I retire, if I don't find a way to make billions somehow. Sure, I'd have to pay somewhere around half my benefit package, but with the extra $30,000 in my first year, I think I could afford it. But I chose to be a teacher. I'll start at $35,000 and then the year after that I'll make $38,000 and in a decade I'll make ~$60,000. I'll retire making ~$103,000 assuming I keep coaching in my three highest paying years (which coaching, hourly, works out to be ~$2 an hour for lightest workloads... those JV football coaches who do film for varsity? they're making pennies on the dollar for how much work they do).

So the grand take-away: unless you want to pay teachers nearly 2x the salary, SHUT THE FUCK UP about our fucking benefits. Seriously.

As a culture we don't value education. We all gonna get fucked because of it.

Honestly, I'd be happy paying teachers double the salary and still have the benefits.

Thank you! It's nice to know there's good, intelligent people left in the country. It means we're not TOTAL failures of a profession, right? Or I guess it can be said that we just filled your mind with our pro-teacher propaganda.

But I've been fired up about this the last 3 days or so because my district is closing one of our elementary schools for the 2013-14 school year and in every public debate, "personnel costs" are to blame for why we're in this mess! They think it's the 24 teachers in that building that are making too much money and have too expensive of benefits are sinking us. The school closing saves $2.5 million, ~90% of which is personnel costs. They forget that there is 24 teachers ALONG WITH a principal, a vice principal for some reason, janitors, secretaries, a school nurse, cafeteria staff... but fuck those teachers and their cushy jobs!

And you're right, the long-term implications of bashing the fuck out of teachers and ruining education is going to be brutal. Cutting edu funding lowers the quality of the education which in the long term decimates our ability to think, innovate, produce, and expand as a culture. We'll be financially worse off for not investing in our children, but we must balance that deficit TODAY, right Paul Ryan?

My second grand take-away, if you vote for Romney, you're a fucking moron. Balancing a budget in a down year is a stupid fucking idea with absolutely horrible long-term impacts. Not that Obama will save the day, but at least he'll minimize the damage.

I think that there is a valid argument to be made about the overpayment of some teachers, especially those who are tenured. I can absolutely see an argument about cutting ineffective personal. So on some level, I can also empathize with those who favor the idea of privatization. In my education, and not getting the behind the scenes, there were plenty of people drawing salaries who were adding no value to the system in which they were employed.

The problem, as I see it, is that demand vastly outweighs the supply here. There are way too many kids and not enough teachers, so we aren't really in a position to be making these demands. Either stop fucking irresponsibly, or start doing something to attract talent back into the teaching profession.

Look, we've taken what should be considered a noble profession, and turned it into something else. No one wants to be a fucking teacher, and who could blame them. We pay them shit, we constantly bitch about the little they do get and they have to deal with our shitty entitled kids all day.

EDIT: By the way, this is a terrible place for this discussion. Let's move it to a thread or PMs.

[qwrm38]

http://www.thenation...tudents-strike# - WHY DON'T AMERICAN STUDENTS STRIKE?

it's only a matter of time i think until more people realize how fucked things are and how fucked they are going to stay unless we are ALL proactive about it

[mcm1610]

Now, back to the story.

To your point on overpayment, I see that it is very easy to think that way, and sometimes I agree (struggling at the bottom of the seniority list and watching someone at the top do nothing is frustrating). But! Again, that's become part of the trade-off. The deal with teaching is that you'll be underpaid most of your career, then somewhere around the middle you'll still be enthusiastic and you'll definitely know what you're doing, so you're probably paid appropriately for a couple years, but then toward the end you might start cutting corners and getting lazy but you've put your time in, so we'll overpay you in your twighlight.

That's the trade-off of the public sector job. We take less pay in the long run for the ability to have some job security and some thank you pay on the back-end. Does your average teacher need to make $100,000? No. But when you total up his annual salary, what does it come out to? I think paying someone a flat-rate of whatever that comes out to is fair-enough for some job stability, some nice benefits, and making sure that there's another generation of innovators, doctors, lawyers, writers, businessmen, etc.

[mcm1610]

I'll bring my contract to my other job (it's also public.. mwahahaha - but seriously, we get "summers off" but have to work other jobs ) and if it's slow, I'll actually calculate out the average annual-salary a teacher can expect over the lifetime in our district. If I remember where my contract is. And it's for the years 2006-2011, but we're still using it because no one can agree on a new one. Or maybe we just signed one in May? I forget if it succeeded or not.

[harryq]

two thoughts:

1) what about switching to a year-round schedule with ~$50,000/year salary? something that would be comparable/competitive to salaries in other careers that you could get with a similar degree, in an attempt to attract the "best" talent.

2) teachers as coaches

for example, I have a math degree and a lot of my classmates got jobs paying around $50k. I'm sure some of them could have been great teachers, but everyone knows there's no money there, so they go elsewhere. at the same time, we've got people whose main focus is to be a high school sports coach, so they go to school (struggling a bit through the courses) and get a math teaching job. (I'm not saying that all coaches are necessarily bad teachers, just that if you want to be a coach, be a coach. don't get a teaching degree because you want to be a coach.)

ooh, one more thing:

3) tenure - how hard is it to fire someone with tenure who's in the "twilight" of their career? is there a regular evaluation process that you can use to kick someone out if they've been slacking? what about signing like a 10 year contract or something?

anyhoo, I agree that teachers need to be paid more (I think I even made a comment in another thread that people should tip their (children's) high school teachers instead of (over-)tipping their servers at restaurants, but that's a discussion for another time), and I also think education needs to be taken more seriously. I think we should give schools more funding (much of which should go to teacher salaries) and think of ways to get students to take school more seriously (teachers won't get the respect they deserve unless the students succeed). have any of those programs where the students get paid for doing well in school shown any results? imagine if you could get a better paycheck for getting A's in school than you could by working at mcdonalds...

sorry for going off on a bit of tangent

[mcm1610]

Lot of good points in there.

1) By year-round, do you mean school is year round for the students (and therefore teachers as well)? I think a great many teachers would like that idea, but I'm sure a good deal would put up a fight about making sure the pay is equivalent. We're talking about adding in probably 45-50 more teaching days, depending on how much of a summer vacation everyone gets. I personally think a starting salary of $50,000 and year-round schooling is fair (assuming benefits stay as they are, largely publicly funded). I can think of a handful of teachers in my own department that would not go for it, though, but they're older. [Edit: keep in mind, a teacher's summer isn't truly time off right now. They are filled with staff development, planning, new programs, etc for the teachers to prep for the coming year as well as remedial summer school and preparatory summer programs. Even without being paid, while summer school is wrapping up and there's 3.5 weeks until the school year starts, the teachers are rolling back into the building without pay to prep.]

2) This is good topic. I personally see coaching as an extension of teaching. If you're a great teacher and willing to do a bit of prep-work to make sure you can field questions, you can teach anything. Teaching math isn't fundamentally different than teaching English or field hockey or golf. If they can get through the teaching part and are actually a good teacher, I have no problem with teachers as coaches, and it's good to have someone who is so driven to be a coach that they want to teach as their "in", just as long as they aren't cutting corners anywhere. Sometimes, though, a real coach needs to be brought in. I can think of my school football team - coach has no idea what he's doing. In some states, that works. In my district, our union won't allow that unless no teacher wants to do it at all. The quick fix is just harsher evaluations so a shitty coach can be removed, but the union stance is that if there's money to be paid out, it has to be presented to union members first - and that's true for every branch of the education machine - the custodial staff and grounds crews don't like it even when people donate their efforts to doing something they would get paid for, even if they don't really want to do it. In the end, it's just selfishness.

3) It's very tough to remove a tenured teacher because there has to be documentation of them doing something wrong or them being bad at their job. The assumption is that you got tenure because you're NOT bad at your job, so to turn around and remove someone forces everyone to go, "oops, we screwed up" and no one wants to do that, because then the principal, etc. looks bad. I know a great many progressive-minded teachers who love the idea of personal contracts. Honestly, I don't think I do. The union machine is certainly far from perfect, but it would be a different world if they weren't around the last three years in my district. Teachers without a strong stance would have definitely conceded salary and benefits setting the precedent that the rest of us would ultimately have to follow or risk our jobs. They fought very, very hard to keep people like me around as long as they could, and at the end of the day it's bigger than our employment. Class sizes of 35 don't do anyone any good, and that's the reality we're seeing. Removing teams in middle school so that they follow a high school style schedule doesn't do them any good. You go from one teacher in k-5 to the freedom of high school in 6th grade? It's too dramatic a change and we're going to lose students. Our district did this, despite the gripes from the union.

4) I know you don't have a #4 but you hit it in your wrap up. The trouble with educational studies is two-fold.

4A) They're never really run long enough to see the full impact. Educational policy is put in place by politicians, not educators, and education is a slowly changing beast, so when a law is put in place, it takes years to really see if it worked, but everyone gets antsy and the new hip solution is implemented without giving the old one a chance to flesh out.

4B) A great majority of studies are done with the aid of universities. You take any group of students, if you have 7 adults, tons of private funding, and real hard oversight, it doesn't matter what methodology you use, it's going to work. It could have the best results of any study ever, but when you pull out those university professors, that money, and that oversight (or hell, you can even keep the money, but without the extra eyes...) the results fall back down to earth.

Regarding paying students for grades, there's a study going on right now I believe in Washington DC, privately funded by a university, for just that. We'll see how it goes. They tried something similar in the Freakonomics movie but it was more for changing grades for at-risk kids, so it left out those who already do well. With all the extra incentives, there's more reason to cheat the system though so there will probably be a lot of side-effects I imagine. Also, side note, you gotta compete with how much money you'd make selling drugs or some of that other stuff, not just what McDonald's will pay. But then again, the best way to keep in contact with your customers is to be in school around them all.

This doesn't save me at all being a gr 7-12 teacher, but honestly, the US needs to create at least a 2-year universal pre-k program. You can pick out the underperforming students the day they walk into Kindergarten because they haven't had any help, whether it's their parents, pre-k, or whatever, in their most crucial formative years. Take any educational money, cut it from wherever it's going now and put it there and we're light-years closer to a well-educated nation than we'd otherwise be.

But whatever the fix, it has to start with a respect for education, a respect for educators, and stressing the need of it for everyone. The best way for all of that, in this teacher's mind, is to make sure you have the best and brightest in the classroom and being enthusiastic and engaging every day. Those teachers exist, but right now they are semi-charitable. You attract more of them by paying them more or at the very least not shitting on them every day in the public conversation on schools.

Hello? Anyone there anymore?

[rudeboydh]

America: FOOTBAWLLLLL > Education

Also, I was a music education major for 2 years until I decided to change my major. I realized that I would be not getting paid well for how much work is involved. Not only is there a regular school day for band directors, there's after school rehearsals, and summer goes to band camps and more. Ultimately I'm glad I made the switch to something much more broad, (Business Management) even though it took me longer to graduate. I have a friend that graduated a semester after I did and immediately got a job as a band director in a middle school. After 2 years, he's quitting because he got fed up with the kids not respecting him, all the parents constantly breathing down his neck, and all the beaurocracy involved. So yeah, again, glad I didn't take that route.

I completely agree with everything said above as well. Teachers are grossly underpaid and underappreciated in this country. Something needs to change because the education system in this country is seriously broken.

[One Hundred Fifty-Two]

OP you sound like an educated dude and probably make a great teacher. But everyone is not like you. Being 25 I'm right at the age where most my friends have graduated college and are starting their careers. My friends span a wide range of intelligence. Many on the dumber side got their degrees in education and are starting teaching careers while very few of the brighter ones have chosen that path. A lot of the classes that education majors especially elementary education had to take were laughably easy. In fact I can't recall any "weed out" classes for education majors. You said earlier that all teachers in NYS (New York State?) must have masters degrees. That is a great idea for the enhancement of teachers and increasing the difficulty to become a teacher thus justifying a higher salary. This requirement is not nation wide and so people of average intelligence are able to become teachers.

As for the coaching situation you brought up. If someone wants to be a coach a great alternative to teaching would be becoming a trainer. You would work at the school giving you an in to be a coach.

Starting students earlier is also a great idea, "preschool" is pretty common around me, but it costs money so many struggling to make ends meet aren't able to give their kids the start they need.

[rudeboydh]

OP you sound like an educated dude and probably make a great teacher. But everyone is not like you. Being 25 I'm right at the age where most my friends have graduated college and are starting their careers. My friends span a wide range of intelligence. Many on the dumber side got their degrees in education and are starting teaching careers while very few of the brighter ones have chosen that path. A lot of the classes that education majors especially elementary education had to take were laughably easy. In fact I can't recall any "weed out" classes for education majors. You said earlier that all teachers in NYS (New York State?) must have masters degrees. That is a great idea for the enhancement of teachers and increasing the difficulty to become a teacher thus justifying a higher salary. This requirement is not nation wide and so people of average intelligence are able to become teachers.

I just think teachers need to have higher sallaries. Think of it this way: You can choose to be a high school science teacher: Bachelors degree salary: 35,000 Masters (as mentioned above): 60,000.

OR you can choose to be an Engineer: Bachelors degree salary: probably around 45,000 or 50,000. Masters degree: probably anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000+.

See where the problem is? If you are an intelegent person, there is no way you will take a pay cut for being a teacher AND have to spend extra time grading homework, dealing with parents and such, etc etc. All the shit that teachers put up with now-a-days, it's just not worth it given the salary they make. Unless we have a more competitve teaching salary, America will have very few good teachers.

[mcm1610]

^ I know that most states don't require a Master's degree, and that's two impacts: the quality of education is in fact lower in a lot of areas, and it makes it super easy for someone educated in NYS to move to another state to teach. They hand out jobs in Arizona, SC, and Florida right over the phone. I just don't want to live in any of those places.

[rudeboydh]

^ I know that most states don't require a Master's degree, and that's two impacts: the quality of education is in fact lower in a lot of areas, and it makes it super easy for someone educated in NYS to move to another state to teach. They hand out jobs in Arizona, SC, and Florida right over the phone. I just don't want to live in any of those places.

Yeah, don't move to SC. My mom taught there and got fed up really quick and quit. She now works with a company doing therapy for autistic kids and is much happier doing that.

[mcm1610]

Just to clarify, it's $35,000 to start as a teacher and you need the Master's degree (in NYS - in other states, you can start with a BA and in some states a BA in anything, not even education, but the pay in those states is less, think ~$28,000). $60,000 is the average starting salary for a private-sector job that requires a Master's degree. But the point is the same... with the little respect, the petty BS, and the low pay, education does not attract the best and brightest minds.

[rudeboydh]

And on top of that, alot of the teachers that actually get into it and are smart, compassionate and able are driven out by the BS they have to put up with from parents, school boards, etc etc...

[One Hundred Fifty-Two]

I just think teachers need to have higher sallaries. Think of it this way: You can choose to be a high school science teacher: Bachelors degree salary: 35,000 Masters (as mentioned above): 60,000.

OR you can choose to be an Engineer: Bachelors degree salary: probably around 45,000 or 50,000. Masters degree: probably anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000+.

See where the problem is? If you are an intelegent person, there is no way you will take a pay cut for being a teacher AND have to spend extra time grading homework, dealing with parents and such, etc etc. All the shit that teachers put up with now-a-days, it's just not worth it given the salary they make. Unless we have a more competitve teaching salary, America will have very few good teachers.

That does bring up a good point, but I can't see increasing salaries to a level comparable with the higher end of the private sector serving its purpose in less than 10-20 years. 5-10 years of steady raises of 10% a year (made up figures for the purpose of the thread). Then another 5-10 years for people to catch on / get the education required to become a teacher. If politicians thought further into the future than the next election this type of plan could work out.

[ronniegwilliams]

I spent three years working toward a degree in primary education. My dream was to be a third or fourth grade teacher, that is, until I did more research on No Child Left Behind. So I dropped out of college. Saddest part shout that, was the fact that I was making far more money selling skateboards and stupid clothing to ignorant teenagers, while making far more than I would ever make as a teacher. The point being, teachers should be paid far more and held with a higher degree of respect. Has anyone seen the documentary 'Waiting For Superman'? If not, I highly recommend doing so.

[lexicondevil]

Everyone thinks that teaching is a noble profession and that teachers should be paid more money and respect. Blahblahblah. And yet, no one wants to pay higher taxes. People don't want to contribute to building the infrastructure of a well balanced society. Will you pay higher taxes or hold millionaires accountable to pay a fair share? If not, then shut it. People need to put their money where their piehole is.

I've been a teacher in a high poverty urban area for 11 years. I didn't get into this to be rich, I got into it because I genuinely care about this population of kids. I can make a positive change in this world every day. THAT is the reward. Unless I win the lotto I will regularly be struggling to make ends meet. Retirement? Probably when I die. And yet, I still love my job(most of the time). I actually feel sorry for those suckers going to their, albeit high paying, jobs every day and hating their life. Of course, I wish I could get paid a more equitable wage, but in the end I am still going to be doing this for many many years to come. I do it because I love it. If you ever expect to get real money, this job is not for you.

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

i'll revisit this, but the issue with teachers salaries is that they're tied to state/local tax funding, with some federal funding thrown in. its not like the private sector where salaries are based off profit-margins and such. so its really not fair comparing salaries of a BA and MA in education to that of someone in Engineering, they're two completely different business models.

I for one think that its pretty ridiculous that your state of NY requires teachers to have masters degrees to teach. my wife teaches here in Pittsburgh, and I have a number of friends who teach down here and in NW PA, and I think everyone would flip their shit if Gov. Corbett changed teaching requirements to needing an MA.

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Everyone thinks that teaching is a noble profession and that teachers should be paid more money and respect. Blahblahblah. And yet, no one wants to pay higher taxes. People don't want to contribute to building the infrastructure of a well balanced society. Will you pay higher taxes or hold millionaires accountable to pay a fair share? If not, then shut it. People need to put their money where their piehole is.

I've been a teacher in a high poverty urban area for 11 years. I didn't get into this to be rich, I got into it because I genuinely care about this population of kids. I can make a positive change in this world every day. THAT is the reward. Unless I win the lotto I will regularly be struggling to make ends meet. Retirement? Probably when I die. And yet, I still love my job(most of the time). I actually feel sorry for those suckers going to their, albeit high paying, jobs every day and hating their life. Of course, I wish I could get paid a more equitable wage, but in the end I am still going to be doing this for many many years to come. I do it because I love it. If you ever expect to get real money, this job is not for you.

agreed. I for one dont mind paying higher property/school taxes to help educators, but I know I am in the far minority on that one

[ronniegwilliams]

I'd happily pay higher taxes

[rudeboydh]

i'll revisit this, but the issue with teachers salaries is that they're tied to state/local tax funding, with some federal funding thrown in. its not like the private sector where salaries are based off profit-margins and such. so its really not fair comparing salaries of a BA and MA in education to that of someone in Engineering, they're two completely different business models.

I agree with you, but it does effect a young person going into college in making a descision on whether to go into, let's say, Science Education or Engineering.

Everyone thinks that teaching is a noble profession and that teachers should be paid more money and respect. Blahblahblah. And yet, no one wants to pay higher taxes. People don't want to contribute to building the infrastructure of a well balanced society. Will you pay higher taxes or hold millionaires accountable to pay a fair share? If not, then shut it. People need to put their money where their piehole is.

I've been a teacher in a high poverty urban area for 11 years. I didn't get into this to be rich, I got into it because I genuinely care about this population of kids. I can make a positive change in this world every day. THAT is the reward. Unless I win the lotto I will regularly be struggling to make ends meet. Retirement? Probably when I die. And yet, I still love my job(most of the time). I actually feel sorry for those suckers going to their, albeit high paying, jobs every day and hating their life. Of course, I wish I could get paid a more equitable wage, but in the end I am still going to be doing this for many many years to come. I do it because I love it. If you ever expect to get real money, this job is not for you.

And yes, I completely agree with you. You have to be a very compassionate person to do this job. If you are not, you will easily become frusterated and quit. Cudos to all the good teachers in our school systems!

[mcm1610]

I don't know if it's really necessary, but I feel the need to say that I normally am perfectly fine with the circumstances surrounding teaching. I started this thread in a fit of frustration after spending 3 days discussing a school closing and having every single conversation with non-teachers end in the fact that somehow teachers are mooching off the community in some capacity. I 100% absolutely LOVE teaching. I look forward to every class (well, not EVERY class EVERY day...) and feel the same way as lexicondevil. I was actually pretty close to being an investment banker.. like 6 weeks away from starting a job, but this was in early 2008 and looking at all that bundling of derivatives struck me as extremely immoral so I bailed and wanted to do something a) productive with my life with meaning c) that I enjoy. Teaching has given me a wide-open door to coaching which would be the only thing, the ONLY thing, I ever quit teaching for (if I could coach as a job itself).

For those of you that thought about it and quit: you're really missing out. The one real drawback is that we've become public enemies as a profession somehow. It really is amazingly rewarding to help a kid pass an exam to get out of high school like I did this week, or to see some lesson click, or to watch the class actively debate some issue while you float around the edges and just moderate. Teaching is amazing.

[rudeboydh]

It all stems from greed. People just want to pay as little taxes as possible so we have to make cuts everywhere, especially in Education. The irony lies in the fact that America will really be hurting without the next generation having a good education. But I digress, we'll save the politics for another time.

[hobohunter48]

I'm an education major and every time I mention in a group of people that I want to teach high schoolers I get many that say "Why the hell would you want to do that?"

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

I agree with you, but it does effect a young person going into college in making a descision on whether to go into, let's say, Science Education or Engineering.

well if you're concerned about making a ton of money, you shouldn't be looking at Education or Human Services to begin with, and I am 110% fine with kids going away from becoming a teacher to go into Engineering, or any other profession that makes bank.

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

two thoughts:

1) what about switching to a year-round schedule with ~$50,000/year salary? something that would be comparable/competitive to salaries in other careers that you could get with a similar degree, in an attempt to attract the "best" talent.

Problem is, you've got a lot of teachers who have been teaching for 15, 20, 30 years who are making over $50k, or well over in some cases, that would pitch a fit. almost all public schools are associated with one form of a Teachers Union or another, and you can bet on grievances and complaints being filed by senior teachers about how its unfair, blah blah blah. basically, you'll never see a change in the payrate schedule for entry/1st year teachers to a level that teachers who have been working 10+ years are making. oh, and the Teacher Unions are a necessity in this "industry", they're the only organization in the nation who actually has the backs of educators 24/7, no matter what.

2) teachers as coaches

for example, I have a math degree and a lot of my classmates got jobs paying around $50k. I'm sure some of them could have been great teachers, but everyone knows there's no money there, so they go elsewhere. at the same time, we've got people whose main focus is to be a high school sports coach, so they go to school (struggling a bit through the courses) and get a math teaching job. (I'm not saying that all coaches are necessarily bad teachers, just that if you want to be a coach, be a coach. don't get a teaching degree because you want to be a coach.)

problem is that not all schools have the budget to afford to pay a coach an actual livable wage. most school coaches do it for free, or for a yearly slot "bonus" payment, sometimes a couple hundred dollars, sometimes a couple thousand, depending on the district, sport, successes, ect. so its not as simple as just creating a job for every coach to just be a coach, and not a teacher, they go hand in hand. There is a private school here in Pittsburgh that requires all teachers, from 6-12th grade to be a coach, or assistant coach, for 2 years when they're hired. Also, some teachers can only afford to go college to become teachers through athletic scholarships, so if you're a school district, and you just hired a new Math Teacher who has played football since 6th grade through college, and you need a new coach for your football program, why wouldnt you want to save your District and tax payers money by just lumping the two together? Adding more positions at a school = increased SD Taxes (part of Property Taxes).

ooh, one more thing:

3) tenure - how hard is it to fire someone with tenure who's in the "twilight" of their career? is there a regular evaluation process that you can use to kick someone out if they've been slacking? what about signing like a 10 year contract or something?

anyhoo, I agree that teachers need to be paid more (I think I even made a comment in another thread that people should tip their (children's) high school teachers instead of (over-)tipping their servers at restaurants, but that's a discussion for another time), and I also think education needs to be taken more seriously. I think we should give schools more funding (much of which should go to teacher salaries) and think of ways to get students to take school more seriously (teachers won't get the respect they deserve unless the students succeed). have any of those programs where the students get paid for doing well in school shown any results? imagine if you could get a better paycheck for getting A's in school than you could by working at mcdonalds...

sorry for going off on a bit of tangent

Tenue is tricky as it all depends on each school districts CBA between the district and the teachers union. once a teacher joins a union, you cannot flat out fire them with or without tenure. they've received tenure, as MC said, generally because they've done well, or they've been at the school long enough with no grievences/complaints filed against them. no union will ever allow you to "fire" a teacher because they're close to, or past, retirement age. You can create a severence package, negotiated with the union reps, to try to lure those older, tenured teachers into retirement... but a SD does not want to get into a legal battle with a union over trying to fire someone, because that'll cost more tax payer dollars on both sides, when it might just be easier to just let them ride out the last couple years, or offer a package for early retirement.

as for your last question, you already see teachers cheating on state/federal testings to help ensure that their schools maintain funding, theres no doubt in my mind there would be cheating involved students getting any financial reward for success. I think its a very dangerous idea, it takes away from actually learning substance and further pushes towards "teaching to a test", where now both teachers AND students are incentivized to "ace".