Let's Pay Iowa's Teachers Fairly
Iowa teachers pay ranks 41st in the nation - is that fair? We can be proud of the ACT scores (we rank 3rd in the nation) and proud of the tradition of excellence in education in Iowa. But we shouldn't be proud of the way we compensate our teachers for that excellence.
At a time when teachers are required to work longer days, go to more meetings and take more professional development classes, we are failing them when it comes to their monthly checks. If Iowa wants to maintain our standard of excellence it needs to pay their teachers a wage that will keep them teaching in Iowa.
Even after our state has seen an increase in revenue of $280 million, Republicans are dragging their feet on teacher pay, while Democrats are leading the fight by refusing to adjourn the session until teacher pay is raised.
Republicans are attempting to force any pay increase be directly tied to "performance" of their students. This would mean, for example, that Special Education students (some who have a tough time reading anything) would be held to the same standards as mainstream students -- or their Special Education teacher would be found deficient. It would also penalize teachers and schools with high percentages of immigrant students who have limited or no English skills. "Pay for performance" might sound good, but things are often quite different in the real world.
With legislators trying to work out an education package in the coming weeks, we need to act now to guarantee teacher pay is no longer stalled in the Legislature. No more excuses - raise Iowa's teacher pay this week and let the legislature adjourn.
6 Comments:
"Pay for performance" might sound good, but things are often quite different in the real world.
Yes, in the real world many of the deadbeat teachers would have been fired long ago.
In reality if people aren't happy with what they are paid they go somewhere else-usually a different company, sometimes a different country. "Undocumented Workers" aka illegal immigrants are a prime example.
If Iowa has teaching positins filled, why is there a problem?
Of course if the problem is the teachers are terrible because only the bad ones will stay at that salarly level, THEN you have two problems. The first one being the pay, the second one being a system that allows bad teachers to begin with.
If Iowa's teachers are doing such a bad job, how do our Iowan students excell on the ACT testing? They are consistently in the top 5 in the nation
I am not AT ALL saying that teachers are doing a bad job. Where did you get that idea?? What I did say is that our teachers should be paid fairly for the excellent work they do -- or we will surely lose the good teachers we have. Other states pay their teachers (and other professionals) far more than we pay our teachers. If Iowa doesn't keep up with the going rate, we will all surely loose.
In a country where if we don't like our pay we can find another job elsewhere. New Jersey pays their teachers (northern)well and that is why people are moving in at a fast rate to get those jobs. Have you all looked to relocate? Quit blaming the government for your problems and look to solve them yourself. Its called using your brain...
My husband is a school teacher in MO and no he doesn't get paid for the job he does but it is our choice to stay here. We could move to a state that pays higher for teachers but we choose to continue to stay in the Metro Kansas City area. Lets see what happens in the future now that the voters have voted. But, we need to stop finger pointing, as 3 our pointing back at us.
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