Combat Pay
Last week I found myself in a fascinating online discussion regarding findings of alleged disparity between schools in poorer and wealthier parts of Oakland. The finds were by a research organization called Ed West Trust (no Web link found).Some of the report and much of the online discussion centered on the reality that experienced teachers tend to head for the hills, to the schools without the greatest need for experienced teachers. How to remedy that? The wealthier schools therefore end up with larger budgets in part due to individual decisions made by individual teachers, not race or class-based bias on the part of school policymakers. How to remedy that?
I ran this discussion past my wife, who taught in Oakland flatland schools before moving to a school with similar demographics in Sac City Unified (Sacramento). My wife served as a union rep for OEA substitute teachers before leaving Oakland.
She notes that experienced teachers move up the hill, so to speak, in part because seniority and tenure allow them to. She becomes tenured this year, which means that if her position is cut at her school she has the ability to bump someone else from their position at another school. Many teachers, if the choice between a school in a low income area and one not, choose the “not” because the student and parent population is simply less challenging. She notes that the teacher with the least seniority at the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) school in her district has over ten years experience. And why not? Why wouldn’t a teacher prefer a classroom of attentive students with engaged parents, “up the hill” so to speak, if they can get it, for the same pay?
She also notes that many principals actually prefer less experienced, untenured teachers because they can remove them if they’re dissatisfied a lot easier than experienced, tenured teachers. Since principals in lower income schools are under the most pressure to perform, they’re therefore likely to look for teachers they can easily move in, out and around in response to the pressure.
The biggest challenge, she says, is the incredible turnover among teachers in their first three years of teaching. They’re often given challenging assignments because there is such high turnover at low income schools that this is where many hit the ground teaching, yet they’re given relatively little in terms of support. It’s really sink or swim for the first couple of years, she says. Since teachers tend to be skilled and well educated people, they can and do find somewhere else to take their skills and education if they don’t find job satisfaction in teaching to compensate for the relatively low pay.
The answer, she says, is “combat pay” and/or mandated lower class size in Program Improvement schools, 15 tops for lower grades (K-2) and 20-25 max for upper grades (3-5/6).
“Combat pay” is a wage differential, more money, for teachers who work at designated schools.
The class-size reduction is important because it allows more one-on- one and small group time for students who generally need more day-to-day assistance and direction, particularly at the critical K – 2 grade levels.
Qualified teacher’s aides would also help. When I served as a tutor and afterschool program supervisor in the Oakland public schools I found classroom aides who could barely read higher than the students they were serving. Teachers elsewhere in Oakland have told me similar stories. When aides are seen as a “community” presence more than actual teaching assistance they become another thing in the class to manage. They served crowd control, but were of little academic assistance.
“Combat pay” makes many in the teaching profession’s leadership class a little uncomfortable. It seems inequitable to pay teachers at the same experience level more or less solely on their work address. But unions have traditionally fought for pay differential when the same duties are performed in more challenging places in other workplaces. Teaching shouldn’t be different.
Put lower class size on top of this and you’ve got more teachers at lower performing schools potentially earning more money, with well-trained, and therefore better paid, classroom aides and you’re talking real money. It’s expensive. It requires renegotiating some labor deals, changing part of the education code and pumping a lot more state and local money into our public schools.
In the end, it all comes down to money. Big surprise.
If we’re going to get more money we need to have some good idea of where we’re going to spend it. Paying teachers more for serving lower performing schools is an idea that I think most Californians will agree with. When a teacher tells the average person that they teach in a challenging school the average person usually rolls their eyes and tells the teacher that they’re eligible for sainthood. The average voter respects teachers and respects teachers who serve what they see as above and beyond the call of duty. It could be an effective rallying cry to fight for more funding. It’s the best of all progressive worlds, a good idea which makes for good politics.
posted by Terry Preston @ 8:53 AM
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