Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan: Pay ‘great’ teachers $150k

The money would be nice, but I'd really just like enough TIME to do what I need to do. I don't need more money to motivate me. I need administrators who follow-through, and parents who return my emails/calls.

I love my job teaching math in a public school. I teach 6 periods a day. I have no planning. During the course of my workday, I continuously interact with my students. I engage them in group instruction, guided practice, projects, small group instruction, and individual remediation. I also tutor before school and after school for no extra compensation. I have 168 students. Each week we have class work, homework, a problem of the day assignment, and a test or quiz. These assignments generate up to 1500 pages of work that I have to #$%$ in order to determine my students’ strengths and weaknesses and assign grades. I spend several hours a week communicating with my students and their families. I arrive at my desk at 7:00 am and often do not leave before 6:00 pm. I do not complain because I love what I do and in order to do my job with a high level of effectiveness, this investment of time is necessary.Most people hate math. Most of my students would prefer to be anyplace other than a math classroom. When I worked construction, no one ever tried to yank the hammer out of my hands. In the hospital no one ever heckled me while trying to change a sterile dressing or while pushing I.V. medications. A few patients however did bite me, punch me or push me. Teaching is a performing profession. I do six shows each day. My audience does not pay to see me perform. They are there against their will. I compare teaching to being a stand up comedian. The difference is that people pay to see the comedian and no one is cheering for the heckler. I have been to comedy clubs where the performer was not very good. This usually emboldens hecklers to make stupid comments. Even when the hecklers are funnier than the comedians, the crowd remains hostile towards the hecklers. Regardless of how clever the heckler, the performer has the upper hand in spite of the lameness of his retorts because the audience is on the comedian’s side. This is the opposite of what happens in the classroom. Some of my students are very funny or charismatic. Their witty retorts are often well received by their peers because even my best students enjoy a good diversion from learning math. Keeping control of a class requires a very strong personality and behavior management skills.In my school district, 40% of all new teachers quit in the first 2 years of service. I know of no other profession that has such a high rate of attrition. Almost 50% resign by the 5th year. It makes me laugh when I hear about “bad or lazy teachers”. If a teacher is bad or lazy, they would have to be a masochist to continue to do their job. In the teaching profession, if you are not good at your job, the students will torture you on a daily basis. 30 people will not just sit there and be quiet because you tell them to. Yes, there are bad teachers but for the reasons previously stated, they are the exception. I currently teach at a public school in a very affluent neighborhood. I have what some people would consider a “dream job”. In spite of my school being a very desirable place to teach, it took us two months last year to find a qualified applicant to teach math. She made it 2 weeks before running out of the building like her hair was on fire. Unable to find anyone certified to teach math, we hired a sub for the rest of the year.Most of the people who complain about teachers and other government workers are unqualified to apply for the positions that they are so opeopenly contemptuous of. Teaching requires expertise in the content being instructed, leadership skills, organizational skills, behavior management, performance skills, discipline, patience, and a college degree. If anyone reading this thinks that mmy job is easy, my advise to them is to stop complaining about how overpaid I am and apply for my job. That is if you have the degree and knowledge necessary to actually do my job. Otherwise, go back to school and make something of yourself.

The real motivations come from parents, not from teachers. We should give awards to parents who raise their kids in the productive ways. That will help ....

Education will improve when they put the charlatans Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and Michael Bloomberg out to pasture.

Young, inexperienced teachers should NOT have their salaries doubled. This is just another tactic from the bash the teacher crowd to divide teachers and pit them against each other. Merit pay, bonus pay, or whatever term they use is another dividing tactic. Most teachers work together to plan for their classes. They share ideas. Tying salary to performance just causes teachers to NOT work together. Also, since principals decide which students are placed in a class, a crony can be given all of the bright students while the learning disabled, emotionally disturbed and English language learners are placed into the class of a teacher targeted because they don't kiss up, or are older. In order to improve education, PARENTS and the STUDENTS must be held accountable.

just give me kids that don't have to be bribed or threatened in order to get them to put forth some effort

How ironic that Obama want teachers, the union workers, to get pay $150K for working 8 months out of the year, at the same time he demands that doctors cut their pays from $150K to $75K for working 12 months. So in Obamaworld, doctors should make 1/3 of teachers are making. And this is the dude who preached about "fairness" what a joke.

I made a post on Friday saying what people will say about this article...I was exactly right, so now I am going to say that the Patriots will win.

I already know the topics that will be discussed in this comment section: It's the union's fault, teachers get summers off, public school teachers aren't doing a good job, parents should send their children to charter schools, and the government needs to stay out of education.

Me...I wouldn't mind being compensated for the hard work I do.

Let me just pull that out of my ---.

If it was such a great gig then why aren't the complainers becoming teachers themselves?

Close the public schools. The public does not want to pay good money even for the best teachers. This is one of the few opportunities that the public has to be the "boss" and control the wages of someone else. But could they pass a compilation of all of the exams that are required in all education classes without having to attend any of the classes?

More like 300K. These kids are raised to be out of control and have no manners. Are the parents teaching them anything at home?

If a football player can make billions so should everyone else..fair is fair right?

That's right dip stick. You are typical status quo for our government. Go ahead and take more of my money away from me, I don't mind. This is your world, I'm just living in it. Now for my honest opinion. Teachers know what they are getting into when they decide to be a teacher. And what other job, other than professional sports, can you work 9 months out of the year? And secondly, disallow unions. These people are paid from my taxes. How and why do we alow them to be in unions, costing me even more money? And we wonder why this country is going down. Amazing, simply amazing. If you want to work 12 months a year, then quit your teaching job and quit whining.

I live in a district where teachers average around 70-75k a year and a vast number of our teachers have only been teaching for 5-8 years. No it isn't a high inflations area, that is a great wage in this region of the country. How is it paid for? As residents we pay and pay and pay. For nearly twenty years we passed every tax levy on the ballot and when the economy tanked we said no more. You know what happened? The school cut every program that benefited students and told us they had tightened their belts. Then they asked for money again. So when they got told no again, they (God forbid) asked the teachers to pay part of their medical insurance. And, reluctantly the teachers agreed to pay like $180 month towards their family health coverage every month and asked us for more money. Guess what? They got told no again and this time the super intendant complained that he couldn't understand what the voters wanted from the school district. Well, to start we would like middle school and high school teachers who grade their own papers instead of having students grade each other's papers. Then we would like elementary teachers who teach thing like phonics as well as grammar and language usage instead of expecting kids to "intuitively" learn them. We would also like for our kids to be taught arithmetic and math table instead of using spiral learning models that no-one understands, including the very teachers teaching them. (Oh, you thought algebra was useless, ask any parent who has ever suffered a copy of Everyday Math if it even understandable, let alone useful.) I could keep going all day and I'm one of the lucky people who lives in a high performing school district. Do the kids who go to school here graduate super smart? Not really. My husband and I think it is pathetic how little education these kids end up with, especially being that we foot the bill. So I'm all for paying teachers well, but only after they produce students who are well educated. Our community paid the high salaries thinking it would in turn improve the education of the kids produced in our school system and it doesn't work.

I will not blame teachers. I will not do it because it is what the ignorant do. But we have a major problem. Since 2000 and NCLB the eduacracy has grown EXPONENTIALLY. We have hundreds of thousands of new government and govt. funded NGO education management position.The education reform movement is now a pulsating blob of ignoramuses costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. My solution is simple and will bring respect back to teaching.1. No more talk about teachers being professionals. They are INTELLECTUALS WHO ARE WILLING TO HELP CHILDREN AND FAMILIES. They deserve our respect.2. Kill the NCLB. NO ONE wants their child to be educated like a widget is processed in a factory.3. Immediately provide to all parents a full cost voucher for the school of their choice.4. Teachers can have all of the job rights that they can negotiate with these new voucher schools. They are free just like the rest of us. If they can swing it, so be it.5. Remove the power to grade from teachers. Institute national board exams that #$%$ yearly learning. Grade promotion decisions will be based on those exams as well as hiring decisions by employers or selection by universities.6. Hold parents entirely accountable for learning outcomes. They chose the school for their child. If their child does not learn, well, they made a BAD CHOICE.There is ONE problem with this plan. PARENTS DO NOT WANT IT. THEY ARE AFRAID OF REAL CHOICE THAT INCLUDES THEIR 100% ACCOUNTABILITY.But we, the taxpayers, cannot afford this ridiculous game parents are playing in blaming everyone else for their child's learning failure.Parents, watch out. You will get what you want, and WE WILL HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE.

Is this Arne Duncan guy in America? How does he justify raising the pay of horrible public school teachers? He can't be thinking that the results justify that astronomical pay raise!!

Obama trying to buy votes.

The Education System in this country is Broke.Over the last 40 or so years the system has been run pretty much by a bunch of Industrial Failures.They got thier Degree in what ever and could not compete in the Private Sector.The Standards for the Jobs were a little bit higher then.Either make steady progress on what ever you were working at or you were kicking rocks down the road.An Administator under most circumstances is not going to hire someone smarter than they are.Why do the Union and most Administrations scream about compitantcy testing on an anual bases?Must be they are afraid of the failure rate.The real sad part about the system that is in place now is the hands of the teachers who realy love the profession are tied.No money,no support from the Admin. or the Parents.The concept of disipline in the class room is gone.Can you here the screams today if Ms. Crump had Johnny up in front of the class and told bend over your taking 3 licks.The concept of personal accountability is beyond the grasp of most of the Country.It's always someone elses fault.Until the Adim. and the Unions are cleaned up and out nothing will change.A Phd is translates into Pile It High and Deep,If you can't Dazzel them with Briliance,Baffle them with #$%$

it will turn into the nursing industry with over employment of below average people doing it for the money.