BlinkVib

If I were a beggar, I’d beg The Post to reprint Daniel Pink’s Feb. 22 Tuesday Opinion column about raising teacher’s pay, “Why not pay teachers $100,000 a year?.” Increase the print size. Rivet attention where it’s important.

Mr. Pink told the story of a highly qualified and motivated educator who left the classroom because of an unwillingness to continue investing grueling hours in a monetarily starved occupation. And thankless.

Now in my 23rd year as a substitute teacher, I frequently hear similar complaints during lunch breaks. Two of my children have advanced degrees in the teaching profession. One will have nothing to do with it. The other is in the same sorry boat as the teacher in Mr. Pink’s essay: suffering financially.

A solution is necessary. Those who can remedy the problem continue to avoid this issue. Any cure must include salary increases. Last year’s pay will not buy this year’s food. But who wants to pay for someone else’s pay increase?

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Talent is fleeing the classroom — quiet departures with debilitating, long-term effects. Classroom teachers today need someone to lead in resolving this nationwide, stagnated-salary existence. Otherwise, the best will move to more lucrative careers. Children will be taught by inexperienced, unmotivated teachers.

Letting the next generation fix the problems will become a disaster for which there is no short-term solution.

John Hebbe, Fairfax Station

Daniel Pink should consider whether the notion of “teacher quality” as it exists within the offices and classrooms of American teacher training programs should be added to the list of discarded theories.

The concept of teacher quality is incapable of scientific measurement. The presumed — but immeasurable — differences in instructional ability among teachers have produced no similar useful knowledge or understanding in the practice of K-12 pedagogy.

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The idea that different levels of teacher “quality” are causally connected to different levels of K-12 student learning is widely accepted both within academic and practiced pedagogy and among the public at large. Nevertheless, that “faith” has failed utterly to produce any improved academic outcomes during nearly six decades of relentless legislated school “reform” mandates. Politically, K-12 teachers are held guilty because of the universal fact that they cannot teach all of their students as effectively as they teach their ablest students. Student quality — as measured by psychological intelligence tools — matters profoundly in terms of student academic achievement. Teacher quality — as measured by nothing — matters almost not at all.

If we intend to identify (and measure) differences that actually influence K-12 learning, we are far more likely to find them among students than among teachers. Teacher variations in intellect, professional training, motivation and spoken communication skills are extremely narrow. Teacher barriers to entry are many and substantial. Conversely, student variations in intellect, preschool learning, motivation, spoken communication skills are nearly without limits. Student barriers to entry are essentially nonexistent. Consideration of quality comparisons among trained teachers serves no practical purpose in the establishment and enforcement of policies governing K-12 education.

Nevertheless, paying teachers $100,000 a year seems like a good idea to me.

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Rob Bligh, San Antonio

Calling the current school year length a relic, Daniel Pink offered year-round school as a bartering point for the higher and more competitive (with other occupations) annual wage he suggested of $100,000.

If eliminating the summer break were to ever occur, I would like to throw another contentious proposal on to the table for consideration. How about adding a year to the current K-12 experience before the awarding of a high school diploma? No, not a first year of college, but an extension of the core learning experience students need to have had before moving on to college, other forms of postsecondary education and eventually the workplace. The knowledge and skill-building tsunami that the United States and the rest of the globe have been experiencing over the past half century demands more formal time and attention than ever.

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Let’s throw out the relic and slay the dinosaur at the same time.

Frank Burtnett, Springfield

Daniel Pink asked, “Why not pay teachers $100,000 a year?” Answer: Because we don’t have to. When was the last time Mr. Pink paid $100,000 for something that he could have gotten for $66,397 (according to his article the average salary of teachers)?

That is, up until now we haven’t had to. If there’s a teacher shortage then, yes, salaries probably have to be higher, maybe $75,000, maybe $100,000, maybe more, but the decision will be based on economics, not morals or aesthetics or philosophy. We’ll pay what it takes to get as many good teachers as we need, not what corresponds to our subjective view of whether teachers “deserve” more or less than actuaries (whose median salary, Mr. Pink informs us, is $113,990).

Keith E. Smith, Silver Spring

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