Michael F. Shaughnessy
Senior Columnist EdNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University 

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based freelance writer whose
columns and articles on labor, politics, international affairs, the media, sports, historical events, foreign and domestic travel and other matters have appeared in more than 150 publications and online outlets ranging from the New York Times Magazine and Christian Science Monitor to the weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian and Anderson Valley Advertiser. He has also co-authored a history of farm labor, "A Long Time Coming," published by Macmillan.

He has been a reporter for United Press, The Associated Press, the San Jose Mercury News and PBS TV Station KQED in San Francisco, labor editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, city editor of the Oakland Tribune, and a commentator on Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, Los Angeles and Houston, KQED-FM in San Francisco and other public radio stations. He holds BA and MA degrees in journalism from Stanford University and has taught the subject at San Francisco State University. He writes as an independent observer and, he hopes, as a sharply focused social critic. (the above bio is taken, with some minor modifications from his web page) . In this interview, he responds to questions about teachers, and teacher pay.

1) You recently published an article about teacher pay. What prompted this article?

The opportunity to show in cold, hard figures just how poorly teachers are treated and hopefully help encourage better treatment. It's a subject very close to me, given my many years as a labor journalist and my wife Gerry's many years as a high school teacher and union activist.

2) Are teachers being adequately paid given the requirements (college degree) for the job?

No, if only because those in all other professions requiring a college degree make so much more than teachers -- an average of $16,000 more a year, as the article notes. That, of course, is but one of the many reasons that teachers should be paid more, for their sake and for the sake of society generally.

3) In your opinion, should high school teachers be paid differently than middle school and elementary teachers?

I have mixed feelings about that. My first reaction is that teachers at all levels should be paid the same because, though the particulars of their jobs and the skills required to do them differ, their basic job is the same. But on second thought, maybe those teaching on the lower grade levels might merit extra pay because they are dealing with children in their most important formative years.

4) What about math and science teachers as opposed to social studies and language arts teachers? Should those high demand areas get some kind of additional compensation?

In theory, perhaps, because people in those fields are in greater demand by employers and so have lots of chances for better paying jobs that would keep them away from teaching. In reality, however, I'd say they should not be paid more than others who lack their options, in part because it simply wouldn't be fair and could cause hostility, resentment and jealously among teachers (or at least more than already exists). In any case, the pay of teachers should not be based on what people outside education are willing to pay for their services. They need more pay, but that's not the way it should be calculated.

5) Special Education teachers often have to work with behaviorally
disordered and emotionally disturbed kids. Should they be paid more?

Yes. The duties of those teachers are well above and beyond those of others. They deserve extra pay -- hazard pay, as it were. Their jobs can be -- and often are -- physically and mentally dangerous.

6) I constantly talk to teachers and many are not money hungry, but want more input into the types of students in their classes, particularly since No Child Left Behind took effect. Your thoughts?

No Child Left Behind has had a terrible effect.
It has understandably led many teachers to try to get the brightest students into their classes and keep out others, who have a greater need of their help. The teachers know that if their classes do poorly on the tests it will reflect badly on them. Teachers with bright, willing, high-test-score students are treated much better than those with lesser skilled and lesser motivated kids.

7) Have the teachers unions failed the membership? Are they really helping teachers or perpetuating the status quo?

The effect of the unions varies from school district to school district and sometimes from school to school within a district. But overall, the unions have been important for their members, if only because they've given individual teachers a voice in determining their wages, hours and working conditions and the strength in dealing with their employers and supervisors that comes from joining in unity with others.

Unlike most other unions, they also have a say in attempts to reform their field of work. What the unions can negotiate for members is limited, however. It depends on how much financial backing and other support the public gives particular schools and districts, and how well parents have prepared their children for schooling and how closely they work with the schools and teachers on educating and disciplining them.

8) Should teachers get bonuses or merit pay IF their students do exceptionally well on the "high stakes tests"?

Absolutely not. That would just encourage more of the No Child Left Behind mentality, the insidious teaching-to-the-test approach to education. Test scores are not true measures of the effectiveness of schooling. Education is a far more complex and important endeavor than that. How well students do on such tests usually reflects their economic status. Those from poor, often dysfunctional, families, living in poor neighborhoods, almost invariably score lower than students from elsewhere.

So why should teachers in better-off neighborhoods with better disciplined students get extra rewards? If anything, teachers who help the much-harder-to-help students in poor neighborhoods should get more.

There are other serious problems with the tests. For one thing, the tests do not reflect the diversity of learning skills among students. Some, for example, should be tested verbally, because they learn primarily by listening. Neither do the tests give an accurate picture of students for whom English is a second language or of students in special education classes.

9) What question have I neglected to ask?

As I've indicated, the basic question on "high stakes testing" was not
asked: Why do we even have high stakes testing? The rationale is that it's the only way teachers can be held accountable for whether their students learn. But that's obviously not true. My answer to whether we should have the tests is a resounding "no."

Another question could be, "Does high stakes testing increase or reduce what students learn?" Since the tests in elementary school are only on language skills and math and those in middle and high schools cover little more than that, most other aspects of education are squeezed out by test preparation. There's little time for music, art, physical education, social studies, even science. Because teachers are forced to spend most of their time on test preparation, they often lose the enthusiasm they felt about becoming teachers. Thus many of the most creative and caring teachers leave the field of education in three years or less.

It might also be asked what are some of the inducements aside from raising salaries that might attract more teachers and keep them from leaving for other occupations?

In many places that would include extensive refurbishing and maintenance of poorly maintained school sites, spreading financial support and other support evenly among the schools in a district and attempting to get parents much more involved in school operations and in instilling in their children a positive and respectful attitude toward learning and teachers. Lowering class sizes is crucial as well, particularly in the lower grades.

And, for God's sake, give teachers a goal beyond merely preparing students to pass tests.

Published April 19, 2007