Teacher Pay and Classroom Success: Two Takes on the Pages of The Times Op-Ed

Recently, The New York Times has been running several op-ed article on how to redesign — er, save — American public schools.

Nínive Clements Caliegari and Dave Eggers, founders of the 826 National tutoring centers, compare what happens in the US when we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors to what happens when we get similar poor results in the classroom. The gist: Teachers get blamed, but the military typically gets better support.

Most interesting, however, is the info the two pull from the McKinsey report that looked at how the US might attract and retain talented teachers. The study looked at the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea. Here's the takeaway:

Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don't.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don't.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do. And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it's 1 percent per year. In Finland, it's 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.

While there's no magic number when it comes to teacher pay, McKinsey polled 900 top-tier American college students and found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a minimum of $150,000. Eggers and Caliegari point out that teacher salary is currently on par with that of toll takers and bartenders.

An earlier Times article by Barker Bausell puts forth some ideas about evaluating classroom success. While Bausell's recipe for success is easier said than done and overly general (keep close to the curriculum, maintain strict discipline, and minimize noninstructional activities), he does highlight the need for more online learning outside the classroom:

...schools could make online tutoring programs covering the entire elementary school curriculum available, both in school and at home.

This approach could mimic the characteristics that make human tutoring so effective, including the ability to immediately ascertain what a student needs to learn, to tailor instruction to those needs, and to provide immediate feedback regarding student progress.

Image: McKinsey, highlighting videos from the consultancy's report