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Covid Provoked Reforms – Professional Pay for Professional Teachers

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Sometimes a crisis creates an opportunity.

The pandemic is stripping public education of its most valuable asset – veteran, professional teachers.  The wear and tear of pandemic teaching is driving more teachers into early retirement and career resignations than in pre-pandemic years.  And, fewer college students are enrolling in teacher preparation programs.  The pool of professional teachers is being choked at both ends – decreased numbers of new teachers and increased numbers of departing teachers.

A Rand survey, fielded in early January 2021, found that nearly one-quarter of teachers indicated a desire to leave their jobs at the end of the school year, compared with an an average national turnover rate of 16% pre-pandemic, according to NCES data.

How the pandemic has changed teachers’ commitment to remaining in the classroom (brookings.edu)

These are not new phenomena.  The beginning of this trend preceded the pandemic.  The number of graduates of teacher preparation programs has been less than the number of teachers leaving the profession for more than a decade.  However, the pandemic accelerates the trend.  In the 2020-21 school year, remote teaching, overlaying mitigation procedures, and the animosity of maskers and anti-maskers became their last straw.  School districts are thankful for substitute teachers willing to accept full-time teaching assignments regardless of their academic training.  In too many schools, classes are combined and increased in class size because of teacher shortage.  Too many upper level and elective courses are cancelled because the school cannot employ teachers prepared for those assignments.  This is true in urban, suburban, and rural schools alike.  What will we find in 2022-23 and beyond?  Answer — greater gaps between staffing needed and staffing available and a greater number of children taught by willing adults not professional teachers.

We need different answers.

“The first step in solving any problem is understanding why it’s happening. The top three reasons for the teacher shortage, as reported by our survey respondents, are as follows:

  1. A lack of fully qualified applicants
  2. Salary and/or benefits are lacking compared to other careers
  3. Fewer new education school graduates”

The State of the Teacher Shortage in 2021 (frontlineeducation.com)

We may not be able to affect the lack of qualified applicants or the dearth of new teacher preparation program graduates immediately, but we can affect teacher compensation.  And, when we make significant changes to teacher pay, interest in teacher preparation programs will increase and the number of veteran teachers staying in the profession will improve

My grandmother was an elementary school teacher in central Illinois in the early 1900s. She was paid $300 for the school year and was provided room and board with a local family.  She knew her salary was not enough for her to live independently.  It was not supposed to be.  She was a single female and teaching was the plight of single women awaiting better prospects. 

As ludicrous as it may seem, the attitude toward the teaching profession espoused in the early 1900s continued through the century.  Because teachers are public employees paid with public tax money, teacher compensation always is restricted by conservative attitudes of “You work of the public and your pay comes out of my pocket”.  Low pay meant low taxes and elected officials who run on promises to keep taxes low are more frequently elected to office. 

In the 1990s a young teacher with a family of four qualified for food stamps.  Not professional grade pay but consistent with the perception at that time of teachers and how much they should be paid for their professional work.

This thinking arises every year the legislature considers our state’s financing of public education.  In the balance of its spending on a thousand budget items, the monies spent on improving teacher salaries are weighed against prisons and highways and social programs and professional teachers remain on the minimal public dole.  At the basics level, teacher salaries do not keep pace with the costs of living.

Teachers pay in the United States has risen +.2% in the time period of 1969-70 to 2019-20 when comparing annual pay to the value of a dollar in 2020.  In Wisconsin, comparative teacher pay for the same period declined by -5.9%. 

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.asp

The second reality is that teacher salaries do not align with other professions requiring a baccalaureate degree and professional training.  The historic table of teacher salaries displaying years of experience and earned professional credits or advanced degrees rationed out annual increases requiring a teacher to work in the same school district for 25 years before realizing the district’s top salary dollar.  Parallel professions access higher incomes much earlier in a career and are not “topped out” on salary tables.  Topping out returns us to the overarching restriction that teachers are public employees and not expected to be paid well.

The problem is “You get what you settle for”.  Today we are not able to provide a trained and duly licensed professional teacher in every classroom.  Why?  Because we have a shortage of teachers available to teach.  The education of too many children is provided by persons willing to be in the classroom not by prepared teachers.  We are not able to meet the educational needs and dreams of all children.  This is the price for settling for low.

The current crisis gives us the opportunity to treat teacher pay differently and to change the direction of current trends.  Begin with the work year, increase teacher pay, pay professionally, and make teaching the desirable professional employment it should be.

  • Make the teacher contract a calendar year not a school year document.  Pay teachers for the year not nine months of the year.  What other professionals besides athletes are only professional employees for part of the year?  This does not mean multiplying a teacher per diem times the 260 workdays of a calendar year.  It means that teachers will be paid professionally for a calendar year and available for professional work the entire year.

Traditionally, most teachers must have summer jobs to sustain a livelihood.  Teachers pay in the school year was inadequate for a full year’s living needs.  How often do we see doctors, dentists, lawyers, and engineers waiting tables for three months to augment their professional salaries?

  • Maintain 180 days of classroom teaching.  There is no compelling research that says year-round student attendance causes improved learning or is good for the whole development of children.  Instead of adding quantity to the days, add quality.  There is a compelling reality that it takes significant time to teach and learn an annual curriculum.  A school year must have adequate time to teach, assess learning, adjust teaching to ensure learning, and time to practice and reinforce learning. 

Districts have “caved in” by diminishing the number of days in a school year as acquiescence to complaints a school year is too long.  There is no evidence that a district exhausted the teaching of its approved curriculum before the end of the school year.  To the contrary, district assessments consistently display students who did not successfully learn their annual curriculum.

  • Add quality control-thinking to school.  Every school intends for each child to achieve one year’s growth in learning each school year, but few schools ever make this mark; some children yes, but all children no.  And children with exceptional needs, almost never.    

Children and teachers today are on a 180-day conveyor belt of teaching and learning and testing.  Break the “belt” and place clusters of professional days throughout the school year.  Allow teachers time to consider what they have taught, what they have taught well, and what they need to adjust and teach again to cause quality learning for all children.  Children need a break from the constancy of school to consider what they have learned well, what they have not learned well enough, and what they need to learn anew.  Weekends are not enough time.  Weekends should be non-school time for everyone.

Additionally, the pandemic is teaching us to allow mental health breaks for everyone in the school and school families.  Social-emotional health has gained our attention and, when the pandemic is over, we need to practice what we have learned and extend our learning into the future.  Four-day weekends or a week with no school attendance dispersed in the school year is good mental health, and good instructional practice. 

  • Develop teacher in-service based upon the observed needs of the school year.  Traditionally, schools provide each teacher with several days of preparation time before the first day of the school year.  A teacher begins to know how the children in the class learn in September, but often first impressions of student needs do not pan out in October.  Quality control of student learning means teachers have the time to adjust their teaching to the changing student demands.  After school and weekends fail to give teachers adequate time to understand the problems students present and find solutions.  Quality controls take time.

Use the dispersed breaks in the school year for teacher preparation.  This does not need to be time in school, but time on task.  It is not vacation time for the teacher but fulfillment of the yearlong, professional contract and professional compensation package.

  • Create a probationary teacher salary (years 1 -3), a teacher salary (year 4 to year 10), and a professional teacher salary (post-advanced degree).  Historically, a new teacher was on probation for 2-3 years depending upon state and district.  During probation, the teacher does not have a continuing contract only an annual contract.  The administration makes decisions on whether the teacher warrants a continuing contract.  This is professional try-out time.  The continuing contract award should be based upon the probationary teacher’s meeting the quality standards of the district.
  • The probationary teacher salary will be the current base wage per diem x 220 days.  The base salary will be raised by annual cpi increments during the probationary period.
  • Create a teacher salary to be 80% of the professional teacher salary.  The teacher salary is not meant as a career salary but a step between a probationary salary and a professional teacher salary.
  • Require a teacher to obtain an advanced degree by their 10th year of employment in the district.  Historically, too many career teachers obtain no more than the required baccalaureate degree.  The BA-teacher fulfills all the district requirements for minimal professional development to maintain a contract.  Teachers stuck in the BA-minimum range comprise the majority of who leave teaching early and annually.

The Wisconsin legislature removed the DPI issuance of successive teaching license based upon a teacher’s professional development.  Once licensed, responsibility for the maintenance of the license was assigned to the local school board.

The definition of professionalism includes continuing education in the professional field.  A school board should not confuse required PD for contract maintenance with required PD for professional advancement.  A teacher is obligated to stay current with curricular changes to maintain a contract.  A teacher who achieves significant professional education advancement warrants professional advancement in salary.

The board should consider ending a continuing contract for teachers who do not advance professionally – ten years is enough time for this advancement.

  • Pay all professional teachers a top salary (100% of the current top teacher salary) when they are awarded an advanced degree.

It would look like this.

A newly hired teacher will be paid the district’s beginning salary plus an annual cpi increase for their first three years of employment.  During that time, the administration will supervise and evaluate the teacher’s professional work for the purpose of awarding a continuing contract.

The district should expect 80% or more of its teachers to be paid professional teaching salaries with 20% or fewer working for professional teacher status.

A change to professional pay for professional teachers in combination with changes in school calendaring and scheduling of district-required professional development will cause

  • more college students to consider teaching as significant professional career,
  • mid-career teachers to remain in the profession, and
  • veteran teachers to complete a career as a professional teacher.

Example:

Probationary teacher salary         $42,000

Teacher salary                              $72,000 (available in the 4th – 10th year of employment)

Professional Teacher salary          $90,000 (available upon completion of an advanced degree)

All salaries adjusted annually for cpi.

Covid Provoked Reforms – Proficiency in Standards-based Learning

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The status quo thrives when there are few challenges to disrupt its normal.  Newton taught us that a body at rest will remain at rest unless it is acted upon by a force.  The lack of compelling forces for change have kept much of public education in a Newtonian normal for decades if not a century.  We should not squander the forces for change that the pandemic presents.  Make plans now for stopping practices that do not work and shaping your new normals.

The grading of student work and students emerges every few years as a consistent problem for educators considering best practices.  Like a groundhog on its annual day, we examine grading looking for something new to know and do as if we want to change.  But, not liking what we see as options, we put our grading practices back into the inertial nest of ongoing poor practices.

Then, comes the pandemic.

How does a teacher apply traditional grading practices for a child whose attendance is disrupted by the pandemic and whose engagement with learning is somewhere around 50-60% of the school year?  How do we assign a value a student’s learning of a grade level or course curriculum when we only taught parts of that annual curriculum?  How do we compare a student’s academic work in 2020-21 or 2021-22 with any other student’s work prior to the pandemic?  How do we grade students who are learning the virtual curriculum of a commercial provider not our school district’s approved curriculum?

We stop the questions because they all point to the same conclusion.  Past grading practices cannot be applied in the pandemic.  We must stop applying past practices that are not valid or professionally defensible for current times.

It is time to replace A, B, C grading that conceptually is an aggregate of academic improvement and achievement, student effort, participation and attendance, and collegiality and collaboration with peers all topped with a smidgeon of extra credit or whatever the teacher adds to make the grade seem to fit the student.  No matter the teacher I have talked with over 50 years of observing grading practices, most teachers follow the Golden Rule of Grading – I grade my students as I was graded when I was a student.  There are modifications, but most practices fall within the shadow of past, personal experiences.  It is time to do better.

Educational standards are not new to educators.  Standards anchor teacher preparation and licensing.  The reauthorization of PI 34 by the Wisconsin legislature says “PI 34 restructured teacher education, educator licenses, and professional development for Wisconsin educators.  The system is based on Wisconsin Educator Standards with demonstrated knowledge, skills, and dispositions for teaching, pupil services and administration.  Initial licensing is based on an educator’s successful performance as measured against these standards.”  Teaching licensing is proficiency-based on the learning and demonstration of specified standards.

https://dpi.wi.gov/licensing/programs/rules-statute

Standards are described in state statute and by state departments of instruction of education.  State standards anchor contemporary curriculum development.  Every subject area taught in Wisconsin is supported by DPI-adopted curricular standards.  “Wisconsin Academic Standards specify what students should know and be able to do in the classroom.” 

https://dpi.wi.gov/standards

These standards provide the scaffold of student learning that creates the basis for standards-based proficiency grading.  It is valid and appropriate to align the evaluation of student learning with these curricular scaffolds.  The scaffolds are laddered by grade level and broadened at each grade and course.

The use of standards-base proficiency grading is not a newly made recommendation.  Teachers have sidled up to this idea in the past, but the pull of the Golden Rule of Grading has consistently overpowered change.  Now that the Golden Rule is broken, standards-based grading makes more and more sense.

To do this, we need to make two types of decisions.

  • What evidence demonstrates secure proficiency of a standard?
  • What aggregate level of proficiency demonstrates secure completion of a grade level or subject course?

While these may be argumentative questions, they are not difficult to answer.  The evidence demonstrating secure proficiency of a standard derives directly from unit and lesson planning.  Using older language of lesson planning, “The learner will …” describes the demonstrated outcomes of interest.  A properly constructed standards-based instruction provides the standards which will be proficiency assessed.  The evidence of completion also is in the unit design; it is in the statement of “extent and degree to which the student will demonstrate the standard”.  Standards-based proficiency grading is using the outcome statement of your standards-based curriculum.   Record keeping of the outcomes for which a student has demonstrated secure proficiency provides a grade book of achievement and growth. 

If your curriculum is not standards-based, you have foundational work to do.

A school’s instructional committee can readily collaborate to determine the extent of the checklist/grade book needed to indicate grade level/course completion.  Collaborative agreement of what demonstrates completion of a grade level or course is essential to balance student work across the curriculum.  Successful completion of one grade level or course should not be disproportionate to another. 

Teachers should thankfully welcome a standards-based proficiency design as it eliminates the problems of measuring effort and adding an extra credit to allow students improve an assigned grade.  This is defensible.  Without expecting an answer, why did we feel compelled to allow extra credit to erase the facts that student did not complete the basics of a grade level or course?  Emotion overcame reality.

The alignment of grading with the demonstration of standards-based proficiency overcomes the dilemma presented by interrupted school attendance and engagement due to covid 19.  Demonstration of learning is not clock or learning place-bound.  This design overcomes the issues of remote versus in-person.  Proficiencies are what proficiencies are – a student can or cannot demonstrate secure content knowledge or skills or dispositions about her learning.

Using standards-based proficiency grading creates a new practice that improves upon the older practices that failed the test of the pandemic.  Standards-based proficiency grading creates a best practice for our future.  We can and should create this as a new normal.

Yoda, the Dark Path, and the High Ground of Education

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It is hard not to like Yoda quotes. The reversal of sentence order captures your attention as much as the pinched voice of the pointy-eared, green-toned little Jedi.  More importantly, the wisdom of Yoda cuts through much of the blather of oblong thinking. 

Yoda said, “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.  Consume you, it will…”.  And, with those words, the threat the pandemic and pandemic politics poses for the future of public education is called out for what it is – a dark path.

While Yoda struggled against a dark path that led to an evil galactic empire, we struggle against a dark path that erodes our optimism and belief in a better future.  There is a narcissism down our threatening  dark path.  Its use of manipulation, distortion of information, and denial of criticism is anathema to public education.

The dark side is doom-sided thinking of negativity characterized by the following statements.

  • The future is bleak and will not be as good as the past.
  • Some people get all the breaks and some people get none.
  • Anger trumps all emotions and arguments.
  • Leaders at all levels fail to understand and meet the needs of the public.
  • All data but my data is suspect.
  • Self-interest is the only interest that matters.
  • Rules only are important when you want them to be.

As educators, our schools are at ground zero of much of the angst.  School boards are under attack for closing or opening schools for in-person learning, providing a remote learning that appeals to some children and is rejected by others, and masking or unmasking of students and staff in school.  On each of these three topics, boards face angry parents and community no matter what the board decides.  Adding to the difficulty of having any kind of school day, student achievement across all grades and subjects displays pandemic gapping.  Academic achievement has fallen.  Fine arts programs that require personal, in-person teaching are stymied by remote education, quarantining, and masking.  Theater and concerts are performed to empty houses and shared virtually.  Athletics are constantly interrupted by quarantines, positive tests of players and coaches, and cancelled contests.  Two years of pandemic and counting and the difficulty faced by teachers and school leaders only grows. 

The high ground of school that keeps the dark path at bay was, is, and will continue to be built upon the aggregate of these statements. 

  • Education is a human necessity.
  • Public education is a community’s obligation to its children.
  • Education opens opportunities and reveals future options.
  • Content knowledge, academic skills, critical thinking, collaboration, socialization, and intellectual curiosity are the six enduring outcomes of public education.
  • Teaching changes lives.
  • Public schools require the trust of parents and conversely parents require the stability of public schools.
  • Public education is the pillar of our society that stands the test of time.  When it fails, our society will fail.

The brightest image of our high ground is the face of a child.  Innately, children want to learn.  Every child has a curiosity to understand the sounds and sights of their world.  A brain never stops processing what a child experiences and school learning provides tools for understanding.  I once cringed at the person in a school meeting years ago who would throw down the conversation-ending line, “Well, I am here for the children.”  As if to say, no one else stood on the side of children.  Today, “I am here for the children, and we provide each and every child with an education for their future” are words we need to say over and over again.  These words do not end conversation.  They open discussion of new possibilities and future options.  I am here for the education of children is a high ground that defeats the adult-centered dark path. 

School Children In the Time of Polio

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In 1955 my classmates and I marched single file from our classroom to the school nurse’s office for an injection of the Salk polio vaccine.  For weeks we had known the vaccination day was coming.  That morning, we stood next to our desks in our classroom and marched out in that order.  I remember young girls in their dresses, white socks, and leather shoes and boys in plaid shirts and blue jeans and PF Flyers quietly walking out of the room and down the stairs to the first floor.  We were lined up along the wall on the left side of the main corridor with another classroom of kids in front of us and another classroom behind.  Teachers hushed the talk and in the quiet we could hear some children up ahead crying.  A poke with a needle was a scary thing, yet looking at the long line in front and behind me meant that every one of my friends was going to get a shot.  Scared, yep, but we knew why we were in a long line that day.  When it was my turn, I watched Carol, my friend in front of me, rub her arm as she got back into line outside the office, felt the prick of the needle, and was told to “Hurry on”.  I was vaccinated against polio.

The year before children in an elementary school on the other side of town participated in the national Salk vaccine field test.  Our Iowa school district had been selected to be part of a field test in which 50% of children would get the Salk vaccine and 50% would get a placebo.  Parents were provided with consent forms to sign for the field test and every parent consented.  The success of the national field study showed that infection with the polio virus, the pandemic of the early 1950s, could be prevented with a vaccination of Salk vaccine.  Within the year a nationwide campaign to vaccinate all school children was underway.

My friends and I knew that polio was real.  Beyond the headlines and stories in the daily newspaper reporting the growing number of children infected with polio, we knew.  One our classmates, Steve, lived in an iron lung in the living room of his home.  His head stuck out from the barrel-like breathing machine that used vacuum cleaner motors to raise and lower air pressure in the barrel to help him breathe.  When the time came, we would all choose a shot in the arm to prevent being in an iron lung.

Class reunions are communal strolls down memory lane.  Yearbooks and dog-eared photos are passed around and stories are told and retold.  Most tales are of our high school days with a few from junior high.  The Class of 1966 represented a pathway from two junior highs and fifteen elementary schools.  We had many memories along the path to graduation.  The one common story from our elementary school memories, however, is always the day we got the Salk shot.  The story goes like this. 

“The hallway was filled with kids inching their way along the wall toward a needle.  It was so quiet.  I cannot remember any classmate saying ‘No, not me’.  I cannot recall my parents even raising a ‘Should we…’.  Everyone was afraid of getting polio and if a vaccination put an end to polio, we were going to get vaccinated.  It’s funny now, but of all the shots in the arm (and other places) I have received, that is the shot I remember most clearly.  Remember when John said, ‘That didn’t hurt.  I’ll take another.’  Hey, we stopped polio, didn’t’ we.”  And they always add, “I remember when we were given the Sabin vaccine in 1960?  It was on a sugar cube!”

Many of my classmates now sleep in death.  Life is what it is.  I look at my elementary class photo of Mrs. Meyer’s home room and see each of their childhood faces and recall every name.  On those vaccination days in 1955 we did what we were supposed to do.  Steve’s face is not in that photo.  He was a polio victim.

Our Children’s Eyes Are On Us

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A fellow school board member reminds us frequently, “Our children are watching us”.  These words alone cut to the quick of every discussion and issue before a school board.  The board’s actions must reflect decisions that are in the best interest of the children attending our schools.  Noble words?  Yes.  Mission-based words?  Yes.  Easy words to enact?  Not always. 

In the politics of school government each constituency except children has leverage.  Parents hold the choice card.  If they disagree with board decisions, they can choose a different school.  Teachers and staff hold the employment card.  There is a statewide shortage in every category of school personnel and a school board knows it.  Decisions that cause an unexpected resignation or retirement may create an opening that cannot be filled or, if filled, with a less experienced and qualified person.  Community residents hold the voter card to be played at board elections and more importantly in the constant flow of district referenda.  A failed referendum denies school needs.  And, recall elections of school board members are at an all-time high in 2021.

What about the children?  Children do not choose their school.  Children do not provide a necessary employment to the school.  Children do not vote.  Yet, children loom constantly in every board action as their education and nurturing are the only things that really matter in public education. 

Two questions should haunt every board member’s mind in their discussion and voting on board motions.  How will this decision affect children?  What lesson of responsible adult behavior are we teaching our children?

Today, it may be that the second is the more important question.  Are adults, board members and constituents speaking and acting like role models for children?  If children said and did the things they are seeing and hearing in our behaviors, would we discipline them for their inappropriateness? 

I was always whipsawed as a child between adults who said “Do as I do” and “Do as I say”.  The lesson of growing up right was to take the best of what you are shown and the best of what you are told to create a model for your adult behavior. 

Yet, when I watch YouTube clips of adult behaviors in some school board and local government meetings this year, I wonder where the adults went.  What I see in too many stories are not the role models we want children to emulate.

Three concepts from ages past pertain.  Respect, civility, and common good.  Almost every school mission statement or list of student goals contains words about respect.  On an everyday demonstration, we want children to show a considerate regard for the feelings, wishes and wants, rights, and traditions of others.  Children tend toward outbursts of the moment, brashness, and acting and saying without a second thought. 

It is the second thought of consideration that reigns in disrespect. These are learned and practiced behaviors that help children over time to achieve the second word – civility.  Civil behavior, somewhat of an archaic term, is courteous, restrained,  responsible, and accountable.  Civility follows the Gold Rule of treating others as you wish to be treated.  Accountability is an essential part of civility.  An adult does not get to say whatever comes to mind without consequence.  Respect and civil behavior combine to shape discussions for the common good. 

Teaching children to consider what is best for others not just self advances their progress toward maturity.  The common good is not ethereal, it is tangible.  School boards face decisions in which special interests are apparent.  Any decision that gives advantage to some at the disadvantage of the many is not in the common good.  On the other hand, a decision that improves the condition or status of a small group and equally shares that improvement with all is in the common good.  The pandemic is providing school boards with a constant arena for considering their decisions in terms of the common good.  This is a test; are we up to this test.

The children are watching us, their school board, to observe and learn from us.  While they may not have material leverage, children have the moral leverage.  We adults know we are supposed to be adult-like in our interactions with each other in our board meetings.  Very often I would like to use instant replay mechanisms from televised sports.  “Time out!  We are going to review what these people said and how they acted toward each other.  We will break down this clip to identify respect, civil behavior, and working for the common good.  Let’s see what we can learn.”

At the end of the day, children will grade us using the same rubrics we use on them everyday in school.  They have been watching and they know us for what and who we are.