Best Cities for Teachers:

Best Cities for Teachers

by Andrew Pentis

After earning their graduate degrees, aspiring teachers head in all kinds of directions, depending on what, who and where they want to teach. Some seek the inner-city challenge, the suburban support or perhaps a school with a greater mission. For these professionals, unlike those in many other careers, the best city to be in a classroom could be the worst for another. It just depends. At ValuePenguin, however, we classify the best city as one that scores well in three metrics that all teachers care about: median salary, cost of living and location quotient. 

Best Five Cities for Teachers

Of the 274 cities reporting data for their teachers, these five earned our best score. Each landed on the list for a variety of reasons. More on our methodology below.

1. Salinas, Calif.

With the country’s highest location quotient, a metric that belies a city’s demand for teachers, Salinas takes the top spot. Having the study’s fifth-highest annual average salary, $78,590, for the profession didn’t hurt either. Famous author John Steinbeck is required reading in schools here, as is a visit to the National Steinbeck Center on the city’s Main Street.

2. Valdosta, Ga.

Unlike the other four teacher-friendly cities among the top five, Valdosta is 7 % more affordable to live in than the average American city. Augusta (No. 17), Albany (22) and Warner Robbins (24) joined Valdosta as particularly teacher-friendly Georgia cities. Located in the extreme southern section of the state, it is home to 10 schools, 650 certified employees and 8,000-plus students.

3. Charleston, S.C. 

Charleston scored well in each of the four metrics we considered, most highly in annual average salary, reporting $68,620, or 54 % higher than the study’s average. Charleston. Which combined with North Charleston and Summerville in its reporting to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a two-hour drive southeast of the capital, Columbia. Education programs in the state overall, from kindergarten to college, have received millions of dollars from the appropriately-named South Carolina Education Lottery.

4. San Diego, Calif.

With the fifth-most teaching positions in the country (7,470), San Diego (and data-reporting partners Carlsbad and San Marcos) finished in our penultimate spot in the pecking order. Only Chicago (18,700), New York (12,980), Los Angeles (12,970) and Washington, D.C. (7,550) can say they more employed. San Diego instructors have the option to join one of two powerful unions, the California Teachers Association or the California Federation of Teachers. According to a San Diego Union-Tribune article based on “Transparent California” data, more than 500 teachers in San Diego County make more than $100,000 in 2013.

5. Oakland, Calif.

The third California city to crack the top five – and one of eight to be ranked in the top 30 (see below) – Oakland narrowly beat out Detroit for this slot in spite of the fact that it’s 44 percent more expensive than average to live in its metro statistical area, which covers Fremont and Hayward. Oakland has the benefit of being in close proximity to some of the U.S. News & World Report’s best graduate schools for aspiring teachers: The University of California at Berkeley is five miles away, and Stanford University is about 35. Working against Oakland is that our study deemed it to be the least safe city in California.

Population Breakdown

Although we adjusted for population in our rankings, it is still difficult to compare a small city to a large one. To account for this fact, we separated the safest cities into three categories: cities with populations less than 100,000 people, midsize cities with populations between 100,000 and 500,000, and larger cities with populations greater than 500,000. Here are our findings:

Top 30 Cities for Teachers 

Rank	City	Average Salary	Jobs	Location Quotient	Cost of Living	Score
1	Salinas, CA	$78,590	2,700	8.48	120	8
2	Valdosta, GA	$61,140	560	5.59	93	36
3	Charleston, SC	$68,620	1,380	2.24	101	44
4	San Diego, CA	$59,450	7,470	2.83	152	45
5	Oakland, CA	$59,800	4,460	2.18	144	56
6	Detroit, MI	$54,290	4,240	2.96	84	59
7	Washington, DC	$60,800	7,550	1.59	157	75
8	Fayetteville, NC	$53,470	900	3.62	94	75
9	Lawton, OK	$58,630	210	2.57	86	77
10	Warren, MI	$60,170	3,300	1.45	95	78
11	Kalamazoo, MI	$53,640	650	2.47	87	87
12	Gulfport, MS	$56,790	430	2.14	91	93
13	Jacksonville, NC	$52,030	450	5.05	99	96
14	Crestview, FL	$60,830	240	1.56	101	103
15	Trenton, NJ	$52,690	970	2.16	106	106
16	Fresno, CA	$52,260	1,380	2.08	101	107
17	Augusta, GA	$79,540	480	1.17	91	107
18	Providence, RI	$72,780	1,170	1.06	118	118
19	Los Angeles, CA	$52,650	12,970	1.60	144	118
20	New York, NY	$58,010	12,980	1.21	168	118
21	Wichita, KS	$50,080	1,320	2.27	87	120
22	Albany, GA	$53,900	200	1.74	88	122
23	San Francisco, CA	$66,260	2,240	1.03	200	124
24	Warner Robins, GA	$59,720	150	1.34	89	126
25	Riverside, CA	$56,940	3,000	1.20	109	128
26	Elizabethtown, KY	$50,350	250	2.76	93	131
27	Kingsport, TN	$50,910	450	1.97	89	134
28	Poughkeepsie, NY	$79,220	480	0.97	119	137
29	San Jose, CA	$55,120	2,320	1.19	187	141
30	Bridgeport, CT	$65,710	810	0.96	143	143

What’s It Like Teaching in… ?

20. New York City, N.Y. 

Dana Humphrey | Adjunct Professor | The Fashion Institute of Technology 

“What is interesting is I have students from all walks of life. Sometimes they come from far away, such as Mexico, Japan, Chicago or Kansas. New York City is so accessible from nearby places such as Long Island, New Jersey, D.C. and Philly as well so we usually have many different zip codes represented in the classroom.”

37. Chicago, Ill.

Ciara Newby | Assistant Headteacher | British International School of Chicago

“There are some great teacher discounts, and it is free to get into the Art Institute of Chicago.”

109. Rochester, N.Y.

Steve Maier | Teacher | Rochester Institute of Technology

“I have worked at a small community college in Texas and now a large private college in New York. The community college helped me to really connect to the students. Some of them were coworkers of mine as well. I learned to have a good rapport with them and that has helped me to do the same with the students at RIT.”

141. Charlotte, N.C.

Kelly Culver | English Teacher | Lake Norman High School

“I work in a school that caters to the higher socioeconomic classes. Many of my students' families are independently wealthy. Coming from urban and rural environments, I was unaware of the challenges facing me here. It's a bit disconcerting to see students driving cars worth as much as my house. In the end though, they are just teenagers and they come with the same host of dramas that all teenagers come with.”

144. Santa Fe, N.M.

Monique Anair | Professor | Santa Fe Community College

“Diversity and extreme poverty (are characteristics here). Santa Fe is known for its art and wealth, but the students who come to the city college are 75 % Hispanic and low-income, and most of our students are first-time college students. That energy permeates Sante Fe Community College. And the faculty… people want to live here, so many amazing faculty take pay cuts and make sacrifices to be in New Mexico. And that wealth and knowledge lands in our classrooms.”

Milford, Mich.

Cindy McKinley | English Instructor | Oakland Community College

“I teach only part-time at my community college but they pay me very well, about $50 per hour.”

New Britain, Conn.

Daniel Blanchard | Teacher | New Britain High School

“I work in the largest inner city high school in Connecticut. We have real poverty issues that are extremely sad. However, on the other end, some of these students will spend some real quality time with you and develop life-long relationships with you. When they know that you are there to help them, they open up to you.”

Richmond, Ky.

Joel Cormier | Associate Professor | Eastern Kentucky University

“The Midwest is unique especially when you are at a regional college. You will find yourself wondering why the local people don’t respect the economic impact of the university as they cheer on all the sports teams of the big conglomerate state school in which they never attended.”

Methodology

These were the three key questions we asked in coming up with the list. 

1. What can teachers earn in the city?  

We ranked the best cities for teachers based on the median annual pay. Income is likely the most important factor people consider when starting their career or relocating elsewhere. A high salary in an expensive city, however, may be less attractive than a lower salary in an affordable town. Our next metric takes affordability into consideration.

2. How affordable is it to live in this city?  

Now that we have the median salary, we’ll look next at the cost of living. The cost of living is a measure of how far earnings can be stretched. Cities with lower cost of living index numbers ranked higher in our study. For example, the average city is benchmarked at 100. A city with a cost of living index of 188, such as Honolulu, would mean that generally speaking, living expenses are 88 percent more expensive compared to the average city.

3. What is the location quotient for teachers in the city?  

A place with a high median salary and low cost of living may seem perfect, but job opportunities may be limited. Our third factor accounts for this by favoring cities with high location quotients. Location quotient measures the concentration of teachers in an area as a percentage of all occupations, and then compares that to the national average. We interpret a higher location quotient to mean a relatively higher demand for a teacher’s services.

Best Cities for Teachers:

Children need teachers to teach them - not computers, says the OECD | ZDNet

Children need teachers to teach them - not computers, says the OECD | ZDNet:

Children need teachers to teach them - not computers, says the OECD

An over-reliance on computers will damage a child's education, not improve it.

OECD education director Andreas Schleicher says: "The socio-economic divide between students is not narrowed by technology." Image: OECD

Walk into any school in term time and you will likely see the kids hard at work on their computers, chatting online, or texting their friends but, according to the OECD, all this technology is not making our kids any smarter. In fact, it says, the evidence suggests it is having the opposite effect.

As the OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher, points out in his report, Students, Computers and Learning: Making The Connection, published today, although students who use computers "moderately" at school tend to have somewhat better learning outcomes than students who use computers rarely, "students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for social background and student demographics".

It gets worse.

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"The results also show no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in information and communication technology (ICT) for education," said Schleicher. "And perhaps the most disappointing finding is that technology seems of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students."

Other findings of the report included:

• Students get worse results the more frequently they use computers

• A little use is a good thing as students who use computers once or twice a week, rather than every day, get better outcomes that those who use them rarely.

• The countries that have invested the most in technology show "no appreciable improvements" in reading, mathematics or science, the report says.

• High-achieving school systems such as South Korea and Shanghai in China have lower levels of computer use in school.

According to Schleicher, one of the "most disappointing findings" of the report was that "the socio-economic divide between students is not narrowed by technology, perhaps even amplified".

Schleicher's department has undertaken a full analysis into the role that education plays in developing a population with the right skills, and has come up with results that overturn the prevailing wisdom on education.

Computers, he believes, are not much help. "Put simply," he says, "ensuring that every child attains a baseline level of proficiency in reading and mathematics seems to do more to create equal opportunities in a digital world than expanding or subsidising access to high-tech devices and services."

But he also believes that "most parents and teachers" will not be surprised by the finding that students "who spend more than six hours online per weekday outside of school are particularly at risk of reporting that they feel lonely at school".

One interpretation, said Schleicher, is that "building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology sometimes distracts from this valuable human engagement".

You can find the full report here.

Further Reading:

Mandatory IT teaching in schools: Pressure grows in Germany

South Africa gets first look at cybercrime bill that comes with 25-year jail terms

Facebook, Dropbox make strides in education with new projects, leadership

Children need teachers to teach them - not computers, says the OECD | ZDNet:

Sacramento steps toward a better ethics policy | The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento steps toward a better ethics policy | The Sacramento Bee:

Sacramento steps toward a better ethics policy

The Sacramento City Council will vote Tuesday night on a plan to direct its staff to create a detailed ethics package, a step that is worthy of encouragement and support.

The goal would be for the components to come back to the council in three to six months for votes.

Mayor Kevin Johnson appointed the committee that came up with the broad recommendations. Councilwoman Angelique Ashby, Councilman Jay Schenirer, and representatives of Common Cause of California and the League of Women Voters, among others, put the proposal together.

The committee is urging an ethics overhaul that would include revisions of the city’s campaign finance ordinance, and its gift, nepotism and revolving-door policies. Newly elected council members would need to complete ethics training within 60 days of taking office, and undergo anti-sexual harassment training every two years.

The city would seek to enhance transparency by placing an array of public records in a central location on a searchable city-run website. Campaign finance, lobbying reports and other related information would become more readily available.

If, as expected, the council approves the package, City Clerk Shirley Concolino would develop a plan to create an office of ethics compliance and a five-member ethics commission that would investigate and adjudicate complaints about campaign finances, lobbying and conflicts of interest. The mayor would appoint the commissioners, subject to council confirmation.

An important component would include a 2018 ballot measure for an independent redistricting commission. The 13-member commission would draw council boundaries after the 2020 census, when boundaries normally are redrawn. To guard against self-serving lines, members would be barred from running for a council seat for 10 years.

Johnson had included good-government provisions in his strong-mayor proposal last year. Even though voters rejected the strong-mayor proposal, Johnson pressed ahead with the ethics package.

The measure took on greater urgency when members of advocacy group Eye on Sacramentosuggested they place their own ethics proposal on the 2016 ballot. Whether or not there is a competing measure on some future ballot, the Johnson-appointed committee’s plan could be far-reaching.

An improved ethics policy, greater transparency and a strong ethics commission all are important. However, much of an ethics commission’s job entails cleaning messes after bad acts occur.

The hope would be that council members conduct themselves properly to begin with. That’s where voters come in. The first line of defense against self-serving politicians always is an informed and engaged electorate.Sacramento steps toward a better ethics policy | The Sacramento Bee:

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article35262837.html#storylink=cpy

Carl Cohn to oversee California’s school district spending

Carl Cohn to oversee California’s school district spending:

Carl Cohn to oversee California’s school district spending

CLAREMONT >> Carl Cohn’s the man who’s going to give report cards to California’s public school districts and charter schools.

In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown announced a sweeping change to how California’s public K-12 schools are funded.

The Local Control Funding Formula replaces the countless narrowly tailored categorical funds that provided money to districts for highly specific needs with a single lump sum that factors in how many poor, foster and English language-learning students the district teaches.

To keep the districts on track with serving those students, districts had to come up with a Local Control Accountability Plan to map out how the district would improve outcomes for all students and specific benchmarks to measure their progress.

And Cohn, a Claremont Graduate University professor and the former superintendent of Long Beach Unified, is in charge of helping districts stay on track. On Sept. 1, he begins his new job as the head of the newly created California Collaborative on Educational Excellence, a state agency that oversees the implementation of the LCFF and districts’ LCAPs.

“This was a part of the original historic legislation,” he said. “It’s the final piece, and I think everybody got caught up with the initial aspects, but now the new, collaborative board has been in place since January.”

The Palm Springs resident took his place at the head of the organization on Sept. 1. The new laws give local districts more control over how they spend their educational fund. But Cohn and his colleagues are in charge of making sure districts keep to the commitments they made to their residents as part of their LCAPs.

“We’ve got to make sure that districts are following what’s in the statute for LCFF and LCAP,” Cohn said. “You can’t just trust that everyone is going to do the right thing.”

The collaborative isn’t a police agency so much as it is an advisory one, providing assistance to districts, charter schools and county departments of education. The organization isn’t big enough to do much more, even if members wanted to.

“Flat, agile, nimble. I’m not building a new bureaucracy or duplicating a new bureaucracy -- the idea, the goal is to just help people without a lot of politics,” Cohn said. “The ideal is really a new kind of a state agency that isn’t so much about policing as it is about getting help to places, becoming a repository for best practices.”

He “can’t imagine more than a dozen or so” CCEE employees ultimately. But, he thinks, that should be enough:

“I’m a huge fan of local control. I actually believe that when people own something at the local level, it’ll stand the test of time.”

Cohn has reason to believe in local school districts: He served as Long Beach Unified’s superintendent for 10 years in the 1990s and early 21st century.

“I became superintendent in Long Beach two months after the Rodney King riots,” he said. “I’m bullish on local control.”

Cohn intends to spend the first month listening to local officials on how the LCFF and LCAP are going so far. He already has some cause for concern:

“I spent a week at Stanford with superintendents from around the state,” he said. “What it seemed they were saying that the LCAP, even though it was well-intentioned, has become a huge compliance concern.”

The intention of the law was that the LCAP was for local community members to set local priorities, not that it would become a new bureaucratic nightmare.

“If a mid-course correction is needed, we need to get to that,” he said. “You’re not supposed to bog Carl Cohn to oversee California’s school district spending:

The Elephant in the Classroom - Decoding Dyslexia Arizona

The Elephant in the Classroom - Decoding Dyslexia Arizona:



The Elephant in the Classroom

Responding to the concerns of parents from across the United States that the word "dyslexia" is not being allowed into the IEP process, a coalition of disability groups recently sent a request to the U.S. Department of Education asking for guidance to be issued on the subject.  Several members of Congress sent a similar request. In response, educator and school groups followed up with a letter expressing concerns about use of the word "dyslexia."

As parents, we believe use of the word "dyslexia" in public schools helps steer discussions toward timely identification of our children, as well as toward appropriate interventions and accommodations.  For those reasons, Decoding Dyslexia groups in every state in the country recently sent a joint letter asking the U.S. Department of Education to clarify that the word "dyslexia" may be used in IEP meetings and related documents.

The following is an excerpt from the parent letter:

Our concerns

As parents, we are often told that dyslexia is “not recognized by school districts,” “is just an umbrella term,” “does not exist,"  "is a medical issue,” or “is not something schools are required to diagnose or address."  We are also told in IEP meetings that schools are "not required to put the term dyslexia in IEPs.”  In many cases, we are even told after years of failed efforts at reading instruction, that we may not discuss or include “specific methodologies" in an IEP to address our children's reading struggles.

Rather, more often than not, our children receive only the broad classification of "Specific Learning Disability" or, at best, “Specific Learning Disability in Reading” and are placed in general resource rooms with students who have different issues and needs.  Some of these students with different needs may even fall under the same Specific Learning Disability “umbrella,” while others may have disabilities that fall within entirely different IDEA disability categories.   Our children with dyslexia then receive interventions that are neither peer-reviewed nor targeted to their specific, individual challenges.

For example, a student with good word decoding skills who struggles to comprehend the meaning of print material may have markedly different learning needs from a student who struggles to comprehend print material because of a weakness in decoding.  Both may have the same "Specific Learning Disability" or even "Specific Learning Disability - Reading" label, but their needs are entirely different.  The result is an unnecessary and often indefinite delay in the identification and use of effective "specially designed instruction" and interventions students need and to which they are entitled as part of an appropriate education.

Use of the term “dyslexia” is consistent with the language and intent of the IDEA

The term “dyslexia” is explicitly included in the IDEA as an example of a “specific learning The Elephant in the Classroom - Decoding Dyslexia Arizona:

CURMUDGUCATION: Forgetting History

CURMUDGUCATION: Forgetting History:

Forgetting History

So it's not 9/14, a date that carries no particular power. And after sitting in the cultural silence that follows any powerful observance, I'm reflecting again on 9/11.

Friday was a day not much different from many others. The social studies teacher whose classroom shares a door with mine was playing a documentary stitched together from footage of That Day. But teachers are already aware of what civilians are slowly realizing-- students in school, right now, have no memory of that day. My juniors were two years old. Some of my freshmen hadn't been born yet. To my students, who think of me as a thousand years old and their own elementary school years as eons ago, the September 11 attacks are as distant to most of them as the Vietnam War or World War II.

And I can't decide if that's a good thing or not.

I am seriously attached to the study of history. My student teaching kept me from minoring; the state of Pennsylvania's elevation of "social studies" over history kept me from adding it to my teaching certification. My class is shot full of it. I think human beings are absolutely hardwired to do history, to try to draw a consensus on what happened, why it happened, what it means. We do it for 9/11, for Vietnam, for the Great European War, and for the fight between Ethel and Mia last night at the restaurant.

My students deride history as the most worthless class they take, a class that has nothing to do with their present or their future. My students also like to drag out and rehearse their favorite stories of Things That Happened in Grade School.

We are hardwired to do history, and yet we also seem hardwired to forget it, if we even grasp it in the first place. I've watched my students for over three decades, certain that the world sprang into existence when they were born, unable to imagine what it will do when they die, and absolutely rocked to their core when someone does die.

We're a small place, but it happens. Accident. Disease. Suicide. The school is an entirely different CURMUDGUCATION: Forgetting History: