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Monday, September 10, 2018

Teacher Pay: What Teachers Want Americans to Understand | Money

Teacher Pay: What Teachers Want Americans to Understand | Money

7 Big Things You Should Understand About Teacher Pay, According to Teachers



Chances are you’ve witnessed a teacher at work. They taught you in your childhood and adolescence; they graded your tests and essays. Perhaps they also served as your high school soccer coach or drove the bus you took to school each day. They may now be shepherding your children through the same educational system, helping them strengthen basic skills and uncover their passions.
But as a student — or even a parent — you’ve probably only observed the basics. “People think they know what it’s about because they went to school,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a union that represents more than 1 million teachers nationwide. “But going to school and being a school teacher are the difference of night and day.”
Over the last year, educators in a number of states have launched protests, strikes, and walkouts to draw attention to what they say is unfair pay and work conditions. Teachers have detailed the financial difficulties that come as the result of years-long pay freezes and growing pensions that dig deeper into their paychecks. Many of them work second or third jobs to make ends meet and pick up extra responsibilities in the school district for extra cash.
And that long-sought-after summer break, which corporate employees can only dream of? A lot of educators work then, too — teaching summer school, picking up more restaurant shifts than during the school year, or spending weeks in training and preparing new lessons plans.
Teaching in America now appears to have reached a tipping point. Low wages have driven some teachers out of the profession entirely, and fewer people want to become educators — heightening a teacher shortage crisis as class sizes grow larger and educators take on extra roles. Educators who spoke with MONEY believe they are undervalued, underpaid and underappreciated. They cited countless stories of peers who denigrated their careers and friends who misunderstood all that it takes to be a teacher.
“It’s an extreme amount of pressure. It’s like running a sprint that’s the length of a marathon; it’s just constant,” says Emily James, a high school English teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y. “You can’t mess up because you have kids right in front of you. You can’t mess up because they’ll break down. You have to be there physically, emotionally and academically at all times.”
MONEY asked more than 10 current and former teachers from around the country what they wished Americans understood about their jobs, their work conditions, and their pay. Here’s what we learned.

Teachers make less even than workers with similar qualifications.

Teachers have faced stifled wages and pay freezes for years. And a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning organization, found that Continue reading: Teacher Pay: What Teachers Want Americans to Understand | Money
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LADY LIBERTY: Why is Murphy covering up Christie’s $10 million loan to failing charter school? |

LADY LIBERTY: Why is Murphy covering up Christie’s $10 million loan to failing charter school? |

LADY LIBERTY: Why is Murphy covering up Christie’s $10 million loan to failing charter school?



The New Jersey state education department has refused to release public documents that might  shed light on former Gov. Chris Christie’s loan of $10 million in state funds to a failing Newark charter school and its partner, a private, for-profit real estate developer that was receiving more than $800,000 in public funds as annual rent from the school.
The state’s  action, in response to a demand filed under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), contributes to a stifling veil of silence covering up the details of the unusual $10 million loan—a loan granted by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) despite the lack of any collateral that could be used to repay the loan if the school defaulted.
The school, Lady Liberty Academy Charter School, did close and no longer receives the state aid it needs  to pay its rent to the developer, BWP School Partners, LLC.  Under the unusual terms of the loan agreement between the NJEDA and BWP,  the state has limited its ability to recoup the loan from the developer  to finding a new charter school to take the place of Lady Liberty. The school is now boarded up and so, this year at least, that won’t happen.
The existence of the unusual $10 million loan was first disclosed by this site last month but the continued refusal by the NJEDA, the state education department, the Newark school district and private sources to discuss details has added to the mystery of why the state would loan $10 million to a charter school that faced problems since 2003, when it was opened as part of Newark’s New Community Corporation’s social outreach efforts. Lady Liberty was placed on probation by the state three times and finally closed this year after  Christie left office.
So that’s the first question that no one at the  state or elsewhere wants to answer:
Why would the NJEDA invest $10 million in a school that its state Continue reading: LADY LIBERTY: Why is Murphy covering up Christie’s $10 million loan to failing charter school?





Education Research Report:Quality Counts 2018: Grading the States

Education Research Report: Quality Counts

Quality Counts 2018: Grading the States

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First Installment:

Quality Counts 2018: Grading the States

Quality Counts 2018: Grading the StatesThis 22nd edition of Quality Counts, an annual state-by-state assessment of public education, paints a portrait of middling performance overall with patches of high achievement, along with perennial struggles to improve on the part of states mired at the bottom. This is the first of three data-driven Quality Countspackages this year exploring distinct aspects of the performance of America's public schools.

Second Installment:

Quality Counts 2018: School Finance

Education Week puts the nation's K-12 finance performance under the microscope in this second installment of Quality Counts 2018, looking at how much gets spent state by state, and how fairly it's divvied up.

Third Installment:

Quality Counts 2018: K-12 Achievement and Chance for Success

The third and final installment of Quality Counts 2018 digs deeply into the data behind how states rank on academic achievement and on students' chance for success in a complex, ever-changing society.

From the report:

Education Research Report: Quality Counts

Big Education Ape: NPE and Schott Issue a 50 State Report Card on School Privatization - Network For Public Education - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/06/npe-and-schott-issue-50-state-report.html



Does Teacher Diversity Matter for Students’ Learning? - The New York Times

Does Teacher Diversity Matter for Students’ Learning? - The New York Times
Does Teacher Diversity Matter for Students’ Learning?
Research shows that students, especially boys, benefit when teachers share their race or gender. Yet most teachers are white women.



As students have returned to school, they have been greeted by teachers who, more likely than not, are white women. That means many students will be continuing to see teachers who are a different gender than they are, and a different skin color.
Does it matter? Yes, according to a significant body of research: Students tend to benefit from having teachers who look like them, especially nonwhite students.
The homogeneity of teachers is probably one of the contributors, the research suggests, to the stubborn gender and race gaps in student achievement: Over all, girls outperform boys (with an exception in math in certain districts), and white students outperform those who are black and Hispanic.

Yet the teacher work force is becoming more female: 77 percent of teachers in public and private elementary and high schools are women, up from 71 percent three decades ago. The teaching force has grown more racially diverse in that period, but it’s still 80 percent white, down from 87 percent.

There are many things that contribute to children’s academic achievement, including teachers’ experience and training; school funding and zoning; and families’ incomes and home environment. But studies have shown that teacher diversity can also make a difference in students’ performance and their interest in school.

It’s particularly true for boys, and black boys. Research has found that they are more affected than girls by disadvantages, like poverty and racism, and by positive influences, like high-quality schools and role models. Yet they are least likely to have had a teacher that looks like them.
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“We find that the effect is really driven by boys,” said Seth Gershenson, an economist studying education policy at American University. “In the elementary school setting, for black children and especially Continue reading: Does Teacher Diversity Matter for Students’ Learning? - The New York Times