Crabtree 1 Ashton Crabtree Campbell English 1102 14 April, 2014 Why teachers are not excited about their

job; Is your child at risk? Of all the pretty things that the state of North Carolina has to offer teaching is considered one of our uglier sides. Teaching in North Carolina has gone downhill in the past couple of years and we have started to see some negative effects happening not only to students but to teachers as well. Some include a very low salary, most of which are frozen, and we have also taken away pay raises for teachers with a Masters degree. With all of the negative aspects of being a teacher in the state of North Carolina it can be very difficult to be a teacher, especially a talented one. Teachers are a central factor in the learning process that takes place in schools, and teachers attitudes and effectiveness can vary depending on the incentives they face (Kingdom). Money is not everything but it can be a very good motivational tool. When teachers do not get paid what they should it is very common for them to not perform at their best.

The basics of teachers salaries North Carolinas teacher pay has been based on how long a teacher has been teaching and their credentials. If you have a Bachelors degree, on average, your starting salary will be around $30,800 according to Marquita Brown in her article titled Pay for starting teacher may go up, Gov. Pat McCrory says. Teachers who have taught longer usually get paid more than the new

Crabtree 2 teachers with less experience. Now that the pay raise for teachers with a Masters degree has been taken away it makes teachers salary look even worse. As of recently, the system of determining pay will now be based off of classroom results. This means that a teacher will get paid according to how well his or her students perform on the state standardized tests. David Figlio says that Teacher incentives elicit more effort from teachers, resulting in higher test scores. Officials think that this is a good thing. They plan to reward the top twenty-five percent of teachers by giving them an extra $500 a month increase in pay for four years according to Bill Ferriter. Supposedly this is a way of motivating teachers to improve themselves; I see the opposite. The teachers who do not earn the extra $500 a month will get discouraged and could possibly lose interest in their job. With that said, you need to reward every teacher and not just the top twenty five percent. When a teacher knows that he or she is doing a good job at teaching and observes a younger inexperienced teacher struggling, they are most likely not going to share their secrets; especially since they are getting paid more according to how well the students do. Why would they share what works for them and risk someone else besides them getting a raise? This helps no one and just creates competition among teachers. Instead it is harming the students because their teacher is unequipped. Should we pay teachers based on experience and educational attainment or the number of students that pass? Bill Ferriter, a current six grade teacher in Raleigh, said that he spent two months teaching his students vocabulary words and facts over and over again. He says my classroom went from being a place of inquiry where I gave kids the chance to answer their own questions about the required content in a process that mirrored the work that professional scientists engage in everyday to a drill-and-kill zone where memorization trumped thinking in my daily lessons When it came time for testing he outperformed county and state averages. Because of this he will

Crabtree 3 most likely be up for a raise at the end of the year, but how does this help the kids? Just because you can memorize something does not mean you have learned it. I think you should go back a couple months after the test and retest the students to see if they truly did learn the material or if it was simply memorization. We should not be paying teachers to get a certain score on a test regardless if the student understands and remembers the material. We want to motivate teachers in a positive way. Rewarding teachers based off of test scores is not a good way to motivate teachers. We should motivate them from the beginning and influence them to be the best teacher they can be.

The correlation between salaries and performance Some people do not think there is any correlation between teacher pay and teacher performance. If you look at other countries around the world you will see that the more teachers get paid the better they are at teaching and also the better their students are at performing in the classroom. You will also see that a higher salary makes teachers feel appreciated and satisfied with their job. Look at the Republic of Korea; here teachers are paid the highest salary in the world. North Korean students have the highest reading proficiency (Brooke). This is proof right here that students learn and perform better when their teacher is satisfied and feel that they are being paid enough. When a teacher has no motivation or desire to teach the students will also have no desire to learn. Although lacking motivation does not come from salary alone, it a big factor. You will see more proof if you look at Mexico. According to Pamela Brooke, in her article Does increasing teacher salaries yield more learning? here teachers are paid the least of

Crabtree 4 any teacher around the world. Their kids have the lowest average reading proficiency. It is not just in the United States that teacher salary is not what it should be; it is a world-wide problem we need to resolve if we want our students to truly comprehend and learn what is being taught. Lets face it; they are our future. As cheesy as that sounds it is the truth. Think ahead 40-50 years when you are about to retire. Who will take over your job when you leave? The people taking our jobs when we are not able to work anymore were the same people who were sitting in chairs learning while we were just starting our careers. They are our future and if they are not educated properly they will not have the tools necessary to succeed later in life. It is our job to properly prepare the younger generation for their future and to serve as a mentor to them.

Teachers salaries just are not enough Every year it seems like there is a cut in the schools budget. In reality though, something somewhere has to get cut and money has to go somewhere else. Education cannot afford to be cut anymore. According to a new survey, Maria Durand says that teachers on average spend $448 of their own money to buy their classroom and students instructional materials and supplies. If education is the number one priority then we should be supplying teachers with all the materials they need to effectively teach. Can you think of another job that requires employees to purchase the materials they need for their job? That extra money they are spending could be spent on rent or groceries. The National School Supply and Equipment Association have found that teachers pay for 77% of the school supplies needed for their classroom (Durand). These materials should be coming from the government. What the teacher does not supply comes from parents, the school, and other school funds.

Crabtree 5 Education plays a tremendous role in our lives. Teachers teach the basics to everyday life; without them we would not know how to do basic math or how to even read. We end up being with teachers for more hours a day than we are with our own parents. For what their job entitles, teachers deserve to be paid more than what they are currently being paid. Education reform advocates in the United States frequently argue that other than the intrinsic rewards of teaching, there is no incentive for teachers to do a good job (Figlio). Not only would the salary increase motivate them more to be a better teacher but you will also see the success of their students increase as well. The bottom line is that education matters and we need to take it a lot more seriously.

Crabtree 6 Works Cited Brooke, Pamela. Does Increasing Teacher Salaries Yield More Learning? Womenadvance.org. Woman AdvaNCe. 7 July 2013. Web. 7 February 2014. Brown, Marquita. Pay for starting teachers may go up, Gov. Pat McCrory says. News and Record.com. News and Record. 10 February, 2014. Web. 14 April 14, 2014. Durand, Maria. Teachers Spend own Money for Supplies. abcnews.com. ABC News. 31 August 2013. Web 7 February 2014. Ferriter, Bill. Three Reasons North Carolinas New Plan for Paying Teachers is a Bad Idea. Teachingquality.org. Center for Teaching Quality. 21 October 2013. Web. 7 February 2014. Figlio, David N. Individual teacher incentives and student performance. Journal of Public Economics 91 (2007): 901-914. Print. Helms, Ann Doss. North Carolina Teacher Pay Stranded by Shifts in Education Laws. Newsobserver.com. News and Observer. 17 August 2013. Web. 7 February 2014. Kingdom, Geeta Gandhi. Does performance related pay for teachers improve student performance? Some evidence from India. Economics of Education Review 26 (2007): 473-486. Print Milburn, Caroline. Why our best teachers are worth $150,000. Newsbank.org. Newsbank. 21 May 2012. Web. 10 March 2014.