DaveShearon

Teacher Pay, Incentives, Teacher-Led Instructional Improvement

A Google-alert and a marketing e-mail led me to these two stories on teacher pay, performance incentives, and teacher-led instructional improvement:

Program That Expands Teachers’ Roles Linked to Higher Student ...
Education Week News - Bethesda,MD,USA
The program uses the value-added information to dole out salary awards to teachers and schools that have performed better than the state average over three ...

When you go behind the story, you find that the TAP program it discusses includes a strong teacher-led instructional improvement component:

Ongoing Applied Professional Growth

TAP restructures the school schedule to provide time during the regular school day for teachers to meet, learn, plan, mentor and share with other teachers, so they can constantly improve the quality of their instruction and hence, increase their students' academic achievement. This allows teachers to learn new instructional strategies and have greater opportunity to collaborate, both of which will lead them to become more effective teachers.

And here's the story on teacher pay.  Basically, it is hard to argue that teachers are grossly underpaid compared to similar professionals, but, as evidenced by the rarity of the teacher-led instructional improvement models, it is very easy to see that they do not receive the respect they deserve in the form of encouragement to engage their professional judgment and commitment. 

How Much Are Public School Teachers Paid?

Today, Manhattan Institute scholars Jay P. Greene and Marcus Winters released a new report entitled "How Much Are Teachers Paid?". Greene and Winters use data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to compile information on the hourly pay of public school teachers nationally and in 66 metropolitan areas. The authors compare the reported hourly income of the public school teachers to those of workers in similar professions; and analyze whether there is a relationship between higher relative pay for public school teachers and higher student achievement as measured by high school graduation rates.

KEY FINDINGS:
* The average public school teacher in the U.S. earned $34.06 per hour in 2005
* The average public school teacher was paid 36% more per hour than the average non-sales white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty and technical worker
* Public school teachers are paid 61% more per hour than private school teachers, on average nationwide
* Increasing public school teacher pay is not related to higher graduation rates

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

Senia, there aren't many folks I'd do this for!

1.)  Curtesy of my Dad, county agent and photographer, when I was around 11, my picture, along with my buddy Bobby Willoughby, was on the cover of the brochure for the 4-H Camp in Milan, Tennessee, and stayed there for several years.  Buzz cuts!

2.)  I won first place in the first barrel flag race I ever entered.  (Update:  Hmmm... That was when I was a kid.  I remember the race; just got the terms swapped around in my mind!)

3.)  In college, I substituted Acting for Public Speaking because I'd already covered the latter doing extemporaneous speaking in high school.  I also took one quarter of Greek, poetry writing, lots of Shakespeare, and pottery -- and loved them all.

4.)  A few years back, I was a Level 2 Coach in the National Archery Association and took a team from the Boys and Girls Club here in Nashville to the State Indoor where we had two-time Olympic Gold medalist Darrel Pace down from Ohio to shoot with us.  I then took those archers on to the Eastern Regional indoors in Virginia.

5.)  We made a last-minute decision to go to the Atlanta Olympics, drove straight to the archery venue, and saw Justin Huish win the Gold medal!  We also saw baseball and rhythmic gymnastics.

Build a Kid Up

“What I learned playing basketball at Ole Miss, was what not to do: beat up a kid. It’s easy to beat up a kid. The hard thing is to build him up.”  Sean Tuohy

Sean Tuohy and his whole family are positive people. That quote is taken from this story:

The Ballad of Big Mike

Read it if you like football.

Read it if you're interested in schools and education.

Read it if you want to believe more in people.

Just read it.

Positive Psychology Daily News

My 17th of the month contribution to Positive Psychology Daily News is up.  Lots of other good entries also.

Funny Google Searches

A recent Google search that found one of my prior posts read, "Cliffnotes for Fish!"  Really.  Have you seen the book?  It's 115 small pages with big type and written as a story!  The searcher could have read the book in the time spent looking for a shortcut, and had more fun to boot!

Richard Feynman

I've just finished Richard Feynman: A Life in Science by John and Mary Gribbin.  Here are some positive psychology observations.

First, it's clear that Dr. Feynman had a great capacity to love and be loved.  He married his high school sweetheart knowing that she had contracted tuberculosis.  And he seemed to be able to enjoy time spent with her while she was in a facility near him during the time he was working on the Manhattan project at Los Alamos.  In a letter to her written after her death and found among his papers after his, he expressed his deep love for her and how empty her absence made his life.  He went on, after 10 years or so, to marry again and have a family that seems to have been important to him and a source of pleasure, engagement, and meaning.  In summarizing, the authors write:

Richard Feynman was indeed, as well as being a scientific genius, a good man who spread love and affection among his family, friends and acquaintances.  In spite of the dark period in his life after the death of Arline, he was a sunny character who made people feel good, a genuinely fun-loving, kind and generous man, as well as being the greatest physicist of his generation.

In addition to his capacity to love and be loved, he had a great deal of zest.  Speaking of that "dark period", the authors note that he was, by his standards, depressed, but that no one noticed.  His mentor and friend at the time said, "Feynman depressed is just a little more cheerful than any other person when he is exuberant."

He also appears to have had a real appreciation of beauty and excellence, as he became a highly accomplished drummer and skilled artist.

Finally, Richard Feynman, for all the magic of his mind, clearly had a growth view of "smarts."  Being smart was about gaining knowledge and exerting effort persistently toward understanding, things that he took great joy in doing.  But, he had his times when understanding did not just blossom in his mind effortlessly.  For example, he has recounted how difficult he found solid geometry.  For the first two weeks, he just didn't get it.  Then he finally realized that the drawings the teacher placed on the blackboard were intended to be of 3-D figures and it clicked.  But, had he had a "fixed" mindset, this might well have been enough to convince him he had reached the end of his math smarts. 

This growth mindset is also evident in the advice he gave his younger sister, whom he adored.  Feynman was in graduate school and his sister, Joan, was 14.  She was fascinated by astronomy, but had been told by their mother that the female brain wasn't up to doing science.  Feyman gave her a college-level astronomy text and, when she said it was too difficult, he replied:

"You start at the beginning and you read as far as you can, until you get lost.  Then you start at the beginning again, and you keep working through until you can understand the whole book."

This is not the advice of a "fixed" mindset person; he did not see difficulty as a sign of "not smart", but as an indication of a need for a new strategy and greater effort.  Joan went on to become a respected scientist in her own right.  In a further slap at the "entity" view of intelligence, Joan's high school IQ measurement was 124, while Richard's was 123!

(Job) Searching for Happiness

Today's Wall Street Journal contains an article on the use of an electronic market signaling system to help colleges and those getting doctorates in economics better match up for faculty positions.  The system, suggested by an economist and similar to one built into an online dataing system based on a similar suggestion, lets the applicant "ping" two and only two colleges in which she has a special interest.  This helps colleges know of serious interest by candidates they might not have otherwise considered.  If it works in this environment, the system might also help in others, including matching law students with jobs.  Alvin Roth, the Harvard professor who chairs the committee that implemented the system says:

"We want to make markets work more efficiently.  That would result in more people being happy with their jobs, in more firms being happy with their employees and presumably society being more productive."

I like his thinking.  Happy = productive. 

Positive Psychology News

Thanks to my classmate Senia Maymin for starting a Positive Psychology news site, www.pos-psych.com.  A number of my MAPP classmates will be posting daily articles on positive psychology.  Sherri Fisher, one of my associates in Flourishing Schools has a post up today entitled Rewiring Your Remote Control.  It's a good demonstration of how the VIA Character Strengths can help us think about the world.  Senia, David Pollay, and Jen Hausmann have also posted.  This is going to be a good site.  Stop by!

Reggie Fils-Aime

Another positive person is Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo America.  His fame in the gaming console world stems from a speech he made a few years ago when Nintendo was struggling and he was head of marketing and sales:  "My name is Reggie. I'm about kickin' ass, I'm about takin' names, and we're about makin' games."  He didn't write it, according to this article in the Seattle Times.  But he gave it and it was a hit with Nintendo fans.  Bold?  Brash?  Yep.  And completely in synch with his steadfast solid optimism and positivity.  His longtime girlfriend describes him like this:

Fils-Aime is unfailingly optimistic, friends say. Sanner said she has never once heard him complain — about anything.

"He is not given to any sort of negative thinking," she said. "He doesn't worry, he doesn't waffle, he doesn't waver, he doesn't agonize."

Fils-Aime says he gets that trait from his mother, who always saw the bright side even though her own life took dramatic turns.