Give teachers the tools, pay they deserve

Teachers are one of the most important elements of a successful school.

Teachers can inspire, and I have written before about how one inspired me 35 years ago. It took me 20 years to take the advice of Yvonne Lefkowitz of Fairfax High School, but I never forgot her words.

Teaching is a noble profession, yet, for all of our talk, we still greatly undervalue not only the importance of teachers, but also our children’s education.

Let’s start with teachers.

The salary for a beginning teacher in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District is $37,856.

In Orange County, that’s peanuts. Even when adjusted for the three months of summer vacation, it’s still peanuts. Besides, for most teachers, that summer is no vacation -- most of them work.

Stick around for a while and the pay becomes respectable, about $60,000 for a mid-range salary and just over $81,000 at the highest level.

The problem is that across the country, and even here in Newport-Mesa, teachers are not sticking around.

According to a recent study by the National Center for Education, 40% of public school teachers will retire within the next five years.

The rate is even higher among high school teachers.

One-third of those retiring will be 50 or older, but the study also reports that their age was far from the major factor in their decision.

The three next most common reasons for teacher retirement are low pay, administrative hassles and classroom management issues.

Translation: More experienced teachers would stick around, even with the low pay, if the job wasn’t such a drag. Teachers do not enter the profession to get rich. They willingly accept lower pay in return for job satisfaction.

(A pause here. Yes, it is true that teachers are not paid very well, but they do receive some generous benefits that, when a teaching career is managed long-term, can be very rewarding.)

The report also notes that the bureaucratic entanglements are also part of the job, as they are with nearly every job.

The difference these days is the kids. That’s right, your children are more and more becoming the reason why many good teachers are bailing out.

In the teaching profession, it is called “classroom management,” which is the ability of teachers to keep kids in line.

From the National Center for Education report: “In a survey taken in Texas, an inability to establish discipline in the classroom was cited as a major reason why 45% of the teachers are considering quitting. Teachers are tired of dealing with problem children, especially when increasingly strict legal considerations tie their hands in handling the situations.”

Even the good teachers in the good (better performing) schools in our district (nearly all of which are located on the Newport side of the Newport-Mesa school district), have classroom management issues.

Yesterday, an unruly kid would be removed from class, sent down to the principal’s office and disciplined. Sometimes, for the worst offending boys, that included a swat on the backside with a paddle.

Today, an administrator can still swat a bad kid but instead of getting some sense knocked into the student, the principal is more likely to be arrested for assault.

Today, kids know the new rules and exploit them often. Kids know that it’s very difficult to be expelled and that teachers cannot touch them in any disciplinary way or yell at them at all, unless it is in an attempt to stop some emergency.

Teacher turnover is costly too, with most estimates pegging the replacement cost at a conservative 25% of the departing teacher’s salary. Several years ago, the U.S. Department of Education put the cost at 33%.

I am taking time to point out the value of teachers to put some distance between them and my recent blather about the underperforming schools in Costa Mesa.

Yes, there are bad teachers there, but there are bad teachers in Newport Beach and bad professionals in every profession. I have met more than my share of bad dentists and bad doctors.

Ask teachers today and they will tell you that classroom management is an ongoing challenge, particularly as children enter middle school, and especially as boys enter middle school.

Much of the challenge originates at home, where children are not taught to respect teachers and where parents do little to support their child’s education and may even openly confront a teacher in front of the child.

At best, a parent will bad mouth a teacher at home, leaving the child to believe that the teacher does not deserve the respect he or she expects every day.

The disrespect is not limited to less privileged homes. Over the years, several teachers in Newport Beach have told me that some students have a sense of entitlement, and their parents’ protection supports disrespectful behavior.

More and more, teachers and administrators are powerless to do very much.

It’s hard to be an inspirational teacher when you spend a good part of your day keeping kids in line. But one of they keys to the improvement of the Westside schools is to empower teachers to remove bad kids -- the ones interfering with the progress of other kids -- without fear of reprisal or administrative action.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to [email protected].

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