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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (15034)	3/24/2006 5:52:20 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541118

I think higher pay would help attract people who might, at the moment, be gravitating toward higher paying areas of employment- which would increase the talent pool, and which would give schools more choices in whom to hire. (In the Bay Area there are few areas where you can buy a house with even two teacher's salaries). Also, many teachers who are simply acceptable, become overwhelmed if the classes are too large. It takes excellent class management skills to keep control of a big class, while a smaller class will not tax weak teachers as greatly- and more money allows smaller class sizes. There's a huge difference between a class of 20 first graders, and a class of 30- and if you throw in itinerant students who may not speak English, the stresses on the non-Escalante teachers can get to be extreme. I remember during my student teaching in a low income school over a period of 8 weeks we had 4 (or it might have been more) new students, 2 of whom spoke no English. It was a 4th grade class of 30 kids (when they were all there), and a few of the children have rather severe behavior problems (for very understandable reasons, but still, problem children). I don't think reinvention is required to fix these problems- higher salaries to attract more applicants for positions, smaller class sizes, more resources for troubled children- time out rooms, for example, and counseling, and very small group teaching for students with very limited English- those simple steps would go a long way toward fixing the problems, but they all cost money.