On Motivation...

nobody@vox.com(Mississippi Teacher Corps) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 07:19:32 -0800

This started out as a reply to Holly’s comment on my previous post and grew from there (Holly, I appreciate the comments. As I'm sure y'all know by now, I love a good difference of opinion)...

Does money matter when it comes to teaching?

The highest-paid profession in the US, according to Forbes, is anesthesiology, with a mean salary of $184,000. To become an anesthesiologist requires 12 years of specialized training, including an undergraduate major in pre-med (or a hard science), admission to medical school, three years of medical school, and a one-year residency. Along the way, the future anesthesiologist must pass the MCAT and become board certified (by comparison, 9% of teachers in Mississippi are board-certified, which ranks us 3rd in the nation). Each one of these steps is a highly competitive process. The bar is set incredibly high. Yet, there is no shortage of anesthesiologists in this country. To become a certified teacher, in Mississippi, requires a four-year degree in any subject from any college in the country with a minimum GPA of 2.5, passing scores on the Praxis I and II (about the easiest standardized test on the planet), and completion of an eight-week online program from Teach Mississippi Institute (or three weeks with “Alternate Pathways”). The bar is set incredibly low. Yet, we have a huge shortage. And a mean salary of $40,000.

Do you have to be motivated by altruism to be a good teacher?

I am completely uninterested in a person's motivation to become a teacher. If someone is a good teacher, who cares why he or she became a teacher? If we pay teachers a million dollars a year, and people become teachers primarily for the money, and they are good at it, great. Put another way, if you have to love the profession of teaching to be a great teacher, why should we pay teachers anything?

If the first-year teaching salary was a million dollars, the teacher shortage would end tomorrow. Over five years, tens of thousands of low-performing teachers would be flushed from the profession by the influx of good teachers. Teacher-training programs would become competitive and could raise standards rather than being a cash-cow for the universities. Low-performing education majors would be washed out because there would no longer be pressure to turn out certified teachers to address the teacher shortage...

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