Sep 8, 2005 3:19 PM
By PETER GOODMAN
During idle chitchat at a neighborhood backyard barbeque, I mentioned I had taught high school for 35 years. One of the guests remarked, “A good deal — you finish work at three and get two months off in the summer — a cushy deal.”
My first impulse was to tear out his still-beating heart. I remembered all those times I had to leave family festivities early to mark sets of papers, to wake up early on Sunday and prepare lesson plans and wonder how I could persuade kids not to drop out ... while my neighbors sipped beers.
So rather than vent, I handed him a copy of a wonderful book — “Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers” — that expresses a lot about what it means to be a teacher.
The book responds to positions held by three groups: those who believe teachers are paid well, they get the summers off, and should be happy; others who believe the job is difficult, and the profession requires an amount of sacrifice; and finally, those who believe teachers should be paid more, but where will the money come from?
The authors — Daniel Moulthrop, Ninive Clements Calegari and Dave Eggers — carefully document the challenges facing teachers and destroy the “myths” surrounding teaching. They document the lives of scores of teachers in their own words: the long hours, the second, third and fourth extra jobs — oftentimes demeaning jobs — and sadly recount the staggering number of caring, dedicated teachers who leave the profession. The day-to-day life of a teacher is compared to other professions, pointing out in detail the intense time demands of teaching.
The most interesting and controversial section of the book highlights examples of teacher unions collaborating in designing alternative methods of teacher compensation. The new system in Denver is described in detail, as are plans for public charter schools in Los Angeles and Helena, Mont.
The Denver plan, called “ProComp,” will provide percentage increases in wages for individual teachers who “demonstrate relevance of successful recent coursework” (2 percent), “complete National Board Certification” (9 percent), “teach in a hard-to-staff school (3 percent),” and a range of other benchmarks.
To the authors’ credit, they point to “solutions that aren’t,” and complete the book with a long list of resources.
Some books should become required reading for policy-makers. This is a must read.