Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Success factors: Inclusion model / teacher skills

Kicking off a thread for friends interested in discussing success factors related to inclusion / integrated education models for gifted students, because this is a policy constraint many of us face in advocacy or school selection.

Core question: What success factors exist in the inclusion model, especially vis-a-vis the gifted population?

If you enjoy this thread and want to take a deep dive, these are some secondary questions that I'm noodling on, and figure our collective community has deep knowledge in:

- What teacher competencies or school policies are particularly successful (or flip side: unsuccessful) when teaching gifted students?

- How, if applicable, does the competency profile change for teaching 2e students?

- How, if applicable, do these qualities change for different ages of students?

Please feel free to take this conversation where you think it needs to go, and evolve it as necessary!

To save toggling back and forth, the original question and aeh's kind reply.

Original Q:

Original thread, for our archivists
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/248239/4.html

As a parent citing privilege allowing access to private school attendance for your DS, you may be unaware of the unfortunate realities of "inclusion" increasingly experienced by many parents/students attending public/government schools in the United States, which are largely controlled by extensive data collection and analysis of the grades or marks assigned by teachers, subsequently used by State Department of Education and others, to generate "teacher report cards," "school report cards," "district report cards," which MUST show equal outcomes among all pupils and demographic groups in the inclusive classroom (or the teacher may lose his/her/their teaching position, the school/district may lose funding).

The success factors related to inclusion / integrated education models for gifted students may be largely based on teacher skills for obtaining equal outcomes in the inclusive classroom, by means such as subjective grading practices, for example grading according to the teacher's expectations for each pupil, rather grading objectively against a uniform standard for all pupils at that grade level.

Not to risk veering off-topic by providing extensive detail, a new thread with roundups of lived experiences pertaining to achieving equal outcomes in the inclusive classroom is found here.

Following up on Wren's comment from the companion thread:
Most certainly. Consequently, the outcomes are mixed as well. For below-grade-level students, they have generally been better than not, I suspect because the philosophical underpinnings of raising their performance (academically and socially) to approach that of NT age-peers are much more in alignment with the values of decision-makers in education (possibly with some relevance to indigo's post above and it's companion thread). Which, in turn, might have some connection to the composition of decision-making organizations, which, like many of the private schools referenced in the prior thread, tends to be tilted toward relatively homogeneously bright-average products of the conventional educational system. Nothing wrong with their membership intrinsically, of course, but it's no surprise that people tend to understand best the needs of those most like themselves, and the GT population is not well-represented among educational planners. (The other end of the spectrum is not either, but does have better legal protections, and often advocates at the table.)

It's a whole lot easier to envision reaching down to bring someone up to one's own level, than to visualize supporting someone up beyond one's own level. Even with the best of intentions.

I will note, though, with regard to Wren's DC's school, that having the resources on-call as a consult is very different from having instructional specialists teaching in the classroom alongside the content specialists. The latter has less the aura of friendly experts, and more the feeling of collegiality. Not to mention day-to-day real-time modeling of a variety of instructional practices, which often ends up benefiting not only the students for whom they are a necessity, but the other students as well.

It's a challenging problem to tackle, for sure. From my experience, the teacher behaviours and and attributes that have been most beneficial for my DS have been:

1 / Genuine respect for the dignity of individual learners, and a belief that the behaviours and outputs the student presents are a best effort.

2 / A flexible, authoritative-but-not-authoritarian classroom management style. Divergent thinkers can present as hostile or argumentative at times, and the best match I've seen for my DS has been a teacher who fosters debate or discussion about instruction and assignments with respectful limits. Virtually any case can be made on any topic, within the apportioned times and in adherence to a given process. The procedural justice and voice has earned this teacher DS' respect, and they have a wonderful working relationship.

3 / Designing assignments with a wide range of choice of outputs, with a scope that is interdisciplinary and allows deep dives on self-directed research projects, and which provide a buffer to learning plans should students advance more quickly than expected.

4 / Not over-emphasizing group work. I've found DS learned to be a generous team player when he is in a group where ideas are shared Socratically, but individuals are responsible for their own work.

5 / Asking the student for input on topics of interest and mutual goal-setting for the course of study (choice within an appropriate menu, with scaffolding).

6 / A strong understanding of the student's baseline social dynamics, and a sensitivity to appreciate the difference between resistance because of willfulness vs inappropriate materials.

7 / A personal love of learning and a desire to inculcate curiosity in the students. Initiative to seek out research on the needs of different learning profiles, and the willingness to evangelize with other members of the team on behalf of the student.

8 / Strong partnership and collaboration with parents to map out individualized learning plans. This is, IMO, paramount.

I kid you not - DS' current teacher has been so intimately and supportively involved in his direction that it's not unusual for us to have a call after-hours, at her initiative, to plan ahead. When the pandemic first landed, she made a special effort to arrange 1-1 calls after-hours with DS every second week to catch up. She did this will all her students. She and DS would share music, discuss inventions he was designing, and she'd introduce him to her hobbies - gardening, playing the theremin, radio broadcast, etc. She is a marvel.

8 / Granting teachers autonomy to tailor curriculum to individual learners' needs, within reason, and allowances to depart from it entirely or test out.



On the other end of the spectrum, attributes in teachers or processes which were decidedly NOT supportive of including DS in a general classroom were...

1 / An age-focused mapping of activities to the student. If you hear any refrain of age-linked curriculum, run!

I'll share a memorable parent teacher conference. DS was in grade 3 at the time, and was becoming furious at being held back from accelerating in the curriculum because he refused to colour and draw on his assignments. I had spoken to the teacher about this three times previously, and she was aware that he is moderately colourblind. Unsurprisingly, children who can't see the colours well don't particularly care to colour.

When I met with the teacher, she presented me with a folder full of supposedly "incomplete" work. I flipped through the assignments, and all the substantive work was done, and done well. All that was missing was colouring, which was irrelevant to the work.

I walked over to the garbage can and dropped the folder in. The teacher froze. I told her, "I don't expect to see any more colouring assignments issued to DS. I'm not paying $X for him to become a crayon."

She didn't like me very much after that. There was no more colouring subsequently.

2 / A closed-minded view of giftedness, whether through lack of awareness of the needs of gifted, or dogged clinging to averages without tailoring the approach to the individual student.

3 / Assuming autodidacticism in the student.

4 / Doctrinaire classroom management or unwillingness to accept novel solutions to classwork that, while not the exact answer sought, are still defensible and/or technically correct.

5 / Not tracking data on student progress, and assuming that a quiet child is a satisfied one. In our case, a quiet child is often one who has created an exciting internal world and divorced himself from his (less than ideal) surroundings. Some children act out, mine explores within.

6 / Mapping work streams to the weakest skill on display. This has included misunderstanding the gap between cognitive output and physical output and/or not showing the initiative to disentangle the two to get to the root cause. Also, I've personally experienced a few teachers who failed to account for gaps between executive function and cognition, or provide appropriate scaffolding.

7 / Not having a workplan developed for the year in advance. DS has made several leaps in his learning that have often required a multi-month jump in curriculum in a week.

8 / Not having the necessary reach to teach beyond grade level.

I have long believed quite strongly that there is an incredible need for the very best teachers to be teaching the "weakest" students. It is very common here for the "best" teacher to teach only the senior years and if in lower grades, then only the top class in a lower grade, especially for math which is often the only "streamed" subject. There is such a need for struggling students to have a teacher who knows their content deeply and LOVES it. And gifted students equally deserve someone who can take them further. This should not be an either/or scenario where the best teacher teaches the strongest or the weakest students.

Twice exceptional students not only need the depth of knowledge and the passion for the subject, but also someone who can apply that and figure out what causes a gap between apparent understanding and outcomes.

Having had a child who was very able in math (though far from PG) but also significantly 2E I watched them fly when they had excellent math teachers, and literally go backwards with a ho-hum teacher. The last two years of primary school they had two years of being taught math by a secondary math specialist (I am not sure why this teacher was in a primary school, his only student facing time was yr 6&7 math). My child's yr7 nationally normed test scores indicated just how well they'd thrived on having a great teacher. Our national testing happens about 1/3 of the way through the year, every two years. Two years later (so after a 2.5 more terms with the great teacher and 5.5 terms at a new school having started highschool) their math scores had not just not progressed, they literally went backwards compared to their own previous scores. They were worse off than two years earlier by every possibly measure.

When presented with this direct evidence the school shrugged and said "Well we don't see that in class." But they also continued to keep our child in the most basic math group that was not extremely "remedial" and never addressed the on-going gap between class participation and test results. Class placement was of course dependent on test scores, so a child who loved math, but could not perform, remained in a class with disinterested and struggling students with a very average teacher.

I was the one who eventually realised it was dyslexic reading errors holding them back, and that they needed coaching and re-enforcement on reading the questions and using highlighters. Their school never seemed to appreciate the weight of this issue or encourage the accommodations from their end.

They moved schools in mid yr10, at the new school they had the head of math teaching them for the remainder of their schooling. They very nearly chose HL math (IB diploma). I am fairly sure that had they had experienced continuous high quality math teaching (AND commitment to debugging of gaps between understanding and performance) they probably would have proceeded with HL. Staying on the HL path until literally the last possible moment certainly was extremely beneficial to their outcomes in SL math. Fitting into, and succeeding, in the most rigorous math class in the school required a teacher that knew HOW to work with this child, and wanted to.

The first highschool did not offer HL math, arguing they did not have any students who "needed" the option. Contrast that with a teacher that argues that "I think everyone should do HL math because it's SO EXCITING. It really is such an exciting course, this is where we really KNOW that we are mathematicians!!!... But if you start HL math and realise that it's taking too much time, because it does take more time, and you need to prioritize other subjects for the path you've now chosen, then you can step back to SL. The bonus is that you'll do even better than you would have without all that HL experience."

There is no failure here. There is only "It's ok to have other priorities". This is the attitude, and the work, of a teacher who LOVES their subject, knows their subject, and who gets the very best out of every child, but with compassion and emotional intelligence. Not everyone did sign up for HL math and go through this decision making process, but many did. My child was the last to choose SL instead, regardless of whenever each child who changed made that choice, I don't think any regretted the path.

I should specify some more teacher qualities/skills that my own child has benefited from:

- targeted one-on-one instructional time during or outside classtime. One of DC's teachers offered to devote time every class period (while others were doing independent work) to support DC through an otherwise independent learning course. This teacher approached us at the beginning of the school year about layering on an advanced course for DC during regular classtime. (DC didn't end up using the offered time, because the help wasn't needed.) And of course, I've seen many teachers use afterschool time to additionally support struggling learners. Which leads to another beneficial teacher quality

- a teacher who advocates for every student's success and continued growth, and is willing to think creatively and beyond the institution's historical practices to do so.

This is just it.

I'm increasingly convinced that the generalist model of teacher subjects is not the best model, particularly if an inclusion model is used. Where there is a lot of learner heterogeneity, a passionate and well-versed teacher in the subject is needed, and an understanding of how to adjust that specific subject pedagogically.

The HL math teacher anecdote is really heartening, particularly as math phobias run so rampant, and so unnecessarily.

I wanted to quote all of your post... But I am too tired to respond to all of it. It's sad really that the second list is so much more relatable than the first. And this. So much this.



And this. I find schools do things to gifted children, especially 2E children, that they would not do to a more typically progressing child with a weakness. The attitude seems to be that typically performing children should be scaffolded in their weak areas and allowed (even pushed) to progress, while gifted children should be held back to the level of their weakest skill.

At the same school, with the same reading standards/policies, only a year apart, I watched those rules being applied radically differently to a dyslexic and severely delayed reader vs very advanced reader.

It’s insanity, right, re: cognitive dissonance with 2e?! I literally had his third grade teacher, French teacher, and acting principal advocate that we undo his telescope because he seemed unmotivated to do work and would socialize extensively in class. This was despite his hitting the ceiling on achievement testing four years above age level (three above grade) and getting 100% on all his coursework. (He was strategic enough to stonewall practice, but to ace evaluations. Pretty decent for a then-7yo.) I had never bothered to test for giftedness, as he is quite conspicuous, but I seriously contemplated it that year because I was sick of hearing, “But he’s a year ahead and soooo young...”

Surprise! DS is 2e and is polite enough to refuse work through passive but pleasant resistance. He knew it was pointless trying to argue with those people, so he charmed them and did whatever he pleased, politely.

I will add that DS is at the same school, there is a new principal well-versed in 2e, and his core teacher this year and next is superb. Same institution, same child, diametrically opposed experiences because of the teacher’s advocacy and ethos.

So true. It's easier and more intuitive for most people to help those different from them to become like themselves. Hence raising below-grade-level students toward grade-level, and not supporting above-grade-level students any further beyond.

Educators are also, as is frequently mentioned, not routinely trained in GT, let alone 2e. A subset are specifically trained in disabilities, and most have had some exposure. Current best practice teacher prep programs actually require at least one course in disabilities education. So most educators respond to 2e needs based on their personal experience, which is statistically going to be very limited, or out of their disabilities training, which biases them toward looking at weaknesses.

Individual staff continue to be the most important factor...my parents used to select placements year to year based on where a specific, most accommodating, administrator was.

From the perspective of socially and educationally optimal outcomes for all students, it's still striking to me that the lists we're producing would benefit *all* students. I have had a bee in my bonnet about this recently, but it would not be unduly costly - and potentially cost-saving - for schools to implement a few broad-brush changes to teacher competencies and curriculum choice that would mitigate risks downside for LDs and 2es, while also offering further reach for gifted students.

Low-hanging fruit like...

Standardizing OG reading instruction for all elementary teachers. The estimates I'm finding vary, but they seem to coalesce around 5-10% of the population with dyslexia.* If we save that 5-10% of the population the discomfort and learning loss of delayed identification and remediation, with the SAME amount of teacher time on reading instruction, that seems like an obvious win out of the gate, and especially equity-based. My DS has a family member who has dyslexia, and I used an OG system with him when he learned early spelling for that exact reason - prophylaxis cost the same as the standard approach out of the gate.

*Source 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528651/

Standardizing, at a minimum, elementary math curriculum, avoiding the verbal diarrhea garble that has come in vogue recently among math-phobic instructors. Singapore Math is evidence-based, has a bunch of different regionally-linked curricula, and the text books are dirt cheap (as in, and I'm going from memory here...$20 or less.) Get the basics right, then delve into individualization off a stable, well-researched method. Ideally, math teachers would be specialists, but I think we could cover 90%+ of learners even by having teachers qualified to teach +/- 2 grades around their placed class.

And instead of obsessively testing students, why not have annual credentialing check-ins for teachers during summer months to ensure they're still effective. I'm not talking a cursory checklist of CPE credits or a box tick for a diploma. I'm thinking fulsome evaluations of teachers on the subject matter AND related pedagogy, anonymized and conducted by independent assessors outside the school district. What would you need per-capita, a half-day? IMO, far better cost-wise than subjecting students to multiple weeks of standardized testing, instead of offering the students a more streamlined pulse check and putting the focus where it belongs: on what teachers are teaching, and how well they do so!

Implementing vigorous daily physical education with specialist phys-ed instructors, ideally for an hour. ADHD accounts for between 8-10% of students, depending on estimates I've seen.** The CDC produces estimates of childhood mental health prevalence, which is on the rise. And 18.5% of US children are obese. What ALL these conditions have in common is that, with limited medical exceptions, the prognosis improves with exercise! This is such a no-brainer it doesn't even require further explanation.

**Sources embedded in the above paragraph. Excuse any wonky duplicate words.

With a stable base in literacy and numeracy, and healthier students who are less "behavioural", we could then start getting fancy and address cross-grade-grouping, models of teacher partnerships in the class (I particularly like DS' class, which has a core teacher and a specialist assistant trained in special education, and specials taught by specialists). I wonder what share of behavioural "presentations" in classes would disappear by eliminating these basic issues.

One of the lessons I believe we *should* be learning in this pandemic is that virtual learning and grouping is a tool that can be used in brick and mortar schools to support student needs. It avoids the awkwardness of being singled out if all students can migrate to their devices and plug into a synchronous lesson at the appropriate level, with a teacher in their home school.

There is a lot of need out there. We need to land the basics and not squander children's lives, or taxpayer money, on programs of dubious value, which often have (unintended) socially regressive implications. Then, with less waste and a better foundation, we can design more intelligent individualization for those who need it.

/off soapbox
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to informing these opinions over the years, whether in PMs or threads.


I can believe it. I feel like a bit of an itinerant parent/home educator myself and suspect that will be our approach.

So applicable, and so appropriately generalizable to contexts outside education. I'm tucking this one away.

Yes! Likewise why I used OG for spelling instruction with my children, even for ones who were early and very effective readers. The statistics on reading disabilities/dyslexia are somewhat ambiguous, due to the nebulous and varied definitions being used by researchers. 15% is also a number that floats around the literature, but tbh, that's largely because the 16th %ile is -1SD. In any case, your original point remains: we have to use some kind of reading instruction with the majority of early readers, so why not use the one that's effective with the widest range of learners (including those who might otherwise emerge with reading disabilities).
I'd be pretty happy if we started with elementary math teachers who didn't fear math...but yes, get the basics of numeracy right, and the rest will follow much more easily. Thinking of the absurd number of students I see who complete single-digit addition by rote, count backward (on their fingers) to do single-digit subtraction, and skip counting/repeated addition to multiply...in high school.

And finally, yes, replacing recess, gym, art, music, and free play with more academics and test prep has already collected a body of evidence regarding its counterproductive effect on academic achievement.

A key attribute that is NOT associated with successful student outcomes or efficient resource utilization is my perennial whipping boy, teachers' unions.

(It's at this point that any unionized public school teachers should promptly hit the "ignore" button on my profile. I can guarantee: you will vehemently dislike me, unless you are a passionate educator who feels held back by the teamsters around him/her.)

;tldr, unionization is associated with higher district expenditures, particularly on (tenured) teacher salaries, lower high school graduation rates, neutral to lower academic achievement, and lower graduate earnings (particularly among visible minority males) in the long run. While conventional research suggests that, across unionized and non-unionized populations in aggregate, higher teacher salaries produce better quality teachers, the mere presence of unions undoes this effect! Unionization also fosters greater inter-district competition for education resources, and penalizes smaller/less affluent districts.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty, let's start with the usual political arguments we hear from teacher's unions, and discuss them each in turn...

[1] The effect of collective bargaining is to increase resources available to students.

Cowen and Strunk (2015), "generally find that the preponderance of empirical evidence suggests that teacher unionization and union strength are associated with increases in district expenditures and teacher salaries, particularly salaries for experienced teachers."

Moreover, they state that, "The empirical patterns are consistent with a rent-seeking hypothesis." In other words, premium pricing on salaries as an additional wage-based profit, not funds directed to infrastructure or non-salary expenditures.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775715000242

Eberts (2007) finds a 15%+ increase in the cost of delivering public education under a unionized model.

Source: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ795878.pdf

Hoxby (1996) finds "that teachers' unions increase school inputs but reduce productivity sufficiently to have a negative overall effect on student performance. Union effects are magnified where schools have market power."

Source: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839935

Rose and Stonstelie (2010) determine that larger school districts are associated with a greater degree of unionization in California. "Teachers’ salaries rise and the ratio of teachers per pupil falls with increasing district size." Yes, you read that right: unions actually increase class sizes AND cost more. Great bargain, that.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46497599_School_Board_Politics_School_District_Size_and_the_Bargaining_Power_of_Teachers'_Unions

The evidence does not support argument 1.

[2] Higher union salaries attract more qualified teachers.

Figlio (2002) studies the association between teacher salary, unionization, graduation from selective colleges, and university studies in the subject taught. Higher pay among non-unionized schools does carry this relationship, but this relationship does not hold for unionized schools.

Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979390205500407

West and Mykerezi (2011) reinforces the idea that teacher collective bargaining is profit-seeking and "unions tend to encourage teacher bonuses that are based on additional qualifications or duties, but discourage bonuses that directly reward improved student test scores."

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227414362_Teachers'_unions_and_compensation_The_impact_of_collective_bargaining_on_salary_schedules_and_performance_pay_schemes

The research seems to suggest that unionized environments do not attract objectively more qualified candidates, but do drive post-university credentialing as a key factor in compensation policy.

Note that there is ample evidence that higher teacher pay attracts higher quality teacher candidates, reduces teacher mobility, and contributes to better student outcomes. Note that this is blunted in unionized environments! Isn't that telling? Unions actually detract from benefits that would otherwise occur in non-unionized environments.

Source: https://journalistsresource.org/education/school-teacher-pay-research/

[3] Unionized teachers drive better student outcomes.

Lovenheim and Willen (2018) find damning evidence of sustained negative effects on earning power and skills development among students who attend K-12 in a unionized system, with minority males most adversely affected.

"We find robust evidence that exposure to teacher collective bargaining laws worsens the future labor market outcomes of men: in the first 10 years after passage of a duty-to-bargain law, male earnings decline by $2,134 (or 3.93%) per year and hours worked decrease by 0.42 hours per week. The earnings estimates for men indicate that teacher collective bargaining reduces earnings by $213.8 billion in the US annually. We also find evidence of lower male employment rates, which is driven by lower labor force participation. Exposure to collective bargaining laws leads to reductions in the skill levels of the occupations into which male workers sort as well. Effects are largest among black and Hispanic men... we demonstrate that collective bargaining laws lead to reductions in measured non-cognitive skills among young men."

Source: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24782

Hall et al. (2016) study the impact of collective bargaining agreements on the proportion of ninth graders passing the state's math proficiency exam. In Ohio school districts, the length of a union’s collective bargaining agreement was linked to lower math scores. The authors state, “It would seem that more stringent negotiations lead to less productive education production."

Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504851.2016.1158912

Cowen and Strunk (2015) find that higher unionized teacher pay is not associated with the lift in academic performance we would hope is achieved. The authors state, "The evidence for union-related differences in student outcomes is mixed, but suggestive of insignificant or modestly negative union effects."

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775715000242

Brunner et al (2020) assess the impact of school finance reforms and intergovernmental transfer regimes on a host of student factors. In more unionized states, increases in funding tend to increase average teacher compensation, but do not reduce class sizes, suggesting the benefits accrue to teachers. Moreover, larger union districts bargain away resources and reduce new teacher hiring in smaller, less well-resourced districts, magnifying inequality by district size.

"We should therefore expect to find greater class size reductions in states with stronger teachers' unions if unions do not alter the allocation of school resources between teacher hiring and raising teacher salaries. On the contrary, we find no statistically significant difference in the effect on class size by teachers' union power. If anything, there is suggestive evidence that there was less of a class size reduction in the stronger union states by 0.144 pupils (standard error of 0.118), suggesting that unions alter the allocation of resources away from teacher hiring."

"Furthermore, the school spending in strong teachers' union states was allocated more toward increasing teacher salaries, while districts in weaker teachers' union states spent the money primarily on hiring new teachers."

Source: https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article/102/3/473/96775/School-Finance-Reforms-Teachers-Unions-and-the

[4] Teachers need collective bargaining agreements to be compensated fairly.

This appears to be untrue in the United States, though higher teacher salaries in non-unionized settings would be beneficial (on net) to students. This argument is offensively untrue in Canada.

Median teacher wages in the United States are much lower than in Canada - I was quite surprised by just how much. When I benchmarked posted full-time teacher salaries for all the districts in Canada, a teacher with 10 years of experience in 2016 - depending on age - is between the 80th and 90th percentile among individual incomes, or about $84,200 CAD.

However, it looks like Canadian teachers often pro rate their salary and work fewer hours than full time, in addition to not working in the summers. Average elementary + secondary teachers salaries are $60,744, suggesting that Canadian teachers work about 72% of a full-time load. Because teacher benefits in Canada - from my research- account for an additional 15-20% of compensation when you factor in benefits, this is an extremely inefficient and expensive way to amortize fixed labour costs over work hours. I would expect Canadian data on teacher productivity (weighted by income) would be much lower than in the US.

Source: https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/dv-vd/inc-rev/index-eng.cfm

BLS has some great wage data here for educators:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2019/e...-median-annual-wage-of-58230-in-2018.htm

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/t...t-for-the-year-ending-september-2017.htm

As does the National Centre for Education Statistics, which shows that median teacher salaries in the US in 2016-17 were $58,950, approximately the 55th percentile, roughly on par with average earnings for Americans with a bachelor's degree.

Sources: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_211.60.asp



So the take-away here is that teachers are paid commensurate to their level of education and are on-track for population-wide norms for bachelors' degree holders in the US. Canadian teachers earn a significant premium over US teachers, and appear (based on actual vs posted salary data) to only work 72% of the time, yet collect full-time benefits.

In Canada, this speaks to excessively high unionized teacher salaries creating a surplus of teachers, and well below-average teacher income among non-tenured / itinerant teachers. This is the same effect we see of unions magnifying the receipt of increased salaries at the top of the teacher salary table, and reducing hiring.

There you have it - teachers' unions are a political cudgel used for resource hoarding among the most senior teachers and affluent districts, with no attendant benefit to students or teaching productivity.

I found a few interesting articles down another rabbit hole discussing lower pay and the link to factors (which appear to be strongly correlated to the presence of collective bargaining) lowering teacher quality over time. IOW, unionization drives away high quality teachers, and may be contributing to a lower average quality in the teacher talent pool over time...will definitely be digging into this bit of the literature with interest!

Thanks for the exposition. Full disclosure: I have, at various points in my career, been part of collective bargaining units for teachers--which, of course, is true for nearly all public educators in my region, and actually the default. Some years ago, it became possible to opt out, but it requires a fair amount of initiative to do so, and the union will still take bargaining fees out of you.

I can point to specific exceptions in places I've worked, including currently--but I think we've established that my public school place of employment isn't entirely typical. (For example, the union agreed several years ago to tie certain teacher bonuses to student outcomes standardized test performance.)

The group data, though, are difficult to wave away. Interesting that Canada and USA teacher conditions are much more different than I would have expected. With reference to the earlier discussion on the miseducation thread regarding access to psychoed evals, it also sounds like the perennial shortage of school psychologists everywhere is dramatically more severe in CA than in USA. NASP, the largest US school psych org, recommends 500-700 students per school psych. The actual US average is about 1400:1. My very non-comprehensive survey of the Toronto board website (I recall that's where the private psych firm mentioned previously is located) suggests that school psychs there are running a ratio of around 2500-3500:1 (5-7 schools per person, with schools ranging from 200+ to nearly 800, clustered around 500, in my unscientific sample). That's more intense than the most intense job I've had, which was about 2000:1, with about 140 evaluations a year (yes, I did almost one every single school day). I wonder if psychs are in or out of the teacher unions in Canada. In my US experiences and observations, when there is a union, most school psychs are in the teacher union, with some districts classing them in a different, non-teaching staff union, and a few districts placing them on the administrator scale, or some other independently negotiated schedule.

Thanks aeh - I will reiterate your point that the above is average, not universal trend, and psychologists would not be considered in that discussion.

That's an interesting observation re: school psychologist coverage ratios. I seem to remember you saying the upper limit on completing evaluations in federal US law is 60 days, right? With the Canadian schools in the board you scanned running at one fifth capacity, that would translate into a 10 month turnaround equivalent in Canada, plus the wait time on the front end to be placed on an evaluation list. That seems just a touch light, so I suspect our school psychologists are not, on average, working full time case loads in the schools, and I would be *very* interested what the total count of school psychs is on an FTE basis in school settings.

I just checked the public register of active school psychologists in Ontario, and you'll be pleased to know your back of the envelope numbers for Toronto are pretty accurate when extrapolated across the province. There are 1,009 active licensed school psychologists for a total K-12 aged population of 2.04MM students, for an average of 2,022 students per school psych. The data I have don't show the split by in-school vs in private practice, but I suspect the ratios in public schools will be closer to your estimates once the private practices are netted out.

The average school psychologist salary I'm finding in the province brings in one quarter the average private billable rate per hour recommended by the provincial college of psychologists. I imagine there is a LOT of moonlighting and incentive to switch to private practice...

As employees of the boards, I suspect the full-time school psychologists would also be unionized here. I know that, at least for secondary school psychologists, they are grouped in the secondary school teachers' union in Ontario.

I am not a teacher, or close enough teacher's financial information to be able to say much very useful about Australian teacher's unions and their impact. But it certainly is fascinating to me how different the US and Canadian situations are, and I believe the Australian situation is quite different also.

I have long noted comments here about private school teachers generally being lower paid in the USA. That is certainly not the case here. Possibly in the catholic system, but not at "independent" schools.

There are certainly semi-regular discussions in the media / govt about how to raise the standard of teaching, how to attract a higher standard of student to B/Ed in the first place, etc. How to attract quality industry specialists to jump tracks and become teachers... Is it pay? Is it respect? etc.

With regard to psychologists, I believe the education departments in each state do have psychologists, maybe. They might even do individual educational assessments on children sometimes but I can't think of ANYONE I know who has a child that has been assessed by an education department psychologist. I think their role is primarily to advise schools from afar (ie phone and email) about reports already done, or managing behavioural issues and decision making. I am not actually sure what they do, but I believe they exist...

Private schools routinely have school psychologists, I don't believe I have ever heard of one doing an IQ assessment, they seem focused on counseling (ie social, emotional, behavioral and usually short term)...

Educational assessments are recommended by schools, public and private, and then you are expected to organise them... Wealthier families will just pay (possibly after a 6-9m wait). Other families will go onto a very long waiting list for a public hospital based assessment (more likely 2yrs), which I think are probably also only available if there is also a developmental or behavioral issue being addressed (ie not an option for a supected gifted child with suspected dyslexia). In some scenarios it might be possible get medicare to help pay for a private psychologist IQ assessment if a pediatrician has requested a psychologist assessment for a developmental issue and the psychologist uses and IQ test as part of their assessment... We did this once, but I am no sure if you can still do it, even so there is still a decent out of pocket.

Given that any time you change schools, or states, or maybe it's just been 2yrs, or now you want yr12 exam provisions... You will be asked to do this again and again. I have at this point paid for at least eleven full ed psych evaluations. And I am not sure how many OT evaluations. What is really fun is that it is very common that psychologists who like to do assessments will not want to engage with school advocacy at all, beyond some recommendations in the report. Or they will charge by the hour if willing (I have never succeeded at actually having a psychologist who had done a test intervene with a school directly).

We had to do a private eval at 2 for an HG preschool in NYC. Then she had to do an IQ test for Hunter elementary in NYC, then we had to do something for CTY, I think. Then I we had to do one for Toronto school system gifted, then she did the SSAT for admittance for her current school. After she got a high enough score on the SSAT, then did another test and interview for 2nd stage. For all the IQ tests, they were all in the same range +/- 2 points. Never had to wait. Either in NYC or Toronto. You can find someone. Do you have to pay? Yes, but in my mind, if you don't get your hair cut for a year, or not go out for dinner, you can pay for it.

Wren, you've crossed the border and seen some of the high performing schools in NYC and the gifted / private world in Toronto. What's your take on how the politics and ideology around giftedness in the two countries play out in the schools, if at all? Did one system serve your DD better? I'd value hearing your thinking!

Really, that question doesn't have to be just for wren. Anyone who has experience with more than one education system probably has some interesting insight into how the different methods benefited (or didn't) the students.

I've been a culture-bound parent in Canada, so what perspective I have on other countries' models is gleaned second-hand.