"At each step toward a long-term career in teaching, those who were more inclined to teach scored less well than those less inclined to teach."... For example, by 1997, the 1992/93 college graduates in this study with the highest college entrance examination scores were consistently less likely than their peers with lower scores to prepare to teach...:
Graduates whose college entrance examination scores were in the top quartile were half as likely as those in the bottom quartile to prepare to teach (9 versus 18 percent).
Teachers in the top quartile of college entrance examination scores were more than twice as likely as teachers in the bottom quartile to teach in private schools (26 versus 10 percent).
Teachers in the top quartile of scores were about one-third as likely as teachers in the bottom quartile to teach in high-poverty schools (10 versus 31 percent).
Graduates in the top quartile of scores who did teach were twice as likely as those in the bottom quartile to leave the profession within four years (32 versus 16 percent) (Henke, Chen, and Geis 2000.)
Note that point about private schools: they attract the highest scorers. Yet they don't offer tenure, pensions are not as great, their classes are only two students smaller on average, and they don't pay as much (see this link at the Dept. of Education). If money is so critical (as has been suggested here and elsewhere), why is this? Also, private school teachers don't get criticized the way that public school teachers do. Why is this?
This seems like data that would need to be broken down a bit farther. I have to wonder if most of the high scorers are working in prep schools, gifted academies, etc. My understanding is that private school salaries are less in parochial schools, but not necessarily in other types of private schools. Which private schools are attracting those high scorers?
As to why private schools might be able to attract teachers without offering high pay and good benefits.... I can think of several reasons; here are a few:
1) Many private schools don't require a teaching certification, so it is a teaching opportunity that is open to some who would have to go back to school in order to teach in a public school.
2) In urban and semi-urban communities, it is easier and less stressful to work in an environment where students and families toe the line or get kicked out. I'm sure there are many people who are willing to work for less pay, job security, benefits, etc. in order to avoid the challenges of working in a public school. It does not follow that you can attract people to public school for private school pay, because you are often asking significantly more of the staff members when they are working in a public school environment than in that lower paying private environment (note: I am comparing lower paying private to public; not all private to public).
3) People who want to teach particular types of learners are more likely to be attracted to private than to public. It seems likely to me that people with top subject expertise are more likely to choose private than public for exactly this reason. I've seen many teachers leave public education because they imagined college students in elementary bodies--not in ability, but in engagement. The variation in engagement in college setting, prep school setting, or other select setting is much less varied than in a public school setting. A teacher can focus much more fully on the content of what they teach vs. the method they use to teach. I think about the range of teaching styles I encountered in college. Some held me on the edge of my seat and I loved every lecture; some bored me to tears. I may have preferred one class to the other, but I accepted that the responsibility for learning was on me, regardless of whether or not I liked my professor. Except for in very unusual cases, no one would have dreamed of holding the professor responsible for my grades. Yet in a public school, lack of effort, engagement or preparedness is laid squarely at the feet of the classroom teacher.
I think that the primary reasons you don't hear the same complaints about private school teachers as you do public school teachers are pretty obvious:
1) Private schools aren't tax payer funded, so only the people who use the specific schools care about what happens there. By contrast, many tax payers see themselves as the direct employers of all public employees and will comment on their performance whether they have firsthand knowledge or not, and whether they have a child in the public schools or not.
2) Private schools are able to control for many (if not most) of the conditions that impact outcomes, whereas public schools are not able to control those conditions. It is easier to blame the teachers than it is to blame the conditions (which would be extremely expensive to fully address, if they could be fully addressed at all). In other words, many of conditions that people complain about in the public schools are attributed to teachers and private school teachers are protected from those conditions in the first place.
3) Test scores provide ammunition to use against public school teachers but are not reported for private schools unless the private school chooses to be part of the testing. Private schools who are struggling in any way are highly unlikely to make that public. Why would they?
I doubt very much that people who choose private school teaching over public school teaching are doing it because they don't want good pay and benefits or union protection. I suspect it has much more to do with the conditions under which they will be teaching, and I agree with previous posters that this is not going to change until the conditions become more attractive and/or both the compensation for the current conditions and the attitude of the general public changes significantly. I mean really, who wants to rush towards work conditions in which pay and benefits are getting worse, conditions are getting worse, and public bashing has become an art form?
I am not suggesting, by the way, that all critiques are bashing; just that it is a very difficult time to be a teacher given the near daily thrashing the profession has been taking in the media.
