I will be talking about how teachers, and other educational workers write about being underpaid in their newsletters, teacher unions, articles and letters to congress. Do you think you’re paid enough? Think about being paid at least 30% less than other degree graduates like yourself. That’s how educational workers feel.
“Collective bargaining helps to abate the teacher wage gap. In 2015, teachers not represented by a union had a ‑25.5 percent wage gap—and the gap was 6 percentage points smaller for unionized teachers.” (Strauss) This quote is just an introduction to show you a genre that breaks down the numbers. This isn’t a teacher writing it but a good secondary source with lots of stats.
“The erosion of relative teacher wages has fallen more heavily on experienced teachers than on entry-level teachers. The relative wage of the most experienced teachers has steadily deteriorated—from a 1.9 percent advantage in 1996 to a 17.8 percent penalty in 2015.” (Strauss) This genre is also from the same Washington Post article, the genre is showing how the the rate of entry level teachers are being underpaid and underappreciated.
Last quote from the Washington Post article is showing the decline from teachers salaries in a weekly basis. Which could be an example of the CHAT term Activity.
The NEA ( National Education Associations) is where a lot of teachers write a lot of their articles. A reason article is talking about the public school teachers and the pay gap between other career options. When they are writing these types of articles they are using the CHAT term(s) Representation and Production. “It is true that most educators decide to enter the teaching profession because of a desire to work with children, but to attract and retain a greater number of dedicated, committed professionals, educators need salaries that are literally "attractive.(NEA)" Quotes like this example shows how they Represent how teachers do not become teachers because of the money, but the job itself.
Another thing that teachers write about is the big gap in their work and their pay. According to the NEA again “Not only do teachers start lower than other professionals, but the more years they put into teaching, the wider the gap gets.” (NEA) The NEA also says that teachers salaries are so much lower than other incoming competitive jobs that some teachers are unable to survive and pay on their loans. “According to a recent study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the teaching profession has an average national starting salary of $30,377. Meanwhile, NACE finds that other college graduates who enter fields requiring similar training and responsibilities start at higher salaries:Computer programmers start at an average of $43,635, Public accounting professionals at $44,668, and Registered nurses at $45,570.” (NEA) While Teachers and Educators are starting at $30,377, which is leaving them unable to pay bills. “ The intrinsic rewards of an education career are often used as a rationale for low salaries. But low teacher pay comes at a very high cost. Close to 50 percent new teachers leave the profession during the first five years of teaching, and 37 percent of teachers who do not plan to continue teaching until retirement blame low pay for their decision to leave the profession.” New teachers are often unable to pay off their loans or afford houses in the communities where they teach. Teachers and education support professionals often work two and three jobs to make ends meet. The stress and exhaustion can become unbearable, forcing people out of the profession to more lucrative positions.” (NEA) The NEA is attracting people who are not aware of how low paid educators are. This genre is to inform people on the comparison of starting wages. This could be an example of the CHAT term Reception or Socialization. Just because it can leave the the reader more informed about the salary difference, and they can take something from this genre.
Another thing with being a teacher being always having the worried of being cut, and depending on the state they live in they have to worry about if they are in a “ right to work” state or not. Which they could or could not be denied to work somewhere if they’re in a union. States such as Texas is a right to work state. “ “Texas is also a right-to-work state that does not have a collective bargaining law for teachers (Krueger 2002). As such, analyses of Texas labor markets are not complicated by the need to measure and control for variations in the extent of teacher union influence.”(Taylor) Texas itself has a good example of salaries, even though there are some rocky parts there it still takes them forever to hit what is “ high paying” for teachers. This genre is another article from the academic journals from Taylor, this one is more of the the CHAT term ecology because later on when I cite more quotes he talks about more physical aspects of the writing. Such as lots of numbers and charts. Which will not be presented but represented by his writing and explanations. He gets back to explaining how Texas and its teacher unions are separated in pay.
“Finally, the quality of the available data is another reason why Texas is particularly well suited to this analysis. Much of the variation in teacher compensation reflects the premia paid for individual-specific characteristics like experience or educational attainment. Because the distribution of teacher characteristics is likely to vary across labor markets, it is important to control for such characteristics when estimating the effect of competition on teacher salaries. Texas’ administrative records provide the data necessary for such controls.” (Taylor)
With him going into more detail he says in this quote
“ To explore this possibility, I divided teachers into three experience groups—beginning teachers, experienced teachers, and highly experienced teachers—and divided non beginning teachers into two educational attainment groups—teachers with a bachelor’s degree or less and teachers with a master’s degree or more—and re estimated Equation (9).25 Following the definitions used by the NCES, I consider teachers with 3 or fewer years of experience to be beginning teachers (U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics 2005). By this definition, roughly one-quarter of the teachers in the sample are beginning teachers. Roughly one quarter of the teachers in the sample have at least 20 yr of experience. I consider them highly experienced teachers. All remaining teachers are considered experienced teachers. Table 3 presents selected coefficient estimates”(Taylor).
This genre just shows how the CHAT terms Activity and Reception is being used.
My next source is another NEA source. This genre is another article that is talking about how politicians and other people believe in cutting public school funding and cutting teachers. In this genre the CHAT term Production could be used. In this text the NEA is producing lots of facts and trying to reach other people. To prove them wrong/ right about certain myths about cutting funding. Cutting funds goes back to the other two sources (the other NEA article and Taylor) back to teachers not being able to pay for anything.
“ Educators across the country tell stories of how lost jobs and lost funding have left them struggling to make ends meet this year. “I can’t afford to buy anything that isn’t a necessity,” says first-grade teacher Lysa Sassman, one of many California educators whose salary has been slashed. “I grocery shop based on what’s on sale, and I can’t tell you the last time I’ve gone out to dinner or gone on a vacation.” “Every teacher I know is making sacrifices,” she says. “Some have lost homes and cars.” But it’s not just teachers who are hurting from budget cuts, furloughs, and layoffs. According to recent research, low educator pay is also causing long-term economic harm.” (NEA)
In that quote from this genre it is showing us that this decision is causing long term effects with teachers. They’re presenting it as teachers are the important workers, but steady cutting them in this next quote, it will show more Representation as one of the CHAT terms.
“In the wake of the recession, many politicians have tried to balance budgets by reducing the number of dollars spent in public school classrooms. But researchers say this policy is misguided. A few weeks ago, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a report, “Debunking the Myth of the Overcompensated Public Employee,” stating that public employees were underpaid, and that lowering their wages would be unwise. “ (NEA) This quote is appealing to the audience because it’s still giving explanation on how politicians are taking these teachers lives as a budget.
“That’s a good question, says EPI President Lawrence Mishel. His 2008 book, The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground, revealed that public school teachers in 2006 earned an average of 15.1% less per week than similarly educated workers and $154 less per week than those in comparable professions, such as journalism and nursing. “There’s much discussion about the importance of teachers, but given that teachers already suffer a wage penalty, making further cuts is going to move us in the wrong direction,” he says. “This misguided solution is going to exacerbate the challenge of recruiting and retaining quality teachers,” he says. Pay cuts and layoffs have discouraged talented students from becoming teachers, says K.C. Walsh, president of the Oak Grove Educators Association in California.” (NEA)
The last quote from this genre is summarizing how politicians are forcing teachers to cut classroom time. This is meant to get more attention to the readers and future leaders to see how much this is really hurting not only teachers but classroom time. This could be a CHAT term Distribution. “NEA researcher Richard Sims says economic stagnation is just one of the many negative consequences of cutting education budgets. Reducing classroom spending will also make it harder for Americans to compete in the international job market against the Chinese and others who are increasing how much they invest in their children’s education, he says.” (NEA) That quote is appealed specifically to everyone. It gives background information about future information.
My next source is an article written about the CPS (Chicago Public Schools). Talking about their strikes, how they’re paid based on test, and how the district itself is a big part of the state itself. The main CHAT term in this source is Representation.
” Finally, a teachers’ union had the courage to take a stand against the corporate education agenda to privatize and dismantle urban public school systems emanating from President Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and being implemented today by virtually every big city mayor across the country; in this case Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, one of the nation’s most powerful politicians. In its counterattack, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) organized and mobilized its teacher base, and actively involved parents, students, and non-profit community-based organizations. It made the improvement of education a central goal, thereby thwarting Emanuel’s attempt to isolate the CTU as just another “self-interested” union. The CTU inspired militant actions across the country, most recently the teacher boycott of high-stakes standardized testing in Seattle, Washington.”( Kaplan) This quote is showing how the district finally got the courage to present the argument to the city and the unions.
“The union, on the other hand, made concessions on some key issues. Most importantly, it agreed to reduce pay guarantees to laid-off teachers from two years to one year, a bitter pill to swallow with fifty-four more school closings in the works, potentially affecting over a thousand teachers and paraprofessionals. At the same time, a new Teacher Quality Pool of veteran laid-off teachers was created from which 50 percent of all new hires must come (the district was not obligated to hire any laid-off teachers before this settlement). However, the new formula for rehiring laid-off teachers gives the highest priority to those with “excellent” or “satisfactory” ratings, which, with the new evaluation system, will increasingly be based on student test scores.” (Kaplan)
This quote above explains the how the genre is expanding its academic audience showing how to get the word out.
Above all, the CTU was bucking the Obama national education agenda, which, under No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top, dangles scarce federal dollars for states and districts that agree to expand the number of charter schools and evaluate teachers based on student test scores. This agenda, begun in Chicago under now Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan and buttressed by corporate foundations and pro-charter movies, enjoys bipartisan support in Washington, D.C. and in most statehouses. No local union, including the CTU, can stand up to such a coordinated, powerful national attack alone. To beat back these attacks requires not only a class-wide local union strategy, embracing the local working class, but an organized, class-wide national strategy that combines local, state, and national organizing to (1) resist teacher-bashing state legislation; (2) win funding for public education and other social services through progressive taxation; and (3) assist building alliances between educators, students, parents, community-based organizations, and other public-sector workers. To accomplish these and other goals, teachers’ union activists should have no illusions about the bureaucratic, conservative nature of the top leadership of the two national teachers’ unions, the AFT and NEA, and that of most of their state affiliates. As states become increasingly financially strapped, due to continuing economic crisis and the success of the right wing’s anti-government and anti-tax agenda, teachers’ unions have been increasingly on the defensive. However, rather than organize a fight back against the corporate agenda and for authentic reform, local unions, aided and abetted by their national affiliates, have generally accepted concessions without a fight. AFT officials, in particular, have “helped” locals around the country negotiate contract agreements that permit teacher evaluations as well as “merit pay” based on student test scores. Chicago was the exception to the rule.”
This quote is showing the CHAT term Activity. “In 2010, the Illinois legislature passed a law requiring districts to use student test scores for at least 25 percent of a teacher’s performance evaluation. This meant that at best the CTU could only negotiate the minimum percentage, which it did, rather than eliminate the use of test scores altogether for evaluation purposes.” (Kaplan)
In Project 1, I have talked about every CHAT term. I have given logical, and detailed background on teachers being underpaid. I have discussed the details of many genres from newsletters, to websites, to academic journals.From the NEA to Kaplan their writings have gotten the attention and audience expansion that has been needed to get the genres out. After reading this paper hopefully you get the idea of how teachers, and teacher unions come together and make their voices be heard. From strikes to pay cuts, their genres and text are getting the attention of many people.
Works Cited
TAYLOR, LORI L. "Competition and Teacher Pay." Economic Inquiry, vol. 48, no. 3, July 2010, pp. 603-620. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1465-7295.2008.00130.x.
KAPLAN, DAVID. "The Chicago Teachers' Strike and beyond." Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, vol. 65, no. 2, June 2013, pp. 33-46. EBSCOhost, webcontent.heartland.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=87646476&site=ehost-live.
Kowarski, Ilana .”Researchers Say Cutting Teacher Pay is Not the Solution for Economic Woes”. 2016. National Education Association
2017. National Education Association
Strauss,Valerie. Think teachers aren’t paid enough? It’s worse than you think.2016. Washington post