Raising Teacher Salaries

Letter to the Editor, The New York Times

To the Editor:

Would elevating teachers’ salaries to the level of engineers’ mean that the quality of teaching would match that of engineering (Week in Review, August 8)? Not if teacher education remains unchanged. Engineers are taught according to settled science. Teachers are too often taught education-school myths that defy the results of research. Despite research establishing teacher-directed instruction as the most effective approach for most children, educations school preach the gospel of the teacher as mere facilitator and the child as natural learner. Phonics, the multiplication tables, facts and drills are passe.

Improve the teaching product, and the salaries will rise.