Teachers in crisis

May 20, 2019 3:07 PM

New Zealand's public education system, as in other countries, is under intense pressure. On 29 May it faces what's being described as a once-in-a-generation mega-strike. Journalist Toby Morris has produced a short comic that explains the crisis from both an individual and a larger perspective.

Toby Morris has also produced comics about Christmas parties, Australian immigration policies, commuters, and the "war on men".

posted by reshet (24 comments total)

If they handle it anything like their recent gun regulation update, then I have great faith in the people and leadership
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 3:27 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Love this comic. My partner is a part time art teacher in Australia, and there are many similarities. She often hears comments like "you only work 9-3 and have all the school holidays off". Meanwhile, she works most holidays planning for the next term. Teachers, like nurses, vastly underpaid and under-appreciated. I hope it all gets resolved in NZ!
posted by greenhornet at 3:41 PM on May 20, 2019 [6 favorites]

The Spinoff is a NZ online commentary and opinion magazine.
Toby Manhire is the editor of The Spinoff. Toby Morris draws comics for The Spinoff. As far as I am aware, they are not the same person.
posted by zamboni at 3:46 PM on May 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

Toby Morris previously:
Te tiriti o Waitangi: the comic book
A 12 step guide to a perfect non-apology
The road code is a scam
Hussam and the Death Way
This is Richard. His parents are doing OK.
Great Gran
posted by zamboni at 4:00 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Teacher compensation has been an issue since I worked as a teachers' aide back in the early 90s. There was SO much work to get done outside the classroom, SO many supplies that were needed...

Back then, the strategy that schools were using to get adequate funding and teacher pay was to qualify for Title I funding through getting some percentage (75%? higher?) qualified for free lunch, which was used as a metric for "we need to pour money into this school because the community needs to be lifted up across the next generation(s)".

Our school qualified about 2 years after I started working there, and suddenly everything changed. Supplies were easily afforded without being purchased personally. Teachers were compensated for their continued development education. More money was made available to reduce teacher/pupil ratios mostly through hiring of aides, but still that helps a lot. Basically the school and staff thrived once this sort of "wow, this place needs help" federal funding. It's nearly like if you pay out enough for a school to not have to struggle, it becomes someplace where learning happens and the staff doesn't feel exploited.

This is a US example from a specific point in time (I have no idea how things work with schools these days), but I found it pretty stark even while I was living through the whole process.
posted by hippybear at 4:13 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

What greenhornet said (my partner is a High School dept head in Aus).

The bit in the comic about tests being individualised (or, in her case as an English / History teacher, essay-based) is something that's often overlooked, and even harder for people to grasp. Mention the "20 minutes for each of 29 students" thing, and people tend to quantify that as "some time" - but work it out and it's 9.5~10hrs; a whole extra working day or more per week or two.

Throw in, in her subjects, multiple student drafts (always delivered last minute and wanting full feedback and 100% corrections because, y'know, kids…) and you're looking at an extra 1.5~2 days work per week for most of the semester. Which she doesn't get time to do before classes or from 3-5 because, well, department heads have other stuff to manage (teachers, curriculum, departmental admin, etc). Late days & a chunk of nights & weekend are the order of the day.

And although teachers don't have the departmental responsibilities and overheads department heads do, it's not much better for them - they teach more classes across more grades, so while they've got less admin work they've got proportionally more marking/drafts/etc to do.
posted by Pinback at 4:41 PM on May 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

Forgive me! Credit goes to Toby Morris, not Toby Manhire. Thank you for spotting that Zamboni.
posted by reshet at 4:45 PM on May 20, 2019

"Manhire" is an awesome name for somebody making a cartoon about labor issues.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:45 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Corrected the Morris/Manhire mixup in the post
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 4:49 PM on May 20, 2019

If they handle it anything like their recent gun regulation update, then I have great faith in the people and leadership

Unfortunately I'm guessing its not going to be that easy. The cost of the current proposed offer by the Govt. (the one rejected by NZEI/PPTA) is I understand at least 6x what the gun-reform is anticipated to cost (and most of the cost on that program is the buyback which is one off), doesn't have nearly as uniform support and agreement on the problem and solution by the public or political parties, and I'm guessing (and I'm clueless really but just from what I've read) likely tied up with a whole bunch of issues - like class size, structural reform of public education, other working conditions. Seems like this is an order of magnitude more difficult.

Gun reform had a very clear sudden and shocking event based driver, near uniform support politically (at least at a high level if not on all the details), very broad public support, a working model based on our closest neighbor, and was long overdue.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 4:59 PM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

I was totally with this comic until the last panel or so, where it said that the teachers "love their job" and thus (implied) we should have sympathy for them. Though (no doubt) that's true, I also think this is one of the most insidious and invasive sentiments applied to teaching professions these days--the notion that love for the job necessitates sacrifice and that, since the involved instructors do feel that love, we can get away with paying them the bare minimum / less than the bare minimum to perform their heart's calling (this last being said with deep irony; I realize it's hard to communicate this in text).

I'm saying this because the rest of the comic emphasizes something that I deeply agree with--that teaching is a job, and a hard and grinding job at that, which not everyone believes and which you sometimes have to show your audience (laboriously, as here) is the case.

The same logic (to some extent) governs how adjunct instructors are handled at the college level here (the U.S.) and to how hardworking visual / audio artists are paid. Whenever anyone tells you that you should accept less / zero compensation for anything because you "love what you do," guard your goddamn wallet.
posted by lorddimwit at 5:15 PM on May 20, 2019 [16 favorites]

There's no denying that teachers do an important job, but let me be a government shill for a minute here and give the other side of the story. Teachers earn way more than the average person in New Zealand, and their pay has been rising faster than the average:

Over the past 10 years, teacher remuneration has grown more quickly than salary and wage rates for the workforce as a whole. Since 2007 average secondary teacher remuneration has increased by 27.4% to $79,500 and average primary teacher remuneration has increased by 30.6% to $72,900. Over the same period the labour cost index, which tracks changes in salary and wage rates, has increased by 22.4%. Over the same 10 year period inflation has increased by 21.4%.

The median income in New Zealand in 2018 was $997 per week or $51,844 per annum. Teachers already make more than civil engineers, veterinarians, software developers and nurses. Principals make well into 6 figures. They are being offered an extra 9% on top of this, and turned it down.

Morris says in his cartoon that the "beginning salary" for teachers used to be more than the median income (20 years ago), but now it isn't. So what? Just because you don't make more on your first day on the job than other people average over their entire career, doesn't mean you are underpaid. It obviously not a "below average salary".
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 6:47 PM on May 20, 2019 [5 favorites]

Perhaps the civil engineers, veterinarians, software developers and nurses also need to go on strike. It depends on whether they feel they are being fairly compensated for the amount of effort they are putting into their careers. The teachers don't feel they are. As a child of two educators and having worked in public school in the US for a few years, I know that that effort is, and I don't blame teachers for wanting more money because the time commitment and effort required to do their job is pretty intense.

I don't know any civil engineers who are concerned about cultural context and language issues to know whether what they are communicating is being clearly perceived. Above linked comic suggests this a practice of a good teacher. Should they be compensated for this kind of concern about how they carry out their job? I think they should be. Etc with a lot of all the other stuff.
posted by hippybear at 7:02 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Sorry to be the one who has to do the stastics nitpicking, but median is not the same as average.

The median salary is the salary which 50% of the given population earns more than.

The average salary is adding up all the salaries and dividing by the number of people.

You cannot directly compare the two. The average is almost always higher than the median for anything like a salary that has a minimum amount because people can earn more than twice the median value, but no one earns less than zero dollars, so the few really high earners skew the average higher.

Admittedly that payscale website is not helping announcing "average salary" when they really actually mean the median, as demonstrated by their little graph and actually calling it the "median" down below. Fortunately, it turns out they also have data for teachers.

Looks like the only one of those professions that have a lower median salary than teachers are the nurses. And I'd believe nurses are underpaid, too. Also, if that teacher listing includes positions like university professors or other professions that earn more than school teachers, that's going to skew that number higher than what the striking teachers are actually getting paid, too.
posted by Zalzidrax at 7:07 PM on May 20, 2019 [9 favorites]

hippybear: Toby Morris' cartoon claims that teachers earn less than "average", and that compared to median incomes it has "gotten worse". As far as I can tell, and going by either median or mean, that's false. They earn more than the median, and their rate of pay increase over the last 10 years is also above average according to government statistics, so how has it gotten worse? The teacher's union is claiming that teachers need a pay rise to attract more people to their profession, so the comparison to other jobs is relevant. Teachers "feel" they deserve a pay rise, who doesn't? They've been offered 9%, seems like a good deal to me. What about all the other stuff the government has to spend money on?

Zaldidrax: Adding them up and dividing by the count is the mean. Mean and median are both types of averages. It's not clear which type of average the government website is referring to. The link you provide on the Payscale website for teachers is based on only 11 samples (click "Show Salary" and see the small print: "Individuals Reporting: 11"), whereas the estimates for those other professions are based on hundreds or thousands of values. I suppose the reason for that is that teacher's pay is set by the government so they have less need to use online tools to figure out the market rate.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 7:57 PM on May 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

L.P. Hatecraft: Mean and median are both types of averages. It's not clear which type of average the government website is referring to. The link you provide on the Payscale website for teachers is based on only 11 samples (click "Show Salary" and see the small print: "Individuals Reporting: 11"), whereas the estimates for those other professions are based on hundreds or thousands of values.

So, since we don't know if the government site is using mean, mode, or median (though I'd assume mean, since it's probably most flattering to their position) it doesn't seem fair to compare their data to the medians for other professions posted on the PayScale website.

The PayScale site does have specific data (based on hundreds of values) for Primary School Teachers (median income $54k - lower than nurses, civil engineers, software developers and veterinarians) and High School Teachers (median income $62k - higher than nurses, but still lower than civil engineers, software developers and veterinarians). And yeah, nurses are notoriously underpaid for the work they do. (At least they are in Canada, and I gather it's the same in many/most countries. "Women's work" don'tcha know?)

I noticed this in the NZ government site:

"Base primary teacher salaries range from $47,980 to $71,891 for someone with a teaching degree, or $49,588 to $75,949 for a trained teacher with a subject degree, for example a BSc. Base secondary teacher salaries range from $47,000 to $78,000, depending on the qualification they hold. Primary and secondary teachers receive extra remuneration in the form of units for taking on extra responsibilities. Some teachers are eligible for other allowances such as Tutor Teacher allowance, Careers Advisor allowance and Kāhui Ako (Community of Learning) allowances."

Anyone have an understanding of what extra responsibilities might entitle a teacher to higher pay or what the significance of the allowances are?
posted by Secret Sparrow at 8:30 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

I think that teacher pay may be a red herring here. The comic points shows that the teachers’ jobs have been subject to an incredible amount of mission creep without a commensurate level of logistical support. At a certain point, it doesn’t matter how much you’re paying someone if they’re being set up to fail.
posted by Leeway at 8:34 PM on May 20, 2019 [16 favorites]

That is a good point. A lot of these anti-public sector union arguments seem to assume some sort of command economy where the government can just order people to be teachers at a given salary, when it's very clear in New Zealand's case that they aren't offering an attractive enough salary to convince enough people to enter the profession.

It isn't the union that's saying teachers are underpaid, it's the free market. The teachers just don't want to get stuck with professional workplace that implodes when suddenly there's way more work than there are qualified people to do and people quit due to burnout, increasing the stress on the remaining people until it all snowballs into a disaster.
posted by Zalzidrax at 8:45 PM on May 20, 2019 [5 favorites]

Hey all- the derail about teacher pay is really illuminating, actually, as this is the tendency in the public that boils down the labour conversations about teaching to "pay teachers more" - and in the American context, with abysmal wages, it makes sense. I'm a teacher and part of the union, in the Australian context, which I recognise is also NOT directly comparable to the kiwi context.

Anyway, just quickly on pay: I get frustrated when people hear the conversation about teaching get going and cut it off with "yeah yeah pay teachers more" (or not, depending on the argument.) At the last agreement negotiation in the state that I'm in, we actually fed back to the union that we don't actually care that much about more pay, we care about the conditions.

Eventually, the job gets too much, no matter how much we're paid for it. Talk about the conditions, not the pay.

Great comic. Thanks for sharing.
posted by freethefeet at 9:02 PM on May 20, 2019 [14 favorites]

If you're asking a worker to do more than it's reasonable to expect one person to be able to do, it doesn't matter how much you pay them.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:07 PM on May 20, 2019 [12 favorites]

That's why what I mentioned upthread about Title I funding being enough to hire aides for teachers was an important point. Having another adult (or adults) in the classroom takes weight off the main teacher so it doesn't end up being more than they can do.

Hiring more teachers and having more, smaller classes would be more ideal. But that can butt up against infrastructure issues which is much more costly and is a different issue entirely.

But providing the support for teachers to be able to do what they need to do without burning them out? That needs to be a part of every calculation when it comes to education funding.
posted by hippybear at 9:14 PM on May 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

Lucid and clear. This is a masterpiece of art and storytelling.
posted by hugbucket at 10:27 PM on May 20, 2019

Yes, and his other cartoons linked up-thread are clear and illuminating as well.
posted by Harald74 at 11:44 PM on May 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

"doesn't have nearly as uniform support and agreement on the problem and solution by the public or political parties,"

One thing that is driving this across English-speaking countries -- and in other Western countries as well, although to a somewhat lesser degree -- is that during the post-WWII baby boom everyone had children in school. Well, not everyone, but in the US it was around 70% of households that had a K-12 child, similar in other countries, between shorter life expectances, more multigenerational families (grandparents still in the home), and much larger families. There was ENORMOUS support for education funding when 70% of households were directly benefiting from it.

Today, we're looking at delayed childbearing, much much smaller families, many more households without children at all or which consist of independent seniors (who may have once had children by now don't). Something around 30% of households today in the US have children in primary or secondary education, again similar in other English-speaking countries. The public support for adequate funding isn't there, because now you're looking at 70% of households that DON'T directly benefit, and people can be remarkably selfish and shortsighted about this. You'll talk to seniors whose own kids went through well-resourced schools, who now are quite wealthy, but don't feel they should have to pay taxes for schools because they "don't get anything out of them."

(In many communities, shifting patterns of immigration plus racism also contribute -- some people would be willing to pay taxes for the white underclass to go to school, but they strongly object to paying for black, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, etc., immigrants to get educated and constantly insist that "those people" aren't going to work hard or graduate anyway, so why should they have to pay for them to go to school? Etc.)

"That is a good point. A lot of these anti-public sector union arguments seem to assume some sort of command economy where the government can just order people to be teachers at a given salary, when it's very clear in New Zealand's case that they aren't offering an attractive enough salary to convince enough people to enter the profession."

And even if started paying a market-clearing wage today, you're looking at 4 to 8 years before you've got enough teachers to fill the holes because the profession requires so much training (and it's typically difficult to suddenly decide you want to be a teacher in your last year of university because licensing requirements generally require certain credits before then).

And given the background checks and so on that school employees must undergo (I looked at NZ's rules, they're pretty comparable to the US's), it's often not possible to pay a market-clearing wage even for low-skilled and semi-skilled positions because so many people are disqualified by the background checks. (Partly due to overcriminalization of low-level offenses during the 80s and 90s.) You're trying to hire janitors and maybe you're paying 15% more than the local average but the background check disqualifies a big chunk of people to begin with, and then there are so many hoops to jump through that a lot of people will go "fuck this, they pay less at the factory, but at least I can just go to work and go home instead of going through this enormous rigamarole that is not worth a 15% salary bump to me."

Teachers have degrees and when the working conditions are bad enough, they're going to jump ship for other white-collar work, probably a desk job that's hella less demanding. I'm not sure it's possible to pay a market-clearing wage for teachers without dramatically improving working conditions, and I'm not sure it's possible to dramatically improve working conditions because the political will isn't there. Which is a very discouraging thing to say, I know, but that's what I've seen.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:57 AM on May 21, 2019 [3 favorites]