Responding to the growing shortage of special education teachers, the state Board of Regents is moving forward with plans to streamline the special education certification system - reducing the number of titles from 45 to just three.

The Regents endorsed the State Education Department's conceptual plan, which will now be drafted into regulatory changes that are expected to go into effect in the fall of 2009.

NYSUT has long been predicting the looming shortage, especially at the secondary level, since the adoption of the new certification structure in 1998 that changed a single special ed certificate to 45.

The SED will draft proposed regulatory changes to:

• Retain the current Early Childhood special ed certificate (birth to grade 2), but extend its coverage to grade 3;
• Retain the Childhood special ed certificate as currently structured, covering grade 1-6;
• Establish a Childhood special education extension and extensions for both Early Childhood and Adolescence;
• Eliminate middle childhood certificates (generalist and subject areas in grades 5-9);
• Replace the current subject-specific, special ed adolescence certificates (grades 7-12) with a single, special ed adolescence generalist certificate that will include an enriched academic core.

While looking at the barriers posed by the current certification structure is a positive step, NYSUT will critically review and comment on SED's proposed regulations.

The union wants SED to clarify the scope of practice of the adolescent certificate holder when providing core academic instruction in a special class setting and to clarify the ability of this proposal to meet No Child Left Behind requirements for demonstrating subject matter competency.

NYSUT will also recommend expanding the grade 1-6 Childhood certificate to include teaching pre-K and kindergarten (ages 4-5).

Myths and Facts About Teacher Pay

MYTH:  Teachers make just as much as other, comparable professions.

FACT: 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.

Not only do teachers start lower than other professionals, but the more years they put into teaching, the wider the gap gets.

• A report from NEA Research, which is based on US census data, finds that annual pay for teachers has fallen sharply over the past 60 years in relation to the annual pay of other workers with college degrees. Throughout the nation the average earnings of workers with at least four years of college are now over 50 percent higher than the average earnings of a teacher.
• An analysis of weekly wage trends by researchers at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that teachers' wages have fallen behind those of other workers since 1996, with teachers' inflation-adjusted weekly wages rising just 0.8%, far less than the 12% weekly wage growth of other college graduates and of all workers. Further, a comparison of teachers' weekly wages to those of other workers with similar education and experience shows that, since 1993, female teacher wages have fallen behind 13% and male teacher wages 12.5% (11.5% among all teachers). Since 1979 teacher wages relative to those of other similar workers have dropped 18.5% among women, 9.3% among men, and 13.1% among both combined.
• Teachers lost spending power for themselves and their families as inflation outpaced increases in teacher salaries last year, according to NEA Research. Inflation increased 3.1 percent over the past year, while teacher salaries increased by only 2.3 percent.

MYTH:  Teachers are well-paid when their weekly or hourly wage is compared with other professions.

FACT: Teacher critics who make this claim use data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in its annual National Compensation Survey (NCS). But NCS data are based on employer surveys, and the NCS measures scheduled hours -- not the work teachers do outside the school day. Because teachers do not work the familiar full year and roughly 9-5 schedules that most professionals have, the comparison is one of apples to oranges.

• Economic Policy Institute President Lawrence Mishel explains that in the NCS data "Teachers are measured by days worked (say 190 official school days divided by five, resulting in 38 weeks), while others are measured as days paid (work days plus paid time off: breaks, vacations and holidays)."
• The bottom line: NCS data vastly understate the weekly hours of teachers and the weeks teachers work each year, and thereby significantly overstate the hourly wage or weekly wage for a given annual wage.
• If you believe the NCS hourly pay data, then you believe that English professors ($43.50) make more per hour than dentists ($33.34) or nuclear engineers ($36.16).

MYTH: The school day is only six or seven hours, so it's only fair that teachers make less than "full-time" professionals.

Still here?  Click on http://www.nea.org/pay/teachermyths.html to finish the article and more!

Lolita in the Classroom-NEAToday March 2008

\Dolls in fishnets, hair extensions for kids, and pole-dancing Tween tv stars. Girlhood isn't what it used to be, and that means teaching girls isn't either.

Maybe it was when stores began stocking thongs embroidered with "wink, wink" in sizes for 7- to 10-year-olds, to be covered by sweatpants with "Juicy" stitched across the rear. That's about the time it became apparent that there is less sand in the hourglass for girlhood than there used to be…. http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0803/sexualization.html

Assessing the Threat

Are we doing enough to reduce the risk of violence against educators?

http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0802/coverstory1.html…be sure to read to the end regarding students with disabilities…

 NEAToday February 2008