Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics - IEA

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PART 1: 17 1. Introduction Educators have long claimed that good teaching is the key to higher student achievement, as well as to other positive student outcomes, such as moral values and tolerance. Economists also have bought into this argument (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2007; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Wright, Horn, & Sanders, 1997). Although not all economists agree that higher salaries are associated with better teaching (see, for example, Hanushek, 2006), there seems to be, even on this matter, a shift in their thinking toward the notion that using monetary incentives to reward good teaching is a means of recruiting better-prepared individuals into teaching (Lavy, 2005). Increasingly, it seems acceptable to argue that teaching quality may be higher in countries that pay teachers more (especially in return for greater competence) than the pay received by competing professionals. The reverse side of this coin is the common complaint in the literature that a significant proportion of mathematics middle school and secondary teachers are not sufficiently well trained in subject matter to teach higher level arithmetic concepts, introductory algebra, and introductory geometry to seventh and eighth graders (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2003). Yet, some nations are better able than others to supply many more of these “elements” of mathematics knowledge to teachers. Some countries may “purchase” higher levels of teacher mathematics knowledge because it is inexpensive to do so. The price of attracting more “mathematics- oriented” individuals into teaching may be lower in certain countries than in others because market demand for mathematics-intensive professions is relatively low. Also, even with relatively high demand, the supply of mathematics-oriented professionals in some countries may be high because past investments have created a young labor force well prepared in mathematics, thus making it relatively inexpensive in those countries to train almost any high school graduate to become not only a “good” mathematics professional but also a good mathematics teacher. Another reason why wages in mathematics-intensive professions may be relatively lower in some countries is that political choices have kept the income distribution somewhat more equal, thus holding down the salaries of highly demanded professions relative to professions such as teaching. In this case, it is easier to attract mathematics-oriented individuals into teaching because they do not have to give up as much monetarily to pursue a teaching career. Countries such as the United States can therefore find it expensive to match the better mathematics teacher preparation in other countries, mainly because of the higher salaries of university-educated engineers, mathematicians, and scientists compared to university-educated mathematics teachers and mathematics teacher trainers. These high salaries are the result of a small pool of labor with high-level mathematics skills and a very high demand in industry for workers with such skills. Furthermore, countries such as the United States, where student teachers have a comparatively poor high school mathematics background, may find it expensive to train these people to a high level of mathematics competence primarily because they start out so far behind.
18 TEACHER PAY AND STUDENT MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT These two reasons are difficult to separate, because the more widely that mathematical skills are available in the labor force, the smaller the likely difference in wages between workers in jobs requiring these skills and workers in other professions, such as teaching, where the emphasis is on other skills. Accordingly, if all high school graduates have relatively high mathematics skills, the premium for jobs requiring these skills will not be as great as in economies where mathematics skills are rarer. However, mathematics skills do vary greatly in national student populations (see, for example, Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, & Chrostowski, 2004, for an analysis of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)). In nearly all education systems, mathematics teachers are not paid on the basis of their mathematics skills; rather, they, as with all teachers, are paid as teachers, usually according to their education and teaching experience, and often by the level of schooling taught. Thus, if teachers as a profession are paid less than scientists and engineers, mathematics teachers will also be paid less. They, then, as a class of professionals, are likely to have lower mathematics skills than engineers, scientists, accountants, and workers in other mathematics-intensive professions who are paid mainly for their mathematics skills. So, even in countries where the average high school graduate is, compared to counterparts in other countries, well trained in mathematics, it is possible that recruiting individuals with adequate mathematics knowledge to become teachers will still be difficult if teachers are paid much less than people in mathematics-intensive professions, and if teachers are paid similarly no matter which subject they teach. Finally, we observe that some countries facing similar income distributions are willing to pay teachers more relative to non-teaching professionals. We could argue that some parents (or governments) in some countries have a greater preference for highquality mathematics teaching, where quality is measured by individuals’ mathematics knowledge. Even within countries such as the United States, where states are responsible for teacher pay policies, there is considerable variation in average teacher relative pay. States such as Connecticut pay somewhat higher teacher salaries, and states such as California pay teachers somewhat lower salaries. This situation suggests that even when the supply of mathematics-oriented professionals and income distribution are similar, the public sector’s willingness to pay teachers’ salaries will vary from one political jurisdiction to another. In this publication, we compare the salaries of primary (Grades 1 to 6 in most countries) and secondary school (usually Grades 7 to 12) teachers with the salaries of people in mathematics-oriented professions, such as engineering, scientific fields, and accounting. Our analysis centers on a number of developed and developing countries. We also look at the relationship between what mathematics teachers are paid and the mathematics scores of Grades 8 and 10 students on mathematics tests associated with the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Because, as we previously noted, teachers who teach mathematics are generally paid on the same scale as other teachers, we use the salaries of teachers as a category to measure the salary of mathematics teachers. We compare the salaries of teachers as a profession with the salaries of personnel in mathematics-oriented professions to secure a measure of how teachers teaching mathematics are paid compared to those in occupations that teachers might enter if they were well trained in mathematics. We hypothesize that students in societies with higher rates of teacher pay score higher on the TIMSS and PISA mathematics tests than do students in societies with lower rates of teacher pay.
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Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics - IEA

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