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  • Ask the Administrator: HS vs. CC Faculty

    By Dean Dad February 15, 2009 9:59 pm
    (Also appears in Ask the Administrator )

    A regular correspondent writes:

    What, exactly, are CC faculty supposed to do that substantially distinguishes them from high school teachers?

    I don't mean this in a derogatory manner, I was a high school teacher and found the job incredibly fulfilling.

    Similarly, I was a full-time CC instructor on the tenure-track. In order to be approved for tenure I was expected to teach classes (actually semester hours) to a reasonable standard of competency. I was also expected to take part in the organizational structure of the college by serving on committees. It was expected that I keep current in the methods of pedagogy in my field and demonstrate that I was attempting to improve my instruction (note that this is pre-tenure).

    I could write the exact same job description for a high school teacher, except that they would spend far more time in the classroom on a weekly basis. I taught more classes, had more preps and had more students as a HS teacher than a CC teacher and I worked far more school days. That 'month break' between fall and spring semesters sounds more like 10 days depending on the year.

    The weird thing? The salaries were about the same, maybe a little better at the CC. And, the opportunities for overloads, intersession classes, summer classes made the possible salary significantly better.

    What justifies this disparity? Especially in these economic times?

    For reference, my academic qualifications were better when I got the HS job than at any time during my CC gig and I was a far better teacher. While teaching HS I just kept reflecting on how much free time I had while teaching at my CC.

    I guess the corresponding question is, 'how are CC administrators paid in relationship to school district personnel who have similar jobs?' I've got no idea/experience on this one other than to note that many, if not most superintendents make well in excess of 100K, but I've got no idea what the lower level folks make.

    I'll start by saying that this varies by state, so generalizations that are relatively fair in one state may be wildly off-base in another. Depending on locale, one venue might be unionized and the other not, for example. I'll be interested to see what my wise and worldly readers have to contribute on this one, since they hail from many different places.

    That said, I'll address the academic side first. In the geographic areas with which I'm relatively familiar, high school teachers have historically been teachers first and subject matter experts second (or sometimes third). On the positive side, that has often meant that they've been trained in the quirks of child and adolescent behavior at a level that most laypeople haven't. On the negative side, I had teachers in high school whose subject-matter mastery sometimes lagged my own, and I wasn't alone. (I clearly remember explaining the Missouri Compromise to my American History teacher, who thought that it involved partitioning Missouri. You know, North Missouri and South Missouri.) The worst – and I'm not making this up – was the fifth-grade math teacher whose grasp of fractions was bad enough that we graded quizzes by majority vote. If TB came home and told me that, I'd be in his principal's office the next day with a pitchfork in one hand and a torch in the other.

    At the cc level, instructors are professors. That means their primary expertise is in their subject matter, with a secondary focus – if that – on instruction. While I've seen some great teachers, many good ones, and a few regrettable ones, I haven't seen a single one who didn't at least understand the subject matter of the course. The least effective ones often can't communicate their knowledge effectively, but at least the knowledge is there.

    On the higher end of the scale, we expect professors to have the capacity to explain things above the level they're teaching. That's why we require Master's degrees, and prefer Doctorates, even to teach 101-level classes. The idea is to be able to handle student queries that don't follow the book, to follow developments in the field before they show up in textbook revisions, and to equip students with some of the depth necessary for them to succeed at the next level. Our graduates transfer to four-year colleges, and they need to be ready to compete there. (According to the data we've been able to gather, they actually graduate at higher rates at their destination schools than do 'native' students.) Professors who have the capacity to do higher-level classes can provide that extra depth, so that's who we hire.

    It's probably true that the 'face time' demands on high school teachers are higher. At my cc, which isn't unusual, professors have to teach 15 hours per week and provide a few office hours on top of that. They also have to do a few committees. All told, they can do the scheduled work in probably 25 hours per week, when classes are in session. That's not counting prep time, or grading, both of which can be monstrous time sinks, but both of which can be done at home, or at night, or on Sunday. High school teachers have to do five days per week, six (or so) classes per day, starting at an unhealthy hour of the morning. (Why, or why, haven't American high schools adjusted to the research which shows that the adolescent body clock starts and finishes the day later than everybody else's? But I digress.) They also have to prep and grade, and sometimes do lunchroom or hall monitor duty, too. (I literally can't imagine my faculty doing that.) I imagine that high school teaching involves less curricular work, since curricula are pretty rigidly standardized, but that can bring its own set of stresses.

    I can't really address the salary question directly, since I don't know the ins and outs of local high school salary schedules. (Yes, they're unionized, as are my faculty.) My impression anecdotally is that they're roughly comparable, though you get tenure faster in the high school system. And I have even less clue what, say, high school assistant principals make around here, so I really can't address that.

    What I like about this question is the implication that some folks who are absolutely killing themselves as college adjuncts might be able to find very satisfying lives teaching high school. In some disciplines, that's probably true, and well worth some mulling.

    Wise and worldly readers – any thoughts or observations on this one? Keep in mind, the question isn't meant to be derogatory towards either group; it seems to be (at least I'm reading it as) an actual question.

    Have a question of your own? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.

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Comments on Ask the Administrator: HS vs. CC Faculty

  • Posted by Michelle@masto.com on February 16, 2009 at 5:00am EST

  • [W]e expect professors to have the capacity to explain things above the level they’re teaching. That’s why we require Master’s degrees.

    I can't speak for every state in the U.S., of course, but many districts require secondary teachers to hold an advanced degree, and indeed make this requirement mandatory for permanent certification. (In New York, where I'm nearing completion of my M.A., we have five years to get that degree as well as teach full time for two years - the other requirement for permanent certification.)

    And indeed, neither of my degrees are in Education; they're both in my subject matter (English). A degree in Education isn't required, although one must obtain the necessary licensure to teach - but one has a few different choices in terms of how one obtains that teaching license. (There are several pathways to certification.) I got all the same teacher training - all those extra classes - but still have the same subject knowledge as perhaps a CC instructor.

    I'm not entirely convinced that a degree in Education makes one a better teacher (nor, of course, am I convinced that a degree in one's subject matter makes one expert.) Those extra courses I was required were very helpful, but I was of the opinion - and still am - that I could comparatively easily (and maybe even more easily) gain expertise in teaching simply by the very work and practice and daily grind (if you will) of teaching, whereas I was perhaps less likely to get the same level of content knowledge if I were in the classroom. (Another point for continuing teacher education, I suppose - especially if it's content-related.)

    I suspect that in many cases, the differences between high school and CC instructor are negligible.

  • Emperor's New Clothes
  • Posted by ezry on February 16, 2009 at 8:15am EST

  • I think there are three pieces to this question.

    First: I have no doubts that it can be difficult to distinguish highly experienced, conscientious, hardworking HS teachers from good CC teachers, or even from good 4-year faculty. (Also: Schools at both levels can either be so well funded that they can hold very high expectations of their faculty, or so poorly funded that they have to employ hacks and dolts.) But the intention is for the CC to hire, more often, faculty with more subject-matter knowledge.

    Second: It seems entirely possible that an experienced HS teacher, used to what can be a crushing load of classroom management decisions, inane bureaucracy, heaps o' students, squeaky-wheel parents, and late nights of grading, can stay with mostly the same teaching practices and find herself enjoying relatively larger amounts of free time teaching FT at a CC. She does have the option to decide that the CC is paying her to spend more minutes per day per student than she was able to do at the HS, and adapt accordingly (and probably still end up with more "free" time). I adopt grading and curricular-innovation practices that I steadfastly do not recommend to my NTT faculty colleagues who have much higher teaching loads than I do.

    But does subject-matter qualification, and/or additional time investment per student, and/or any other expectation we place on teachers at different institutions, result in better teaching and learning?

    Here we get to the implied question that's most important: Is anyone measuring, accounting for, or rewarding the additional intellectual and professional work that is *supposed* to go into teaching (and other related professional pursuits) as one moves to a lower course/student load and sometimes a higher salary? In settings in which there are quantifiable scholarship requirements (and in which we "outsource" the evaluation thereof to uncompensated blind-peer-reviewing faculty and editors), we do hold faculty accountable for some of their extra-pedagogical work.

    But quite often, especially in higher ed, we do not hold faculty accountable for degrees of investment in and success with teaching. We wince at how time-consuming and "subjective" and even invasive it is to evaluate teaching practices. Who wants or has time to or has training to visit all those classes (not just a single session every year or two), meet with all those teachers, assemble and read all those portfolios, design locally reasonable and professionally consistent evaluation criteria, and painstakingly write up the evals that judge whether Thelma or Daphne is providing her students better instruction, support, feedback? And if nobody's looking carefully, we have only individual integrity/masochism to rely on as the spark for better teaching.

    So until we decide to make such an investment, we can only hire hopefully and sit with our fingers crossed and our rose-colored glasses on, anticipating but not knowing that our faculty really are doing better by our students than faculty at School X down the road -- which pays less and/or requires more teaching work -- are doing by theirs.

  • Posted by Turducken on February 16, 2009 at 10:10am EST

  • Just out of curiosity: When you measure the four-year completion rate of your students who transfer, are you comparing them to everyone who starts at the four-year level as a freshman, or only to those who have accumulated an equivalent two years worth of credit?

  • Teaching Salaries
  • Posted by Dr. F. Gump on February 16, 2009 at 2:20pm EST

  • Remember supply and demand? When I last taught in K-12 schools, there were thoroughly entrenched locals who would have taught for next to nothing (I was on the faculty negotiating committee).

    Currently, we have a lot of adjunct faculty who practically live in their vehicles while teaching at multiple area colleges. Are college students that much easier to teach? Is it preferrable to be a little further away from parents with unreal expectations?
    Freedom of the open road?

    There must be some aspects of teaching college students that draws applicants, even when adjunct status is the only available option; however, adjuncts barely make half of what full-time instructors pull down and full-time instructors are becoming fewer.

    We have no professors or similar titles at our college; only instructors with one committee assignment required. Some possibilities exist for overloag assignments, but few get rich at this gig.
    Fewer still have parent-teacher conferences.

    Supply and demand, or maybe - not what one
    knows, but who one knows?

  • ideal world
  • Posted by DFS on February 16, 2009 at 3:10pm EST

  • In an ideal world, where HS graduates were actually qualified for graduation, the CC work-load would be devoted to the ideal two-or more track student body: college transfer students, applied science students, and diploma/certificate students, with perhaps some continuing education efforts. This involves teaching at intentionally different levels, for different students, and is often done by the same professor.

    At my CC, fully two-thirds of incoming HS graduates need remedial education, that is, developmental work. So, we first have to discover what they "learned" wrong and fix it.

    Even among those entering as "qualified" and not needing developmental work are almost always helpless without a calculator or without spell-check or without the expectation of reading ahead -- in fact, they are becoming more and more ignorant of any study skills conducive to success at the four-year.

    We all like to bitch about the disparaging results associated with the HS diploma, but it ultimately goes back to the parents.

    By the way, public school teachers here make at least what new CC FT's do, and my CC does not have any "tenure." Further, the statement that about 25 hours per week is all it takes for everything, well, we are required by policy to spend 30 hours per week in our offices, and this still requires long nights and some weekends as well on our own. But, it could be worse. There is a CC up the road some 90 miles which has a punch-in time clock, just like at the factories we used to see in the area.

  • Student v. Teacher Ownership
  • Posted by jabjr , None at None on February 27, 2009 at 5:00am EST

  • The level of motivation that a college student may have over a high schooler is important to consider and may directly correspond to the workload of the teacher at the high school or collegiate level. In essence, because college students are generally more motivated than high schoolers, the demand of labor on the college professor is reduced.

    Possible reasons for this hightened level of motivation for college students include:

    • Economic: In general, costs are more significant. There is an opportunity to obtain a higher salary upon completion of degree. Additional costs are incurred when courses are failed.
    • Interest: The application process alone encourages ownership, responsibility, and determination. Students often major in areas of interest and/or strength.
    • Social Status: Obtaining a degree may give both of sense of well-being to the student and increase their respectability among their social group.
    • Maturity: Students are older.

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