Council Report Recommends $11,000 Pay Raise for New Science Teachers

The city’s Department of Education should be more selective when it hires science teachers for elementary schools, and it should pay new science recruits $11,000 more a year than other teachers, a City Council report released yesterday said.The council’s Committee on Education, which issued the study, found six key problems with the science education the city’s public schools offer students: There aren’t enough qualified teachers; elementary-school science is nearly nonexistent; middle- and high school science is subpar; science labs are insufficient; private resources aren’t used effectively, and science education is not a top priority.While the report recommends that elementary-school science teachers should be required to have lab courses and more formal science training before they enter city classrooms, it acknowledges that raising the bar for science teachers might reduce the supply of applicants.It said that to combat the relative shortage of science teachers, the education department should pay science teachers more than other teachers.It suggested boosting the starting salary to $50,000 from $39,000. That would compare with $61,460 for nurses without a bachelor’s degree, and $62,760 for nurses with a bachelor’s degree, the report said.The president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who generally opposes paying different categories of teachers different salaries, said: “We think $50,000 ought to be the base pay for all new teachers.”The report also recommends hiring “science coaches,” who would have responsibilities similar to those of the math and reading coaches who already work in the schools, and providing additional professional development for science teachers. Further, it urges the city to modernize science labs and bring to the schools more money from private sources.“Science is a gateway to the future, and we cannot keep our children locked out,” the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, said at a news conference.The chairwoman of the council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz, said a 1992 report called on the public school system to make science a core requirement for students in elementary and middle school, to install lab specialists in all middle and high schools, and to require that all science teachers have completed two semesters of college-level lab science courses.She said most of the recommendations in that proposal have spent the last dozen years “collecting dust.” “We cannot afford another generation of students,” Ms. Moskowitz said. The report said the poor quality of the city’s science program is obvious from its results.In 2003, 50% of fourth-graders and 46% of eighth-graders in New York City passed the state science exam. In high school, the situation is even more dismal. Just 36% of students took the Regents exam in chemistry, and only 20% of students passed. Only 17% took the Regents exam in physics, and only 9% passed.In an e-mail message yesterday, the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Carmen Farina, said the education department is already focusing on fixing science education. It is working with top science educators to design and implement a “pre-kindergarten to 12th-grade science program to challenge all of our students from those in Advanced Placement and accelerated classes to students in general education, special education, and our English Language Learners.”In addition, she said: “We already have students in classrooms with teachers who have taken advantage of new science training being offered by the City’s top science institutions.”Meanwhile, a nonprofit foundation, Math for America, announced yesterday that it would spend $25 million to train high-school math teachers in New York City and supplement their pay for four years. Each of the 180 fellows will win a full scholarship for a one-year master’s program at either New York University or Queens College.The fellows will then receive additional stipends totaling $62,000 over their first four years of teaching.

Council Report Recommends $11,000 Pay Raise for New Science Teachers

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