Award Winning Teacher Promotes Higher Salaries for Teachers

Brian Crosby, whose book "The $100,000 Teacher" won the 2003 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year in Education, examines the miserable salaries and working conditions of the nations public school teachers

Dulles, VA (PRWEB) September 2, 2003 -- With the back to school season beginning, our focus is on education. Many agree that our education system is having problems, but few agree on a solution or try to improve the situation. Brian Crosby, a teacher and author whose award-winning book "The $100,000 Teacher" has just been published in paperback, argues that raising standards and salaries for teachers is the correct solution to Americas education problems.   

Brian Crosby convincingly argues that the key to better schools and better students is better teachers. He examines the miserable salaries and working conditions of the nations public school teachers, and offers a detailed but very manageable plan for how we can attract these skilled professionals-and retain them-without even raising property taxes.

As the title suggests, Crosby advocates that skilled professional educators receive a salary of at least $100,000, and more, for their vital work of preparing Americas students for the demands of the twenty-first century. He discusses why teachers unions are wrong in insisting that teacher quality cannot be objectively evaluated and how incompetent teachers can be eliminated from the system by raising standards and accountability.

Crosby then explains how we can afford to increase teacher salaries and improve working conditions, not by raising property taxes, but by redistributing existing money so that the better teachers make higher salaries than weaker ones.

Increasing teacher salaries isnt a new idea, but until now no one has clearly explained how it can be done and why it must be done. Crosby offers new ideas like creating a more competitive, private sector-like pay schedule with a tiered career ladder, paying teachers according to performance, pooling money earmarked for special programs to create a legitimate pay scale, providing for peer evaluations, and upgrading the daily working conditions of teachers. This book will inspire good teachers, inflame bad ones, and educate parents and policymakers.

Brian Crosby has been a high school English teacher in California since 1988, where he has also served as mentor teacher and chair of the English Department. Crosbys article, Good Teachers Deserve $100,000" appeared in the Los Angeles Times in November 1998 and was syndicated in papers across the country. The article was highlighted on C-SPANs Washington Journal," and Crosby appeared on radio nationwide to debate its merits.

A graduate of California State University with a BA in English and an MA in Computer Education, Crosby belongs to the National Council of Teachers of English and the California Association for the Gifted.

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There are some important ideas here... and a strong argument for awarding teachers-good ones-the status they deserve." -Publishers Weekly

In addition to the compensation issue, the book also addresses the need for better working conditions, more flexible unions, and a re-vamping of teacher evaluation systems." -Teacher Magazine

Though the title implies that the author will argue for whopping teacher salaries as a way to improve education, Brian Crosbys proposals are actually far more nuanced..."
-Education Gadfly

Here are sound and well-researched ideas for teacher preparation...licensing thresholds, rubrics for evaluation, professional salaries, and career ladders." -The Rochester Teacher