K12 Schools Must Fill Need For Digital Media Skills
There is a new urgency to teach digital media literacy as a study finds students are taking online information for granted
It isn't easy being an administrator in a public school district these days. Under pressure to meet the federal No Child Left Behind standards and other public policy requirements while operating under tight budget constraints, you and your colleagues also face the demands of satisfying various constituencies, including teachers, parents and the community, as well as getting along with your school boards.
You are also paid, on average, salaries lower than ones you could earn in private-sector positions. But many of you say that you enjoy other satisfactions of working in an educational environment, and even if you could make more money elsewhere, you are comfortable staying where you are, notwithstanding the challenges and frustrations of the jobs.
"Nobody goes into one of these jobs because of the money. The good thing about education is that everybody is underpaid equally. If it wasn't fun and rewarding in other ways, I wouldn't do it," says Carlos Garcia, superintendent of the San Francisco (Calif.) Unified School District.
"I have not met an administrator or teacher who is really doing this for the pay. Our reward is being able to affect the lives of kids in a positive way," adds Marrius Pettiford, dean of counseling and student services at Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School in the Wake County (N.C.) Public School System.
Salary Survey
The latest edition of Salaries and Wages Paid Professional and Support Personnel in Public Schools, 2006-2007 by Educational Research Service (ERS), a nonprofit organization, reveals that salaries, not including bonuses and other perks, in 2006-2007 were up nearly 44 percent over what they were 10 years earlier for superintendents, nearly 45 percent for deputy/associate superintendents, 34.2 percent for instructional services directors, 26.7 percent for librarians and 23.3 percent for counselors. Technology directors have seen salaries increase on average about 12 percent from five years ago, in 2001-2002, when ERS started tracking those data. Th e survey, which has been done for the past 34 years, includes data on 23 professional and 10 support positions from 550 public school districts. You might use the data to help them put into context salary increases for their staff in a national or regional context, to assess the level of competitiveness when attracting other staff , and to review and compare their district's salary schedules for administrators and teachers relative to other school districts.
The ERS survey also shows that salaries tend to be the lowest in districts with the smallest enrollments. In general, as a school system gets larger and more complex-and the number of staff supervised grows-the salaries paid employees in the central office also tend to increase.
However, the survey states that the relationship is more complex than simply one of size and dollars. It suggests that the relative wealth of communities and the geographic region make a difference. Small districts in more wealthy communities might pay higher salaries than larger districts in less wealthy areas. Suburban districts tend to pay the highest average salaries, while rural districts pay the lowest, according to the survey. The Far West, including California and Nevada, and the Mid-East, including Delaware and New York, generally pay better than other parts of the nation.
Administrators in different job categories say the relationship between what they do and how much they are paid for it is even more complex than that, given the issues and pressures they face.
"Resources always come up near the top of the list," says Paul Houston, executive director of American Association of School Administrators. "It's about all the expectations placed upon school administrators and their inability to respond to them because of insufficient resources. Schools have increasingly been asked to respond to all kinds of societal pressures."
He cites concerns about obese children as an example. "It used to be that you served the kids lunch and that was all you had to worry about. Now it's the quality of the lunch and the types of snacks you offer. Schools have to worry about nutritional issues in ways they never did before," Houston says.
