Debunking Education Myths
By Kevin Holtsberry Posted in Elections — Comments (85) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Discussing public education has to be one of the most frustrating public policy debates in this country. It is hard to think of an area where the conventional wisdom is so often ill informed and yet emotionally charged.
If you have been frustrated in your discussion with family and friends who insist that we just need to spend more money, pay teachers more, etc. then you might want to pick up the recently released Education Myths by Jay P. Greene. Heck, buy a couple and send it to friends and family; or maybe even a local politician.
More below.
Why is Greene's book so valuable? Because it collects the latest research on education policy and uses it to debunk and take down the myths and mistaken beliefs that seem to permeate the education policy debate.
Greene, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and endowed chair and head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, patiently explains that teacher's unions are not the unbiased public interest group they present themselves as, but a special interest group whose fiduciary responsibility and political loyalty is to its members first and foremost. This crucial fact, that unions exist to benefit their members not the public or education in general, is all too often lost on the general population. The average person falsely assumes union members - particularly a teacher or administrator at their local school - knows best and has the best interest of the students at heart. In fact, I honestly believe that teacher's unions are the single largest roadblock to real reform.
What Greene brings to the debate is data and logic; two things sorely missing. Education Myths patiently takes on the myths the education establishment uses to defend the status quo and to better their own circumstances. It outlines eighteen myths and chapter by chapter describes how the data and research shows that these common misconceptions are rooted in emotion and self-interest not facts.
Here are the myths tackled:
1. The Money Myth — "Schools perform poorly because they need more money."
2. The Special Ed Myth — "Special education programs burden public schools, hindering their academic performance."
3. The Myth of Helplessness — "Social problems like poverty cause students to fail; schools are helpless to prevent it."
4. The Class Size Myth — "Schools should reduce class sizes; small classes would produce big improvements."
5. The Certification Myth — "Certified or more experienced teachers are substantially more effective."
6. The Teacher Pay Myth — "Teachers are badly underpaid."
7. The Myth of Decline — "Schools are performing
much worse than they used to."
8. The Graduation Myth — "Nearly all students graduate from high school."
9. The College Access Myth — "Nonacademic barriers
prevent a lot of minority students from attending college."
10. The High Stakes Myth — "The results of high-stakes tests are not credible because they're distorted by cheating and teaching to the test."
11. The Push-Out Myth — "Exit exams cause more students to drop out of high school."
12. The Accountability Burden Myth —"Accountability systems impose large financial burdens on schools."
13. The Inconclusive Research Myth — "The evidence on the effectiveness of vouchers is mixed and inconclusive."
14. The Exeter Myth — "Private schools have higher test scores because they have more money and recruit high-performing students while expelling low-performing students."
15. The Draining Myth — "School choice harms public schools."
16. The Disabled Need Not Apply Myth — "Private schools won't serve disabled students."
17. The Democratic Values Myth — "Private schools are less effective at promoting tolerance and civic participation."
18. The Segregation Myth — "Private schools are more racially segregated than public schools."
As you can see from the above, Greene gets to the heart of education policy debates by attacking the self-serving arguments of the education establishment. Who else gets to argue that less work (smaller and fewer classes, etc.) and more pay is the answer? What other interest group consistently opposes any reform all the while blaming others for the problems?
In Ohio, as in a number of states, we had a decade of legal battles over whether the school funding system was constitutional. During that time school funding has nearly doubled while inflation was in the single digits. And yet the mantra about underfunded schools is a constant refrain. Where else would you double your money with no appreciably improvement and yet continue to dump money into the system?
Another good example from Ohio is the case of charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded non-sectarian schools. They take the same tests and are under the same general requirements as regular public schools, but are freed from some of the paperwork and red tape of regular school districts. But they are public schools in every important way.
And yet they are constantly attacked as "quasi-public schools" and the companies that manage some of the these schools are disparaged as "for profit" companies out to get rich off of public funds (as if that was a real get rich quick scheme). No one reminds the public that teachers and administrators don't work for free. The Superintendent of the Columbus Public Schools makes nearly two hundred grand if I am not mistaken; more than the Governor! And, as I mentioned above, what are unions if not an organization whose job is to maximize the profits of its members? Unions were not created to provide innovative solutions to public education or to foster good public policy. They were, and are, created to protect the jobs and pay of their members. If anyone is "for profit" it is the unions.
Also worth noting, is the fact that when charter schools fail they are closed down. When traditional public schools fail they continue to exist and are passionately defended by the education establishment. All of the myths outlined by Greene are regularly deployed to defend the status quo.
What is valuable about Education Myths is that it doesn't have the strident tone of my above rant. Instead Greene takes a balanced look at the research and data that is out there on these important subjects and calmly tries to makes sense of what we know. When the evidence is inconclusive he says so. Research that counters his conclusions is not ignored but rather put in a context that allows the readers to judge the proper conclusion.
You don't have to agree with every argument he makes or come to the same conclusions, but you must deal with the facts he brings to the debate.
So if you are interested in education policy in this country; need some ammunition to debate friends and family; or are looking for a Christmas gift for a policy wonk; I recommend Education Myths. It is perfect for injecting some facts into a debate too often dominated by self-interest and emotion.
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The other big villain in the piece are schools of education and the various education majors.
I'm also more convinced that helicopter parents are a real problem too, especially since we're now seeing these at the college level.
Fire teachers who can't teach, use the freed-up capital that would otherwise go to their paychecks to increase the salaries/compensation of retained teachers. Increase class sizes as necessary.
Jay Greene is a very smart guy and knows an awful lot about education. I don't necessarily always agree with his policy prescriptions, but his diagnoses are always well reasoned.
It's a great book.
and I also don't buy the "teachers are underpaid" meme. Sure some teachers deserve better pay for what they do, but when you compare the hours teachers work, to the hours other service proffessionals with degrees hours worked and the pay, teachers come out way ahead.
I worked in social services for several years, a starting social worker in my state made about $13,000 a year, and worked on comp time (that they never could afford to take) so in reality worked 50+ hours a week. First year teachers made about 24-18k depending on district for a lot fewer hours.
I also think our current system overly focuses on those who are behind, while those who are ahead aren't challenged, and those in the middle end up fending for themselves half the time. I would like to see a lot more grouping by ability.
they are parents that hover over their kids and insist that their kids cannot possibly be wrong/stupid/bad/etc., and interfere with the education system in general.
Often firing teachers that can't teach isn't all that simple, even when there's no legal or administrative barrier to firing a teacher.
The problem is that there aren't 2 discreet groups: Great teachers and those who are bad. Like everything else the teacher's ability forms a normal curve -- A few really great ones, a few really bad ones, and the great bulk in various points in the middle. Also bad teachers can improve with the right guidance and motivation.
The problem is that the teacher you find to replace one that is fired will almost always be worse, at least for a year, maybe more. Most young teachers just out of college don't have the experience or ability to deal with kids effectively. They're always too firm, too lenient, or some combination. Kids can sense when a teacher is making it up as they go. Teachers need a few years experience to build the experience and confidence necessary to be a good teacher.
So the question is always -- Can this bad teacher be moved closer to the average ranks? Or should we start over at this position with a worse teacher next year in hopes that the new guy (lady) can be made better over a couple of years? Often a painful choice, for both kids and administrators.
Public schools are poor nannies. If the parents look on education as strictly the schools' job, the students will fail to excel.
In private schools, you find few indifferent parents. Many students in my daughter's private school receive financial assistance. The parents are equally committed to the value of education, regardless of economic background.
If we're going to throw money at a problem, maybe the appropriate place to throw it is not at the teachers or the classroom, but in teaching parents how to parent.
criticism but your philosophy here is really, really weak.
You are setting up a dichotomy where you say you are willing to accept guaranteed long-term substandard performance rather than accept temporary substandard performance with a reasonable expectation that the situation will improve. You can't run an organization like that.
I like to bash the public education cartel as much as the next guy, but I like to do it because of their idiocy and insistence on involving themselves in virtually every part of a kid's life except education.
Let's face it. If you don't read to your kids or have books in the home it doesn't make any difference whatsoever how much money or what kind of programs the school system has.
The US primary education system is garbage. We lag most of the industrialized world. Yet they don't educate their kids at Walmart. Why should we?
I may get it. I have been involved for some time in the local school district, and agree that most of the myths above are just that -- myths.
A couple I'd like more information on.
But overall it sounds like a very good book, and possibly some good Christmas reading.
It's almost never a dichotomy in practice.
It's a series of choices. Can the substandard teacher be made into a better teacher? Can we get an experienced teacher for that position? How long before a new graduate will be as good as the current? What is the probability that a new teacher will never be as good as the current bad teacher(a very real possibility).
Remember that staffing is a multiyear decision, but a group of kids is only there for a single year. Making the decision that reduces the instruction quality in a classroom even for a single year is a hard one to make, and is much more complex than "fire all bad teachers".
but I don't agree it is complex. It is a simple binary decision.
- Accept poor performance permanently.
- Accept poor performance temporarily with the chance of future improvement.
I agree "firing bad teachers" is a costly decision and it has organizational ramifications but it also seems to me that any organization who is considering firing someone should have already undertaken remedial training. So when you get to that point the idea that continued effort is going to change performance seems rather fanciful.
Like you say, for a group of kids there is a single year. The question is how many of those single years are you willing to burn before doing what you probably know needs to be done.
Firing folks is unpleasant but quality begets quality. And Gresham's Law is just as applicable to organizations as it is to money. If you are relentless in weeding out non-performers you'll find that it raises the bar a little higher for everyone else.
I beleive the real problem is that there's too little parental involvement.
There was a poll a few years ago that showed that most teachers would prefer more parental involvement over a pay raise (I'm assuming the wording was "a small pay raise").
I'm sure that there are parents who get in the way of the educational process, but how many of them are simply trying to keep a mediocre (or worse) teacher from slapping a "hyperactive" label on thier son because he's bored in the classroom?
Speaking of myths... having grown up with my mother teaching, I can tell you that she would have loved to have had the 50+ hour week of the social worker instead of "a lot fewer hours" (ha!) as a teacher.
Some people think that a teacher's day begins and ends at school, but my mother almost never stopped working. When she got home from school, she would work on lesson plans or correct papers or prepare tests right up until the time she went to bed most nights.
Her experience is pretty common (to hear her tell it). It didn't change her antipathy toward the teachers unions though.
I second your call for more ability-grouping. God knows I was bored as hell until ability-grouping started in middle school (although the gifted and talented programs in elementary school were a nice help -- too bad they're being cut all over the place now, as schools scramble to throw the money at special ed so they can try to make F students into D students to meet their minimums under NCLB...but that's another story).
On social workers though, ouch. It's hard to say teachers are overpaid compared to social workers, because just about everybody is overpaid compared to social workers, or legal aid lawyers, or public defenders. Most teachers are underpaid, but from what i know, almost all social workers are disgracefully underpaid - probably why we don't have enough of them. I wouldn't use that as a cudget against teachers though.
How do you use governmental resources to encourage parents to care about parenting, and to care about their child's education?
(Although, to be fair, some woefully under-educated and illiterate parents care but simply lack the ability to help...hearing the stories from my mother's 3rd grade class when many parents couldn't do the simple math/reading problems with their kids - ouch. what can you do? after-school programs?)
It's like trying to use governmental resources to encourage people to get and stay married. Marriage is great for kids, but it's pretty hard to make people care about it.
And on the private schools, some people on my side do complain of cream-skimming when it comes to wealthy kids, but I think it's probably just as likely that they're cream-skimming the kids whose parents simply care and are active in the kids' education, regardless of income. And I don't mean to use "cream-skimming" in a pejorative sense - it's just what happens, and the public schools are left as the place for the kids whose parents can't or won't help them. A sorry state of affairs.
Hat tip to Michael Bates, BatesLine.com blog: Larry Zenke, [former] superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools, defending declining test scores by saying that knowing things wasn't really important anymore, and teachers would no longer be "disseminators of cognitive information". I closed by writing, "I suspect that Zenke's ideas are now mainstream among public education administrators, but perhaps better disguised behind a veil of Educanto."
A reader whose daughter takes French at a Tulsa high school writes and confirms my fears... "This is what I received back from [my daughter's French teacher]. I was concerned when my daughter was complaining that they have not been studying or learning any French yet. I did figure that she was stretching it a bit but I was surprised at the answer I got back from the teacher as to why. Am I just out of the loop?" Excerpt from the memo, emphasis added:
The ... Tulsa Model for School Improvement stresse[s] the importance of accessing the knowledge that students already have about the themes and concepts and then building on it. ... I decided to introduce the new learning in English to enable the students to more easily and quickly grasp the concepts that we will be using. ... Teachers are ... expected to teach students about the 8 Multiple Intelligences and how they learn best, the 7 Learning Community Guidelines and the 18 Life Skills which are the basis of the Tulsa Model discipline plan. ...What has been "French" in the classroom:
The day, date, month and classroom directions ... The 7 Learning Community Guidelines [!]...The colors ... The students saw a video on the French impressionist artist Edgar Degas... . The students evaluated how effectively Degas ... used the Life Skills ....
We have been working on class and team building activities and stressing mutual respect and attentive listening since research proves that students learn best in cooperative groups. Sadly, most students do not know how to work effectively in a group and these skills must also be taught. ...
I hope this addresses your concerns.
What sixteen-year-old wouldn't be on the edge of their seat to learn this gobbledegook? This would make the conjugation of etre seem absolutely enthralling!
Education is way too important to turn over to this kind of hypereducated academic bureaucrat. Shame on us.
New Orleans' (pre-Katrina) public school system was 90+% black, but Asian, especially Vietnamese kids, made up a disproportionately high percentage of valedictorians and other high-achieving students; a huge number of the black students never graduate. We're talking about kids from a similar socio-economic background; the difference is the importance the parents place on education.
The storm gave the state of Louisiana the excuse to do what it had long wanted to do, but could not due to political considerations: take over the corrupt and failed New Orleans Public School system. Several charter schools have opened since the storm; apparently this is the new model. Let's hope that a new day has finally dawned for the city's poor children.
How would I throw money at the task of educating parents? Head Start, a program with a great deal of popularity but questionable effectiveness. Cut it in half, spend the savings on educating parents, and make attendance mandatory.
bad teachers. They teach for reasons other than the love of teaching children, and if they haven't figured out how to teach effectively within a couple of years of starting out, then they need to find a career elsewhere. We shouldn't sacrifice our children in the hopes that a poor teacher will get better with just a little help.
ivovlement where parents are there to support the teachers and the school, they value education, and teach their children to value it, and to respect the authority of the teachers in charge.
Then you have the parental involvement where the parent believes their child does no wrong, where the parent undermines the authority of those in charge, where the parent blames the school for their child's problems etc. These parents are actually worse than the kids whose parents don't give a flip at all, because at least the kids whose parents don't give a flip don't always have total contempt for teachers and school staff.
sorry.
I worked in social work for several years, and while I am not a certified teacher I work for the school system.
Yes teachers do put in a lot of time, but they don't put in nearly as much time as service jobs that also require 4 year degrees. You forgot about the part where the social worker works those 50 hours plus a week, has to carry a beeper, doesn't get summers, Christmas and a Spring Break off every year, and gets paid about half the salary of the teacher (yes I know now you are going to pull out the continueing education argument, but see social workers also do continueing education type classes, and to move up administratively you have to get a Masters).
Yes, teachers work hard, but teachers aren't any less underpaid than any other job that is a service oriented type job that also requires a four year or higher degree.
reality of jobs that are provided by the government, are service oriented and require higher education.
Many plumbers and electricians make more money than teachers, cops, social workers, fire fighters etc.
It is the nature of the field they choose, and the source of funding for the employment.
In general teachers are among the best paid, with the most time off of this group. So, I just don't buy the whole concept of teachers being "underpaid" when for the type of job they do, they are among the best paid. Coule we pay them more? Of course, it would certainly be nice, but we could also pay social workers, cops and firefighters more too.
from memorization of facts.
I loath the math curriculum our school district uses. It isn't a bad curriculum for kids who grasp math concepts easily, but the curriculum doesn't seem to encourage mastery of anything (it almost assumes that one lesson taught with a couple of problems equals mastery). It also doesn't overly encourage the memorization of basica addition/subtraction facts. I remember having to memorize addition facts tables along with multipication tables. Instead of kids learning the basic facts, they learn to do all their math on a number grid (granted a number grid is a great math tool, but you can't go through life with a number grid in your pocket). I want to scream every time I see a 7 year old second grader unable to add 1 to 4 without using a number grid or their fingers.
And in defense of the teachers at least in our school district, I haven't found too many of them all that thrilled with the curriculum either.
In general you are right, there is much too little parental involvement. Parents dump kids into public education and expect 'the system' to provide an educated child at the end of the year. But kids aren't widgets, there's a lot more to education than just the 6-8 hours a day in the school building.
But the phenomenon of 'helicopter parents' is typically viewed as the over-involved parent who won't let go of their child even a little. They do their homework for them, they debate grades with teachers constantly, they fight with the teachers and schools when the kid gets a B or C or D even if it is warranted.
At the collegiate level its starting to get even worse, parents who call college professors to complain about class schedules, office hours, grades, tests, etc and etc. I know folks in higher ed who had to negotiate a roommate squabble between the parents of the roommates, not the roommates themselves. It's absurd.
The Wall Street Journal has even done a few stories about parents trying to negotiate salary and benefit packages for their adult children in the first job out of college. Can you imagine?
Those are the types of parents not to emulate. How the heck can these kids ever succeed if Mommy and daddy are running their lives like that. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.
The Wall Street Journal has even done a few stories about parents trying to negotiate salary and benefit packages for their adult children in the first job out of college. Can you imagine?
Yes. I've experienced this. Young woman, graduate of Brown, applied for an entry level job. She made it to the point where I was discussing salary/benefits with her, with entry level people you usually don't have to do a lot of negotiations as there are about 50 additional qualified applicants where she came from, then her father weighed in. You'd have thought she was being looked at as a CEO of a Fortune 500 Company. It just got too hard and we hired someone else.
It's just a flat out myth that NCLB is forcing states or schools to 'throw money' at special ed kids.
States do not have to test all kids in the state to the exact same test. Students with disabilities can take tests with accommodations, modified assessments, or even totally different assessments. Under the special ed law (IDEA) states have been required to do this since 1997, so its not a new requirement.
States have been inherently lazy and felt justified in passing special ed kids along without worrying about their performance or holding themselves accountable for helping these kids achieve as best they can.
Special ed kids, of almost all varieties, can learn. Maybe not always at grade level, maybe not always as fast, maybe not always as much, but they can learn something, they can make progress, and they can achieve. States do have an obligation to take the multiple varities of disabilities into account and establish appropriate standards and establish appropriate assessments and test these kids appropriately, but again that's been the law for a long time.
NCLB and IDEA have massive flexibility in helping states use multiple types of assessments, lots of different accommodations, and can easily reflect the varities of these kids. Just because the majority of states haven't really paid attention to that flexibility is not the fault of the law, or of the kids with disabilities.
Instead, states take the easy way out and blame any cuts or changes in spending on the disabled. That is not only massively inappropriate, it is unfortunate and unfair.
(Please note, I'm not impugning you or your character. Unless of course you are a governor or chief state school officer of your state, then I would be willing to condemn you.)
Sending your parents to negotiate your salary!
I always send my wife.
seeing as how she'll be the one spending it anyway.
The complexity that is describe above is exactly the decision process business executives make in a myriad of functions (project management, corproate finance, sales come to mind off the bat). They all use some combiantion of continued training and outside hiring to try to fill gaps, and they are all continually dissatisfied with the results. The binary chocie you set up is a false one becuase it does not take into account all the risks of choosing to retain or fire. It assumes retention means eternal mediocrity and is assumes that firing and hiring some else contains a significant chance of futrue performance enhancements. It ignores the frictional cost of change and the difficulty of retentiont alent once you have it.
One side note, at the end of the day most executives learn that the best way to increzase thier talent is to pay more plain and simple. A company that is a client of mine came to this conclusion recently regarding project managers. They are a healthcare organization in the New York metro area and have to compete with the big banks and consuatncies for the skill set, though the rest of their salary scales are on average lower, they had to shif the scale for project managers. If we think the best talent is not choosing to go into or stay in teaching because the same talents make them good in management, law etc. then we have to make the payscale more competitive (doesn't mean they have to be equal, most of the best probably are willing to take some discount for the knowledge that they are doing a more socially important job).
across social service oriented functions, that doesn't meant we shouldn't raise all their salaries. We would attract more and better people into the fields if the salaries were mroe competitive with other jobs the top college graduates get to choose from.
Our real problem is that we undervalue all the social services (teachers, social work, publi defenders etc.); if we are going to complain that we are not getting the msot talented people then lets put our money where our mouths are. Basic economics, increase salary attract more competitve applicants.
ed aren't of the expensive variety. Often they involve modifications in the existing curriculum, breaks etc, things that are done without any additional cost.
I also agree that most special ed kids can learn, although some of them are never going to perform at grade level, most are kids who can learn, and eventually live independantly.
I am in business.
And no it is not a false choice. There is no risk in getting rid of poor performance because the worst you can get is what you have.
It seems that in your anxiety to disagree that you didn't bother reading much of the post or your essay into "friction" wouldn't have been necessary.
I wish your clients good luck relying on this kind of mumbo jumbo.
the money to pay those salaries comes from taxes, that is why they are paid so low.
Ideally we would pay them all tons of money, but that isn't the reality. So in the mean time I just don't have much sympathy for the "teachers are poor and are underpaid" meme, it is essentially the nature of the job they work and where the check comes from.
"There is no risk in getting rid of poor performance because the worst you can get is what you have."
This assumes there are only to states: good performers and poor performers. Of course there is a continuum of preformance and you can certainly repalce a sub par performer with someone who will be even worse. How can you assert otherwise?
"It seems that in your anxiety to disagree that you didn't bother reading much of the post or your essay into "friction" wouldn't have been necessary."
Well then, life isn't always as it seems. I did read and your line:
"it has organizational ramifications but it also seems to me that any organization who is considering firing someone should have already undertaken remedial training" is begging the question. It is assuming you have exhausted internal training as a strategy when deciding to fire someone when in fact you must start thinking about that choice before you even undertake training; it must be a constant part of your decision process into whether it is worth providing initial or ongoing training to any individual
"I wish your clients good luck relying on this kind of mumbo jumbo"
My personal success and the success of the company I work speak for themselves; but I do wonder why resorting to ad hominens is necceary or useful. It seems to be a common feature of arguments here, why is that?
but then we should stop complaining about the outcome if we are not willing to invest in it.
What we are really arguing is that we don't value education enough to put more money into it if that is what it takes to improve. We as a society are free to make that decision, but we shouldn't be suprised that we have difficulty attracting and retaining qualified (fill in the social service career).
I have no sympathy for people who dismiss paying more as a means for attracting better teachers and then magicaly expect education to get better. As the people providing the check, we are repsonible for the financial investment we are willing to give to education.
I don't assume "there are only to states" (I'm guessing you meant "two") I'm assuming that anyone who has had enough success in business to actually have employees realizes the sunk cost and doesn't fire people with out trying to improve their performance. Maybe I've just worked for high performing companies that never needed a business consultant to identify sunrise in the East. So I am not only assuming, but stating, that the people we are talking about firing are demonstrated poor performers. Again reading really improves the quality of discussion.
No, it's not begging the question, it is stating a fact. Again, having been in the business world for some time I have only known of one company who just fired people and they did it as a dodge to avoid pay unemployment insurance premiums.
I didn't see any ad hominem, but I'd assumed that anyone who could open a conversation with someone he doesn't know with "are you in business" probably wasn't a very serious person or certainly not deserving of any more respect than they had offered.
Having been in the gifted/talented program, and having several siblings who were (and are) in special ed--I gotta say that I've always felt the money was pretty much wasted on the gifted. Most of those kids will ultimately become productive citizens without any extra assistance. Personally, I'd've preferred more advanced (eg college-level) coursework. Whereas one of my siblings, with an IQ puttering along somewhere around 30 (yes, I typed that correctly) does custodial and service work 6-8 hours a day--work that he wouldn't have been able to do without special ed. If you don't have money enough for everyone to get tailored services, for goodness' sake use some triage skills and put it where it's needed.
Ability-grouping...not a bad idea, where possible. (Although I was rarely bored in school--not with the active fantasy life I enjoyed. Teacher droning on for the third repetition? Off to la-la land!)
The unruly kids can make it almost impossible for the rest of the children to learn, as they take up all of a teacher's time (and Charter/Private schools do not have this problem, as they can simply kick those kids out). If we brought back the use of the paddle in our schools we might be able to change this problem, as it gives teachers and immediate and very effective means to quell troublemakers in the classroom. CP wasn't really needed in schools when it was used (because teachers knew that a note or call home would actually correct a problem child instead of bringing their parents down to yell at the teacher as they would today), but it is needed now.
That is until I realized, sometime in my early 30's, that public school teachers in my own age group with a 4-year degree made more money than I did with a 5-year degree in architecture. When I realized that each and every public school teacher I knew owned their own home (OK, they actually owned a mortgage) while I was renting and saving for a down payment.
That the job is part-time, not full-time. With all the breaks, union days, and summers off. If you factor that in some teachers are paid very well.
teachers.
The reality is that people who are passionate about teaching will work for what they can get, just like people passionate about social work stay in the job, even though they work more hours, and for half the pay. Just like firefighters do it.
Would higher pay perhaps keep good teachers in teaching longer? Maybe, but you know what I have had several very good teachers, and work with several good teachers, they aren't going anywhere.
This is underpaid.
Teachers should be the best and brightest. The starting salary for a right-out-of-college engineer is twice the amount the average teacher salary you quote here is.
That's a real problem.
I think part of the solution is, pay to get the very best and brightest teachers, but then focus them on teaching and free them from the classroom administration tasks.
Most teachers spend most of their time on out of class responsibilities: correcting papers, putting together documents, etc. Let's hire tteaching assistants to do this grunt work and free a highly talented teacher to do more teaching. A single teacher with teaching assistants could teach 2 maybe 3 times as many classes and use their time focused on what is most valuable ... their interaction with students.
.................
There is any relationship here at all. Add to that the fact that pay is not the #1 criteria for many/most people when deciding between careers or jobs. Life is too short to work at a job you hate just because it pays a little more.
I'm sorry, but this is plain silly.
Scenario:
You're a talented and smart, charismatic person.
You are offered an$80,000 where you can work with state of the art facilities,other highly talented individuals, will be treated with great respect, and have the opportunity for advancement.
OR
You are offered a $30,000 salary where you will work in facilities that lag behind the state-of-the art by at least a decade, few people around you are of exceptional talent, and you will have little if any opportunity for advancement.
hmmmm .. tough choice.
Yes, some heroic people of great talent go into teaching. Some join the Peace Corps too. How many Pat Tilman's are out there?
And why should we support an approach where we expect talented people to sacrifice?
Pay people what they are worth.
............
And you can make this happen. Sure some teachers start out at 24k but other teachers are making 50k at the same time based on their seniority and credentials. Of course they aren't paid based on how good they are at their job. That would be very un-union like.
They also have very generous benefits that need to be factored in, since it is part of their pay package. You also have to account for the fact that it isn't a full-time job.
Teacher pay is only slightly based on seniority. At least not in the Michigan district at which I went to school.
Teachers who make 50k+ make that much because they have earned Masters degrees and Ph.Ds .. when they get advanced degrees there is an automatc and significant pay increase. There are also "equity" checking. Gerneally speaking teacher pay is determined by the degrees a teacher holds and the subject matter they teach. After the first 5 or so years of experience a teacher has, experience plays a smaller role in their salary.
Evaluating the effectiveness of a teacher is very difficult. I wish we could evaluate them based on student performance. But that is not an easy thing to do.
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after all I am the woman who not only did social work for 13k a year with a four year degree while earning my masters, but am now working for $8 an hour in our local school system as a title I assistant.
There are trade offs, you can either do what you love doing and are passionate about for less pay (or for other trade offs, one of mine admittedly is that I would rather work the hours required for my current job that carries the same schedule as my kids, than go back into criminal justice for 50+ hour weeks, for similar pay to what I am making now, and with a schedule that isn't anything like what my kids are doing).
So the reality is that plenty of bright people still teach for 30k a year, instead of something else for 80k a year. I work with several dedicated teachers who are passionate about their jobs, and given the fact that they still choose to work as teachers, I think they are doing what they love to do, or at least consider other trade offs (ie some of them have the same kids/schedule issues as well).
Could higher teacher pay maybe draw in some people who are looking elsewhere due to the pay? Sure, but the reality is that people who want to teach and are passionate about the job are going to teach, and they are going to do it for less than some other college graduates who went into different fields.
negotiate the planning periods away for teachers so they can spend more time in the classroom? You are insane.
Honestly-the teachers in our district have an hour planning period per day, and then they spend about 1 to 1 1/2 hours before/after school. Most papers get graded during the day, and depending on how anal the school curriculum is, the teachers have very little extra planning, because the lesson plans are written for them (and yes many a good teacher complains about these curriculums, because they don't leave time for the teachers to use their own bag of tricks in the classroom).
I will also say that many teachers do not want an assistant to grade papers, the teacher I work with prefers to grade papers herself, so she can personally monitor the proggress. Other teachers don't mind, one of the other teachers has her assistant grade some of the papers in her class. But hiring an assistant isn't going to automatically make teachers better teachers either. The only place I can see your argument maybe making a difference would be at the college level.
It varies a lot depending on the state/district. Seniority plays a bigger role in some areas than others. I think the education scale is even more bogus than the senority scale. There is nothing about an advanced degree that automatically makes someone a better 8th grade math teacher.
In private industry the evaluation would be based on their supervisor's observations, but you would need decent school administrators for that to work (which is much more rare than good teachers). Student performance could probably work if it was done right.
while your examle does seem pretty stupid, I DO think educators have failed in properly preparing students HOW to learn and not just simply presenting them and drilling them on data to be learned.
for example, you may be given homework to memorize 20 vocabulary workds in French. So you go home and grunt through memorizing 20 vocabulary words. This is not teaching IMHO.
Memory is not simply a "you either have it or you don't" thing. There are techniques that can help you to memorize things better.
Wouldn't it be better for teachers to teach you techniques that make it easier to learn? Organizational approaches, learning techniques, etc?
Anyone can pick up a French-English dictionary and start memorizing. You don't need a teacher for that kind of learning.
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In a survey that had over 275,000 respondents (conducted by the Corproate Leadership COuncil of the Corproate Executive Board) base pay was the #1 criteria in self stated importnace of job offer criteria. Additionally, the single most important change in offer to retain or attract someone is to increase base pay (no suprise given the other finding)
Here are the top ten criteria:
- Base Pay
- Manager Quality
- Health Benefits
- External Equity
- Hours Worked
- Job Fit
- Retirement Benefits
- Bonus
- Empowerment
- Location
Life is too short to work in a job you hate, but it is still the primary criteria for people when deciding.
Unions are very strongly against relaxing education rules so that people who say have a degree in biology, rather an education degree can get jobs as teachers.
One of my daughters best science teachers at the middle school level was a man with a science degree (I think it was phsyics but won't swear to it) worked in the field for 20 years, and decided to teach (along with a massively huge pay cut). No teaching degree anywhere in his portfolio, but he taught rings around science teachers with education degrees.
Sometimes real world experience can bring a perspective in to teaching that a teacher whose only experience is an education degree and a teaching position.
is that the complaint is ther are not enogh quality teachers. That being the case, assuming that all those passioante enough to go into already are, we need to raise the reward of going into it to fill that gap. The strongest lever we have to attract that next set of less passionate people is money.
The pont is not that the teachers we have now are underpaid, but that if we want the best and brightest to be teaching, we need to be willing to pay more.
I think the unions make for lazy teachers.
I think the unions harm education over the long haul. I think the unions are more about the teacher than about the goal of the job.
I do think it is difficult to fire and get rid of poor teachers, I don't think I have made the argument that there aren't any quality teachers.
I also am strongly in favor of relaxing rules for hiring teachers so that people with degrees that are useful in education (science, math, engineering, English, foreign languages etc) don't have to have an actual education degree to get a job as a teacher. Teachers unions are strongly opposed to these moves.
Like I said in another post. One of my daughters best middle school science teachers is a man who has a degree in science, worked for about 20 years as a scientist, then decided he wanted to teach. He didn't have and never got a teaching degree, and there are several pro union people that would say he shouldn't have been teaching, because he wasn't qualified.
I notice it was a Corporate Council that did the survey, what was the sample size of those working in public service jobs?
"actually have employees realizes the sunk cost and doesn't fire people with out trying to improve their performance"
Are you sure you mean sunk costs? If he recognizes the costs spent on the current employee are sunk then he recognizes there is no rational bases for spending more on training him. If on the other hand you mean he recognizes the frictional costs of attracting and hiring someone new, and he thinks those are greater than the cost of training the current employee, then he would do that.
"Maybe I've just worked for high performing companies that never needed a business consultant to identify sunrise in the East"
Since the highest performing companies inthe world do engage multiple consultancies (including my own which is a slightly different model then say mckinsey or bcg), I find this statement a bit amusing. One of the attributes of high eprforming companies is the recognition that they don't know everything and can value from specialized knowledge consultancies and peer networks bring them.
"having been in the business world for some time I have only known of one company who just fired people"
Your not thinking hard enough, or you don't consider lay offs' to be firing people. People get fired all the time for non-performance related issues.
" didn't see any ad hominem, but I'd assumed that anyone who could open a conversation with someone he doesn't know with "are you in business""
I'm sorry if my initial title offended you, it was not the intent. If I had been presenting an analogy from say the scientific world I would ahve titled it 'are you a scientist'; it was just itnroducing the subject of the post not meant as a shot at you. As for your ad hominem:
"I wish your clients good luck relying on this kind of mumbo jumbo."
Should qualify as it was personalized to my clients and calling my work, of which you have no familiarity, mumbo jumbo. And of course, as a subscription absed model with over 80% renewal rates in a univers of fortune 1000 executives, I think its fair to say a strong majority of the smartest business men in the world disagree with your assesment.
and set hiring standards so that people with a degree in a primary area they would be teaching can teach, even if they don't have a teaching degree.
You could probably attract a lot of teachers that would be quality, but the current rules, supported by unions, want to have education degrees (which most teachers I know didn't find all that practical anyway).
The non-profit sector made up 7% of respodents, but ther was no statistical signficance between industries. Maybe early next week I will get the full dataset and do the analysis to see if I can cut by jot type within the non-profit sector.
I don't have a link for you. The study that goes along with the survey costs companies >$50,000.
Abstracts of the sutides are available publically here:
http://www.corporateleadershipcouncil.com/CLC/1,1283,0-0-Public_Display-152
,FF.asp
The Compelling Offer and the Compelling Offer Revisited are the two that that contain this survey.
ONe restructure would greatly improve our education system:
Separate the "Teaching" function from the "Testing" function.
This would have many benefits:
- Teachers would be spending more time teaching and less time grading.
- It would make the grading more fair since the teacher's bias would not effect the grading
- Discipline would be improved - The teacher becomes more like sports coaches to their students, preparing them for the big game - the test. There would be no doubting who's side the teacher was on... the teacher is on your side, becasue the teacher is not in a position to grade you, the teacher's only goal is to help you.
- You could afford to hire teachers who are only available at top salaries because by focusing their time on teaching (not grading), they could teach 2-3 times as many classes. Hire a staff dedicated to testing at a much lower salary, and hire teaching assistants to help with in-class administration work, also at much lower salaries, or as interns.
- It's easier to evaluate the effectiveness of classes, teachers, and curriculum by centralizing testing. An entire district perhaps could have one centralized testing team that would administer and correct tests.
- Testing would not need to be limited to multiple choice and yes/no answers.
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- Grade would be standardized across classes. No longer would you have students seeking out the "easiest" teacher. Students would be desperately seeking out the teacher that will help them most learn what they need to know to do well in the class.
- Because of number 7, you now have another decent gauge of the best teachers.
going to work for?
Remember much about elementary school? Worked much in an elementary school?
Honestly at the elementary level, there isn't much time spent grading anything-things get graded during the 40 minute planning period most days.
There also isn't a whole lot of testing going on-it is mostly mastering work (ie teacher introduces a new concept, child does either pencil/paper work or activity to help them master the concept).
the real comparison is why do some people choose fields like teaching over engineering or some other field? I don't think you can take a survey that is almost entirely from private sector people, and argue that all those people would be heading right into teaching.
My sister is very bright and very smart (not genius IQ, but no dummy). YOu couldn't pay her enough money ever to teach school. While she loves her own kids, she doesn't like teaching other peoples kids, and gets no joy out of it.
I really don't think the key is paying tons and tons of money, and all the great teachers will come, but in making it so that people who are interested in teaching can do so, even if they don't have an education degree somewhere in their transcripts.
There are people out there who just aren't meant to teach school or work in a school system. I had a math teacher in 8th grade who was so smart, he didn't know how to teach 8th graders-we just didn't get what he was teaching. About 7 years after he started teaching at my school, he left to teach college math, and was much happier there, because the students could understand him.
working on a bell curve, in Fortune 1000 companies would be about 20% of the total.
I meant sunk costs
Definition: Sunk costs are unrecoverable past expenditures. These should not normally be taken into account when determining whether to continue a project or abandon it, because they cannot be recovered either way. It is a common instinct to count them, however.
Because the average person considers the cost he has sunk in an employee in hiring, training, etc. They aren't recoverable but since you know you're going to have to spend the money again on a new person it is natural to consider them.
Please just read what is in front of you, it would really make this much easier.
I guess your view of consultancies, especially like McKinsey, is whether you are the consultant or paying the bill.
Your not thinking hard enough, or you don't consider lay offs' to be firing people.
You're not thinking at all, either that or you are so wrapped up in proving a point that you refuse to read. Nowhere, I say again just in case you missed it, Nowhere did I mention nonperformance. Got that. I said "just fired." Get the difference. I didn't say anything vaguely resembling what you attributed to me.
Should qualify as it was personalized to my clients and calling my work, of which you have no familiarity, mumbo jumbo. And of course, as a subscription absed model with over 80% renewal rates in a univers of fortune 1000 executives, I think its fair to say a strong majority of the smartest business men in the world disagree with your assesment.
I've been around enough consultants to recognize mumbo jumbo and buzzwords. Your clients buy your service, I'm happy for you. However the fact that they buy it says nothing about competency or value added.
As a nation we spent about $419 billion (that's with a B) on k-12 education in the 2001-02 school year(latest year available). With about 49 million kids that's about $8600 per kid per year, as a national average.
Perhaps the issue is not necessarily how much we spend, but how we spend it.
Myth - The problem and the solution is single fold. Education by and large focuses on silo solutions to overcome existing issues and works to correct each solution (vertically) instead of taking an horizontal approach that works with all the issues.
Myth - An agrian school system works. Public education missed changing the agrian school system during the 20th century and now is in the 21st century with "farming" school structure. No one looks good in a bad system. The system needs to change because within this system are current beliefs that are still driving silo solutions.
Myth - Learning and performance are the same. How many times have we heard "I can't believe you did that! I taught you better than that." This statement suggests that by teaching someone they should have performed at a satisfactory level. Learning through the strategy of teaching is the acquisition of knowledge. Performance is the application of knowledge.
I agree that the emotion including the blame game must end and that sustainable performance driven results need to be implemented. Given the recent reports including adult literacy as well as the nation's report card, American citizens should be outraged at the lack of results given the billions of dollars spent during the last 3 decades to improve education.
"Because the average person considers the cost he has sunk in an employee in hiring, training, etc. They aren't recoverable but since you know you're going to have to spend the money again on a new person it is natural to consider them."
Right, so they are considering the frictional costs of hiring someone new, not the sunk costs of who they alreay hired. Good job there boy.
"I guess your view of consultancies, especially like McKinsey, is whether you are the consultant or paying the bill"
In my experience the consultants ahve a lower view of there value than those paying the bills.
"I said "just fired"
So tell me what it means to 'just fire' someone? Do you mean some guy who just randomly dismisses employees for no reason; well I agree thats rare, mostly becasue there is always a reason, even if it is a bad one. However, if you reread your use here in the context of you saying that teachers who are being considered for firing are already known to be bad performers you might understand why I thought you were talking about firing for performance only. Of course your head may be so far up your ass that you don't really try to understand how your posts are percieved.
"I've been around enough consultants to recognize mumbo jumbo and buzzwords. Your clients buy your service, I'm happy for you. However the fact that they buy it says nothing about competency or value added."
And any money your business makes says nothing about your competency or value added. It does however say something about the percieved value added, and having the smartest companies year on year increase the amount they are willing to spend on you should be a hint about competency. Of course you are free to think that they are all incompetent too.
7% of 245,000 is still a statiscally meanignful sample size. But in any case I used that list in response to teh guy aboe who said generally that pay was not most important. The people who aren't currently in the public sector are the one's you would need to attract to increase the field.
I agree that not every smart person would make or want to make a good teacher, but I know plenty of people who would and did who left or didn't enter the field because they didn't think the money was enough to justify the work. It's great if you can have a proffession that is completely filled by dedicated individuals who would do it for free, but te evidence seems to suggest that we cannot fill the teaching profession in this country with enough of those people.
BTW, my sister and brother teach (one in public schools one in private) and neither had an undergraduate education degree.
I've pretty well had it with you. "Boy" is the last straw so you can read this but you're not commenting here anymore.
- No. Reading still gives you a lot of difficulty doesn't it. They are not considering "frictional costs" they are looking at the money they have already spent. Your mail order business may not do that but real employers consider what they have already spent. The less they've spent, the less likely they are to fool around with giving an employee extra chances.
- Congratulations. You actually read what was written. And apparently a light came on. Off course, then you proceeding to bastardize it by "no reason" where I didn't say that at all. And no, the context wasn't about teachers. I made that pretty clear to you twice but you refused to read it.
- No, I don't think they are all incompetent but based on your post here you are at best a poseur and at worst downright dangerous to your clients.
costing well over $10,000 (some closing in on $20,000 in the DC area; I have no idea how I will be able to afford that and college to boot), that number does not come across as a lot to me.
Though I wouldn't disagree that we can't better use the money we already do spend; that doesn't mean we are spending enough.
...other developed countries get far better outcomes from their education spending, with per-pupil outlays that are generally less than ours and in some cases far less?
You're arguing for higher spending on teacher salaries in hope of getting more really talented people into the game. I have an experience-based sense that there really aren't that many super-talented people out there. (Try not to react in knee-jerk fashion to the language I'm using here.) I've had many occasions to evaluate different businesses by how much they depend on super-talent, say two or so std-devs above normal. These enterprises (assuming everything else is good) generally have the opportunity for extremely high profitability for not for large size.
As (necessarily) fragmented as it is, education is an awfully big business. (Almost 4% of GDP if you accept dpcleary's numbers.) That means you can't be thinking in terms of getting the very best people. By definition, that approach will cause you to overspend. You have to think about how to improve the process, or the productivity, or the best practices, etc.
(By the way, I don't need any flames about how I'm disparaging the value of talent. It's terrific when you get it, and pays huge dividends. But I'm talking about the mismatch between the size of the enterprise and the hiring methodology.)
Though I would suggest that one reason we spend more generally si that we have a higher cost of living; everything from land to teachers cost more here. Do you have any number adjusted for purchasing power?
In either case, I do agree that you must find ways to improve process and productivity and you current talent pool, but you cannot ignore the possibility of hiring better talent. Right now at work I am addressing a growing problem in IT project management, most companies I speak with say they do not have the right project managers in place but they also don't really want to spend more. However, a few companies are completely happy with there current talent pool (and these are not small enterprises that have less complex project, we are talking P&G here); the difference is they have outsourced most of their operation. It costs them a bit more than keeping it in-house, but it seems to pay them big dividends. (there are real reasons why not everyone can outsource everything in IT at this point but that is a different discussion).
The lesson is that we should not ignore the talent attraction solution. We are not striving to have the very best in every teaching post, that probably is impossible and the added value probably isn't worth the expense, but we can open up the talen pool considerably by bringing salaries more in line with other proffessions that we (may) value at the same level as our education system.
I like to add (since I will be banned shortly and don't intend to come back), I have enjoyed our discussions here and think it is good to see that there are thinking people with different opinion who are still capable of convsersing with oneanother.
You could probably state education costs on a purchasing-power-parity basis but then you'd have to adjust again for the fecklessness of purchasing-power models. I also don't agree with your point. Not everything costs "more" here in the sense in which it matters, as a slice of your available income. In fact most things cost less because of the high productivity of our economy.
I'd love to talk about IT management but I don't think the example is germane. (For what it's worth, I think the project-management imbalance you point out is a leading indicator that a disruptive technological or methodological breakthrough is in the making. I've been telling clients for three years now that by 2010 they will be getting 10 times as much value from IT but not spending more in real terms than they are today.)
I don't think government schools can ever be run according to sound business principles because they're run by bureaucracies. And bureaucracies have very different incentives. If you counter that Citibank and GM are run by bureaucracies, well, I rest my case :-). As much as people hate the idea, we probably ought to look at education as a for-profit activity.
But I still want to know how a country like Japan gets the public-education outcomes it does and only spends 3% or so of GDP to get it. They're doing something right that we're missing. (If part of your answer is the private juku schools, then the last sentence of my previous paragraph applies.)
PPP is flawed to be sure, just looking for some meaningful comparison. I can't speak to Japan (or to there educational system, cause I know nothing about it), but land and construction costs (two huge line items in school budgets) are more costly here than Europe (that was actually three years ago, it may have changed now with the weak dollar).
Also, don't confuse for-profit schools with private schools; most of which are non-profit. My problem with for-profit education is that I don't think maximizing profit on education is the same as providing the optimal educational output for our country. I would love to align education incentives with results-oriented measurements, just don't think profit can be the proxy in this case (or any other service that has positive social externalities).
As for IT, I recently came to the IT space from Finance and am appaled at how 'IT value' is measured. I have always been skeptical of it but after talking to what are supposed to be the smartest CIOs around and hearing how they communicate IT's value, it sad. My goal for the next two years is to develop or find a meaningful model for determining 'IT value' in relation to financial results. I also think the project manager problem really stems from a disconnect between the skills of IT professionals and the skills needed for good proejct management (which is largely relationship management between IT and business sponsors and within the IT matrixed organization). The solution, other than outsorucing, that some progressive companies are pursuing are putting IT proejct management on a career track to senior management, thereby attracting people from outside IT to the position.
In any case, I think by 2015 all IT infrastructure and most application development will be outsourced by most large companies, with them retaining architecture in-house. Project managers will likely be reduced to vendor management.
...I think you agree that just spending more money on teacher salaries isn't going to get us to the promised land.
but it is probably part of any solution, we just shouldn't dismiss it out of hand.
Have to keep this short because it's offtopic, but have you ever noticed that some CIOs report to the CEO while others report to the CFO? Historically, IT reports into the finance function (goes back to the early days, when IT was called automation). Your comments are clearly conditioned by your finance background. I'd say that in the future, IT adds huge value in two broad areas: improvements in customer service (qualitative as well as quantitative), and basic transformations of business models. I'm inclined to believe that finance-driven IT will concentrate on the former (in part because it's more measurable) and CEO-driven IT will be looking more at the latter.
Returning guests who haven't said "Mother May I" first leave immediately.
Once more, and we can make this real ugly. Your call.
By a banned user, who thought vulgarity at the end of his adieu would be cute.
It's gone now.
The degree of training and demonstrative knowlege (e.g. a degree) a person has IS a worthwhile basis for a pay grade.
Experience (e.g. seniority) IS ALSO, in part, a worhtwhile basis for a pay grade.
Of course, the most important thing is to be able to evaluate who well a person can transfer and apply their knowlege, experiende and, training.
This is not easy stuff to do. There is a lot of subjectivity both in the evaluations themselves and in the judgement of which metrics and scales of performance to evaluate.
.......
#1 Get rid of calculators in elementary and middle/junior high schools.
It is a proven fact that teaching children to do their math on calculators actually reduces their ability to do that math. You can double check that with statistics on standardized tests (like the ASVAB) that don't allow calculators and looking to see how many failures come from schools that taught math via calculator. It is well over 60%. And lower overall scores are at a worse rate.
#2 Get rid of poor teachers. This is where the "Pay teachers More" thing comes in. We need to pay them more to attract more potential teachers. This would allow us to eliminate the poor, ineffective, and, occasionally, downright abusive teachers from the educational system entirely. As is, you fire a teacher in one district, (s)he gets hired next year in the next district over.
#3 Quit pitying poor students or minority students. Light a Fire under them and show them that failure has consequences. Make them exert themselves to the same extent as students who pass. Actually fail students who aren't passing. Eliminate problem students. Enforce regulations.
Oh, and #4: Get more involved in the Fine Arts. The studies that are most often ignored in order to better fund sports programs are that participation in the Fine Arts actually IMPROVES test scores and raises grades. Students in Band or Chorus or orchestra or theatre or sculpting/painting, etc. are far more likely to pass and get scholarships and be at the top of their class than football players or baseball players. Oh, and they have just as heavy schedules, btw. Just ask any theatre student getting ready for the Spring musical.