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The Sorry State Of Our Schools
Feb 24th, 2010 | 34 responses
Of all the professions in America, the one I consider the most important for an inquisitive, enlightened citizenry is the role our teachers play in private and public schools. Think about it. No other person, hopefully with the help and support of parents, has such an important impact on the development of a child than a teacher.
I consider myself among the fortunate to have learned at the feet of Harold Ambuel, my seventh grade math teacher. From Gordon Wilson, my senior high school English teacher. From Jonathon Chappell, my college political science professor.
I was doubly fortunate to have parents who would not tolerate excuses for D and C grades; my father because he threatened to put the horse whip to my behind; my mother because I did not want to disappoint her.
I, as millions of other Americans following current folklore, consider the ideal teacher none other than James Escalante, the calculus teacher at Garfield High School in the barrios of Los Angeles made famous by the film “Stand And Deliver.”
The problem is: For every one James Escalante, there is 1,000 teachers who can’t teach, can’t inspire their students and if they survive enough years can’t be fired. Not only are our resources drying up, they’re directed and weighted to lift those unable to function in our society with a full deck or those who refuse to learn until it is too late when they wake up some morning in their 30s or 40s and suddenly realized what fools they were.
I am a firm believer of merit raises for the good, productive teachers we do have in our system. Make their salaries comparable to our civil engineers or some grade in today’s job market that pays in the six figures.
I am told that teacher unions vehemently oppose a merit system — even voucher programs — and school superintendents and school boards do not have the will or clout to override such resistance.
The fact is, teachers are not paid well and it is a miracle so many remain in the profession which I would hope would be for love of the job. And, yes, I’m factoring in the shallow argument that most teachers only work nine months out of each year. Take a look at this chart. It rates by states a “salary-comfort” index which includes cost-of-living and other factors.
Illinois is No. 1 with an average $58,680 annual salary. Three states we’ll look at closely are No. 39 Utah at $40,007, No. 42 California at $59,825 and No.44 Rhode Island at $54,730.
The recession has been extremely tough on school financing in which funding comes from property taxes, state aid, federal grants and private endowments.
How each state and school district face their budget cuts ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous. It is almost reading a fairy tale disguised as a horror flick on public administration.
In Utah, a state legislator proposes eliminating the senior class in all high schools to save what he figures is $60 million in a budget that needs cutting by $700 million.
In Rhode Island, all teachers at Central Falls High School were fired Tuesday with the hope half will be rehired next school year through a new federal government grant program. Rhode Island is an extreme case. Unemployment is 13% and Central Falls is an underachiever. Consider this:
Seven percent of 11th graders were proficient in math; 33% proficient in writing; 55% proficient in reading and only 52% graduated within four years while 30% dropped out in the class of 2008.
The Draconian decision by the school board was refusal by teachers to work extra hours after school for no additional pay. It is common practice in most states to fire teachers and staff who lack seniority and then hire some if not all back once the budget is reconciled, usually by August. Central Falls is a rarity where all were canned.
In California, the San Diego Unified School District board began cutting budget programs Tuesday, a process that has axed $300 million since 2008 in a district with 9,000 teachers, 130,000 students and 202 schools. About $19 million was cut last night from employee wages and benefits — amounting to 6% of their current salaries — in which trustees are praying the unions will accept.
Besides hoping for the best, San Diego is taking a kinder, gentler approach which makes one wonder why these expenses lasted as long as they have. Among the $63 million cuts en route to make up a $87.8 deficit in the $1.2 billion operating budget:
Cutting weeklong seminars at historic sites for fourth and fifth graders to two and three days; cutting a half day from a four-day trip for sixth graders to a mountain campsite; ending free bus transportation to families who do not qualify for subsidized lunches; cancel free educational testing for ninth-grades; and kill a proposed increase to special-education services.
“I’m worried about the kind of education the children will get next year,” Pamela Forde, who teaches second and third grades at Rosa Parks Elementary School, told a Union-Tribune reporter. “But I’m worried about my own welfare, too. My husband and I both teach in the district, and we bought a house six months ago.”
I’m worried, too. What happened to the 3 Rs? Little wonder why there are so few James Escalantes in our classrooms.
34 Responses to “The Sorry State Of Our Schools”
Jerry, thanks for addressing a topic that gets underplayed here at TMV. It's an old line, I know, but why do athletes get paid millions and teachers get paid peanuts? Illinois has the highest paid teachers, but now faces a massive $ 13 billion budget shortfall. You can bet their schools will take a big hit. I have a brother who teaches elementary music in the public schools in a southern state.Though he's a gifted teacher, he sweats bullets at the end of every year during the budget process. I wish I had the answers. I'm not even sure I know all the questions.
Why do athletes get paid millions and teachers get paid peanuts?
Because athletes' pay is linked to their performance.
“why do athletes get paid millions and teachers get paid peanuts”
Economics says — a wide divergence in talent (that people may choose to pay to observe).
The ones at the top are paid what we know are very much, but what about all the other athletes? (Or artistic performers?)
“The Draconian decision by the school board was refusal by teachers to work extra hours after school for no additional pay.”
Ummmm….. no. That's not correct.
Central Falls is not just a low-performing school; it's one of the very lowest-performing schools in RI. And the teachers weren't asked to work for nothing. The teachers wouldn't accept $30 / hr for the extended time (incidentally, an extension of less than an hour per day). They wanted *triple* that amount — and further contracted increases as well.
The story by MSNBC that you linked is astoundingly biased. Here's a less-skewed version. (LINK)
Mish has more background on the story here (link).
To my eyes, the teachers (and their union) radically overplayed their hand, and they got called on it.
I have come to realize that the public schools will never get better. The political leadership in the U.S.is a product of prep school and private, tier-one universities. They have zero experience with schools where many, if not most, of the students have zero interest in learning.
Does anyone believe that political leadership can ever comprehend the problems let alone implement solutions?
Thanks for the clarification and my mistake on the refusal by teachers because of no pay. As with most news sources, I try to be as general as possible and use them only as a path to support the angle I'm pursuing in the story since I'm wearing a hat of a columnist.. Had I seen the link you offered, I would definitely have included the union's counter proposal, as posturing.
– Jer
What are the odds that if you went out and fired all the teachers, rehired a new staff according to good “Conservative Principles”, the school district would still be the worst in RI five years from now?
Horrible School District, in general, are in bad, poor neighborhoods in which the stability of the family unit leaves quite a bit to desire, parents lack the steady jobs, the education and the incentives to help their children in school…
In such School Districts, you are asking teachers to do the damn near impossible: Not Educate Children but Fix Society.
“Horrible School District, in general, are in bad, poor neighborhoods in which the stability of the family unit leaves quite a bit to desire… In such School Districts, you are asking teachers to do the damn near impossible: Not Educate Children but Fix Society.”
DQ, I agree that Horrible School Districts, generally, are found in areas with instability and poverty.
However, I disagree with the implicit assumption that schools are locked into a single-model, and new approaches / reform should be resisted because it's hopeless. And I especially disagree with the teachers' union in this case, because the teachers themselves initially welcomed the reform proposals; it all bogged down on more $.
SD — Arne Duncan has been working in the background (only because education is so far below anyone's radar right now) with a number of fairly interesting reform approaches. What we're seeing in CF is the direct result of that.
“Does anyone believe that political leadership can ever comprehend the problems let alone implement solutions?
Not when they're locked into a “one size fits all” model, no. This is one of the strongest arguments for returning education much more fully to individual schools and districts. Unfortunately, there are more barriers to creative reform than politicians…
The ones at the top are paid what we know are very much, but what about all the other athletes?
Exactly. There's an enormous salary differential between the stars and the many athletes who are never able to make a living at it at all. And job security is exactly the opposite of teachers: even the stars enjoy fairly short careers before they have to find other lines of work.
Teachers could make a lot more money if they were willing to sign up for more accountability and risk.
“Exactly. There's an enormous salary differential between the stars and the many athletes who are never able to make a living at it at all.”
If I have time I'd like to quote from the econ book I have currently in my truck cab, that decribes this better than I have done. The other thing I'll note here is that it's not new; a book I've recommended in the past, “Tragedies of Our Own Making,” by a Dem, includes a long treatment of the economy as well as education, with views by Thurow and Robert Reich, and among other things it discusses the old vs. new economy (bolt-tighteners in a factory versus writing software for computers), the larger disparities that can be found (the thousands waiting tables all over Hollywood versus Eddie Murray), and how those whose unskilled or low-skilled labor can be done in the Third World will be done here for Third World or equivalent wages or won't be done here at all.
As for the book I have and the athlete example, it also involves the “ability” (additional) to fill seats with paying spectators.
One thing I see here, in the post and among the commenters, is the idea of merit pay instead of seniority pay. I'm curious for those who are advocating such a change — how does one figure out the merit of an individual teacher? My contention, having a family full of public school teachers, and having been involved with the public school system myself for a number of years, is that it's not nearly as easy as one might think.
As a student, it was pretty easy to tell. Unfortunately, students tend to prefer teachers that are easy over teachers that do their jobs well, so your point is well taken. I know in Indiana, the “solution” has been to exchange weeks of teaching for testing, which is good for show, but seems to hurt more than it helps.
There are a lot of possible approaches: student reviews, test scores, peer reviews, audits, votes by parents. Even just getting the principal to rank the teachers would give a pretty good read.
Everyone who has been to school remembers standout teachers and dolts. At all the schools I attended, who was who was never much of a secret.
So although no one ever promised that telling them apart systematically would be easy, there's no reason to write it off as impossible. Especially since it's so important.
Because professional athletes are blood sucking socialist who are paid through an involuntary tax on every consumer in America… If they had to depend upon people paying hard cash out of their pockets to see them perform, they would not be taking home tens of millions every year…
My favorite term, which came up over a discussion on building stadiums with public money, was “sports socialist”.
I don't think that any new approach/reform is going to make much difference until the students have a stable home life, employed parents who give a damn and peers who are interested in something other than sex, drugs and rock & roll.
Best thing you could do for the students is breakup the district and distribute the students into the neighboring school districts, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN… I can hear the screaming from the parents in the neighboring district from here…
$ That's the purpose of a Union, would you go out and work a couple of extra hours every day for free if you had a choice?
Because professional athletes are blood sucking socialist who are paid through an involuntary tax on every consumer in America.
True. But so are teachers.
“student reviews, test scores, peer reviews, audits, votes by parents. Even just getting the principal to rank the teachers would give a pretty good read.”
But Dr J, there are huge problems with each of these methods; perhaps a combination of them would work, but would be horribly and prohibitively expensive — on the tax payer's dollar and all that. I hope you know that in most school districts, a teacher is subject to many drop-in reviews by principles, etc, before they get tenure. The teachers who are just downright bad are put on probation, and then do not have their contracts renewed if they fail to improve dramatically.
My point here is not that merit pay would be bad, per se, if it could be done in a manner that somehow correctly assessed merit. Unfortunately, the most common proposed way of determining merit is student test scores. Hopefully we can all see the many, many reasons why this would be a highly destructive metric to link to teacher pay. First: you'd have a flight of all the best teachers to rich districts (which already happens often), leaving all the less awesome teachers to work with the kids who need the most help. This would happen not only on a district level, but also on a school level, and on a intra-school level. If I were an awesome teacher who is excellent at the extremely sought-after but very rare skill of teaching low or poor-English-speaking students to write proficiently, but I would get paid more for just showing up in a class full of the rich GATE/AP/Advanced kids, where would I rather go?
Obviously student reviews are bad ideas: basically the kids will have the power over teachers' salaries. Who thinks a screw-up kid who won't do hir homework and gets an F will give the teacher a good score? Honestly, these days, parents really aren't any better. My mom will quite often get threats from parents of lawsuits for giving their kids the grades they've earned. (She always tells them no, the grade will not change, but also let's them know that their kid is lucky to have involved parents.) Not to mention the fact that often the teachers that teach us best are different from the ones we like the most; I know for me personally, it's also the case that the teachers I thought were enhancing my education the most were different from the ones I'd say did so now, in retrospect.
Peer/principal reviews: too easy to rig, too easy to let politics get in the way. And in most school situations, teachers don't spend much time in other teachers' rooms watching them teach. In many cases, principals have never ever been in front of a class, and there's huge amounts of politicking among administrators. (Hence: union protections)
Any other suggestions?
My point is to make it clear that when teachers' unions oppose merit pay, it's not because they're afraid that they, personally, are bad teachers, and they're not averse to pointing out and rewarding the best teachers. They're not trying to hide poor performance behind a union. It's primarily because there really are no good proposals on the table for how to fairly determine merit.
“$ That's the purpose of a Union, would you go out and work a couple of extra hours every day for free if you had a choice?”
More than that, DQ, would you go out and work a couple of extra hours every day if it were already in your contract that you don't have to? In the non-unionized world, most people's pay continues to go up as their work load and experience go up. One of the things that I know is happening right now in a north San Diego district dispute is that the school board members are attempting to cut pay by 5% while increasing maximum class size by 6 kids per class, plus adding on after-school babysitting duty. That's significantly more work for less pay. (At least the class size thing also gets the parents riled up, and the school board will rarely go against anything the parents want.) All this couples with the fact that the same school district is pink slipping huge numbers of teachers, so there's not even much job security in the field any more.
Once again the teachers at the lowest-performing schools get punished. Has anybody asked the question, “Are these students in a poor neighborhood?”. How about, “What's the educational background of the parents in the school district?”. Here's another, “Why are the teachers in the worst school districts being asked to do more than those in affluent ones, and all the while being pushed around and demonized for their efforts?” Now ask yourself,”Would you want to work in a school district that not only gets no respect, but shows none for the teachers who work there?”. I didn't think so.
roro, maybe you and DQ missed my first comment in this thread? They're not being asked for a couple of hours extra every day. It's less than one. And they were not asked to work for nothing. They wanted to triple the hourly rate they were being offered.
I gather, then, that you also feel that these kids are hopeless because of the environment in which they live, and that there's no point in doing much of anything if we can't up-end society and fix all social problems with our magic wands.
Myself, I'm much less of a defeatist. I think there's always hope, and that one never gives up.
“Once again the teachers at the lowest-performing schools get punished.”
They're being punished? How so? By being asked to help with a reform effort?
Pfffft. Hogwash. These teachers, better than anyone, know absolutely that their students are in difficult circumstances — and they KNEW that when they took the job. Furthermore, they're hardly undercompensated. The average teacher salary in CF is $75K… in an area with an average income of $22K.
Polimom, I wasn't speaking to that situation; I have no more knowledge about that particular dispute than what is in the articles. I was speaking to the union disputes in my mother's school district, which are fairly typical according to the state teachers' association.
There are huge problems with each of these methods; perhaps a combination of them would work, but would be horribly and prohibitively expensive.
Yes We Can! There's a huge difference between good and bad teachers, and a society that can feed 6 billion people and let you slay orcs from the comfort of your desk can measure it. To take your objections one at a time (and I hope I can paraphrase you reasonably):
1. Test scores would measure the best students, not the best teachers. Of course, which is why you have to look at the deltas the teachers brought about, not the absolute scores. And it may be harder to raise poor kids' scores, so you may need to index the deltas for kids in different categories. Correcting for biases like this is what statisticians do for a living, nothing hard about it.
2. Good teachers would gravitate to rich districts because they'll get paid more just for showing up. No one gets paid just for showing up, they'd have to compete with other teachers to show they could make an even bigger impact on the kids. And salaries should be based on the market as well–any school where everyone was dying to teach should have to pay less, the challenging ones more.
3. Kids aren't reliable reviewers. No one is a reliable reviewer. Even professional movie critics are so variable that we need a tomatometer. But given the limitations of reviews, who better to ask than the kids? The screw-up kid arrived unmotivated and left unmotivated, and his review reflects that. It's a legitimate ding, because it's a missed opportunity for the teacher.
4. Internal reviews are too easy to rig. Most of our planet's other organizations function on internal reviews. They're not perfect, and skilled politicians can nudge the consensus a bit. Do you believe your mother and most of the other professionals in our schools cannot spot incompetence? If so, let's fire the lot of them and start fresh. I was spotting incompetent teachers when I was 9.
5. These measures are too expensive. Surveys are embarrassingly cheap, and tests are already being given. Where's the expense?
My point is [teachers] are not trying to hide poor performance behind a union. It's primarily because there really are no good proposals on the table for how to fairly determine merit.
In policy discussions, it is the union speaking. And of course unions want to avoid scrutiny on performance, because they don't see it in their financial or political interest. They have more leverage when they have a monopoly on the labor market, and to keep it they have to represent the interests of all the teachers, not just the top performers.
Watching conservatives, people who have spent the last thirty years telling us that government couldn't find it's ass with both hands and a flashlight, telling us that if we were willing to break the Teacher's Union we could fix the school systems in a jiffy is pretty hilarious…
BTW, Why is it that Southern States with right to work laws have even worse schools than the strong pro-union States in the North-East and the Mid-West?
if we were willing to break the Teacher's Union we could fix the school systems in a jiffy
Not quite what I said. I'm saying get rid of the bad teachers, and stop accepting excuses for why that's not feasible.
That need not imply breaking the union. Green Dot Schools, for example, are turning around troubled schools with unions in place. Their innovation: less patience with bad teachers.
I'm curious, Dr J, if you're against all unions, or just teachers' unions? You say things like this: “They have more leverage when they have a monopoly on the labor market” — I mean, that's tautological. It's what a union is. Of course there's safety in numbers. However, I'd certainly argue that among the perhaps 400 teachers I know personally, the ones that are bad do have a great deal of difficulty keeping a job, and they don't have tenure.
I'm not sure if it was you with whom I had a long conversation about what makes a good teacher, and how teaching is a skill set much like any other, in that those who have it, have it, while those who don't can be taught. Even those who have it can improve greatly with experience and more training. I just don't buy into this trope from both you and from the original post that “For every one [fantastic teacher], there is 1,000 teachers who can’t teach”. I haven't had a thousand teachers in my life; I've had a few handfulls of awesome teachers, a large number of good teachers, mostly fine teachers, and a couple of stinkers. Even among the stinkers, about half of those were people I strongly disliked but from whom I was nevertheless able to learn a great deal. Because of my personality, some of the teachers others simply hated and thought were terrible were teachers I thought were excellent. I'd say the ones we need to find a method of weeding out are those remaining stinkers, who aren't loathed because they're bad people, but are loathed because they're just dumb and don't teach much and can't keep discipline in the classroom.
When it comes down to it, we need lots of teachers. If only 1 out of a thousand are meeting your personal standards, we've either got to start paying teachers way, way more to attract the sort of talent you're looking for, or we've got to increase class size by a good 1000%.
I have a few things to say about your merit metrics, but I'll let those slide for now.
I'm no fan of unions in general, but I respect that workers have their own interests to protect just like everyone else, and they're doing so. It's rational self-interest for a teachers union to put teachers first, kids second. Fair enough, but we should receive their claims that the top teachers cannot be distinguished from the bottom with some skepticism.
My student experience was much the same as yours: there seemed to be a bell curve, with a few terrific ones, a few terrible ones, and most somewhere in the middle. And I found my perceptions aligned well with everyone else's.
For sure we should weed out the stinkers, but to do only that is aiming too low. Why can't we shift the whole curve up? Identify the stars, figure out what they do that makes them terrific, and use that info to improve the average–either by teaching their skills to others or by hiring more people with those traits?
There's a potential virtuous cycle we could get on. Showing improvement in teaching would make taxpayers willing to pay teachers more, which would in turn let us attract more talent into the field, which would let us show even more improvement. But we can't even start if we're unwilling to measure performance.
The problem is that you have to do a more careful job of gathering. I have
been teaching in a school with poor academic performance for 27 years, and
have gotten great results from the kids I teach. I had a group last year
that took 1st, second and third place in a Los Angeles technology contest
open to all Los Angeles Unified School District students. Not all of them
succeed, mind you, but those that put their heart and soul into learning
will. I am committed to that.
Many of the solutions proposed by the latest group of educational pundits
is that you have to concentrate the best into Charters and let the rest fend
for themselves (read rot) in a compressed environment of hopelessness. There
is always an easy and erroneous solution to public education. Eli Broad,
Bill Gates and the Charter Kings are just the latest to glom onto the wave
of public dissatisfaction with simple solutions. This time around, though,
they are creating a layer of classicism that is going to make the inner-city
schools even more desperate than ever before. You really have to look at it
carefully to understand how entrenched the problems of the barrios and
ghettos are to understand that it takes a lot of work at all levels,
including parents and administrators to help. If I didn't have hope, I
wouldn't try, and believe me, I do. It is just that much tougher when
everyone is an expert and every five years someone has a new wonderful
solution that makes life Hell for the kids in the toughest part of
town…and that's the way it is. So don't put yourself too high on some
pedestal, and watch the Kool Aid being passed out at the door.
“It's rational self-interest for a teachers union to put teachers first, kids second.”
Ok, yes, I'd say that's true. However, I'd also say that teacher's interests align more closely with the interests of the students than any other group. When students do well and have all the resources they need, that's because the teachers are doing well and have all the resources they need. You might say that students themselves, or their parents, have interests that line up better; however, I'd argue that students/parents have competing interests with other students/parents. For example, rich/white parents probably prefer not to change the system, as their kids are getting the best teachers, the most resources; kids in rich districts have no problem getting an excellent public education as it is. The interests that want to maintain the system as-is are in deep conflict with the interests that would like to see major improvements among lower or middle income schools. Overall, teachers in general are just as interested in improving the system for the lower kids, because they're the ones who have to try and teach these kids with no resources, starting from a lower baseline kid due to family/low income/kids who need to get jobs/kids who have no support at home/parents who can't come in and help, etc, while at the same time getting slammed by the public for being “bad teachers”.
“Why can't we shift the whole curve up?”
This is possible, but considering that there aren't enough teachers as is, this would require, again, improving both the ability to sufficiently fund schools and improving teachers' base salaries. Both of these things cost money. If we as a society aren't going to pay teachers enough, while at the same time sticking them with really crappy work situations in which they need to spend huge amounts of their own money to have things like *paper* in their classrooms (let alone computers), in which they're basically babysitters because the districts keep on raising minimum class size (35, 40, 45 kids in a class), and in which they don't even have enough time to teach any sorts of critical thinking skills due to having to teach to the ridiculous NCLB tests, well, we kind of have to take what we can get. It's still quite possible to get rid of the “bad” teachers, but frankly, without putting more money and security into that job market, you're just not going to attract as high a quality of teachers.
My mom's retiring at the end of this school year, in part because things have gotten so crummy for teachers in the past decade. It used to be that teaching was a really cool profession, because even though it requires a 4-year degree plus a year of grad school, and even though the pay isn't great, you did get the summers off, and there were great benefits and job security, with general respect from the community. Plus most teachers just really like kids, and like teaching, and like the satisfaction of helping people every day. All that's pretty much gone now. We've got a great deal of healing to do in our education system (like, uh, funding it properly) before our best and brightest are going to choose that as a profession again. My mom's saying that the young, enthusiastic teachers are leaving the profession after a few years these days, because it just doesn't pay enough to justify the long hours and the horrible system.
This is possible, but considering that there aren't enough teachers as is, this would require, again, improving both the ability to sufficiently fund schools and improving teachers' base salaries.
Yes. I think that's very hard to do if teachers continue to stonewall on measurement and accountability. Look at the gist of Sscanlan's message: underperforming schools are unfixable, inner city kids doomed, and outsiders' proposed solutions unwelcome. If you're hoping to tickle taxpayers' wallets open, that pitch won't do it.
What's more likely to succeed is teachers demonstrating they're putting their own house in order, shaking off the defeatism, and scoring some actual successes. Check out the Green Dot trunaround in LA, which they accomplished with just the normal money available from the state.
Their innovation: a group of self-selected students with parents who give a shit.