Our local school district is having serious problems: A pathetic voter turnout of barely 25% (among other things) resulted in the school budget being voted down. By state law, the school board has to implement an austerity budget which calls for the discontinuation of extracurricular activities including all sports, music, theater, art…everything, really.
So local groups have been cropping up that are attempting to develop fund-raising activities to cover the difference. Well, tonight a meeting had been called at the local high school of a group that was seeking to raise money specifically to cover music, theater and art. Kath had gone to previous meetings dedicated to saving sports, and I was hoping she would go to this one as well. But she didn’t feel up to it and so, against my better judgment, I went.
Well, with key members of the school board as well as local politicians up on the stage, and a fairly decent turn-out of parents, there was lots of talk about things parents could do to raise money, and students could do to raise money, and more things parents could do and more things students could do, and how absolutely everyone had to pull together for the kids.
Then they started taking questions.
Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty questions are asked in relative silence as the people on the stage fielded them.
And then I raised my hand. And they brought the mike to me, and I said, “I can’t help but think that what we’ve basically got here is a business that’s in trouble. A business that we–the consumers–are being asked to help shore up. And what occurs to me is that in the corporate world, on some occasions when a business is in trouble, the management–which is you–approaches the various unions in their employ and ask them to pitch in to see them through difficult economic times. Everyone contributes to the greater good. So what I’m wondering is–following that business model–has anyone here approached any of the unions and asked for roll backs or give backs in the spirit of everyone pitching to help the students?”
And suddenly the place was alive with thunderous applause and shouts of “Yes! Yeah!” And the organizing guy starts telling me why this is a terrible idea, and the superintendent of schools is telling me why this is a terrible idea, and the head of the local teachers union, HE’S explaining why it’s a terrible idea…
Understand, I think teachers are underpaid. When one of my kids was in kindergarten, I came in to lecture about making comics. After 40 minutes I felt like I’d been running a marathon, and when I staggered home, I was convinced that however much they were paying teachers, it wasn’t enough.
Nevertheless, from a business-model point of view, it seemed a reasonable question. Instead it touched off a small shitstorm of hostility from the parents and defensiveness from the school people.
So when I got home, I said to Kath, “From now on, YOU go to these kinds of meetings. At least YOU don’t nearly start riots.”
PAD
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but, as a liberal, aren’t you supposed to love unions no matter what?
Actually, though, I see your point. I think that point of a school is to provide the best education possible no matter what. Sometimes though, schools go overboard in some areas. For instance, at my high school of 800 kids, we had four vice-principals, more then most schools three times our size. and yet, they were constantly whining about a) not having enough money, and b) not controling the students.
Much as I hate to suggest it….we should privatize education. give a company a set of stringent standards, give ’em cash, and let em go.
hëll, can’t be any worse.
Is a school system a business? Does a school system operate in the same way that a corporation does? Is it designed to achieve the same ends that a business does? The answer to all these questions is ‘no’. This is an analogy that cropped up during the 80s when every aspect of our culture was looked at throught the lens of the bottom-line business model; a model that is fine for businesses, but schools don’t operate that way. So to treat a school system as such is flawed from the beginning. And while you’re paying lip-service to the overworked teachers, all your proposal offers is to work them over some more.
The problem has more to do with the school systems being continually forced to do more with less, or rather, more with none.
In Respectful Disagreement,
Mark W.
What a load of crap.
The underpaid teachers should take a paycut to help YOUR kids to do extracurricular stuff so YOU don’t have to pay any more money?
Sounds like the crap that the overpaid politicians would shovel–but you’ll never hear them mention a paycut for themselves.
Someone needs to start asking why most politicians in office are making more than double the average worker’s salary.
If we could cut the politicians’ salaries we could divert that money where it’s needed, like the schools.
Anybody got a button maker? Peter needs a button:
Insitement to riot? Ask me how!
Yet another reason why no vote or referendum should not be passed without a majority of registered voters participating.
I have to say I don’t think the “little people” who you admit are underpaid should have to chip in to help with a situation that sounds like it’s the result of bad law. Surely this is when the state should step in and help out the school district, rather than saying, “Screw you… cut everything that makes school a more human environment and you have to pay out of your pocket to get it back.” And by “you” here I mean the parents too. It seems like there should be some serious lobbying/protesting going on, rather than forcing parents and teachers and school staff to scramble to cover expenses for which I assume the state has the money to pay for.
And as someone already pointed out, education is not a business. Schools are not corporations, nor should they EVER be thought of as such. For one, their goal has to ultimately be enlightenment, rather than profit. If you let it be made into a profit-driven system, you might as well just shut public schools down because I’m sure by corporate standards schools are dreadful wastes of money.
Folks should remember that there are more unions than just the teachers…
-K
Peter really does have a point. Well maybe not with the teachers taking paycuts, but someone should be looking at the schools to make sure that all of the money is being well spent. It’s not a business and doesn’t operate like one. That could be a problem. Perhaps the officials while generally well-meaning might not be using their resources efficiently. They might be, but it really doesn’t hurt to examine the system.
James–I think a number of schools have tried that. I keep hearing, when I’m at university in Philly, about the Edison schools, which are privatized. Apparently it’s an unmitigated disaster.
For myself, I side with Aaron Sorkin (in the voice of Sam Seaborn): “[E]ducation is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes. We need gigantic monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries.
School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”
But, of course, that’s not quite the issue. What bothers me (and, I think, Peter) is the idea that there are any suggestions that can’t be discussed, because no one will listen to each other. Maybe there were perfectly good reasons that the unions cutting back wouldn’t work, but the parents wouldn’t listen because they were all furious, and the officials wouldn’t entertain the debate.
James–I think a number of schools have tried that. I keep hearing, when I’m at university in Philly, about the Edison schools, which are privatized. Apparently it’s an unmitigated disaster.
For myself, I side with Aaron Sorkin (in the voice of Sam Seaborn): “[E]ducation is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes. We need gigantic monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries.
School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”
But, of course, that’s not quite the issue. What bothers me (and, I think, Peter) is the idea that there are any suggestions that can’t be discussed, because no one will listen to each other. Maybe there were perfectly good reasons that the unions cutting back wouldn’t work, but the parents wouldn’t listen because they were all furious, and the officials wouldn’t entertain the debate.
James–I think a number of schools have tried that. I keep hearing, when I’m at university in Philly, about the Edison schools, which are privatized. Apparently it’s an unmitigated disaster.
For myself, I side with Aaron Sorkin (in the voice of Sam Seaborn): “[E]ducation is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes. We need gigantic monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries.
School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”
But, of course, that’s not quite the issue. What bothers me (and, I think, Peter) is the idea that there are any suggestions that can’t be discussed, because no one will listen to each other. Maybe there were perfectly good reasons that the unions cutting back wouldn’t work, but the parents wouldn’t listen because they were all furious, and the officials wouldn’t entertain the debate.
I read a story some months ago about some kids who hacked into their schools network because the admin was a moron and they guessed the passwords.. it was a fairly typical “string’em up” article.
What was interesting about it though was the FAQ on the schools website. It stated that if a parent wanted to buy one of the laptops that the kids received from the school so they could keep it through out the summer then it would cost the parents $3400. This may not seem like a huge amount for a laptop to some people. But these were $1k 12″ iBooks.. I sat for hours trying to figure out WTF kind of software a high school kid would need that would $2400. I added up the cost for retail versions of Photoshop, MSOffice, 3Dcad and anything else I could think of. And it came nowhere near $2400. I know for a fact that students pay about 1/3 of retail for MSOffice and the other titles are given at substantial discounts to students.
So my question to PAD or anyone else.. why do teachers and the like need to take hits to make up for piss poor management? I mean this isn’t an Mac vs Windows thing.. the machines they got can be had a dámņ nice student discount and so can the software. Who the *uc* is padding their pockets at our expense? I’d say we SHOULD do what businesses do.. when things seem out of whack .. have an audit. They can then make the findings public at the PTA meetings or whatever. It’s time that taxpayers and parts got the most bang for the buck. We need to stop letting the private sector screw the public sector.. because what they are doing is screwing us.
I like to have someone who is screwing me to at LEAST buy me dinner first. 😉
Again, all PAD was asking was whether anyone had even looked into the idea of trimming any of the other budgets around the school. And, as so many have shown here, even raising the concept sets off so many people, on so many barely-related tangents, that it’s never even discussed.
Perhaps there are good reasons why no other monies are avilable. Perhaps the administration actually is running efficiently, and perhaps the teachers have been cut to the bone and beyond (that last is true in many districts, including San Diego Unified). The salient point here is that we will never know, because the very idea is off-limits. And I don’t think that, in a situation like this, any ideas should be off-limits…
> [Teachers] should be making six-figure salaries.
I’ve never quite understood the “teachers are grossly underpaid!” meme.
I would suggest that some proportion of teachers are the epitome of teacherdom and are grossly underpaid. Some (perhaps much larger) proportion of teachers are being paid exactly what their qualifications and abilities deserve; some are being grossly overpaid for their abilities.
The overwhelming power of the teachers’ unions means that any attempt to differentiate between these groups fails. If teachers as a collective group have chosen a position that reduces an individual teacher’s ability to earn what they deserve, I’m not sure I’d look beyond that group for blame.
The truth is that being a teacher is not a particuarly skilled job. Being a *good* teacher is, but that’s never been a requirement to gain or keep the job.
Brian: Maybe, maybe not; but you can’t deny that if teachers made six-figure salaries, more people would be competing for the jobs, allowing us to find teachers who were deserving of the salaries.
Brian: Maybe, maybe not; but you can’t deny that if teachers made six-figure salaries, more people would be competing for the jobs, allowing us to find teachers who were deserving of the salaries.
Brian: Maybe, maybe not; but you can’t deny that if teachers made six-figure salaries, more people would be competing for the jobs, allowing us to find teachers who were deserving of the salaries.
“What a load of crap. The underpaid teachers should take a paycut to help YOUR kids to do extracurricular stuff so YOU don’t have to pay any more money?”
Well, first of all, I didn’t say that. In an environment where we were being repeatedly told, “Everyone has to work together,” I asked if the unions–and there are more than just the teachers–had been approached about pitching in since they’re, y’know, part of “everyone.”
And second, of the people who did vote against the budget, certainly the fact that the student grades and educational quality have been spiralling in our district over the past decade MUST have factored into their decision to vote no. Maybe they’re saying with their “no” vote that they feel they shouldn’t be paying higher taxes for education quality that is declining.
So it seems a bit disingenuous to say that everyone BUT the teachers bear responsibility for that decline, and not exactly out of line to suggest that maybe–just maybe–while the kids are being made to pay by losing their senior proms and athletics, and while the parents are being made to pay by trying to come up with the money to reinstate them, that the various unions at least be ASKED if they want to pitch in as well.
PAD
The truth is that being a teacher is not a particuarly skilled job. Being a *good* teacher is, but that’s never been a requirement to gain or keep the job.
Well, sure, but that’s true for most things. Outside of tightrope walking and lion training, most jobs are easy if you don’t care how good a job you do at it.
But I’ll say this: while I will never ever disagree with anyone who wants to see my salary raised (bless ’em) I went into this with Eyes Wide Open. Yeah, teachers are underpaid. So are cops, firemen and sanitation workers. Nobody holds a gun to your head and makes you pick a career.
That said, I agree with the poster who said that its a mistake to look at a school as a business. I also have to point out that the teachers did nothing wrong here so why should they be penalized? Not that it was wrong for PAD to throw out the suggestion (and you’d think that the administration would have had a better response). If the votes are anything like what I see in my old hometown of Saugerties NY I’ll bet that if every parent who has kids at the school had showed up at the polls the budget would have passed easily.
And may I make a suggestion? Why don’t the parents, teachers, PTA, whatever, take a page from the way politicians do it. We’ll use the Republicans as an example, since we want to win (ba dump!); start organizing a grassroots organization that will man phone lines on voting day and get out that vote. Should be easy. Start with the names of all the parents at the school and ask them for the numbers of people who, though they don’t have kids there, are sympathetic to the cause. Have teachers and parents at the phones, have vans that can transport voters who need a ride, do whatever it takes, short of registering dead people or slashing tires of your opponents.
And for God’s sake, make sure that someone remembers to thank the voters at every sports game, recital, art show, whatever. Many parents feel like they have no connection to their kids school. If you are in fact so dependent on them to function you had better make sure you let them know how much their support is appreciated.
I just returned from 2 months in upstate NY for my summer family visit. My sister teaches special ed and walked into school her first day with a salary close to double my own, even though I’ve been doing this for 8 years. Kind of depressing and it makes me think about moving…then again, when I talk to the teachers and parents and read the incredibly cranky letters to the editor in the local paper, I realize that I’ve got it pretty sweet in North Carolina. Parents seem to like me, I don’t think of my students and their parents as likely adversaries, I’ve never encountered the open hostility that you can find in New York against teachers. So…
If anyone knows of a place with North Carolina’s teacher friendly atmosphere and New York’s wallet friendly pay scale please let me know!
I am not a teacher, but I am married to one, my sister is one, my sister-in-law is one, my grandma was one (years ago), my cousin is one, and my aunt is one. So you could say teachers kind of run in the family.
I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but the amount spent on education versus the results (and versus what is paid to those on the front lines, the teachers), is appaling. All but one of my relatives teach in the public school system. I know unions play a necessary role in giving them bragaining power, but the reality is that far too much money goes to union dues and to support political candidates than to actual educational issues.
I don’t blame the teachers, nor do I think they should take a paycut. But knowing the absurd levels of middle management that existed in Dallas and the absurd salaries paid to many of them, I am not surprised that our education system is in trouble. And the unions are not helping.
No easy answers, I know, but something has to change.
Iowa Jim
And may I make a suggestion? Why don’t the parents, teachers, PTA, whatever, take a page from the way politicians do it. We’ll use the Republicans as an example, since we want to win (ba dump!); start organizing a grassroots organization that will man phone lines on voting day and get out that vote. Should be easy.
Good suggestion, but you left out one step. A good Republican would start a petition to get it on the ballot! Which is what I thought PAD would suggest. Nobody likes their taxes raised, but not educating kids will only come back to haunt us later and be far more costly.
Iowa Jim
The truth is that being a teacher is not a particuarly skilled job.
Having taught in other arenas, and having many teachers as relatives, I can say with utmost confidence that teaching is a highly skilled job. It takes a unique mixture of people skills to control and discipline a classroom, organizational skills to set up lesson plans week after week, and communication skills to impart information to kids who would much rather be doing something else. It might not seem hard to subsitute when it is only one day and the lesson plan is done for you, but try taking 30 diverse children who learn at different speeds and who are dealing with a host of their own home and personal issues and try to get them from point A to point B, and you will have a whole new appreciation for skills.
I think PAD is right that teachers should be held accountable, but they are only a piece of the puzzle. Most do a remarkable job with little support.
That’s my two cents worth. I will shut up and go to bed now.
Iowa Jim
It’s late. I’m tired. I just can’t let this one go.
Peter’s not wrong for suggesting the idea. It’s unfortunate that his posts don’t include the arguments being made against his idea. I’d be interested in seeing what the district had to say. The first argument that pops into my head is that the relatively minor downward adjustment for everyone simply isn’t that dramatic. If you cut everything a little, the voters don’t notice. Kids still go to art class, to football practice, etc. If you cut all the flashy stuff, people notice and realize (right or wrong) that the school needs money and they should have voted yes.
If grades etc. are going down in the district, Peter’s absolutely right: everyone bears some responsibility. However, I have to wonder what it says about the average parental involvement (which can have a huge effect on a student’s performance) in a district with such low voter turnout (and negative turn out, at that!).
Finally, for “teaching isn’t that skilled of a job”-guy over there: Buy a clue. As other posters have noted, any job’s easy if you don’t do it even remotely well. Sitting in a classroom and breathing isn’t that hard, true, but have you ever even tried to make it through the day as a sub? I’m not even talking about education, here, I’m talking about simply babysitting. Some days, you get a sweet group and life is good. Many other days, the kids run you ragged until you develop some (gasp!) skill at classroom management. Coming into the profession with that skill, teaching purposefully and not accidentally: that’s tough. It requires skill.
As far as teachers’ unions and pay scales and all that crap: merit pay is a chimera. How does one measure a “good” teacher? Grades? Say hello to inflation. Test scores? I can focus on a test and get students to rock the world on it. Wanna guess how much they really learn? Answer: how much do you or your buddies remember from all those tests you crammed for in high school? Student satisfaction? Oh, yeah. Let’s let the inmates run the asylum. Parents wouldn’t be much better. Teacher pay scales are based on seniority because that’s the only reasonable way to do it in a society that values grades over learning, tests over teaching.
People say “teachers are underpaid” for the same reason people say “cops are underpaid”: they’re essential. It makes no sense to the average person why someone as useless as Pamela Anderson makes millions while the person shaping your child’s future or protecting your child from harm makes a pittance. (Please note I’m saying many people see it as not making sense–that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason.) That doesn’t mean that the people who say it are right in an economic sense. The statement really boils down to an indictment of our culture’s value system. If teachers and cops and firemen and EMT’s were valued the way we should value them, we’d make sure we had the best rewards there that we could, and people would compete more for those jobs. At the same time, where there’s money to be won, there’s deception to be found. I’m not sure we could handle teachers with big salaries. Who knows who’d be instructing our children then?
Eric
Since Johnson’s “Great Society,” we have spent over a TRILLION dollars on our schools. Thats a lotta dough. As a former inmate of the public school system, I would like to know where my money went. If teachers are underpaid (and I have know teachers worth paying millions.) and schools are falling apart, and we never get new textbooks, and teachers are decorating their rooms out of their own pockets, then where the hëll did my trillion bucks go??!?!?! Band uniforms?
That is a serious question, where is all the money going? and why are schools having so much trouble with students?
Well, I talked to a lot of my teachers about this, and they always said that a large part of it was the parents fault. Not the good parents, like Mr. David, who go to the PTA meetings, and are involved, but the parents who never show, and who never get involved.
At my school, we, at one point had to have five police officers in the school due to constant problems. I always felt that if parents bothered to take care of their own kids, and worked with teachers, there would be a lot fewer problems. As far as I could tell, a large portion of our money went towards having four vice-principals, and whatever it cost to have five cops in the school on a daily basis. When you get to the crux of it, a lot of schools problems get down to discipline, which, at heart, is the responsibility of the parents. Unfortunately, many parents would rather blame schools then take responsibility.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Bill or Iowa Jim can give me a different, teacher’s-eye perspective of the problem. But I think that if discipline was a little tighter, you wouldn’t have to worry so much about having all the things to teach with, because the teachers could teach, and not control.
Iowa Jim, thank you for that comment. Yes, teaching is a skilled job. Too many people without exposure or experience have an imagine in their heads that teachers are class monitors and no more.
Eric, if you believe subbing is harder than teaching then I question your experience. Subbing might involve more disciplining because you, as the sub, haven’t been there long enough to set up your own authority with the students but it is not harder than a regular teacher.
Teaching today involves more and more techniques and knowledge of technology. Class cirruculum is also being pushed. Where Algebra was a high school class when I attended school, it is now something taught at the middle school level. Most systems now require math and science courses to be taken each year of high school where two credits over four years used to suffice.
The funding issues for schools is ridiculous and outdated. The main problem being the formula doesn’t provide for things like art teachers, music teachers, PE teachers and teachers of honors electives.
Parents are busier and have less time to invest in their child’s education – a key factor in their child’s success, kids are too easily distracted by TV and games at night and aren’t getting the sleep or the homework time they need and then there are the abuses…
There are so many problems with the education system in America I can’t see us fixing it within my lifetime.
I am a teacher. 24 years. PAD, I can understand their reluctance not to give up ground. I work an average of 10 hours each and every day but am paid for 8. There are nights when I leave home before light and return after dark. I teach one of those fine arts: choral music and also work with the theatre program. Often I am the very last person to leave the building at night when rehearsal ends. My pay for this? 33,000 a year. And that’s with a higher degree and 24 years experience.
Folks, we ain’t in it for an easy job.
Forgive the mistakes in the above. Long day and late night.
In the CPS, it takes 4 years to get tenure. During the first 3 years, you can be gotten rid of for any reason, including questioning the Principal’s decision, the Principal caving to parents who kids got D’s when the parents believe their kids should get A’s and promotions to honors classes, because the Principal wants your job for the Principal’s niece, or just because you are a lousy teacher. After tenure, you get a hearing and due process before you can be removed from a position. The point is, you have those first 4 years to screen a teacher to see if that teacher is a good one. And good teachers don’t become lousy ones as soon as that tenure is granted. Principals need to do a better screening job prior to granting tenure to weed out the lousy ones.
I’ve never quite understood the “teachers are grossly underpaid!” meme.
Then you’ve never been one. ’nuff said.
Now, to echo Bill, I came into this with my eyes open, and I’ll be the first to admit that by staying in the independent-school community I’ve got it a lot cushier than some … but it’s still not a lot of money. (Though Bill, if you want teacher-friendliness with a reasonable pay scale, California isn’t completely out of the question — and just for you, there’s even a piss-poor Republican governor. 🙂
As for Peter’s question … it’s a good one, though I don’t knwo that I’d agree with it, in part because the decline of unions’ strength is so precipitous that I don’t think there’s much hope of a friendly labor/management “let’s all pitch in” chat these days. (It seems closer to the “let’s work together, meaning you do whatever I want” model that’s currently in vogue in other arenas.) Getting the voters involved is a good idea, as is perhaps asking where a lot of the money disappears to in the bureaucracy. (I’ve never met an overpaid teacher, but I’ve certainly known a few administrators who seem such.)
And as others have said, I don’t really think that looking at the schools through a business-model lens is necessarily a good idea. They’re not in this for profit, and we’ve got an awful lot riding on their staying in good shape. Adam Smith be dámņëd in this case — we need good schools to be kept afloat by whatever means necessary.
Of course, I’m an evil liberal, so none of this really matters…
TWL
And by “knwo” above, of course, I really mean “know.” At least I’m not teaching English. 🙂
TWL
It’s posts like this one that reinforces my belief that camera crews should follow PAD around, recording stuff like this for entertainment.
There are some systems that you just look at and have to ask “who was responsible for putting THAT mess together?” Public schools have to be one of them. Sure, there are excellent examples of well-run, productive, successful public schools. They don’t often make the news, but they exist. Or they did, back 20 years when I entered high school. Today, you hear all the bad stories, and think something must be done. And mostly, you’d be correct.
Edison/charter private schools have had some success. But just as in any venture, you’re going to have some failures. Are schools a business? Sure they are. But like a hospital, or even like a lot a businesses, determining whether your business is a success depends on what you value. Schools don’t produce a marketable good that offers a monetary return, so in order to view it correctly as a business model, you need to identify the outputs you’re trying to achieve. They’re pretty intangible: graduation rates, GPA, college admission distribution, average salary of graduates, etc. And you have to have community buy-in that their investment isn’t going to return financial interest, but these intangibles.
Much as I’ve harped on No Child Left Behind, it’s a good theory, because it looks at the non-monetary intangibles and attempts to use those as a benchmark for determining success of the school venture. Every Federal government agency is undergoing, or already has, a re-evaluation of their key missions, and identifying benchmarks of success. Federal Employee salary increases are now tied to these benchmarks, mirroring the private sector business model (right down to the executive salary increases seemingly insulated from performance ratings). It’s probably a good idea to do something similar for schools, and also to get all education related unions to buy in to tieing salary increases to meeting those performance benchmarks, rather than to a union promotion schedule.
And here’s a novel idea: make that uniform right up through the executive/administration ranks. Make everyone accountable (oh, and for the Federal programs, FUND them).
PAD’s question was certainly legitimate, and probably needed to be asked. If the tax-paying public perceives a decrease in performance, it’s understandable that they are going to resist a tax increase. If Marvel switched it’s paper to tissue for it’s comics, and then raised it’s prices, their sales would plummet…you can’t usually charge more for a crappier product because your costs are increasing and expect unit sales to remain constant. Much as I appreciate the need for a union, I’ve long held the opinion that most teacher’s unions hold too much power, and contribute too much to the problems at schools. New teachers are horribly underpaid. Old teachers that have lost the fire and are just coasting can be terribly overpaid. Very few are paid on actual merit and accomplishment…the incentive is to put your time in and just get your reward, whether you’ve earned it or not. And the temptation is to only work hard until you’ve earned tenure and substantially more job security, at which point you lose most of the incentive to work hard. And since the longer you stay, the more $ you make, there’s an entropic tendancy to sit and coast while you cost the system ever more, and contribute less and less as you age and lose the ability to truly inspire your students.
So I don’t think it’s outrageous to consider asking the unions if they want to sit at the table and be part of the discussion. There’s a huge problem to fix, and unless someone’s going to put one person in charge, and give them the authority to make sweeping changes, then it will take all parties (parents, administration, teachers, support, and even the students at higher grade levels) meeting and willing to sacrifice a little now in order to develop a better model.
“Folks should remember that there are more unions than just the teachers…”
We could always adopt the Japanese method of having the kids doing the cleaning in high school. Saves money, and you have less vandalism when the little blighters realize they are the ones who have to clean up whatever mess they make.
“School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”
Maybe ask the government in Norway where, if I recall correctly, undergraduate university is free. What do they know that we don’t?
” if teachers made six-figure salaries, more people would be competing for the jobs, allowing us to find teachers who were deserving of the salaries.”
Isn’t that the rationale for paying politicians more? Doesn’t seem to work all that well, does it? Conversely, let’s look at Mother Theresa, what she accomplished and what she was getting paid for it.
Maybe John W. Campbell was right. We should have leadership by lowest bidder. Of course, we’d need to have strict anti-bribery surveillance.
“But I’ll say this: while I will never ever disagree with anyone who wants to see my salary raised (bless ’em)”
I did. Some human rights tribunal in Canada decided that certain positions, such as lower-end clerical occupied mainly by women, were underpaid. It ordered a big back pay settlement. I thought it wasone of the silliest things I’d ever heard and wrote in to complain about it on the grounds that I had held one of those positions, had not made one cent more than the female staffers I worked with, yet still thought I was getting overpaid given the nature of the work. Unfortunately, the politically correct twits ignored me, rammed the back pay through, I got a cheque and my taxes soared thanks to that extra income. Thanks a heap.
“How does one measure a “good” teacher? Grades? Say hello to inflation.”
Again, turn to the system used in Japan where one has to pass qualifying tests to get into (not out of) a grade/school. It is in the interest of the teachers receiving the new batch of kids to make the test tough to ensure they only get dedicated, hard-working students. No grade inflation there.
” … but the amount spent on education versus the results (and versus what is paid to those on the front lines, the teachers), is appaling.”
And herein lies the rub: “those on the front lines.”
Teachers ARE the ‘front lines’. But does anyone in the educational system listen to them? Of course not. Instead, bureaucrats and politicians bring in ‘great experts’ (ie anyone with a pop psych degree and half-baked theory) to tell teachers how to do their jobs. This results in such insanity as Britain looking at eliminating the use of the word “fail”, replacing it instead with “deferred success” because it doesn’t harm little Johnny’s self-esteem as much.
Or bow to the rich, grant tax cuts, and then wind up with geography textbooks so out of date (in Ontario anyway) that the Soviet Union is still a superpower.
And we wonder why our educational system is such a mess?
Feh.
I teach part time at a community college, which I know isn’t nearly the same thing as teaching at the zoos that our public schools have become, but I can tell you that it does require some very specialized people-skills that you can only learn on the job and that’s on top of having knowledge of the subject matter.
Someone mentioned Edison and Philadelphia. Interesting story behind that company. Edison was created by a group for reasons that were as much political as they were to make a profit. The founders set out to prove that the private sector could run schools better and make a profit doing. So far, they’ve failed to achieve either goal.
Edison has been running the schools in Chester, one of the poorest cities in PA for years, and test scores have continued to drop. A few years ago, the state hired them as a consultant on how to fix the Philadelphia school district. After spending a year studying the matter, Edison came back with the recommendation that the state should (surprise!) hire Edison to run the Philly schools.
The only bigger educational fraud in Pennsylvania is our charter school system. Oh, and the new slots law, which while we’re going to have slot machines in PA now, apparently, none of the money raised from them is actually going to go to the schools as originally promised.
It’s true that we as taxpayers have been asked to pay more while getting less results from the public school system. However, after 20 years of trying to apply businesss models to public education, I think it’s clear that the “privatized is always better meme” isn’t giving us any better results.
More money isn’t the answer as it generally ends up being spent on bureaucracy (4 vice principals in a school of 800 students? Yikes!), but for years the mantra has that teachers are lazy and we need more competition to kick them in the ášš. I don’t buy that argument either. Most teacher’s I’ve known are dedicated professionals who try their best to do their job *despite* the pressures from both parents and the bureaucrats.
The real solution involves letting teachers restore discipline and high standards to the classroom, but that involves more that just throwing money at the problem. It involves school districts having the courage to tell parents that their kids aren’t perfect and parents remembering that their job is be parents and teach their kids how to behave, not to be their kids’ best friend.
I was going to be an English teacher when I was in college. That was my goal after I realized that computer science would take me nowhere I wanted to be. If I hadn’t burned myself out in the first two years of school, I might be teaching somewhere. One of the reasons I didn’t go back for it after I got myself back together is all the apathy I saw. Most of the teachers in Pennsbury taught with the MOST apathy I have seen. The ones I remember, like Mrs. Martinez and Mr. Roche, you could SEE their passion. They got everyone in the class involved. A lot of the other teachers spoke at the front of the class and didn’t care whether or not anyone got it. In fact, I remember a few cases where when some in the class didn’t understand, we all were lectured about how easy this stuff is, with no clarification of the initial point given. School systems have to look not only at the performance of the students but the performance of the teachers. At least make some of them take effective speaking classes.
On the flip side, some teachers are paid nowhere near enough. Hence, I believe, in a lot of cases, the apathy. However, the school board? The administrators? Most of whom when I was in school never seemed interested in anything but what the football team was doing? The focus needs to shift back from athletics to academics. Schools will have fund raisers to build a new stadium, but that does very little for the average GPA. Worry more about whether or not the kids are learning. Schools may not be businesses, and that point has been beaten to death, but they SHOULD be run like one in that if the people working there aren’t effective, get them out so that people who would be can get in.
The only problem with raising taxes to pay for education is the games the politicians will play.
When the state lottery here in New York was approved, it was because the money would go to education. HOWEVER, as lottery money was put into education, tax dollars were removed, leaving schools with no more money than they had before.
An education tax would likely have the same results.
I work for a teacher’s union. The last thing we ever want to do is offer givebacks. It’s bad precident, and a huge sign of weakness. That might seem insignificant, but I’ve sat in for contract negotiations two times now, and you’d be surprised how “out for blood” it gets.
I agree that these programs are horribly underfunded, but staff givebacks are the last thing that I would consider looking at.
From what I see people posting here, I think you can start to see that the problem isn’t just one, or even a few, things. There’s rampant problems all throughout the system. If education were a door, it’d be like saying “the door squeeks…I’m going to replace one of the hinges.” Which might stop the door from squeeking, but totally ignores that there’s a big hole in the door about 2/3 of the way down, there’s only a handle on one side, one hinge is totally missing, and the doorbell rings next door, not at your house.
Education is in such a state that the entire system needs to be addressed, not just points here and there. Throwing money around won’t fix much, if that money is just being pumped through the existing system. Our youth are failing, and falling behind relative to other countries. While at the same time, they’re mostly being raised to expect that they’re entitled to an awful lot of stuff. When today’s kids finally graduate, and get out of college and discover that they need to actually DO something and EARN what they can, they may find themselves woefully underprepared.
Since we’re talking about education again:
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19455
More about Bush’s war on science.
Catori,
Check my post again. I was pointing out that just being a sub and doing the babysitting for a day requires skill. The idea was for the reader to then think, “Wow, and that’s not even all the work of being a ‘real’ teacher!”
As for my experience, I think a year of subbing and seven years of teaching have shown me that both require skill.
Eric
“Schools will have fund raisers to build a new stadium, but that does very little for the average GPA.”
I forget whether it was North or South Korea, but in one (or maybe both for all I know) of them, they treat the high-achieving students like they treat football stars over here: They are the popular, recognized ones. I recall, at the wonderful tribute to “Lord of the Flies” that was my high school; they had individual rewards for each and every sport, and often individual positions. The Honor roll kids (3.5 GPA) all got the same cheap plastic plaque, and a form award that I could have made using Word and Clipart. Until academic achievement is recognized as being worthy of some note, you are gonna get the same morons pouring out of the schools that you have know. I’m sorry, do I sound bitter? I am. Four of the most intellectually void years of my life were spent in high school, and that needs to change. Much as I like the spirit of No Child Left Behind, in reality it will only lead to administrators putting more pressure on teachers and minorities, and the teachers, instead of at least teaching the tests in their classes, will end up teaching the NCLB tests. A friend of mine is from India, and (according to him) the Public schools over there are the good schools, with a long waiting list to get in. Students don’t dare misbehave, because they know they will be kicked out, and their place taken by one of the other thousand people who are begging to get in. Schools should be palaces, but more importantly, they should be a place that students want to go because they love it. It is the human nature to learn, and if you can make it fun and worthwhile, you will have people begging to go to school. At least, that is MHO
James Carter wrote:
“That is a serious question, where is all the money going? and why are schools having so much trouble with students?”
When Gov. Schwarzenegger of California came under fire for cutting the public school budget (from $42 to $44 million dollars), Tom McClintock published what he called “A Modest Proposal for Saving Our Schools.” He ended up coming to the following conclusion: “The school I have just described is the school we’re paying for. Maybe it’s time to ask why it’s not the school we’re getting.”
Mark Walsh, in the second comment on this thread (and others have agreed with him), asserts that schools aren’t businesses, don’t operate in the same way, and aren’t designed to achieve the same ends. Unfortunately he’s right, and that’s the entire problem.
Our public school systems, like virtually every other government program, have no incentives to do well. There’s no incentive for the school to provide a good product (a child’s education) for the customer (the child’s parents), because their income isn’t dependent on pleasing the parents. (Of course, often, parents don’t seem to give a hoot about their child’s education, but that’s a different problem altogether.)
Just as bad as not holding schools accountable for the quality of the education is that we don’t hold them accountable for their budgets. If they go over budget, or if teachers are underpaid, it’s because we’re underfunding the system, not because of poor management of the funds or overpaid administrators. (I’m not saying we’re not underfunding the system, just that there’s so much other stuff going wrong that it’s hard to tell. “It’s for the kids” has been such a reliable way of getting people to shell out money that the school systems, at least around here, are never scrutinized that well.)
We need to re-introduce some accountability into the school system, and the best suggestion that I’ve heard to do that is to semi-privatize the system, using school vouchers. Schools funded in this way would be forced to compete for students, and even better, for teachers, which should substantially help with the underpaid educators problem.
Our public school systems, like virtually every other government program, have no incentives to do well. There’s no incentive for the school to provide a good product (a child’s education) for the customer (the child’s parents), because their income isn’t dependent on pleasing the parents. (Of course, often, parents don’t seem to give a hoot about their child’s education, but that’s a different problem altogether.)
I don’t think it’s a different problem at all; I think it’s a different facet of the same problem. If the “customer” doesn’t appear to give a crap about the quality of the product, THEN there’s no incentive to do well. It’s not a question of “does their income depend on it?” — it’s a question of whether there’s any significant feedback at all.
My income’s never been dependent on “pleasing the customers” in a hard-and-fast way, but it’s certainly true where I’ve taught that if a lot of parents start making phone calls in critique of your teaching, you’ll hear about it.
The problem with saying “make schools accountable” is that there’s really no way to quantify the results that (a) doesn’t take years, or (b) isn’t a joke (cf. NCLB). I know how well I’m doing because I see what my students do with that knowledge months and years later, and because I hear from them and from their parents … at least on good days.
the best suggestion that I’ve heard to do that is to semi-privatize the system, using school vouchers. Schools funded in this way would be forced to compete for students, and even better, for teachers, which should substantially help with the underpaid educators problem.
And schools not funded in this way … what? Die off?
The basic problem with vouchers, unless you restrict it to public schools ONLY, is that it winds up sucking even more money out of the public schools as parents head for private ones. The typical voucher amounts are enough to give a moderately well-off family a bit of a break for that private school they were eyeing, but not enough to do a dámņ thing for an inner-city family whose schools really need the help.
Vouchers might work, but it would take a lot of work and a lot of hard thinking to make sure you’re doing it in a way that doesn’t just cause more and larger problems a few decades down the road.
(I also don’t believe it would help the “underpaid educators problem”, as you put it, but that’s another issue.)
TWL
As someone who has worked as a union employee, non-union employee and a manager, I think it is crucial in any organization that there is a non-adversarial relationship between employees and managers/administrators. And if the organization is hurting in lean times, the give-and-take MUST come from both sides for the organization to weather its crisis.
For unions to say, “no concessions — it sets a bad precedent” can doom a company and put EVERYONE out of work. I’ve seen it happen. Conversely, poor decisions by selfish, short-sighted or incompetent management can do the same.
As a shareholder (taxpayer) of the school system, Peter has every right to question any angle if there is a fiscal crisis. And anyone who attacks such an open-minded stance is probably someone who is being influenced by self-interest rather than the ultimate well-being of the organization.
Frankly, at least at the university level, I am appalled by the runaway tuition costs over the past few years — tuition costs that have far-exceeded inflation. Where’s all that extra money going? Unlike with a business, no one can say it’s going into the pockets of stockholders or the owners of a business. The lion’s share, I’ll wager, is going into the pockets of the professors, researchers and other folks who work there.
No offence to the teachers out there (I’m not trying to cancel your jobs), but here’s a suggestiong: Cancel school for a year, and make each parent personally responsible for their child’s education. Say around 8th grade. History, math, writing, science, and an art.
Give each parent a year of doing what people like Tim and Den do year after year, and then see how fast those parents step up to work a chance in the system. The poor voting turnout PAD describes just shows the apathy many have in America toward education. We see it as an entitlement, and we just expect it to be there. Too many parents don’t see it as something they should invest in at all…just send your kid to school, and assume learning hijinks ensues. Progressing from one grade to the next, rather than being the rite of passage it should be, is just another entitlement, and woe befall any teacher that gets in the way of little Jimmy’s progression.
Countries that make education a priority, by requiring actual, meaningful tests to advance, and that don’t glorify the athlete at the expense of the scholar, are passing us by leaps and bounds these days. Countries that had rice as their biggest product 30 years ago are now close to creating nuclear devices, while the US…well, let’s just say that I just got out of a 2 hour class my agency is requiring me to attend so that I can learn to write in something called Plain English. And the instructor is very good as telling us that it’s not “dumbing down” our writing…but that’s exactly what it is. It’s an admission that the common American citizen lacks the reading comprehension to easily comprehend words like utilize, initiate, and promulgate. And rather than strive to improve education so that Americans are able to communicate in a sophisticated and intillectual debate, we’re being told to lower our standards and write down to a lower level. This is the culture America is developing: Something proving too hard or ambitious? Simple solution, lower the standards so that the mediocre level you can accomplish with minimum work becomes acceptable.
I’ve long held the opinion that most teacher’s unions hold too much power
I’ve always found this argument hard to swallow, because, from all accounts, it sounds as if teachers don’t hold enough power.
It seems as though in alot of cases these days, the teachers have no power in the classroom or in the school, that parents have taken the power away, while, but expecting teachers to the jobs the parents should be doing at the same time.
Of my favorite two teachers in high school, one once told me that if he could go back and do it all over again, he probably wouldn’t have become a teacher (pay, lack of power in the classrom).
The other lamented the fact that, after being teacher for 20-25 years, I could get hired as a computer programmer after 2 years of college and make more money than him on the spot. I mean, sure, he was happy to see that we had such opportunities, but it shows that society seems to care little for those that we need the most, such as teachers, firefighters, etc.
A friend of mine is from India, and (according to him) the Public schools over there are the good schools, with a long waiting list to get in.
Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education.
Of course, things don’t work like that here – kid may not get a good education, but he’s forced to go.
So, I wouldn’t consider what India is doing a good system.
“I’ve always found this argument hard to swallow, because, from all accounts, it sounds as if teachers don’t hold enough power.”
That depends on what you think of when it comes to “power.” I totally agree that teachers have lost far to much of the ability to excercise control and enforce discipline in the classroom. Nothing gets an unruly kid’s attention in class so much as a rap on the knuckles with a ruler (assault and bettery suit). Or giving a kid a failing grade (can’t do that, will damage the frail esteem of the developing child).
Maybe the news just isn’t reporting it, but where is the union call for getting power back in the hands of the teacher? Maybe the tenure pay system doesn’t exist any more, but that was a creation of the union…stick around for 30 years, and finally you might make decent money. Just like many other unions that have similar pay-scales, 30 years ago, when those agreements were signed to by the companies, they seemed like a great idea. Or at the very least, they’d deal with the potentially high cost of retaining a bunch of top-salaried older employees in the future. Are we seeing a case where that once future time is now? What are the age-statistics on teachers? Do the schools most in budget trouble have a greater number of older tenured teachers pulling a significantly larger check for doing half the work?
“Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education. Of course, things don’t work like that here – kid may not get a good education, but he’s forced to go.”
This is another basic idea that maybe it’s time to dismiss as outdated? Who says every kid needs the same education? How far do we want to take our standard education requirements? As a lawyer, I clearly need skills in writing, logic, reason, other communication, deduction, etc. I don’t really need calculus, a ton of science, really broad history knowledge. Yet, I’m required to get a lot of that stuff. We’re teaching our kids a lot of stuff they don’t need, want, or can even use.
Why force someone to go to school? Why have someone in the classroom that does not want to be there? All they will do is serve as a disruption, distraction, and eventually slow those that DO want to be there down. If parents can’t instill a sense of wanting to learn in their kids, what chance will total strangers have in doing so? Maybe this sounds harsh, but I think we need to put real requirements on school admissions and progressions. If a kid fails to attain the required score, they don’t advance. If they don’t demonstrate basic skills, they can’t be admitted (we would have to set up some alternative access to education…like a skill based vocational program). Having a system where everyone, regardless of achievement, intent, or skill, is crammed through the same system. It produces the rare gem, but more often, it just gets bogged down in mediocrity. Is that the direction we want America to go in? So we can raise our big Foam Finger and chant “we’re number 5!”
“Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education.”
Not from what I understand. Indian parents are so focused on education that they send their kids to private school, but the public schools are so good that people beg to come in. So, the private schools aren’t BAD, but the public schools are really, really good. I should have made that clearer.
I figured it was only a matter of time until somebody mentioned the “V” word. Vouchers are one of those panecea ideas that may look good on paper and promise to magically transform the public school system into models of learning. In practice though, I have yet to see a vouchers scheme that would actually acheive this goal by itself. That’s for a number of reasons. One is that there are generally a limited number of slots in the “good” public and private schools into which students from the “bad” schools can transfer, meaning only a select few will actually get elevated out. And if you think the kid who can’t read but has a great jump shot won’t get in ahead of the science whizkid, then perhaps you’d be interested in buying some beachfront property in Kansas.
Second, as study after study has shown, the problems facing many distressed school districts have less to do with how much money the school spends per pupil then with other more intangible problems like how the money spent (buy new textbooks vs. sending the superintendent to a conference in Bermuda), the general decline in accountability/discipline in this country, and the lack of parental support of teachers. Taking the money from school A and giving it in the form of a voucher to school B won’t motivate A to change these problems.
Finally, vouchers lead to a further fragmentation of the community. One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that people today feel less invested in their neighborhoods and towns. Policy makers should be encouraging residents to invest more of their time and support towards improving their communities, including the schools. Vouchers send the message that, “Your community is falling apart and there’s nothing that can be done about it, but here’s a lifeline to pull a select few out. The rest of you can get bent.”
Not from what I understand. Indian parents are so focused on education that they send their kids to private school, but the public schools are so good that people beg to come in.
Gee, imagine that. Parents that actually expect their kids to get an education instead of having their self-esteem built it.
What a dangerously radical suggestion.
Tim wrote:
“I don’t think it’s a different problem at all; I think it’s a different facet of the same problem. If the ‘customer’ doesn’t appear to give a crap about the quality of the product, THEN there’s no incentive to do well. It’s not a question of ‘does their income depend on it?’ — it’s a question of whether there’s any significant feedback at all.“
After considering it, I think you’re right that it’s a facet of the same problem, but I wonder why there isn’t feedback? Is it just a matter of parents who don’t care, or is it that they don’t feel their input matters?
Tim:
“The problem with saying ‘make schools accountable’ is that there’s really no way to quantify the results that (a) doesn’t take years, or (b) isn’t a joke (cf. NCLB). I know how well I’m doing because I see what my students do with that knowledge months and years later, and because I hear from them and from their parents … at least on good days.“
Of course, you’re right — it’s nearly impossible to look at a school and quantify whether it’s doing well. Standardized testing is almost useless for doing that.
The voucher system, in my opinion, provides a very good way of holding schools accountable. If my (hypothetical) son’s been in a school for a year and I don’t see that he’s making progress (individual interaction with him day after day does qualify me to make that decision in a way that a government agency looking at a test score cannot), then I’m going to take my son out of that school in favor of another one. It might be that particular school just doesn’t suit my kid very well, but it suits plenty of other kids just fine. In that case, the school will prosper, and my son, having been placed in a different school that’s more fitting for his personality and/or abilities, will prosper as well.
Of course, the system isn’t flawless. Among other things, it brings up issues on how we monitor homeschooling (or unschooling), since the educators are also the parents who would be otherwise charged with evaluating the “system.” Still, I’m convinced it remains a better system than what we’ve got now.
Tim again:
“And schools not funded in this way … what? Die off?“
Unless they fix their school to meet the needs of the students and their parents, yes. Just like any business that doesn’t meet its customers needs.
Tim once more:
“(I also don’t believe it would help the ‘underpaid educators problem’, as you put it, but that’s another issue.)”
Why not? I’m not suggesting that it would suddenly put all teachers in a higher tax bracket or anything. I’m saying that I believe it would put the good teachers in a place where they could make a lot more money. Average teachers should make at least some more, and lousy teachers, well, they’ll take what they can get, or find another line of work.
If a school’s ability to make money is dependent on being able to teach students well, then good teachers will be in demand, and as demand goes up, the cost of those teachers will go up, too. On the surface, it looks like basic economics to me. Is there something else I should be considering?
Craig J. Ries, about the Indian public school system:
“Which makes it sound like not every kid gets an education.
Of course, things don’t work like that here – kid may not get a good education, but he’s forced to go.”
Are you saying you prefer the system that forces a kid to go to school for 13+ years even if he’s not getting anything out of it? Despite what society tells us, there are important jobs that don’t require thirteen years of schooling, much less college.
Everyone does need a basic education (reading, basic math skills, some fundamental scientific knowledge, an understanding of their duties and rights as citizens, etc.), but I strongly believe that we could give that to them by the age of fifteen (possibly younger). I wouldn’t want to keep anyone who wanted an education from getting one, but keeping a kid who doesn’t want to learn (particularly if he shows an aptitude for a productive skill that isn’t part of the formal school system — fixing cars, for example) in school where he can keep others from learning as well just seems counterproductive.
Granted, that brings up issues with helping the kid know what he truly wants, but I’m convinced that there are large numbers of students who would be better off in some sort of apprentice-ship type program than in the kind of formal schooling that we currently provide.