Issues 2004 - Education

Jeff posted his take on the education debate last thursday and I am only now getting around to replying. I took my "no child left behind due to blogging act" seriously this weekend.

Education is a huge deal. We have a great education system in this country. Our K-12 education system has its challenges, but our college and university system in this country is outstanding.

I think that one of our great strengths versus other countries and other societies is that we have not turned eduction into some kind of rote learning experience. Our kids come out of our education systems, both K-12 and collegiate level, with a better ability to create, innovate, and respond to the changing dynamics of the work place.

I am not a fan of the No Child Left Behind Act and the reliance on testing that our country is turning to in an effort to improve our schools. This will take us in the direction of other countries who treat education like mass production and we'll be a weaker world competitor as a result.

I posted last week on progressive education and although it was not meant to be a reply to Jeff's Eduction post, it serves that purpose pretty well. It outlines what I think is the best way to educate a kid.

I would like to see these techniques encouraged in our public schools. And I would like to increase the compensation levels for public school teachers. I ran into a guy running for Congress the other morning on the way to my kids school. He was campaigning by the West 4th Street Subway stop. I forget his name but I took his flyer. Most of his positions were forgettable, but one was not. He proposed making public school teachers' salaries tax free at the federal, state, and local levels. That would instantly produce a 30-40% increase in teacher compensation. I like that idea a lot.

Another thing we must do in our public schools is reduce class sizes. You can not teach to each kid as an individual with 30-40 kids per class. We need to reduce public school class sizes to below 30 and ideally below 25. That will require an investment in additional teachers and school facilities. But its a must if we really intend to improve our public schools.

There are those who would eliminate our public school system and rely instead on a for-profit system. I think that would be a terrible mistake. Our public school system has served our country incredibly well for a very long time. It's not time to scrap it. It's time to improve it and invest in it for the next century.

Comments

[Peter Morelli]

While I like the idea about making teachers' income tax free, I think school systems would just price that into the offered compensation, lowering teachers' absolute income, to roughly the same relative level as today, maybe slightly higher. To fully realize the sought after benefit, you'd probably need to extend some of those tax incentives to the school administrations as well, tightly coupled to salary levels, thereby providing a disincentive to lower salaries...

[Chris]

There is no connection between teacher pay and student academic performance. Public school teachers are not nearly as underpaid as their union wants the public to believe. The annual salary is for 10 months of work, plus they have a benefits package and defied pension plan that most of us in private industry would die for. Add to that - it's practically impossible to get fired once you've put a few years in. Per pupil spending has exploded since the 70's with no corresponding improvement in student performance. NCLB may be misguided, but at least it is an attempt to put some accountability into the system, instead of just throwing more cash into the black hole of public education.

If money is the answer, why is it that the best prepared kids academically, (generally speaking) come from lower paid teachers? Private school teachers don't make as much as their public school peers. Nobody is getting rich teaching in the Catholic education system in NYC, for example. Homeschoolers end up paying hundreds to thousands each year (not to mention forgone wages) to take control of their kids education, yet nobody except a few NEA officials seriously disputes the fact that most HS'ers turn out very well educated and socially competent.

I'd like to see an open education system built around community schools in which students and parents would mix and match homeschooling, traditional classes, co-op's, self-study, distance learning and whatever else we come up with, to design the optimum education experience tailored to each child. Generally speaking, I agree with Fred's goals - I just don't see how the public education system can ever provide it.

[Hector]

Raise teacher salaries, reduce class sizes, no testing ... WOW! Now THERE'S some breakthrough thinking!

The tragedy here is that Fred can afford to send his kids to good private schools yet thinks vouchers are kryptonite. Fred, along with 25% or so of the teachers in the NYC public school system who send their kids to private schools, should be ashamed.

[Brian Goler]

I generally agree that reducing class size will improve the quality of education and with your point about the merit of a system that goes beyond rote learning, but I think the idea of making teachers' salaries tax free is horrible. If we beleive that teachers should earn more, let's pay them more in a way that doesn't obscure that fact through tweaks to the tax code. Why is it that we tolerate so much complexity in our tax code? Complexity just makes it harder for people to understand and harder to communicate.

You didn't explain why you think we should pay teachers more, but I assume it's because you think we'll attract and retain better people in teaching positions and keep them more motivated if compensation were higher. I'd expect these points to be true in theory, but I don't know if they are true in practice. I'd love to see what research has been done on this point. I would think that changing our labor management practices with teachers (eliminate tenure and enforce some reasonable degree of accountability for performance) would have equal if not greater impact.

[Tony Alva]

I have mostly been on the listening end of education discussions most of my adult life, but will be directly engaged in a year or so when my daughter begins her academic life. I have two teachers in my family and have many others as friends including our best friends and next-door neighbors. On most of the topics being discussed on this blog I have probed my gang in the field for answers. Very interesting discussion indeed.

If I hear them correctly, they are NOT fans of progressive education for the masses, nor do they believe that curriculum itself is in need of massive overhaul ("Why do people always think that every problem requires complete rebuild from scratch?" a comment from a teacher at our supper club Saturday night). If you can afford alternative education for your kids independently at private schools, more power to you. In the public sector however, it would be impossible. All students must be treated equally and many of the tried and true formulas work just fine. As my brother would say, "We put a man on the moon with publicly educated citizens".

On the issue of testing, the field is divided. My non-Georgia teacher family and friends don't have issues with it as much as their Georgia counterparts. I believe that this gap comes from the fact that Georgia ranks so low on the countries education tote board and the associated pressure to improve keeps the press and administration zeroed in on test results. I don't see any chance of testing going away. I'd rather work on ways to derive solid student progress data from tests and make the tests themselves better, than fight some losing battle to eliminate them. I have never heard a better alternative to testing, at least one that has any meat on the bone.

The one opinion they all share which they believe is at the root of declining education in this country is parental involvement. They cite the ever-dwindling attendance at PTA meetings, quarterly conferences, or any other event that requires parents to interface with their own kid’s teachers including simply signing a progress report as hard evidence. They insist that this is the biggest problem facing public education today. I tend to believe them and I don’t need some huge pile of empirical data to be convinced of it either. All you have to do is ask them about it. They all say that no program in place now, or any in the pipeline, really addresses this root cause. They point directly to the fact that 50% of school age kids come from single parent homes. Nobody in my polling group was really able to offer up big solutions since they have very little control of a student’s life outside of school other than a reporting role. This frustrates them endlessly. I have yet to meet a teacher who wasn’t completely dedicated to their job. Although there are bad ones out there to be sure, the process of natural selection works well in the teaching profession.

My kid will go to public schools. No matter how tired I am at the end of the day, no matter what else I have going on in my life, I will give my kid 110% of my attention when it comes to her school work. When she needs help beyond what myself and my wife can assist her with, we will seek the services of tutors. I figure if we do that we'll have done what my trusted teacher family and friends have recommended as being most beneficial to bettering her educational success.

[jackson]

I know how involved Fred is with his children, but there does seem to be a trend in this country to want to opt out of involment with our kids. It may relate to single parenting, but I think it's deeper and very troublesome. Tony has the only answer there is right now. Be involved, and make sure they get what they need from us.

[Derek W]

While I think teacher pay is not great, it was true in california and its true here in AZ that we spend a lot on education. I would call for an examination of where the money is spent, and if its being effective. I know a lot of teachers in LA that complained that there were too many administrators making too much money. And retirement? Here a teacher with 30years get 1/3 pay and 5 years medical. An assistant principle? 2/3 pay and lifetime medical.

Lets also not forget that one of the highest factors in job satisfaction is not pay, but the quality of the direct manager (or in this case administrator). Lets start judging the principle and school administrators on how well they clear the path for their teachers, and how much time their teachers can spend on teaching (vs other nonsense).

And yes, when my kids get older, they will go to public school, but how they do will ultimately be up to me.