Recruiting a few good men, to teach

September 1, 2006

Our local paper has been full of interesting stuff the past week — as it should be.

On August 30 the Dallas Morning News editorialized in favor of more men in teaching — citing a study that found men in the classroom improve the academic performance of male students.  (The newspaper said it is a study by economist Thomas Dee at Swarthmore, but it provides a link to a Hoover Institution magazine that does not mention the study . . . [grumble].)

For anyone looking for new arguments to get more men into the classroom, it’s tempting to hold up the new study as a manifesto. Could more men teachers help stem the hemorrhaging dropout numbers for boys? Or reverse the dwindling percentage of boys headed to college? Are more single-sex schools the answer?

The study is certainly not the last word on the matter; the author hopes it could be a jumping-off point for fine-tuning how schools entice youngsters into absorbing information. We hope so.

We also hope the study could be an enticement for the next young man to hear that calling to the classroom. And the next. And the next …

There should be no mystery about how to attract qualified male teachers.  How about we start by paying a competitive wage?  Teaching is a profession where one can take time out, spend seven or ten years getting a Ph.D., and then get a job that pays roughly what a garbage collector would make had he started collecting garbage at the time the teacher starting the march to the graduate degrees.  A recent graduate of our local high school spent a few months’ training with the Army Reserve, and upon return has an administrative job with a local police department — at a salary equal to a degreed teacher with a few years’ experience.  Cops on the beat don’t make enough, either — but someone who spends a decade getting ready to teach should do better than a rookie cop not on the beat.

In contrast, MBAs at accounting firms start out around six figures.  They often have less education and less experience than the teachers — and they are expendable (look at how many are weeded out by the firm in the first three years).  But with that kind of salary offered, a kid might make a well-reasoned calculation that two years of graduate business school and a life in accounting would be better than a Ph.D. and a life teaching in public schools.  I think it patently unfair to say that teaching then gets the leftovers — but it makes one wonder, doesn’t it?

Public schools are the only enterprises where we demand higher standards for the employees, and then hold salaries down until the employees reach the standards.  In every other line of work, the market raises wages.  We might learn a lot by observing (was that Stengel or Berra?)

For those conservatives who ask that education be treated more like a free market — do they really anticipate what would happen were that to occur?  A good teacher is easily worth as much as a starting accountant.  Why not use market devices to improve education?  Raise the wages. 

More men, and more highly-qualified women, will pursue teaching when we let the salaries float to levels comparable to other industries with similar demands and education requirements.  I read Milton Friedman — vouchers or no vouchers, he makes the case that education will be mired in mediocrity until we spend the money to attract the best people possible to teaching, and to keep them there.

6 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Economics, Education, Education spending, Public education, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

California – new law aids low-performing schools

September 1, 2006

Maybe California will get back on track.

Once California’s public schools were the envy of most of the nation.  Most of them worked well, and proved very attractive to new businesses who needed well-educated workers for increasingly complex and technical jobs.  Then the state lurched to a “don’t spend” mode with Proposition 13, which severely limited tax increases, and the school system began a long slide towards mediocrity.

Growth in the Las Vegas, Nevada, schools is driven in part by people fleeing California for better schools. 

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports a change in attitude in the top levels of government:

SACRAMENTO – A sweeping $3 billion agreement to give hundreds of low-performing schools smaller classes, more qualified teachers and additional counselors was revealed yesterday by the Schwarzenegger administration and the California Teachers Association.

The proposal would create one of the largest pilot programs in state history, targeting 600 struggling schools heavily populated with minority students.

What a unique idea!  Who would have thought that targeting low-performing schools with money to improve education would, you know, improve education? 

Meanwhile, other states struggle with “reform” efforts designed to take money away from struggling schools.  Nation to education:  “The floggings will continue until morale improves.” Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Classroom size, Education spending, Leadership, No Child Left Behind Act, Public education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Burying Brown and the Board of Education, too

August 30, 2006

WordPress now alerts bloggers to other blog posts with similar content.  Sometimes it pulls one out of the past, and sometimes the posts pulled up make one shudder.

Reports last April said Nebraska’s unicameral legislature passed a law that will effectively resegregate Omaha’s school system.  Appletree has the story here.  How did it turn out?  I haven’t found much other news on it.

The news and the figures reported are troubling, regardless the final outcome (and I suspect the motion did not proceed exactly as the version reported).  Some of us have long suspected that the anti-education drive, manifested in proposals for charter schools, and especially for vouchers, is simply a masked version of segregation, a way to deprive people of color and people in poverty of a chance for a good education. 

One almost wishes Ronald Reagan were still alive to remind these people that, while a rising tide raises all boats, punching holes in the bottom of the boats sinks them, and in a drought, the entire lake goes dry.  The best ideals of the United States have been expressed in the drive for almost-free, universally-available primary and secondary education, for nearly 200 years.  The U.S. education system remains the model the rest of the world strives to copy.  Getting Americans to commit to keeping that system, and keeping it up to date in a world gone flat (see Tom Friedman) is an important political task for the next quarter-century.

Every kid deserves a chance to achieve as much as she or he can.  We need to focus more on making that happen, for all kids.

8 Comments | Charter schools, Civil Rights, Current History, Education, Education spending, Freedom - Political, Public education, School vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Nurture a sense of outrage

August 11, 2006

I suffered through a couple of uninspiring commencement addresses in my day, and a few good ones (Sen. Daniel K. Inouye’s speech at my law commencement even impressed my father, who generally regarded speeches by politicians as pure fluff).

David Lawrence, former publisher of the Miami Herald, delivered an outrageous commencement address at Florida State University.

David Lawrence, former publisher of the Miami Herald, delivered an outrageous commencement address at Florida State University.

Even the good ones generally fall back into platitudinous depths, reminding graduates of the great potential they have to do good . . .

“Be outraged that our great country can figure out how to invest $5 billion dollars every month to try to bring democracy to Iraq, and yet we live in a nation where more than 12 million children live in the full definition of poverty.”

This commencement address popped up in some search or other. If Howard Beale is platitudinous, this is full of platitudes. Sadly, most Americans haven’t a clue who Howard Beale was, or why they should care. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Education, Education spending, No Child Left Behind Act | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Newspaper prays for drought in Nevada education funding

August 8, 2006

No sooner did I note the Nevada State School Board’s request for more money, mostly to increase teacher pay, than today’s editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal started shooting at the proposal, saying it has no chance to pass.

The editorial board wrote:

That the board would make such an outlandish demand is not surprising. Leading into each legislative session over the past decade, the board has prepared budgets that far exceed the state’s ability to pay. Of the board’s 10 members, six have ties to education, either through teaching positions or retirements from schools and colleges. From their perspective, schools can never have enough money, no matter how much they pull from your pockets.

The earlier story noted that the slide to the current average classroom size took several years. From the appearances of the earlier story, the state has not kept pace with funding needs in education. If the state board’s recommendations are not met one year, and they recommend full funding the next year, the recommendations will begin to look “outlandish.” As the needs continue to be unmet with funding, the need for funding grows — and usually such growth is not linear, but is instead exponential. Ten years of budget failure does not indicate that the current budget proposal is too large by any means. It would be the logical result of a state sliding in education capability. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Classroom size, Education, Education spending, Harry Wong, Public education, State school boards, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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