Ravitch calls the issue: Will public education survive?

May 1, 2010

Diane Ravitch in Dallas, April 28, 2010 - IMGP3872 Copyright 2010 Ed Darrell

Diane Ravitch in Dallas, April 28, 2010 – Copyright 2010 Ed Darrell (you may use freely, with attribution)

Bill McKenzie, editorial board member and writer for the Dallas Morning News, wrote briefly about the rekindled controversy over standards a year ago — but did he listen to Diane Ravitch on Wednesday night?

He should have.

I first met Ravitch a couple of decades ago when I worked for Checker Finn at the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.   Ted Bell’s idea of a commission to look at education quality, and it’s 1983 report, saved the Reagan administration and assured Reagan’s reelection in 1984.  She was one of the most prodigious and serious thinkers behind education reform efforts, then a close friend of Finn (who was Assistant Secretary of  Education for Research) — a position that Ravitch herself held in the administration of George H. W. Bush.

Ravitch now criticizes the end result of all that turmoil and hard work, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the way it has distorted education to keep us in the crisis we were warned of in 1983.  Then, the “rising tide of mediocrity” came in part because we didn’t have a good way to compare student achievement, state to state.  Today, the mediocrity is driven by the tests that resulted from legislative efforts to solve the problem.

Conditions in education in America have changed.  We still have a crisis after 27 years of education reform (how long do we have a crisis before it becomes the norm), but for the first time, Ravitch said, “There is a real question about whether public education will survive.”  The past consensus on the value of public education and need for public schools, as I would put it, now is challenged by people who want to kill it.

“The new issue today:  Will we have a public education system bound by law to accept all children.”

Ironic, no?  The No Child Left Behind Act has instead created a system where many children could be forced to the rear.

I took an evening in the middle of a week of TAKS testing — the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.  With ninth through twelfth grades, we had four days of testing which essentially requires the shutdown of the education for the week (we had Monday to review for the test).  It was a week to reflect on just how far we have strayed from the good intentions of public education advocates who pushed the Excellence in Education Commission’s report in 1983.

Ravitch spoke for over an hour.  I’ll have more to report as I get caught up, after a month of meetings, test prep, testing, and little sleep.

Background, more:

8 Comments | Education, Education assessment, Education quality, Education reform, History, Politics, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Teaching, Testing | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A Jonathan Alter-cation: Teacher pay-for-performance? How about the same for pundits?

November 19, 2009

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter likes charter schools, and often enough writes about them and his frustration that public schools and their teachers won’t roll over and play dead while charter schools steal money from them (my characterization, not Alter’s).

At Public School Insights, Claus von Zastrow suggested that maybe pundits like Alter ought to be subject to having their pay docked when they screw up, too.  Then he went further, and specifically criticized a recent Alter column, point for point.

A few comments down, who should show up to make his case, but Jonathan Alter.

Go watch, and learn.  Among other things, the discussion is much more civil than we usually see on blogs.  It’s a lesson for Christians and creationists especially.

It’s not much of a conflict of interest, but I have dealt with Alter before, in his previous job at The New Republic (back when it was not so much a bastion of neo-conservatism).  Alter did a major profile of Sen. Orrin Hatch.  Alter strove not to be flattering, and the biggest problem was the Vint Lawrence illustration, showing Hatch draped in the American flag as a cloak.  As I recall from those now-dusty decades, the profile wasn’t exactly correlated with the illustration on any issue.  Over the years, Alter’s been closer to correct more often than he’s been wrong, in my view — his views on charter schools being in that area where I think he errs.

Public schools have never suffered from a surplus of money.  Charter school advocates should not be allowed to steal income from public schools directly.  To shore up GM, we don’t allow GM to take a share of profit from Ford for every GM car sold.  Nor do we allow Ford to take a share of GM’s income.  Competition in education is a foolish pursuit most often, but we don’t need a competitive model that bleeds education on either end, as Alter’s advocacy favors.

In hard economic terms, free market, gloves-off, bare-fisted capitalistic competition has never been shown to work in education.  I never could figure out Milton Friedman’s advocacy for such competition since there is no case ever to be made that competition makes better schools, nor that privately-run schools work better for educating an entire nation than public schools.  I think all relevant evidence runs the other way.

Pay for performance, but links for free:

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

12 Comments | Charter schools, Economics, Education, Teacher Pay, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Chicken or egg, teacher or cynic

February 17, 2009

Do only cynics become teachers, or does teaching make one cynical?

NYC Educator writes about being astounded to discover that the nation’s current economic woes can be cured by cutting teacher pay and benefits, as some propose.

Another teacher writes to the Bathtub complaining about printing progress reports on his computer at home — his district’s computer system is notoriously weird in remote access mode.  Why is he printing the reports at home?  “It’s been 11 months since we got a delivery of toner cartridges for teachers’ in-room printers, and we’re out of paper again.”

When do you think was the last time New York Mayor Bloomberg had to run the city budget on his home computer?

Is it really cynicism if it’s dead right?

5 Comments | Debunking, Economics, Education, Education spending, Rampant stupidity, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival of Education Bankruptcy

October 24, 2008

Have you looked around lately?

Dallas isn’t the only school system in trouble in America.  Financial woes plague many, perhaps most of the nation’s schools systems.

Funding for schools is difficult in an environment where even good schools get stuck with the label “failing school” due to seriously misdirected programs from the federal government.  The situation is complicated by a non-booming economy, especially in districts that had been gearing to build new schools to accommodate increased student populations.

What will the future bring?

It’s enough to merit its own little impromptu carnival.  Oy.

There may be updates.  We haven’t even gotten to the Texas SBOE House of Science Horrors.

Vote, will you?

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Education, Education assessment, Education quality, Education spending, History, Politics, Teacher Pay, Teaching, Texas, War on Education, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cut off your arm, move on

October 17, 2008

It will probably be several weeks before the full effects are known. Dallas ISD is about 500 teachers lighter today than it was two weeks ago. Yesterday the forced layoff notices went out, to teachers whose positions could not be saved by another teacher’s having retired, or simply resigned.

There is great irony. The year started with a mass meeting of Dallas’s 20,000 or so teachers, with an inspirational speech from a Dallas fifth grader. After nearly a decade of shaky leadership at the district office, most people thought Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa was close to established trim in the ship of educational state. Even Dallas Mayer Tom Leppart showed up to congratulate Hinojosa and cheer on the teachers.

News of an $84 million shortfall, the result of finance and payroll offices failing to integrate their systems, followed a couple of weeks later, and it’s been a downhill slide for teachers since then. NEA and AFT affiliates point to a lot of problems in Dallas ISD financial controls. How could they not notice an $84 million hemorrhage?

(Let me note here that I’ve been at private corporations that made errors of similar magnitude. Generally the problems were dealt with quietly. “Writeoff of bad investment” was what the annual reports usually said, or something like that.)

Originally, we heard 750 teachers would go. There are about 250 schools in the district — three teachers per school. Welcome to “Survivor, Dallas ISD.” Who gets to vote whom off the island?

Morale is low. It’s been interesting to see who used the turmoil as just an excuse to get out. It’s been interesting to see how many teachers had illnesses suddenly flare up. Requests for information or work from the central offices get a lot more sneers from teachers. In the teacher’s work areas, in meetings in the hallways, cynicism rose to all time highs.

Our department of about 20 people lost two — one position that was not yet filled, and one retirement. That’s a 10% hit. Overall, our school lost just under a dozen teachers. So much for the “three per school” hope. It’s still unclear how some classes will be covered come Monday. Some schools will have to shuffle their student/class assignments completely. We’re starting over on the year, eight weeks in.

Some of the effects are predictable, some are not.

  • Special education teachers laid off complain that they are paid from federal funds. At least one will sue.
  • Students whisper to other teachers, wondering whether their favorites will go (why don’t they as the teacher?); sometimes the students hope a teacher will be terminated.
  • Already noted, illnesses appear to be up.
  • Several teachers with offers from other districts resigned, collecting a double paycheck for the next few months. Many of the teachers leaving Dallas are among the best. One we lost had just started what promised to be a brilliant career teaching math.
  • Parents are confused. We had report card/parent-teacher conferences last Monday. One family asked me whether schools would open at all come next Monday.
  • Class reshufflings yield gaps in education, when a student moves from one class where subject A had not been covered, to another class where subject A was taught in a project three weeks ago.

So, damage is done that cannot be undone. Teachers who had spirited devotion to their jobs and the district less than two months ago, hunker down.

Remember that rock climber who got his arm stuck under a falling rock? In 2003, Aron Alston amputated his own arm to get to freedom after a few days with his arm stuck.

That’s a good metaphor for Dallas schools right now. We’ve amputated most of an arm. No time to mourn. Move on. Except, there was no rock, and there was no chance to make such a clear calculation.

Ask not for whom the bells toll.

Tally from the Dallas Morning News:

The cuts

About 375: Teachers laid off Thursday, representing 3 percent of the district’s 11,500 teachers

40: Assistant principals and counselors released Thursday

152: Number of noncontract employees laid off last week, including clerks, office managers and teacher’s assistants

About 100: Number of unfilled, noncontract positions eliminated last week

62: Central office members laid off

About 100: Number of vacant central office positions eliminated

More than 200: Number of employees who have voluntarily resigned

Total: More than 1,000 total positions eliminated

Projected savings

$30 million: Expected savings from job cuts and unfilled vacancies

$38 million: Expected savings from cutting various programs throughout the district

Total: $68 million

Resources:

1 Comment | Business, Business Ethics, Education, History, Politics, Teacher Pay, Teaching, Texas, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Good teachers make the difference

May 19, 2008

A New York Times editorial last week came very close to getting it right on teachers, teacher hiring, teacher retention, and teacher pay.

To maintain its standing as an economic power, the United States must encourage programs that help students achieve the highest levels in math and science, especially in poor communities where the teacher corps is typically weak.

The National Academies, the country’s leading science advisory group, has called for an ambitious program to retrain current teachers in these disciplines and attract 10,000 new ones each year for the foreseeable future. These are worthy goals. But a new study from a federal research center based at the Urban Institute in Washington suggests that the country might raise student performance through programs like Teach for America, a nonprofit group that places high-achieving college graduates in schools that are hard to staff.

Recruiting high-achievers, across the board and not just with the help of a flagship do-gooder program, will require that starting salaries be competitive with those jobs where people of high caliber flock.  Education competes with accounting, law, medicine and other high-paying professions for the best people. 

If Milton Friedman and Adam Smith were right, that most people act rather rationally in their own interests, economically, which jobs will get the best people?

Teaching is the only profession I can think of where the administrators and other leaders threaten to fire the current teachers, work to keep working conditions low and unsatisfactory, and say that more money will come only after championship performance. 

There isn’t a person alive who hasn’t cursed George Steinbrenner and said that he or she could run the Yankees better.  Whenever he opens his checkbook, the nation howls.  And yet, year in an year out, the Yankees win. 

Is there any fool alive who thinks Steinbrenner could do what he does by cutting pay, not cleaning the locker room, and drafting the cheapest players he could find?  Were we to assume Steinbrenner the world’s most famous lousy boss, there are a million education administrators who would need to step it up to get to Steinbrenner’s level.

As Utah Phillips famously said, graduates are about to be told they are the nation’s greatest natural resource — but have you seen how this nation treats its natural resources?

Oh, I miss Molly Ivins.

6 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Economics, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Free market economics, History, Leadership, Molly Ivins' Ghost, Politics, Public education, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Education spending, per pupil, apples to apples

May 3, 2008

Utah rejected education vouchers last November, so the release from the Census bureau at the first of April probably got overlooked as not exactly important — I saw no major story on it in any medium.

Education spending chart from U.S. Census BureauMaybe it was the April 1 release date.

Whatever the reason for the lack of recognition, the figures are out from the Census Bureau, and Utah’s at the bottom end of spending per student lists, in the U.S. I wrote earlier that Utah gets a whale of a bargain, since teachers work miracles with the money they have. But miracles can only go so far. Utah’s educational performance has been sliding for 20 years. Investment will be required to stop the slide.

Utah’s per pupil spending is closer to a third that of New York’s.

Of course, spending levels do not guarantee results. New York and New Jersey lead the pack, but the District of Columbia comes in third place. Very few people I know would swap an education in Idaho, Utah or Arizona, the bottom three in per pupil spending, for an education in D.C.

Public Schools Spent $9,138 Per Student in 2006

School districts in the United States spent an average of $9,138 per student in fiscal year 2006, an increase of $437 from 2005, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today.

Public Education Finances: 2006 offers a comprehensive look at the revenues and expenditures of public school districts at the national and state levels. The report includes detailed tables that allow for the calculation of per pupil expenditures. Highlights from these tables include spending on instruction, support services, construction, salaries and benefits of the more than 15,000 school districts. Public school districts include elementary and secondary school systems.

All the census statistics are on-line, for free. Policy makers can mine these data for insights — will they? You may download the data in spreadsheet or comma-delimited data form.

The rest of the press release is pure policy talking points:

  • Public school systems received $521.1 billion in funding from federal, state and local sources in 2006, a 6.7 percent increase over 2005. Total expenditures reached $526.6 billion, a 6 percent increase. (See Table 1.)
  • State governments contributed the greatest share of funding to public school systems (47 percent), followed by local sources (44 percent) and the federal government (9 percent). (See Table 5.)
  • School district spending per pupil was highest in New York ($14,884), followed by New Jersey ($14,630) and the District of Columbia ($13,446). States where school districts spent the lowest amount per pupil were Utah ($5,437), Idaho ($6,440) and Arizona ($6,472). (See Tables 8 and 11.)
  • Of the total expenditures for elementary and secondary education, current spending made up $451 billion (85.7 percent) and capital outlay $59 billion (11.2 percent). (See Table 1.)
  • From current spending, school districts allotted $271.8 billion to elementary and secondary instruction. Of that amount, $184.4 billion (68 percent) went to salaries and $58.5 billion went to employee benefits (22 percent). Another $156 billion went to support services. (See Table 6.)
  • Of the $156 billion spent on support services, 28 percent went to operations and maintenance, and 5 percent went to general administration. Of the states that used 10 percent or more of their support services on general administration expenditures, North Dakota topped the list at 14 percent. General administration includes the activities of the boards of education and the offices of the superintendent. (See Table 7.)
  • Of the $59 billion in capital outlay, $45 billion (77 percent) was spent on construction, $5 billion (8 percent) was spent on land and existing structures, and $8.7 billion (15 percent) went to equipment. (See Table 9.)
  • State government contributions per student averaged $5,018 nationally. Hawaii had the largest revenue from state sources per pupil ($13,301). South Dakota had the least state revenue per student ($2,922). (See Table 11.)
  • The percentage of state government financing for public education was highest in Hawaii (89.9 percent) and lowest in Nebraska (31.4 percent). (See Table 5.)
  • The average contribution per pupil from local sources was $4,779, with the highest amount from the District of Columbia ($16,195), which comprises a single urban district (and therefore does not receive state financing). The state with the smallest contribution from local sources was Hawaii ($265). (See Table 11).
  • The percentage of local revenue for school districts was highest in Illinois (59.1 percent) and lowest in Hawaii (1.8 percent). (See Table 5.)
  • On average, the federal government contributed $974 per student enrolled in public school systems. Federal contributions ranged from $2,181 per student in Alaska to $627 in Nevada (See Table 11).
  • The percentage of public school system revenues from the federal government was highest in Mississippi (20.1 percent) and lowest in New Jersey (4.3 percent). (See Table 5.)
  • Spending on transportation represented 12.4 percent of support services. New York and West Virginia spent the largest percent from support services on transportation (21 percent). Hawaii (5.4 percent) and California (7.2 percent) spent the least. (See Table 7.)
  • Total school district debt increased by 8.5 percent from the prior year to $322.7 billion in fiscal year 2006. (See Table 10.)

    • Send an apple to your old teacher:

    Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

21 Comments | Classroom size, Economics, Education, Education reform, Education spending, Education success, Government, Politics, Public education, Teacher Pay, Teaching, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Struggling schools get struggling teachers

February 8, 2008

Everyone who knows him thinks highly of him. When the rest of the teachers in the department need help, they turn to him. The school is struggling to achieve the state’s testing standards, and much hope rides on this guy.

So, yesterday in the staff meeting, when he complained the news media were aiming specifically at him, the generally noisy teachers fell suddenly silent.

Studies may be generally accurate, but they are, by nature and design, generalizations. Across Texas yesterday, good teachers in struggling schools took a hit they don’t deserve.

I’m sure that’s not what the authors intended.

See this story in the Dallas Morning News. Check it out in the Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Look at the report, from the Education Trust, here.

So far, I can’t tell if the study said anything about improving conditions for teachers to encourage the good ones to stay in the profession and take the tougher assignments. Conservatives will see this as a call to fire more teachers, I’m sure. Reaction will start any moment now.

Tip of the scrub brush to Aunt Betsy.

4 Comments | Education, Education quality, Teacher Pay, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Texas | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Missing the point in Happy Valley

January 15, 2008

Utah’s Cache Valley is home to the city of Logan, and to Utah State University, the land-grant college for the state. For several humorous reasons, some of them good, the place sometimes is called Happy Valley.

Small county in a beautiful setting + good university with a good school of education = good conditions for teacher recruiting. Logan’s schools have been very good over the years, in academics and all forms of competition.

As we discovered with the voucher fiasco in 2007, Utah’s education situation is not completely happy any more. Classrooms are crowded, teachers are overworked, and for the first time since the Mormon pioneers first settled Utah, educational achievement is declining.

The editorial board at Logan’s Herald-Journal noticed the problems. It’s tough to recruit teachers. If Milton Friedman were alive, we’d look for a classic free-market economics solution, something like raising teacher pay to stop the exodus from the profession.

Milton Friedman is dead. His ghost doesn’t seem to have much clout in Logan, Utah, either. What does the Herald-Journal propose? Loosen standards, look for uncertified people to teach.

When people leave the job they worked hard to earn certification for, what will happen with people who are not certified and are untrained in classroom management?

Why not just raise teacher pay, and attract more well-trained teachers?

Let me ask the key question, more slowly this time so I’m sure it’s caught: Why not just raise teacher pay?

Fishing for teachers? Bait the hook with money.

(Full Herald-Journal opinion below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teachers need to demand respect? (Strike?)

January 15, 2008

Is this a state school board member urging teacher unions and — heavens to Betsy!  — a strike?  Tim Beagley, at Educating Utah:

In very real terms, I’m afraid that the reason the teaching profession has fallen so far is that teachers have allowed it to happen.  In the face of ridiculously low wages and poor academic environments, teachers keep showing up and going through the motions of their job.  That must change if the system is going to improve.  We need (and I believe would ALL be well served) for teachers to be more forceful with their demands for respect and dignity.  The standards that our accountability plans are based upon should be high and the expectations teachers have of us need to be just as high and stringent. There was a time when the teacher was known to be one of the most respected and strongest members of society.  We need to get back to that.  Respect and dignity are likely products of strength.

His post reminds one of Bill Bennett’s old “$50,000 solution” — hire a good principal, which in 1986 and 1987, would run about $50,000 (it’s higher now).

When will legislators and school boards really get the message that to make our schools competitive, we have to hire people who can make them compete, which means we need to compete against other hiring authorities to get the best?

Beagley is a member of the Utah State Board of Education, and a biology professor at Salt Lake Community College.

3 Comments | Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Labor and unions, Teacher Pay | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Low-cost solutions to some education problems

January 14, 2008

State legislatures shouldn’t micromanage the classroom, parents should monitor student progress, and students should take difficult classes, to get a better education.  Utah math teacher Allen Barney lists inexpensive — and unlikely — methods for improving education, in Salt Lake City’s Deseret Morning News.

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education reform, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Class sizes swell, teacher incentives shrink

January 1, 2008

Lisa Schencker writes about Utah’s problems in The Salt Lake Tribune, but you can find exactly the same story in every state in the union, plus Guam and Puerto Rico:

The two Utah men don’t know each other, but they have at least one thing in common.
Ben Johnson is a first-year math teacher at Alta High School. He loves his job, but it’s exhausting and pays well below what he could make elsewhere with his bachelor’s degree in mathematics.
Marc Elgort is a University of Utah graduate student who researches cell metabolism at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. He tried teaching but found it stressful, all-consuming and riddled with bureaucratic frustrations.
Both men’s stories reveal different shades of the same problem: retaining and attracting teachers in Utah, especially in math and science. Utah schools were 173 teachers short – including nearly 20 science and math teachers – on the first day of school in 2007, according to a recent report by David Sperry, a University of Utah professor of educational leadership and policy and Scholar-in-Residence with the Utah System of Higher Education. State education leaders worry Utah’s students and economy could fall behind other states and nations if something isn’t done soon.

Utah voters rejected an ill-thought-out voucher plan in November, but the Utah legislature had no plan B — so Utah’s classrooms are still crowded, there’s not enough money to provide merit increases to teachers who need them, teaching is a grind instead of a calling, and that means it will take a lot more money to get the teachers the students deserve — money the legislature hasn’t appropriated and probably won’t when they get back to the issue early next month, for the legislature’s 30-day budget session.

At some point we will have to stop working for education reform, and start working at education rescue, if these conditions are not changed.

Don’t smirk if you’re not from Utah. I can find a school in your state, probably in your town, with the same problems:

Johnson, like 8 percent of new teachers hired to work in Utah schools this year, came from out of state. Several Utah school districts recruit from elsewhere because Utah colleges and universities trained about 1,200 fewer teachers than schools needed this school year, according to Sperry’s report.
Johnson made most of his contacts at a job fair in Michigan.
“Every person that found out I was a math teacher pulled me aside,” Johnson said. “You could see how desperate they were.”
He said he interviewed with several school districts and received an offer from each one. He ultimately chose Jordan.
That’s where the easy part ended.
On a recent school day about three months into his career, Johnson invited juniors to the board to work with polynomials.
“Let’s take a look at a couple of things first. What do you see that we can cancel right away?” Johnson asked of one problem.
Several groups of students chatted and laughed among themselves.
“Guys, listen up,” Johnson said. It was one of many times he had to remind students to pay attention.
“It’s really tough,” Johnson said earlier. “I have to be really firm. They’re talking all the time.”

Holding on to the dream: Johnson said classroom management has so far been his biggest challenge – his largest class has 37 students. Utah has some of the largest class sizes in the nation.
“There’s no way I can keep an eye on every single student,” Johnson said.

Utah appropriated a cool half-billion dollars to encouraging teachers in shortage areas, like math, in schools that desperately need them. What does that look like on the ground?

Johnson also puts a tremendous amount of time into teaching. As a new teacher, he is building curricula for several of his courses with help from the district.
“Just building that curriculum takes hours and hours outside of the classroom,” Johnson said. “So does correcting papers.”
Johnson said he has about 180 students. If he gives one assignment or test per class a week, and it takes him five minutes to correct each one, that’s another 15 hours of work.
Johnson makes just over $30,000 a year and estimates he works about 65 hours a week. That boils down to about $13 an hour for the weeks school is in session.
“My wife and I get by, and that’s all I can expect,” Johnson said.

Schencker’s story lists ten bills in the Utah legislative hopper designed to hammer at the problems.

5 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education reform, Science, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Why not treat kindergarteners like college students?

November 18, 2007

Vouchers in Utah have the wooden stake right in the heart. That’s one proposal in one state. More voucher proposals are promised, and the debate continues.

Voucher advocates generally make a plea that colleges have something akin to school vouchers with Pell Grants (Basic Education Opportunity Grants), Stafford Grants, the GI Bill and other federal programs, plus many state programs, which give money to a student to use at a college of the student’s choice.

Why won’t this work for kindergartners, 8th graders and 10th graders? the voucher advocates ask.

The short answer is that we regard college students as adults. Beyond that are several other differences between elementary schools and colleges that we should, perhaps, explore.

Texas Ed: Comments on Education from Texas has a couple of posts that provide some insights to the issues. In the first one, “We Have Vouchers for Higher Education,” the question is raised about why not let elementary students operate like veterans, and take their government money where they choose to.

In the second, “Vouchers Are About Choice, Not Quality,” we get a glimpse of real life — parents fighting to keep open their neighborhood school, despite there being better performing schools available to take their kids.

We might want to compare systems, at least briefly.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | College, Education quality, Education reform, Teacher Pay, Teaching, Technology, Tenure | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Killer lesson plans: Teachers as superheroes

September 27, 2007

Reader Bernarda noted this site in comments, and it’s good enough to promote more formally: Teachers as the alter egos of superheroes.

Teachers ARE superheroes, a lot of them. More than in other professions, certainly.

Which reminds me of this video. Teachers, you need to watch this sometime here in the first month of school. What do you say when someone rudely asks, “What do you make?” Wholly apart from the Ann Landers-style answer, “Whatever would possess anyone to ask such a personal question?” there is an answer to give, as explained by slam poet Taylor Mali; surely you’ve seen this before, but watch it again — to remember what teachers should be doing, as well as how to talk about it. See below.

You can support Mr. Mali. Just purchase a pen that includes that little poem.

You can support Mr. Mali and his campaign for good teachers in another way, too. Make sure that whenever you talk about this poem of his, you credit it to him. I think we as teachers owe that to artists, and other teachers, as part of our continuing struggles against plagiarism.

But we also owe it to ourselves to get credit to Mr. Mali. Odds are he has some other good things to say. When you properly attribute his work, you increase the chances that someone else will find the rest of his work. You increase the chances that some superintendent will hire Mr. Mali to speak to the teachers in his district. You increase the chances that someone will understand that Mr. Mali is a real human being who loves teaching — he is, in short, one of those superheroes we call “teachers,” even without a cape.

Uncaped crusaders need compliments, too.

7 Comments | Accuracy, Education, Education quality, Education success, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

UC Irvine works to rehire Chemerinsky; OC Republicans make trouble

September 15, 2007

If you can figure some way to interpret this story in the LA Times as other than the Orange County Republicans don’t want a good, powerful dean of the UC-Irvine law school, let me know in comments. (This is a follow-up of my earlier post.)

This is one more case of Republicans working hard to keep education from being first rate, out of misplaced fear of what well-educated people can do. Uneducated peasants don’t contradict the priests, Jefferson and Madison observed. The OC Republicans know that.

Constitutional law is a good thing, they seem to be saying, so long as it never works to protect the poor, people accused or convicted of criminals, or citizens injured by corporations.

It’s an interesting barrel Chemerinsky has them over; much of the commentary, even among conservatives opposed to Chemerinsky’s views, has it that UC-Irvine will be unable to attract a first-rate dean, and a first-rate faculty, now that this ugly politics cat is out of the bag. If they cannot strike a deal with Chemerinsky to be rehired, they are in real trouble.

Let me say that I don’t put a lot of credence in the claims that pressure from outsiders is a strong motivating force in this crash.  Having worked for both Democrats and Republicans, I’ve seen this too often, and it has all the symptoms of big donor demands to take back a perfectly rational decision for unholy political purposes.  My experience, mostly from the Republican side, is that this is almost exclusively a Republican phenomenon, that big donors expect public institutions to which they donate to dance to their fiddlers.  (There are exceptions, of course.  But let me say:  Ray Donovan.)

Maybe he can negotiate to require the Republican politicians who oppose his hiring to attend a 1st year Constitutional law class that Chemerinsky would teach, and they would have to do it for a grade that will be published. That would be a huge win all the way around, I think:  Chemerinsky gets the job, UC-Irvine gets a the fast-track to high quality legal education, Republicans get a chance to know and understand Chemerinsky in the classroom, and some much needed education about the Constitution sinks into the Republicans.

Dream big, I always say.

Other sources:

Leave a Comment » | Academic freedom, Bill of Rights, College, Education, Education quality, Graduate study, Teacher Pay, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »