Edupessimism Gone Too Far?

"it seems equally likely that the key ingredients that make a place like KIPP work are not easily replicable: strong leadership and teachers who are not only talented, but are willing to work 15-16 hours days plus weekends to bring their students up to standards of proficiency."

Duh. The issue here is much more than the money - I mean, is there any union, anywhere in this country that permits its workers to "work 15-16 hours days plus weekends"? But, hey, if this gets liberals to understand the pervasively detrimental effect that teachers' unions have on our schools, more power to 'em.

"Duh. The issue here is much more than the money - I mean, is there any union, anywhere in this country that permits its workers to "work 15-16 hours days plus weekends"? But, hey, if this gets liberals to understand the pervasively detrimental effect that teachers' unions have on our schools, more power to 'em."

So true, that's why the schools in Mississippi are so superior--no unions. I'll repeat, fix the streets, the schools will get better.

wow, somone finally points out that you get what you pay for. You want good teachers? Pay them more, and in a generation you will find that you get a much higher quality of teachers.

And good luck finding people willing to work 16 hours a day. You shouldn't even begin to expect people to only work, without any life whatsoever. Perhaps Yglesias likes the idea of having slaves, but I'm not going to be one and I'll kill anyone who truly tries to change that.

The premise of this is so ludicrous --- there are thousands of people out there eager to "work 15-16 hours days plus weekends" for a teacher's salary, but the evil unions won't them let them.

Actually, I can't imagine that it would be even be a good idea for most teachers to work that much -- maybe some teachers straight out of college would have the energy and enthusiasm to do that, but I would guess most of them would burn out in a few years.

Peep - the point is that even if we were willing to pay them (and note that many districts in the NY area, for example, pay their experienced teachers 6-figure salaries), the unions would not let them work the hours that non-union professionals work.

Peep -- we have a wealth of private schools without unions.

Can you demonstrate that teachers in these private, non-union environments work some 15-16 hours per day for low pay?

If you can not you are just making up bulls*** that has no basis in reality.

Show me a study of the actual difference between teacher behavior at private nonunion and public school. then I will give your claims some credence.

Spencer -- I think you are arguing with Al, not me.

Is California the only place where teachers start at about 40k and make up to 80 by the end of their careers?

That Kipp schools need teachers to work 16 hrs a day is a bug, not a feature. Why don't they just hire extra teachers? Because their model can't afford it. That is what's wrong with their model. They can't do what they do without over-extending their workforce.

As a soon to be new teacher, I promise you Kipp schools are going to have a very very high burnout rate.

I am a librarian at a public college. The other day, I did some work with an instructor in a graduate-level course for future elementary school teachers. This very nice professor told me that she tries not to ask her students to do any work outside of class hours, because they all have full-time jobs and family obligations. I had to pinch myself to make sure that I heard her right.

Her students are our future teachers. They're earnest and they mean well, but they are being taught that teaching, while rather low-paid, leaves you with ample time off. It's been that way for ages, and I don't expect it to change.

KIPP sounds pretty good, but what is the turnover rate among those teachers working 15-16 hour days?

You shouldn't need teachers to work for 15 hours a day. What you should do is double the amount of teachers. Its patently obvious.

High-poverty school in Massachusetts get substantially more money than low-poverty schools, based on funding reforms implemented over a decade ago.

Guess what? Its still not enough. People too often confuse funding with personnel. The best way to get under-behaved students to learn is more than just "funding." Its more teachers in the classroom. There is clearly a problem here, because not only do you need more money for current teachers, we need more money for new teachers to ATTRACT more people into the profession. If I had my way, we'd be cutting into that defense budget. The money thats needed to affect these areas is just too large than your average tax payer is willing to understand or accept.

"wow, somone finally points out that you get what you pay for. You want good teachers? Pay them more, and in a generation you will find that you get a much higher quality of teachers."

Even 30 years ago, many smart talented women went into teaching because they felt other careers were shut to them - and they were correct. This artificially created a surplus of talent relative to pay. These women have retired. Now, and for the last 25 years or so, similarly talented women are lawyers or doctors or something that pays money and has respect. Its a huge talent loss from the pool of potential teachers that we won't be able to replace, unless we can hugely increase the level of pay.

And 80K by the end of their career in California? That is so little money in CA. Mere 3% pay raises would give you 130K - or 44% more - with a reasonable 40 year career.

"The best way to get under-behaved students to learn is more than just "funding." Its more teachers in the classroom. There is clearly a problem here, because not only do you need more money for current teachers, we need more money for new teachers to ATTRACT more people into the profession. If I had my way, we'd be cutting into that defense budget."

Why not work on ways to get the public education system to reduce its admin spend and reallocate those funds to teachers and classrooms?

I'm skeptical that you'd have to pay $80K to get good people out of college. Two and a half months of full summer vacation is a very nice fringe benefit, as are the various weeks of vacation during the year. Prorated for actual days of work, I suspect a $60K salary for a teacher is close to a $90K salary for, say, a lawyer. And teaching is also far more rewarding work.

A 16 hour day is 8am to midnight. I really don't think a system dependent on that kind of workload is going to work, no matter how much money you throw at them. Most teachers would be burnt out by winter break.

At any point in time, there are always somewhere in the U.S. a handful of schools where the stars come into perfect alignment and a charismatic principle recruits superstar teachers and students learn like crazy. Those schools will get a lot of publicity. But that doesn't mean that what they are doing is nationally reproducible.

On the other hand, have you seen the kind of students that go into education these days? I have. Perhaps a third at most I would trust teaching my children the others are fundamentally idiots. It's not so much whether we could pay for x number of good teachers but that good teachers who actually want to be teachers are a rather small number.

No amount of money for instance will get me to ride herd on a room of 10 year-olds and I'd gather a substantial amount of people feel similarly.

$300e9 (what we spend in iraq) / 3e6 (number of new teachers) = $100,000 per teacher. in w/ overhead eating 20% that is still $80k / teacher. It's all about priorities.

I'll give you my experience. Decided to make a career change, go back to school and become a teacher. I figured, lots of life experience, military background, earth science professional, what's not to like?

Well, $10-20K poorer, after an exhaustive local/regional job search I was finally able to land a one-year temporary teaching gig (turns out that multiple endorsements are key, rather than "experience"). Started with three preps, up to four by the last quarter of the year. Collegiality? None - that door closed and it was me and 120 adolescents for eight hours. Mentoring? None - I think I saw my principal maybe once the entire year. Typically got up at 5 to be in my classroom by 7, left the school at 5 for an evening of 1-3 hours of grading or other school related work. And for a princely $30K for a MS in geology. And with no overtime for chaperoning dances, getting up at midnight to show my astronomy students constellations, timing track meets and attending parent-teacher nights. Oh, and having students disrespect me in my class and deal with personal, emotional and educational traumas.

Most of the kids were great, and it can be a lot of fun to teach, but...

Not surprisingly, after my year was up I returned to consulting where for an additional $20K/year I am assisted by my coworkers, mentored by my project managers and respected by my clients.

So you tell me - how many people who can make better money in private practice will choose to teach? You've got to hope for idealists, and ISTM that making policy based on idealism can be a risky proposition.

To Al: Do a little reading on the labor movement before beating on teacher's unions. Less than 100 years ago, women were paid much less than men to teach the same subjects and had to clean the schools. The labor standards we take for granted (40 hour week, weekends, health insurance, pensions (or what is left of these)) did not come from management because they like their employees. The union movement was behind each of these innovations and each was won with blood an sweat by union members. Even with these protections FDChief's experience mirrors my own experience being a teacher for 7 years. Lots of "extra" time grading, planning, calling parents, etc. If teaching was such a good deal, why is it so hard to find competent teachers especially in math and science? Answer, they can make more money doing less stressful work and get the respect they deserve as professionals (clearly Al, you don't respect teaching as a profession). As for summers off, I had to work to make extra money to supplement my salary which didn't approach CA standards. Teachers are one of the most underpaid professions based on level of education and experience. Like nursing, teaching was (is) dominated by women and hence has been cronically underpaid and disrespected. Despite all of this, I loved teaching and may go back some day, but right now I make more money with less (though certianly not zero) stress.

Lets face it, schools are designed as childcare for working parents and drilling conformity into students. Most are run on the factory model, where students are units to be filled with (mostly uncontextualized) information and sent on to the next teacher to be filled with more information. The school year with summers off was designed so that kids could help out on the farm during the growing season. A 10 week on 3 week off schedule (or something similar) would be much better for students but not for parents who need to work. A lot of the first semester of school is spent reviewing to get kids to where they were at the end of the last school year. The school day is most often designed around school bus, cafeteria, and sports schedules. Designing environments for learning and personal development is far down on the list. Research shows that middle and high school students function best in school from about 10 am to 4 pm, but my highschool stepson has to be at the busstop at 6:45 am and start school at 7:15 so the buses can do their run and then pick up elementary students later in the morning.

Its not that we don't know how to make great schools. We just don't have the political will to make education and personal development the primary goal of schools and build outward from there. We are not willing to provide the support and individualized attention that low achieving students need to catch up with their higher achieving peers.

Schools (particularly high schools) could be community centers where multiage small classes focused on learning would be held without compulsory attendance. If kids are not interested in learning they would not have to attend. After working a few dead end jobs, they might have more motivation to pursue education as a way to get more meaningful employment. Parents would be welcome to upgrade their basic skills. Meaningful mentoring of younger students and community volunteer work could be integral parts of a school that was integrated into the fabric of the community. This is just one model of many alternative schooling models that will never happen because it violates the compulsory childcare mission of the modern megahighschool.

(clearly Al, you don't respect teaching as a profession)

Well, my wife is a teacher, my mother in law is a teacher, and my mother was a teacher. So don't tell me I don't respect the profession.

And your history lesson about what unions did a hundred years ago is interesting yet completely irrelevant to the harm teachers unions are doing to education today.

to MNPundit: The quality of people going into education is directly proportional to the financial rewards that wait in the job market. It is true that not everyone would be good at teaching, many more of the best and brightest would be motivated to teach if it paid like engineering, medicine, or computer science and had the same prospects for career advancement. Students in education departments are generally in the lower half of their class academically. Education departments can't attract the high achieving students because they gravitate to higher paying and more respected professions and majors.

Al, are your relatives part of a teachers union? Are you saying the the teachers in your family (or any teachers you know) work-to-rule (ie leave at the end of the day and don't do any extra work at home), don't sponsor clubs, coach, call parents at night, and don't spend exta time and some of their own resources in their teaching and the union punishes them for this? My union rep never said to me "Gee you are working too many hours, cut it out." Are your family members interested in giving up their collective bargaining rights (if they have them) and accept what school districts offer? Unions are not perfect and certainly can be improved. Sometimes they protect lower skilled teachers and make it hard to fire them. Unions also protect teachers that are good at their jobs but don't necessarily have great relationships with administrators. Without union protection, any teacher could be fired at will. Principals would run fiefdoms with little or no accountability, promoting go along to get along, not excellence or committment to students. Having taught in both union public and non-union private schools, I have found that private (non-union) schools pay on average about 2/3 ot 3/4 of public (union) schools pay. In general, health benefits and retirement benefits are substantially lower in the private schools I have taught at. Are the teachers in your family interested in a 30% cut in pay and benefits? The teacher's union I belonged to did not make it harder for me to do my job. In fact, the union contract made it easier for me to concentrate on teaching so I am wondering what specifically you think unions are doing that is so detrimental to schools? I did work in a private school, because I had more freedom and smaller classes, not because it was non-union. My history lesson has everything to do with this conversation. Take away teacher's unions, and working conditions, salaries, and benefits for teachers will regress. Without collective bargaining, school districts will cut back on retirement and health benefits even more than they are doing now. Union representation is good for workers, period. Low pay, lack of respect, and the factory model of schooling are detrimental to schools, not union representation. Did you read mal's comment "So true, that's why the schools in Mississippi are so superior--no unions."[/satire] What part of this do you not understand?

$60K over a teacher's work-year may pro-rate to $90K over the calendar year (more like $80K, actually), but they have to pay rent, utilities, car payments, groceries, etc. over the entire year. I suppose some of that could be offset with part-time work over the summer, but that's hardly guaranteed, and good luck finding part-time work that pays comparably. Note also that teachers have to keep taking a lot of classes during the off-season to stay certified and such.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, evangelical resentment against the culture of public schooling is only going to grow (and is liable to be transformed into the next front in the culture wars; the Southern Baptists have been on the edge of an organized boycott for at least several years), and poor kids are only going to continue to suffer.

By the way, I haven't heard what any of my fellow liberals plan to do about the fact that 10-20% of high school dropouts are gifted kids (who by definition have IQs of 130+).

I'm skeptical that you'd have to pay $80K to get good people out of college. Two and a half months of full summer vacation is a very nice fringe benefit, as are the various weeks of vacation during the year. Prorated for actual days of work, I suspect a $60K salary for a teacher is close to a $90K salary for, say, a lawyer. And teaching is also far more rewarding work.

We should be paying teachers based on us needing them to do a job, not based on them being grateful to us for letting them do it.

And it's not like we couldn't afford it. Just imagine if the half a billion dollars of debt we're racking up every day in Iraq were actually being spent on something that might conceivably offer some actual future benefit?

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