I think there a clear lesson in Matthew Ladner’s bill of indictment against the public schools:
The unacknowledged elephant in the room- the inescapable fact that the poor have been the primary victims of the failure of the public school system to produce a decent return on investment for the massive increase in public K-12 spending. Several generations of Americans have attended public schools increasingly generously funded and staffed over the decades, and always at globally enviable levels. I’m at a loss to imagine how anyone can blame inter-generational poverty on under investment in public education when such investment can only be described as both substantial and increasing for many decades.
and it is not that we should spend a lot more on them. We spend more on every basis—per capita or overall—than any other country in the world. Just as with our healthcare system we are not receiving value for the money we spend. We are not under-investing. They are under-delivering.
The lesson is that we deserve more from our public education system. The poor deserve more. Everyone deserves more.
When the fulcrum of “anything’ is so out of balance, it’s operation is negatively effected. I don’t care whether one is measuring personal, business, economic or educational growth. Schools are simply mismanaged with fewer educational standards derived mainly from political and politically correct influences. Those schools who have escaped the web of union dominance and social correction dominance prove this point, as they produce a “useful” educational experience, rendering more student receptivity in the classroom, greater teacher/parent involvement and higher graduation numbers.
Ladner is ignoring the elephant in the room. From around 1970, educational expectations changed. There were a series of federal laws that required schools to provide additional services: (i) individualized and inclusive plans for children with disabilities; (ii) language services for children who don’t speak English as a first language; and (iii) gifted programs. Probably Civil Rights laws have had an impact as well; certainly my school district wouldn’t be paying for bussing kids.
The laws change the service expectation and the population has changed as well. More non-English speakers isn’t something created by schools. There were no individualized education programs for Autistic children in 1970 either.
The increase in staffing is mostly in the category of teacher aides, many of which provide individual services for a small number of students. For example, a recently arrived third-grader from Latin America had an interpreter assigned to her, who would sit in the back of the classroom with an IPad communicating lesson plans to the girl on her IPad. The data would make it appear that the classroom had cut the student/staff ratio in half, but really it was a marginal increase that benefitted a single student.
“kids start going to private schoolsâ€
I think the President clearly meant _some_ kids started going to private schools. Here is what he said:
“But there has always been trends in the market in which concentrations of wealth can lead to some being left behind. And what’s happened in our economy is that those who are doing better and better — more skilled, more educated, luckier, having greater advantages — are withdrawing from sort of the commons — kids start going to private schools;”
Not all kids start going to private school, just those enjoying greater advantages, like the ability to pay the rising tuitions:
“Rising tuition fees and a sputtering economy might be reasons for the decline in private school enrollment. During the 1999-2000 school year, the average tuition for a private high school was $6,053. By 2007, it was $10,549, according to government figures. This 74 percent increase far outpaced the inflation rate of about 24 percent between 1999 and 2007. Between 2001 and 2007, the total number of private schools fell 37,000 to 33,700.”
Did private schools become 50% better in eight years? What was the ROI for that increase? Did they become better by being more selective?
“Those schools who have escaped the web of union ” have the same outcomes.
Total spending may be high, but teacher pay as percent of GDP is low.
http://www.newrepublic.com/sites/default/files/migrated///McK%2520Teacher%2520Salaries.jpg
Not here it’s not. I suspect that’s an artifact of the extremely high earnings in the financial sector which is heavily concentrated on the East Coast.
Also, why is that a relevant measure?
I think this is a relevant measure:
Illinois issued 9,982 teacher’s certificates in 2011 when 1,073 new teachers were hired. (Pennsylvania was second in producing teacher surplus)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/23/18supply_ep.h32.html
“About 6,400 teachers and aides have lost their jobs in Illinois in the last five years.”
2013 Article
Illinois teacher salaries fourth highest in the nation.
Source
Let me expand on my earlier comment. Everything is either positively correlated or negatively correlated. There are an enormous number of possible ratios but not all are relevant.
For example, I suspect that on an educational spending per square mile we’re pretty low. It’s also a dubious measurement. Our total educational spending is higher, our per capita educational spending is higher, and our per pupil educational spending is higher. If per teacher educational spending is lower than some countries, it’s just another way of saying what I said earlier: we’re not getting value for our educational spending.
PD’s comment earlier about spending on special needs kids might be relevant but I’m not entirely convinced. It might add something to total spending but I doubt it accounts for the entire or even the greatest part of our inefficient spending.
Ladner is the one who believes “staffing” is a more important metric than “spending.” He argues that the money is wasted on non-teachers. The largest increase in school staffing is in teacher aides, a catch-all category of people engaged in teaching, who do not have responsibility for a classroom. Figure ES-1
And it’s not true for all schools or states. Illinois and California have reduced non-teaching staff ratios over the last 24 years. (Figure 6) (It appears that more rural states hire more non-teachers) His quip about public schools being able to afford football helmets suggests he’s never been approached to contribute to a sports fundraiser. Using national averages he can dismiss the concern that there are schools that are underresourced by hiding behind schools that are building olympic sized pools.
“Also, why is that a relevant measure?”
I strongly suspect plumbers, hairdressers, painters, etc. make more in the US than they do in most of the world. There is no question that our teachers make more than most teachers around the world. What I think you want to also know is where they rank in the country. How much of our GDP do we devote to a teacher’s salary? From Business Insider.
“Of course, the issue is providing the right incentives to motivate people to pursue the career track:
Raising the quality of instruction starts with recruiting exceptional students into the teaching profession. Realizing meaningful gains will hinge on addressing the factors that have discouraged many candidates from entering the profession in the past: lack of a career ladder, low respect for the profession, low pay, and variable principal quality. A recent McKinsey survey of 1,600 high-performing college students found that just 9 percent wanted to go into teaching.
While pay isn’t everything, it is something. And the authors provide some interesting global comparisons that show where the U.S. lags considerably:
US high school teachers are paid 72 percent as much as all college graduates in the workforce, while in other OECD countries, that figure is 90 percent (Exhibit 35). But making teaching more attractive is not simply a matter of money: professional development is also essential (especially for new teachers and those who work in troubled schools). A meta-analysis of 1,300 studies found that students scored 21 percentage points higher than average on standardized tests when their instructors received more professional support and training. Studies show that when training is ongoing, collaborative, and driven by relationships with individual coaches, it is most effective at helping teachers raise student achievement.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-teachers-get-paid-more-2013-7#ixzz3ailO4S8c
Steve,
I think it’s pretty hard to argue that teaching doesn’t provide incentives to pursue a career track. They generally get tenure after a few years. One reason why starting teachers are paid less than the OECD average is because pay increases and benefits are back-loaded. That means you have to make teaching a career to get many of the benefits and that means a decade or more to get vested and then another decade or two to get the full package. This system is designed for seniority and careerism.
But those incentives are also perverse because they do three things:
– Incentivize teachers to keep on teaching even if they hate it in order to get vested. The system provides incentives for mediocre teachers to stay in the job – they can’t be fired, but they aren’t yet vested.
– Lack of mobility – if you move to another district or state and get a teaching job your seniority will be reset to zero and you’ll have to do the decade or whatever to vested.
– Most systems do not take experience or education outside of education into account. Just one example – a good friend of ours spent 20 years as a scientist in the Air Force and has a PhD in aerospace engineering. He wants to teach high school but almost everyplace would start him at the same pay and benefits as someone just out of college and less than someone who pipelines straight through to a Master’s in education.
All these policies, BTW, are the result of collective bargaining by teachers unions. Like public employee unions everywhere, they favor seniority and specific education credentialing above pretty much anything else. The system is not friendly to those who want to start teaching mid-career.