The New Republic

Nixon-to-China time. Obama needs to smash the stranglehold of the NEA over the teaching profession in this country.

If this country is ever going to increase productivity again, it has to turn around the miserable performance of the urban public schools. Bill and Melinda Gates concluded that the biggest driver of school achievement--after the home environment, of course-- is not school size but teacher quality. Raise teachers' salaries in exchange for dropping the entry and exit barriers imposed by the guild.

Let's hope Obama shows some real leadership, spends some real capital. The stakes are huge. If nearly half our future population is educated at third-world levels, there's no way our economy will sustain significant growth.

- teplukhin2you

March 5, 2009 at 9:16am

Hear hear on the NEA. The Gates Foundation has also been pushing smaller class sizes but the evidence that this works is just not there.

- liberal reformer

March 5, 2009 at 11:24am

You know, it does seem to me that many of those entry barriers have nothing to do with the teacher's union.  I remember in the late 90's there was a movement to recruit teachers from other professions, without requiring that these new teachers attend teacher colleges and student teach.  Instead, they would work under the direction of a master teacher for a year or two.  This was seen as a way to increase the quality of teachers by lowering the barriers to entry and making it easier for mid- to late-career people in many fields spend some time teaching, because they had a passion for it.

No child left behind, with its requirements for "highly qualified" teachers meant that those programs bit the dust. NCLB made the barriers to entry for teachers (and paraprofessionals) much higher. It focuses on qualifications, not ability.

I did not live or work, during the time my child was in school, in places with terrible schools or powerful teacher's unions.  Perhaps the entrenched special interest of the teacher's union is keeping a lot of good things from happening in our schools.  But there are certainly other factors at play, and pointing over and over at a favorite target of conservatives isn't, in any way, looking for ways to improve our schools.

- ReganaD

March 5, 2009 at 11:25am

I agree with much of what teplukhin2you says in his/her post--except for blaming teachers and the NEA.

We do need to fix our schools. Read the works of Jonathan Kozol and Herbert Kohn, also Richard Kahlenberg. Even in well-integrated communities, poor children are pooled in certain schools, given the least experienced teachers and short shrift on resources.  Classes are too large and the spectre of testing looms over every classroom., every day.  Many principals are so busy satisfying all stakeholders that they do not always back their teachers. The building's test reults are more important than providing help for individual students.

I'm actually for national standards so states and communities can't offer watered down curricula --but standards based on content that is do-able. Our elementary schools need more reading and math specialists. And today's middle and high schools need adequate resources to provide books, labs, technology, arts and up-to-date vocational programs. We cannot have good education on the cheap. .  

The NEA is an organization that protects the professional workllife of teachers. In objecting to huge class sizes, for example, the NEA also protects the rights of students.

Every voucher that subvenes a private school is money taken from our public schools.

Leave the current DC voucher recipients in place till graduation, but end the voucher program .

- hmseil01

March 5, 2009 at 11:59am

I'm not "blaming the teachers", I'm simply saying that if Gates is right that the biggest lever we have is teacher quality, and if teacher quality depends primarily on attracting the better college students into the profession and getting rid of the incompetent members of the profession, then do whatever needs to be done to achieve those goals. Including firing lots of bad teachers and raising salaries dramatically for the 80%, or maybe 50% in the worst districts, of the rest.

National standards is a great idea. Also consolidation of school districts. IIUC New Jersey has s.t. like 600 school districts. Cutting this down to maybe 20 or so would free up lots of admin $$$ that could be redirected into higher teachers' salaries, lab materials and other classroom expenditures.

- teplukhin2you

March 5, 2009 at 12:08pm

Of course there are other factors that militate against good schools. But the NEA has been consistently recalcitrant on testing, merit pay, etc. and this should not be downplayed as reasons that undercut quality education. It isn't only conservatives who have these concerns. Some of us reformist liberals do, as well. Just because conservatives contend something does not mean that it is an error.

- liberal reformer

March 5, 2009 at 12:08pm

So how does a voucher progam like DC's make public schools better?  The voucher provides only a portion of the private-school tuition, meaning that the family has to pay the remainder of it out-of-pocket or via loans or other financial aid from the private school.  Most of the school population in DC apparently remains in public schools, reflecting the likelihood that many faimilies cannot afford to send their children to private schools even with a voucher.  And the pubic money used to fund vouchers is money diverted from the public schools.  It sounds to me like a prescription for directing a few lower-income children to private schools, while leaving the urban public schools to rot.

- dhurtado

March 5, 2009 at 12:28pm

"Every voucher that subvenes a private school is money taken from our public schools."

... and given to our public students so they can attend effective schools.  I'm sorry, but vouchers (and the charter schools that they enable) are working here in Cleveland.  For decades, we were fed the same lines - "We need to fix our schools!", "This situation is unacceptable!", "Our children deserve better!", and so on.  But the same local pols who shouted this at rallies did little or nothing to improve the schools.  Part of it may have been that they were beholden to the teachers' unions, more likely I think they were just typical politicians, making an outward show of populist wrath while they milked the city coffers behind closed doors.

Finally, though, in '95, we got the voucher program started, despite strong opposition from, I'm sorry to say, mostly liberal interest groups.  Since then, in addition to existing private and parochial schools, several charter schools have opened up to take advantage of the program.  Some of these have been poor, true, but those charters were revoked, and the remainder have been moderately-to-very successful.  Yes, they take money from Cleveland's public schools, but for that money, they deliver a solid education, something our public schools haven't been able to accomplish since the '60's.  My advice to Duncan would be, "Don't knock vouchers until you have a better, proven solution *already in place*."  Our students don't need any more feigned wrath and false promises.

- dhauck

March 5, 2009 at 12:47pm

dhauck, the private schools deliver a solid education to whom?  What about the students who are left behind in the public schools?  Are the private schools delivering a solid education to them?

- dhurtado

March 5, 2009 at 1:23pm

How long do we wait, hurtado?  Better some get a good education than none.  Besides, your math is misleading.

If DC spends 10K per pupil, and a voucher is worth 8K, it's true that $$ is gone - but so is that student, and per pupil spending is thereby higher for the rest.  I'm the last one to assert that more $$ means a better education, but vouchers don't necessarily mean that per pupil spending goes down.

The NEA isn't helpful when it comes to reform, but let's face it, the raw material schools are getting from the home is no prize, either.  It's a complex problem, and bureaucrats in DC have no answers, and we should stop pretending they do.  The feds need to get out of K-12 education.  They do no good, and some harm.

- butchie b

March 5, 2009 at 1:39pm

I'd be happy to see the feds get into k-12 education, in a big way, if it meant higher standards-- not just testing, but raising the curriculum a grade level, across the board, for elementary and middle school kids. Also if it meant a huge decrease in the % of spend on non-teacher/non-classroom stuff like consultants and district administration and a corresponding increase in teachers' salaries.

Frankly, as a parent I've yet to see any benefit from local control. My voice is meaningless. The basic skills K-5 curriculum is watered down and lame, and my wife and I have no power at all to displace it with something even remotely close to what she had in Soviet Russia or I had 40 years ago. We and our boy's math tutor collectively spend an average of 40 mins- 1hour every day teaching what the school fails to teach during the 6 hours the kids spend scewing around in school.

- teplukhin2you

March 5, 2009 at 2:16pm

butchie, I did not enage in any math.  I don't have any actual numbers regarding the amount of the vouchers and the amounts that DC's or Cleveland's public schools "spend" per pupil.  Your math assumes that the amount of the vouchers is less than the per-pupil funding that public schools receive.  It also assumes that the per-pupil funding of public schools will remain the same after a voucher system is implemented.  It also does not account for the fact that the total funding to public schools would decrease, while overhead costs such as building maintenance, security, administrative personnel, etc., would not necessarily decrease, so that, while the amount being "spent" per pupil MIGHT increase, the per-pupil amount actually being spent on educational services might not increase at all, and might in fact decrease.  In any event, you math, without more, does not demonstrate that a voucher system will make the public schools better.

As to your broader point that it is better for some to get a good education than none, we already have a system in which some get a good education and some don't.  If you have the wherewithal to move to a community in which the public schools are good, you can do that.  Or if you have the wherewithal to send your children to a private school, you have that choice as well.  But if the government is going to subsidize the choice to attend private schools, then I think it is morally (and perhaps constitutionally) obligated to do so in a manner that is fair and equitable and does not effectively foreclose the choice for thousands or millions of low-income families.

- dhurtado

March 5, 2009 at 3:26pm

butchie:

"The feds need to get out of K-12 education.  They do no good, and some harm."

Apart from actually feeding some of those poor damn kids eh?  Especially in those "family-friendly" low-tax states that don't bother to do it themselves.

It's funny that most every other country manages to have a federalised (or at least a lot less decentralised) school system and do better than the US by any agreed measurement.  Perhaps the problem is the people who spend all of their time complaining about the government and how it has no solutions?

But you are definitely right on the raw material coming out of the homes though.

- Nari224

March 5, 2009 at 3:44pm

Nari, governors can feed kids, too.  I suspect all states would do it, but they don't have to, because our federal overlords know best.  Why does the money have to go to DC, slosh around and 80% come back to your kid's school?  Of course, the question assumes that food service is the main reason the DoE exists.  And you might be right.

My point, hurtado, was that simply becase a voucher program is instituted does not mean that the local public system would lose money in terms of per-pupil spending.  Of course, some public schools are excellent - Fairfax County, VA, Montgomery Co., MD for example.  There are many others.  But the best thing we could do for inner-city kids is blow up their systems, or institute equal per-pupil spending statewide, and fund the schools through a sales tax, or some other tax than the local property taxes.  And no, most other countries do NOT do better than we do.  Some do, some don't.

I sympathize, tep, but the feds can't fix those problems.  The states need to, but probably won't.  My model is KIPP - a longer day, longer year, and parental buy-in.  What eats up schools is ESE, ESL and behavioral problems galore.  I confess I don't know how to fix the problem, nor do I think vouchers are some magic bullet, because they aren't.  But I've go nothing against them.

- butchie b

March 5, 2009 at 4:26pm

butchie, vouchers may not NECESSARILY result in public schools losing money, but I think an analysis of actual numbers may very well show that vouchers do result in resources being diverted away from the public schools, not merely because of the money diverted for the vouchers, but because, where there are vouchers, the public may become less supportive of public school funding.  Be that as it may, my larger point is that I see no evidence that vouchers will make public schools better, and I think it is highly likely to cause greater inequities in our educational system than to fix it.  I fullly agree with the idea that there should be equal per-pupil spending statewide.  That also would not be a panacea, but I think it would be going in the right direction.  In my mind, vouchers, as presently conceived, are going in the opposite direction.

- dhurtado

March 5, 2009 at 5:13pm