The Education Wonks
I'll bet the CTA will like the higher pay part but nothing else.
I wonder how soon that "highly competitive" test would get watered down as the result of pressure from school boards and parents?
But otherwise, I think this 10th grade get of school early card is an intriguing idea, speaking as one who was not allowed to graduate early or get early dismissal to take college classes since I was "already the youngest kid in my class..." --and that is a direct quote from my guidance counselor.
So I sat and spun my wheels for an entire year. It didn't kill me, but I could have saved myself some money earning some credits, since my high school also offered NO AP or college credit classes.
Hmm. So let's see...Schools should be run as businesses, but businesses that don't produce a marketable product with which to make a profit and businesses wherein the student "product" has a will of its own and can decide whether or not it will allow itself to be manufactured.
And, compared with other cultures, we're not doing well. Talk about the blazingly obvious. What the report seems to ignore are the two most important factors in the educational equation: human nature and culture.
American kids don't work nearly as hard as Asian kids. Why? Culture. American kids and parents take virtually no responsibility for their part in the education process. Why? Human nature. Actually doing some work and dealing with responsibility is difficult and, for the most part, not terribly fun or immediately gratifying. Actually paying daily attention to what one's offspring are doing and learning is also demanding and not terribly fun.
Any report that so utterly fails to take into account these two factors is doomed to failure, but sadly, probably not before some misguided souls take it for the newest save-education-in-one-bold-stroke initiative and try to apply its poorly thought out principles to the detriment of many.
Yes, the request higher pay. But the report also calls for elimination of teacher pensions. Will teachers be fooled by people giving with one hand while taking away with the other?
I hope not.
The report certainly should be ignored, as prominent panel members are Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg, who've done nothing substantive to improve education. Granted, they learned from expert co-panel member Rod Paige how to increase graduation rates by pretending dropouts don't exist.
I did a post on Friday about a CBS News story on this report, and if it's okay, I'd like to share my concluding paragraphs here:
I'm not going to knock the concern expressed by this "Blue Ribbon" commission. I'm not even going to knock their recommendations for radical change in our educational system. But before we take them seriously, I think we are owed an explanation.
Twenty-three years ago we had another report from a "blue-ribbon" type commission on American education. That report was titled Nation at Risk, and it made what was a very insulting statement to those of us in public education: "If an unfriendly power had imposed our schools upon us, we would have regarded it as an act of war." "Our nation is at risk," the report stated. "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people."
I think it's fair to say that the situation described by Nation at Risk was not one which had occurred over night. After all, test scores were not significantly worse than they had been in the 1960s. And, although I wish I could say that this wasn't the case, our test scores are not significantly better now than they were when Nation at Risk was published. That's at least fifty years of "mediocrity" threatening our very future as a nation.
Yet, here we are in 2006. We have a four percent unemployment rate, while many of those nations who are hammering us in those educational test scores have double digit unemployment. As I sit here typing this, Shepard Smith of Fox News is announcing that the Dow Jones is at a record high--the stock market is as good as it's ever been. Last week, I handed out this current event item to my students making it clear that the United States is the richest country in the world. I think it's fair to say that according to the dire proclamations of Nation at Risk, this should be an impossibility.
So to those members of this year's "Blue Ribbon" commission, I ask these questions: Why did the implied predictions of Nation at Risk turn out to be so wrong? Why should we assume that your forecasts of gloom and doom will be any more accurate than those of that other "Blue Ribbon" commission?
I blogged about this, too. Personally, I feel like this report is full of bad ideas. I'd love to see teacher salaries rise, but there are lots of other ways to accomplish that without privatizing education and losing pensions. I worry most about the kids. None of the ideas have any research behind them. What happens to kids who test out of school at 16, but have no car (and no more school bus) to get them to work? Will there really be any difference in the achievement gap issues because the schools are under private control and teachers are paid more? Will parents be more involved? I think it's doubtful.
Dennis is very much on the mark. I've always found it interesting that gloom and doom predictions and statements of "fact" so seldom comport with reality. If American education is indeed failing so badly, how is it that in the midst of a very expensive war, unemployment is at record lows, the stock market is at record highs, college enrollment is skyrocketing, the economy is, in a word, strong, and American inventiveness, ingenuity and talent continue to drive the world? Apparently Americans are not nearly so poorly served by our public schools as some would have us believe.
Human nature again intrudes on good intentions. Some people will strive to educate themselves despite poor schools, while others, despite having every educational opportunity in the world, throw that opportunity away. No brilliant education initiative can change that.
Some schools are well run, reasonable and competent, while others, bastions of diversity, political correctness, racial politics and self esteem are otherwise. The opportunity to correct every poor school in America remains in the hands of the citizens who vote for school boards. If we continue to put in office those who are more interested in trying to perfect humans through socio-political engineering, or who think that imposing a business model on learning is the way to success and profit, we should hardly be surprised when education fares poorly.
Its more than money. The problems we have now will not be eliminated by higher salaries. People who accept a paycheck and refuse to do what they signed on to do are loafers. Higher paid loafers will not improve our school systems. You might attract a few more dedicated teachers with higher salaries, but most likely you will attract teachers in three groups:
1. Those teachers who were giving their best at the current salary levels--and will be delighted by the pay increase.
2. Those who will loaf no matter what the paycheck.
3. Those who are more skillful but do not have the disposition to be good teachers.
In the meantime, parents, educators and students might try using the wonderful resources at YouthPlay to improve the education of our young people.
Given the sorry state of our pension plan I would as soon get more money and take responsibility for my own retirement fund.
I my opinion we don't need a better class of teachers, what we need is a better class of students. A way must be found to rid our regular classrooms of the thugs, the lazy, the disrupters, and the non-competent so teachers can concentrate on those who can and want to learn.
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