With the highest average salary per teacher, Detroit must be turning out the best and brightest. Does a 75% high school dropout rate merit the highest salaries in the country? The district has 15,000 workers, an annual budget of $1.2 billion, and only graduates 25% of the 94,000 students it matriculates through its horrific system. Well done. I’m sure they will get big union negotiated raises this year. There is absolutely no evidence that average teacher pay is related to high school graduation rates. Due to their strong teachers’ unions, salaries, benefits and tenure are fought for, while the interests of the students are disregarded.
“A lot of people who have been hired as teachers are basically not competent.”
Al Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers
Excellent motivated teachers produce excellent motivated students. Incompetent, unmotivated, burnt out, tenured teachers produce dropouts and functionally illiterate students. Tenure allows bad teachers to stay employed for decades. It is virtually impossible to get fired. In ten years, only about 47 out of 100,000 teachers were actually terminated from New Jersey’s schools. Newark’s school district successfully fired about one out of every 3,000 tenured teachers annually. Graduation statistics indicate that Newark’s graduation rate was a fabulous 30.6%. New York City’s Chancellor has revealed that in that city, only ten out of 55,000 tenured teachers were terminated in the 2006-2007 school year. According to the New York Daily News, at any given time in New York City an average of 700 teachers are being paid not to teach (they instead report to “rubber rooms”) while the district goes through the hoops (imposed by the union contract and by law) needed to pursue discipline or termination. A city teacher in New York that ends up being fired will have spent an average of 19 months in the disciplinary process. The Daily News reported that the New York City school district spends more than $65 million annually paying teachers accused of wrongdoing, in addition to the cost of hiring substitutes.
One highly destructive feature of the typical teachers’ union contract is a system that forces principals to hire teachers who transfer from other schools within the district. Since these teachers frequently are transferring because of poor performance in their original schools, the practice is called “the dance of the lemons” or “passing the trash.” One problem related to the destructive transfer system is a hiring process that takes too long and/or starts too late, thanks in part to union contracts. Would-be teachers typically cannot be hired until senior teachers have had their pick of the vacancies, and the transfer process makes principals reluctant to post vacancies at all for fear of having a bad teacher fill it instead of a promising new hire. Anywhere from 31% to almost 60% of applicants withdrew from the hiring process, often to accept jobs with districts that made offers earlier. Applicants who withdrew from the hiring process had significantly higher undergraduate GPAs, were 40% more likely to have a degree in their teaching field, and were significantly more likely to have completed educational coursework than the teachers who ended up staying around to finally receive job offers. Another common problem with the union contract is a “bumping” policy that fills schools which are more needy (but less desirable to teach in) with greater numbers of inexperienced teachers. In its report Teaching Inequality, the Education Trust wrote:
“Children in the highest-poverty schools are assigned to novice teachers almost twice as often as children in low-poverty schools. Similarly, students in high-minority schools are assigned to novice teachers at twice the rate as students in schools without many minority students.”
The nonprofit Education Sector found in a 2007 report that nearly 19% of all public education spending in America goes towards things like seniority-based pay increases and outsized benefits -- things that don’t do much to improve teaching quality. If these provisions were done away with, the report found, $77 billion in education money would be freed up for initiatives that could actually improve learning, like paying high-performing teachers more money. Teachers unions push for contracts that effectively cripple school districts’ ability to monitor teachers for dangerous behavior. In one case, school administrators in Seattle received at least 30 warnings that a fifth grade teacher was a danger to his students. However, thanks to a union contract that forces schools to destroy most personnel records after each school year, he managed to evade punishment for nearly 20 years, until he was finally sent to prison in 2005 for having molested up to 13 girls. As an attorney for one of the victims put it, according to The Seattle Times:
“You could basically have a pedophile in your midst and not know it. How are you going to get rid of somebody if you don't know what they did in the past?”
Success Stories
"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness." George Washington
Whenever I read about failure, my immediate reaction is to look for examples of success. Based on the studies I’ve found, Finland finishes at or near the top of every survey in Math and Science. They must be doing something right. With the pitiful results achieved by the U.S., we should humbly examine what we can learn from the Finnish school system.
Some facts about the Finnish school system are as follows:
Pre-school begins at age 6
Comprehensive school: age 7 to 16
Upper secondary school or vocational school: 16 to 19
Pupils in Finland, age 7 to 14, spend fewest hours in school
Higher education places for 65% young people
Second-highest public spending on higher education
They don’t divide students until they reach 16 years old. Education Minister Tuula Haatainen describes their philosophy:
“There is a philosophy of inclusion underlying this system. Widening participation in education is the most effective way of finding the most talented students. It's like ice hockey. We let all the girls and boys play, not only the best ones. With this fair play, we can give everyone the same chance to practice their skills - and this also gives us the way to find the best ones."
Their methods are based on common sense, personal responsibility, financial support and strong families:
An important ingredient in Finland's high achievement in reading and writing is a strong culture of reading in the home.
Parents nurture a love of reading among children and this is supported by a network of public libraries.
In the last international education league tables, produced by the OECD, Finland's 15 year olds were judged to have the highest standards of literacy in the world.
School meals are free to all pupils, there are no university fees and students can stay in the upper secondary stage (loosely equivalent to sixth forms) for up to four years.
Finland has made a conscious effort to have highly-qualified teachers throughout the school system.
Other ideas that have worked to improve academic results include private school choice, public school choice, and charter schools. Private school choice policies like vouchers, scholarships, or education tax credits help parents to enroll their children in a private school of choice. Public school choice allows parents more opportunity to choose the best public school for their children by offering open enrollment within the public education system. Charter schools are publicly funded schools that meet certain performance standards set by the government but are otherwise free from the traditional public school system. It is amazing what happens when free market competition is created by school choice. Government bureaucrats and Teachers’ Unions despise these ideas because failure and mediocrity are penalized while success is rewarded.
In 2001, Harvard University Economics Professor Dr. Caroline Hoxby studied the effect of school choice options on the performance of public schools. She found that public schools that faced a higher degree of competition from private schools improved their performance compared to public schools that faced less competition. Many surveys and focus groups have found that parents are more satisfied with their children's learning environment when they can choose their school. That helps to explain why limited voucher programs are usually over-subscribed, with many kids ending up on long waiting lists. In 1998, the non-profit Children's Scholarship Fund offered private school scholarships to 40,000 low-income students across the country. In all, more than 1.2 million kids applied. Not exactly a vote of confidence in the public school system.
Implications of Failure
“We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”
Carl Sagan
After spending trillions on education in the last 40 years, we have absolutely nothing to show for it. SAT scores in Reading are lower and Math scores are flat with scores in 1972. The general populace is more ignorant, less informed, less curious, and easier to manipulate than they were in 1970.
Our family has sacrificed financially to send our children to Catholic schools. Public schools spend anywhere from $8,000 to $14,000 per pupil and are able to send only 33% onto college. I pay $6,000 per year to send my oldest son to Catholic high school. Of the recent graduating class, 99% went on to college. The teachers are paid less, school spending is half as much per pupil and results are dramatically better. The combination of teachers who are competent and care, parents who are involved and care, and students who work hard and care, leads to success. The failure of public school education has vast negative implications for our society. Those with education and knowledge have pulled farther ahead of the uneducated and stupid. There are 225 million people over 18 years old and 146 million do not have a college degree. Only 20 million have a Master’s degree or better. Those who are educated make more money send their kids to private schools and continue the cycle. Ignorant teenagers who grow up to be ignorant adults, have kids who are brought up ignorant. It is extremely difficult to break this cycle.
This is a free country. No one is going to stop you from reading a book. My parents didn’t go to college, but their three kids did. All of our kids will go to college. It is expected and encouraged from the day they are born. The encouragement and involvement of two parents is more important than any other factor. The numbers speak for themselves. Asian children succeed the most because 85% of them are brought up in two parent households. White children are more successful in school because 76% of them are brought up in two parent households. Black children fail because only 38% are brought up in two parent households. The government can spend trillions more in urban public school systems and get no better results because black men have not taken personal responsibility for their children and families.
“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”
William Shakespeare
The dumbing down of America has allowed the intelligentsia to retain power and increase their control over the country. Lack of educational achievement doesn’t automatically mean you are easily manipulated, but it sure increases the odds. If you weren’t motivated enough to do well in school, you are unlikely to take your civic duties of voting, understanding national issues, and getting involved in your community seriously. The saddest part is that an enormous quantity of even the college educated is so intellectually lazy that they choose to trust their leaders without question. With 100 million, ignorant, non-thinking, non-questioning, and intellectually lazy zombies occupying space in this country, continued domination by a few thousand highly educated elite remains quite easy. A highly educated citizenry would endanger their power. By socializing public education, encouraging mediocrity, and not rewarding excellence, government bureaucrats insure that the masses remain ignorant and pliable. Those in power know that by keeping the ignorant masses sedated with socialist goodies like welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, and easy credit, they can stay in charge. For them it is fabulous, for the country it is a disaster. Winston Churchill summed it up succinctly:
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
There is no area of ignorance more distressing than in the area of economics and finance. Those with superior knowledge and power are able to mislead the ignorant masses regarding the state of our economic situation because most Americans have no clue about deficits, inflation, or the printing of money out of thin air. I’m reminded of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Know You’re a Redneck” comedy routine.
You know you are ignorant if:
You think Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Germans (Bluto)
You think the Civil War is a Guns N Roses song.
You think Inflation is what you do to tires.
You think the Federal Reserve is a brand of scotch.
You think GDP stands for Got Da Payment from the welfare office.
You think you deserve a $300,000 house when your annual income is $22,500.
You don’t know the names of the guys on the penny, nickel, dime or quarter.
You think the National Debt is a monument in Washington DC
John Adams predicted the confusion and distress that has arisen in America.
“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”
The question is whether we can change our course, properly educate our populace, and take this country back from the entrenched elite. There is no more important issue facing our country today.
Bio: James Quinn is a senior director of strategic planning for a major university. These articles reflect the personal views of James Quinn. They do not necessarily represent the views of his employer and are not sponsored or endorsed by his employer. He can be reached at quinnadvisors@comcast.net.
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0814.html
