The “Crisis” in Education

“prove their abilities, and continually have to reprove them, the way most professionals–including, yes, journalists–have to do.”

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At least you finished your 1,000th version of this argument with a joke.

Will you someday reveal what personal trauma you went through that now motivates your crusade against teachers? Even if you were to have a point ( I have my doubts), you’re lack of detachment suggests that you’ve got a dog in the fight somehow. Inquiring minds want to know.

Well the NYT has written an article and now Joe thinks we should get rid of unions as well as a right to remain silent. Good news is though he is only concern about teachers and terrorist. For now.

Good point gunny.
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Another example of JK’s “reasonable” position that sacrifices must be made.
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By others.

Good idea to eliminate tenure. Then any teacher with tenure who chooses to teach that evolution is a scientific fact as opposed to the creatonist ideas of the school board can be dismissed with no long involved process.

When I first saw the headline I assumed this was about the shenanigans with the Texas School Board.
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The I read the article, I saw it was about blaming teachers’ unions for everything from the poor performance of our chronically underfunded school systems to overcrowded classrooms.
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Of course it will all be much better without a union. Then we can pay teachers even less, and crowd the classrooms even more, with no one to complain about it. Oh, but Joe is for higher teacher pay. That’s great, Joe – now, who’s going to fight for that higher wage? Are you going to go to the next school board meeting and ask nicely for it? Are you willing to increase your local taxes to pay for it?

Or who persists in calling the Atlantic triangular trade the “slave trade.”

http://race.change.org/blog/view/texas_moves_to_rewrite_history_says_there_was_no_slave_trade

Yes, Paul–My personal trauma regarding lousy teachers who are unduly protected by unions involves 40 years of reporting–the first twenty almost exclusively in urban areas–where I saw a great many excellent teachers, who weren’t getting the salaries and support they deserved, and a fair number of lousy ones who were treating the children as aliens or animals. It also includes dozens and dozens of visits to inner city schools that do it right–including Catholic schools (an especially memorable visit to a school where 4-year-old crack babies were taught to read and teachers worked 11 months a year, like most people do) and charter schools. It also includes numerous columns I’ve written about efforts by teachers unions to stifle innovation. It also includes personal experience as a parent in an affluent suburb, watching my kids get a great education from a few of their teachers, a solid education from most others–but watching a few of their teachers mail it in (and, in one or two notorious cases, act in a flagrant, insensitive fashion to humiliate the kids in their care).

My personal “trauma” also involves a series of conversations with Albert Shanker, including one monster marathon session near his death, about the need for reform in his beloved union.

In sum, my view is the result of reporting–actual reporting in cities across the country–and personal experience as a parent. I come by it honestly, have been willing to change and modify it over time (away from vouchers, toward charters, for example). If we are going to compete in the world, our education system needs to undergo drastic change–drastic rethinking–across the board, but especially relating to its crucial component: its teachers.

the budgetary need to lay off lots of teachers

Oh goody. What a terrific opportunity.

I didn’t realize it was already time for another anti-union diatribe.

Speaking as a parent, JK, I can say without hesitation you’re out to recess when you say there is no crisis in education. My city has had to close schools for failure to meet building codes, laid off teachers left and right, and faces declining test scores, intractable problems that have been around for years – if there’s no crisis, it’s because crisis has become the status quo. And your proposals are simplistic in the extreme. I am sure there are some reforms to the current way teachers are hired and fired that would be helpful, but suggesting we need to “right now” drop union work rules without critically considering what will replace them is, dare I say it, ignorant. And by itself it would not, cannot, fix all the problems we face. Education, much like health care, has many interlocking stakeholders (parents, teachers, administrators, taxpayers) that all have reasons to prefer the status quo over change, and it will require as much effort to reform it as it took for health care, and there is less urgency. In the meantime, holding out destruction of teacher’s unions as a cure for what ails us is opportunistic and facile.

I’ll offer a trade: end tenure for teachers, and every pundit who supported invading Iraq has to find a new line of work. That would probably make the country a better place.

“Teachers and terrorists” – ah, but remember, according to Coach Paige, if the teachers are unionized, then the first is a subset of the second.
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Good times, good times.

To be honest, I’m with Joe on this. I was one of those young teachers 2 years ago. I graduated from a fairly prestigious education school in 2007 and taught for one year. I loved the experience, and I think I was pretty good at it, but after a few months of teaching I saw the writing on the wall (economic disaster+seniority rules = young teachers laid off quickly). Sure enough, 2 years later some of my friends teaching are now being laid off (all teachers with three years or less experience given pink slips).
Luckily I went to graduate school and am now about to take my PhD exams in my content field. I’ll hopefully return to teaching high school, but I’d like to see some reform first.

Or whose personal religious beliefs aren’t identical to their principal’s, or who happens to be an ethnicity that their superintentent dislikes, or . . .

It’s amusing, almost – I get the same sensation whenever someone talks about how ‘powerful’ the teachers’ unions are that the Spouse does when someone starts spouting off about how Jews control the media and/or banking industry. I suppose I should get on the ball and enjoy my ill-procured power until such ‘reformers’ as Mr. Klein manage to take it away from me?

It’s interesting that this cause so consumes JK yet his post and comments here are all anecdotal and broad.
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And the conclusion is -predictably-to throw away negotiated work rules.
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Does there need to be reform/improvements? Certainly.
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Does JK comport himself as an honest broker? No.

you realize, of course, tenure can just as well work in exactly the opposite way. a good thought, but its no argument at all until you get to the level of research profs

My now the problems with schools are the Unions, which of course are the Teachers.
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My God man when are you going to wake up and put the problem where it belongs, on the parents.
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Yes there are problem teachers, problem schools, problem administrators; after all they are all human institutions, which are not infallible, but some how we keep putting out excellent grads. It seems if one takes advantage of the educational opportunities one succeeds. How novel.

Joe,
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We often do not agree. On this occasion, I believe you and the NYT are correct in your analysis.
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Teacher’s unions have for too long put the interest of their members ahead of that of the students and we have one of the poorest educational systems in the free world. This is especially true in our large cities where very few of our young people get a descent education.
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It is interesting to read the posts of nearly all the Liberals on this site. Nearly 100% of them will support the union right or wrong. You would think they would put our children first.

As long as you have Unions determining how teachers are hired and fired, we shall always have sub-education levels for our children. Rather than making it a case of what’s in the best interest of children, Unions make it a case of “what’s in the best interest of the teachers”.
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Good article Joe Klein. One thing you and I can agree on.

“This is especially true in our large cities where very few of our young people get a descent education.”
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Hm….. have anything to back that up? Or is this another one of your profound statements unsupported by reality?

The crisis has indeed materialized, though it built inexorably through the years rather than popping up all of a sudden. Americans, by and large, don’t know much. They don’t seem to mind not knowing much and in fact, rather romanticize the “simple” folk who determinedly refuse to know much.

I can’t understand why everyone is trying to argue by imagining some unspecified conflict of interest that makes Klein incredible on the issue. certainly w/o evidence of some financial/political/other stake it should be assumed he cares about it because he cares about education like most of the rest of us who bother to comment. he’s attacking a major supporter of his preferred party, so if anything, there is only disincentive.
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i recently caught an intelligence(squared) debate between teachers union leaders/reps and various professors that have become major critics. I had never really heard a strong case made for teacher’s unions except by my young friends in them so I went in very undecided and eager to understand their case. unfortunately, it went something like this: “we really do know what’s best for the kids and we place their interests first. you just have to trust us on that one”. I’m hardly exaggerating. they were trounced. almost all of the undecideds in the audience ended up siding with the critics

And the first response of the right-wing is “blame the unions”.

Of course, there is no evident connection between the “budgetary need to lay off lots of teachers” and the “need” to shovel a trillion dollars annually to
“that other, far more effective, form of public service–the military”, is there, Mr. Klein?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/forever-war/

As with almost every issue brought up on Swampland, a short blog never can cover the vastness of the issues involved. I do not blame Joe or any other blogger for this because these are not feature articles. I would be interested in seeing what Joe would suggest if he was able to fix a school district. Even better would be if Joe would let Swampland commentators send him 5 school districts to fix (U46 in Elgin, IL is my vote)and let him develop detailed plans for each. Then maybe we could judge Joe’s views on education better. As for the issue Joe outlined briefly, I agree that how pink slips are handed out at schools should not be entirely linked to seniority, but I do think that somebody that has but in a life time at a school deserves some loyalty back. The knee jerk reaction that old teachers are out of date is as silly as the false assumption that new teachers have some magical new ways to teach that will save the Democracy (okay, democratic-republic as a true democracy would mean we all vote on everything and do not elect leaders to make choices for us).

PNNT,
The solution is not to completely throw away negotiated work rules, instead it is able to keep some and reform others. For instance, I’m very grateful to the teachers union that they remained ever vigilant to protecting teachers from too much “side work.” I was very happy to chaperon a few dances and fundraisers, but teachers simply don’t have the time to work 40-60 hours a week teaching/lesson planning AND 10-20 hours a week attending to the high school social milieu.
At the same time, I was not happy when they protected teachers who, one every measure except two (coaching and seniority) were extremely (and visibly) incompetent/apathetic. My starting solutions is to
#1 Get competent principals who have extensive teaching experience into the classroom to evaluate teachers.
#2 Look at improvement on test scores (they don’t tell you everything but they can tell you something)
#3 Require continuing education in content area (in high school teaching there is often at least a 15 year “lag” between the latest scholarship and teaching) and in education methods.
#4 Extend the school year by eliminating a 3 month summer break and substitute in periodic 1-2 week long breaks.
#5 Reward teachers who achieve well in principal evaluations, improve test scores (though I would make this less of an emphasis than it is now), and attend continuing education classes.
#6 Establish more of the “master-teacher”/”junior teacher” relationships as those have shown to be fruitful.
I’m sure there are more ways, which I would welcome people suggesting, and that this program would not work to immediately institute as an unfunded mandate, but it could easily be started in some places and at least it is a start in the right direction. Much better than simply dismissing the problem as one conservatives don’t understand or stressing about the problem as one that liberals don’t understand.

obviously the home environment is a huge factor but equally obvious is the government’s inability to make people be better parents. teachers, unions, and schools on the other hand, can be improved.
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your last line seems to say it’s all up to the kids anyway, and so neither parents nor unions really matter much.
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it would be great to see you come on here and challenge some specific argument instead of spewing red herrings (post 14 included)

“It is interesting to read the posts of nearly all the Liberals on this site. Nearly 100% of them will support the union right or wrong. You would think they would put our children first.”

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It is the same when liberals will continue to back the trial lawyers association, knowing full well that most of these clowns are merely ambulance chasers. But, they are million dollar contributing clowns to the DNCC none the less.
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Follow the money trail and you can most always find out the rationale behind why someone supports this or that organization.

“This speaks to an absolute need, right now, to abolish union work rules–especially seniority.”
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Care to apply that absolute need, right now, to the non-union sector, say, in public media? After all, inadequate teachers only fail to impart some useful knowledge to some percentage of young people, which can probably be learned later. Your industry has created the shockingly large part of the nation’s permanently, civically apathetic, ignorant and/or misinformed adult citizens and voters. Who’s done/doing more damage to the country’s future?

Shepherd–Absolutely. In fact, incompetent reporters get fired all the time. (I’d add that incompetent reporters are not people who disagree with you; they are people who are consistently lazy or inaccurate.)

Actually, journalism in recent years has been run with rules that seem the exact opposite of those governing teachers’ unions: you will find very few reporters over the age of 50 around anymore because they’re too expensive and our revenues are down. This has deprived us of some fine journalists–I miss Elaine Sciolino’s work at the NY Times and Robin Wright’s at the Washington Post–but it has also removed some reporters who’d burned out, lost their reportorial energy, and were mailing it in.

I don’t take issue with Joe Klein’s observations of systemic problems. I take issue with his pathological and mostly one-sided laying of blame on teachers’ unions.
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On one hand, he’ll say that teachers should be paid more. Great. It’s all well and good to say that, but who does he blame for not paying them more? It isn’t like teachers unions are fighting pay increases.
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OTOH, while Klein may be correct that good teachers are underpaid and bad teachers are protected from dismissal, he sure puts a hell of a lot more emphasis on the latter than the former. And he fails to realize that the two are intricately related.
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Other than in a few affluent suburbs in America — and Klein’s claim to be living in such a community suggests that his observations may not be typical — teachers are just not paid very much. We aren’t attracting the best and the brightest.
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Klein’s solution is to put the cart before the horse. He wants to clear out all the bad teachers before rewarding good teachers with higher pay and more benefits. It is an insulting position that is doomed to failure. Even if it was easier to fire bad teachers, there simply aren’t enough talented people who will work for the low salaries that teachers currently command.
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Klein’s irrational hatred for unions blinds him from accepting the only workable solution: Teachers unions agree to stop protecting the bad apples in exchange for a SIMULTANEOUS increase in teachers’ pay more. Since proposals for major pay increases have never really been on the table, I fail to see how anyone can single out unions for blame.
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The goal should be draw from a superior pool of talent. The people that we hire to teach our children should be people who would also consider becoming lawyers, doctors, and engineers. They shouldn’t be people who would otherwise be working for the DMV, the post office, or at a toll plaza. Garbage in and garbage out.

I agree that tenure is indefensible below the university level.

Just what Did I say in post 14? Other than to request from the idiot who said that few people in large cities get a decent education some evidence of his statement.

By the way, if you can recognize that parent involvement at an early age make a big difference in education, then you can also recognize that at some point the child will take responsibility for his/her own education.

Thanks for the reply, Mr. Klein. However, it doesn’t begin to address “the product” as I outlined it, nor the embargo of real liberal talent, nor the durability of opinion-makers such as Kristol, Krauthammer and Broder (you really want to use The Post as an example of meritocracy?), nor assent of “journalists” such as David Gregory (to use just a few examples). Teachers or reporters, I hope we’re not talking about green-eye-shade cost-cutting but clearing the dead wood to improve quality. Seems to me that whether measuring the quality of inputs or product, the corporate press is more ripe for serious reform than public education.

Joe, your post is very simplistic. You have a bee in your bonnet about teachers and you are a part of the problem, not the solution. You blame teacher’s unions for all of education’s ills, not understanding that it’s people like you who are hostile to the teaching profession that make unions double down on defending teachers and teachers themselves feel under siege.

And you, as always, ignore school boards, which are much more of a problem than teacher’s unions, and the parental part of the equation in preparing their children for school, not to mention the fact that we live in a society that doesn’t value academic achievement very much. Testing has been reduced to a sport, where Americans have to “win” instead of being a real measure of guaging a student’s ability.

Plus, “rewarding” teachers for the performance of their students could mean the best teachers avoid schools with poorer students, who often have parents who don’t or can’t contribute much to their kid’s scholastic lives.

Elvis brought up the Iraq War. Please remember how wrong you were about the invasion and open up your mind to truly examine what we can do to improve our schools.

In my opionon, America will always lag behind in testing because we’re just not a culture that embraces the intellect. How many movies have we seen where the learned fellow is mocked while the wily, street smart man who has never cracked a book and has no formal education saves the day with his instinct and fighting skill?

Education reform is a complicated problem and I don’t think it starts with teachers.

One more thing. The focus on teachers or reporters is largely inadequate in my opinion, to address the institutional problems in public education and journalism. Those people simply don’t play a large role in shaping the policies that lie at the root of those problems.
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If you haven’t read First Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, I recommend it. It suggests that the only way to “fix” public education is to focus on the front-line management – the Principal. I’d say those “miracle turnaround” stories of broken inner-city schools by bringing in dynamic new principles, proves the point pretty well, at least anecdotally.
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Thanks for responding. As Stuart often points out, Time’s brand appeal is significantly improved when it’s writers interact with commenters. I’m forced to admit that having no children myself, I’m not in a position to comment directly about the quality of particular teachers but my interaction with people younger than myself suggests that much of the problem has less to do with the quality of teachers as with the quality of the curriculum. In particular, how do we allow people who seem quite educated by most standards nevertheless be ignorant of the contents of the US Constitution?

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“WASHINGTON — Americans are more educated than ever before, with a greater percentage graduating from high school and college than a decade ago, U.S. Census data released Tuesday show. Eighty percent of Americans are graduates of high school or higher, compared with 75.2% in 1990, the 2000 figures show. That change came about in part because of a decline in the rate of students dropping out before ninth grade: 7.5% in 2000, compared with 10.4% in 1990.”
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2002-06-05-education-census.htm#more
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“In 1900, less than 2 percent of young people graduated from high school.”
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http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=206
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Until this century, we were never a country about education. We were a country of farmers and ranchers who needed to know only how to do a few simple things. Factories of the mid-twentieth century did not require education.

Although I do see that our progress in education is not keeping up with the rate of technology and that there have been some very famous incidents where the unions have blocked reforms, completely going without teacher’s union sounds like a way to make teaching into a minimum wage job, just like all of the other businesses become after a union is broken.

Like most unions, I am sure that teachers want to teach well and have the student’s best interest at heart. I can’t imagine silence the teacher’s voices will solve anything. It may cut budgets and, most likely, will cut the quality of teachers further.

And exactly why is tenure necessary at the university level?

The majority of professors are liberal hired by committees of other liberals. Many schools have “hate speech” codes which eliminates free speech anyway. So why the charade of tenure except to have gas bag professors pontificating on subjects they know little about while ignoring the actual function of teaching.

In NYC the per pupil spending is $21,543, city of Chicago its $15,875 in D.C its $28,170., LA $25,208 In what universe is this horribly underfunded?

Spending on education has well exceeded the rise in inflation while results across the board have declined. We trail countries that spend far less and have larger class sizes, 2 perennial canards used by the unions to expand funding further.

Cities, towns and states are going bankrupt over education costs with nothing or nothing to show for it.

I’ve been searching Google to see a comparison between unionized and non-unionized teachers to see if there is any evidence one way or another on the impact of unions and, even “right to work” (ie right to fire) anti-union states seem to have some kind of an organization resembling a union.
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However, I do know that right to fire states would have unions unable to effectively negotiate, so, if the union was the problem, then those states should have the top, top students. I can find no information, so, I can not find any way of comparing.

As someone who has recently experienced some of the issues in education, what do you think are the issues that need to be addressed? We hear lots of rhetoric but what do did see in action?

Anecdotal? You mean like the attacks the media has perpetuated on the Tea Party? The teacher’s unions have been given a pass by the left forever and yet without any nod to irony the left complains how stupid the public is!

“Follow the money trail and you can most always find out the rationale behind why someone supports this or that organization.”
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So, you are saying that I get paid by unionized teachers and trial lawyers?
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If it were an unpopular decision among registered Democrats, but, the party voted that way, then you can follow the money.
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If people who get $0 from these organizations and are just private individuals, your argument is senseless.

3X,
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“You would think they would put our children first.”
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You totally misunderstand the majority of the posters.
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All else being equal, people like to do their jobs well. Auto assembly workers want to build cool cars, cooks like to make nutritious and/or tasty food, truck drivers like to get things delivered quickly and safely and teachers like it when students learn.
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The question is not teachers or students.
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The question is if there is any reason to say that teachers unions in their attempt to do what they believe is right are succeeding at teaching better than when they are told what to do without their input through a union.
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No, you have not insulted anybody this time. You have, however misunderstood what the debate is about to the rest of us. Does teachers having an input help students: yes or no?
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You’re already sure that it is no and, therefore, can not even contemplate why we are, often, reluctantly supporting teachers unions.

“Like most unions, I am sure that teachers want to teach well and have the student’s best interest at heart”

It is impossible to fix a situation when you start with false assumptions.

I am sure teachers want to teach? As evidenced by what?

Student’s best interest at heart? By going out on strike because they might have to contribute some nominal fraction of their salary to HC & pension just like every other worker many making considerably less than the “underpaid” teachers

Sounds like someone is bitter about being rejected from their safety school.
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Don’t hate, freeper. Don’t hate.
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Besides, the whole point of tenure is to protect conservative academics from the petty injustices of liberal academics, right?

“By going out on strike because they might have to contribute some nominal fraction of their salary to HC & pension just like every other worker many making considerably less than the “underpaid” teachers.’
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No, by the fact that they chose to go to graduate school for teaching at $50K to $70K rather than spending the same year and spending the same money on tuition to get an MBA to make $100K a year.
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So, you are saying that asking for pay means that you do not like your job or that you do not care about it?
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In that case, since your doctor gets paid, he doesn’t give a flying duck about you since he asks for pay and gets a boatload of money (about eight times as much as teachers). CEOs must not care at all about giving quality products or making their business profitable since they ask for it and get paid well.
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A strike does not mean that you do not care about your job. It means that you believe with some justification that you should or need to earn more money and do not want to leave your job.

I’m also a little puzzled by the suggestion – at least, I think I’m reading this correctly – that more experienced teachers be removed in favor of less experienced teachers. That goes against one of the cornerstones of what we know about teacher effectiveness – that teacher experience is associated with higher student achievement, at least as measured by test scores. (Link: Center for Public Education)

My lord Judy Miller is still working as a journalist. Joe Klein of course pretends there is a system where lousy journalists are terminated. Can we say Brit Hume, David Broder, Fred Haitt, David Gregory, Cokie Roberts, etc., etc? Haven’t most staff cuts at newspapers been done by offering by outs, not based on the worthiness of the reporters? Where was the merit evaluation in that Joe?
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Joe, I have yet to hear who will make the judgements on a teacher’s merit? Principals already have that ability the first few years of a teacher’s employment. They don’t do there job.
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What will be the criteria for judgement:
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Class size
Number of students with special needs in the class
Standards of text books and availability
Parental support
Home environment of the students
The abilities of the students entering a class
Condition of the campus
Comparison to more affluent schools
Support by principal, community, school board, parents
Can you factor those things and other subjective and objective conditions into your merit appraisal? Who will make the appraisal?
Riddle me that Joe.

One of the things that is assumed by people of Joe Klein’s generation is that their education was so much superior. Well, I have been around a long time. I taught school in the 60s, raised 2 children in a rural school district, and did a lot of volunteer work supporting schools.
When I was in school, college was not always an important goal. There were good paying jobs to be had with a high school education. And do you know what? We had stupid kids, good teachers, bad teachers, good schools and bad schools. When Sputnik launced panic set in because our math education was so poor. Then there was the “Johnny can’t read” era.
When I began teaching, the unions got us health benefits. They protected us from frivolous complaints, vendictive principals, parents, superintentents, and school boards. They helped us fight for smaller class sizes, adequate book supplies, and better facililties.
Do you know that many teachers still spend their own money on supplies for their students?
The requirements for graduation and college entrance are much tougher than they used to be. But Joe is one of those people that believes in the “good old days” and has no faith in the young people who are leaving our education system.
Does our system need improvement? Yes. But not by denigrating unions but looking at the real problems and recognizing where the good exists.

“….it should work like that other, far more effective, form of public service–the military, in which you continually have to prove your capability in order to be promoted or retained.”
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As someone who served in the Army, I can tell you that part of that is true, but there’s about as much “who you know and who you blow” that goes on, too.
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I saw a lot of really good soldiers get into trouble, not advance in rank, or get denied slots into schools, because they pissed off their PSG or Company CO. And I saw a lot of dirtbags who got promoted, received awards, or who could get away with anything, because they were buddies with someone at Ranger School, or because they know Major So-and-So up at Regiment.
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And as someone whose wife teaches middle-to-upper middle class students at a non-union parochial school, there are a lot of problems in the private sector that are similar to the public sector (funding, retention, parents, administration).
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I don’t think you can just point to one aspect of public education (the unions), and declare that its removal will be the panacea to the educational problems in America. I’m thinking the problem is a lot deeper than that.

As Dirks says, thanks so much for responding at length to commentary, Joe Klein.
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This was especially valuable response, IMO.

Thanks once again for responding to commentary, Joe Klein.

This is a very good thread.

“You mean like the attacks the media has perpetuated on the Tea Party?”
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Using verbatim quotes is not an “attack”. It’s just reporting.
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“..yet without any nod to irony the left complains how stupid the public is!”
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No, the left complains about how stupid people on the far, far right like yourself are.

11charlie: I think you have made an excellent point. Too often critics make their arguments about educational reform too simplistic:
vouchers
charter schools
home schooling
do away with tenure
unions are at fault
education had better standards in the past
It is only simple in Joe Kleins mind. Unions bad.

“Using verbatim quotes is not an “attack”. It’s just reporting.”

Quotes by nut job leftists like you is not reporting is searching for any support to agree with a pre-drawn conclusion.

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“No, the left complains about how stupid people on the far, far right like yourself are.”

It’s too bad your intelligence level isn’t 1/10 of your arroagance you migh tbe able to walk upright and feed yourself

Thank you, apr2563.

both of you: no one here has claimed dropping unions fixes everything. maybe by the time you got to comment 25 you forgot what was in the blog post. this is not Klein’s master plan for education reform. it is specifically about union enforced seniority rules.
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its only fair that you carefully read what you criticize

I think you have some excellent suggestions. I would agree paying bonuses to teachers who demonstrated quantifiable results would boost output and generate healthy competition among teachers. Paying a small number of good teachers six figure incomes is preferable to paying mediocre salaries to dozens of substandard teachers.

I am unclear as to why you would extend the school year 3 months. It has been bandied about but I never heard satisfactory reasons.

The one thing I will disagree with you is the issue of “but teachers simply don’t have the time to work 40-60 hours a week teaching/lesson planning AND 10-20 hours a week attending to the high school social milieu.”. For many professionals 60-80hours per week is standard and it might include days and weeks away from home. I also think the teaching/lesson planning is not a real issue. I have worked on advisory committees to a couple of schools districts and know a great many teachers who have not changed a lesson plan in 10 years.

Your list is a good start for suggestions that folks need to consider.

“A strike does not mean that you do not care about your job. It means that you believe with some justification that you should or need to earn more money and do not want to leave your job.”

If by justification you mean entitlement then you are right for the first time in decades. Salaries and benefits have gone up while results have fallen. Besides the slaries and benefits that has gone up with teachers is the excuses as to why the education results have fallen behind despite the rowing amount spent.

You are the prime example. You claim to be brilliant in history economics, statistics and law and your “career” has been a NYC cop wash out, a used car salesman, a cab driver and now your answer phones for mom’s commercial real estate business, The exact result of a school system where salaries go up and no one is held accountable. Over esteemed students with no real skills.

freeper: Do you know how much of that money goes to management, non-union personnel? In Ca. there was a law that dictated class size. How did management get around it. To make the teacher/student ratio look good they not only counted teachers but all management, administrative personnel, and other non-teaching personnel. Much of the per pupil money does not go to teachers.

Joe: Lock yourself in a classroom with 35 8 year olds.
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Some of these kids have special needs but have by law mainlined into the public school. You have a blind student and a student with MS.
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Several of your students have come to school with no breakfast. They are latch key kids that will go home to empty houses. Their homework isn’t done because no one was there to encourage them. Other’s didn’t do their homework because no one cared enough to see it was done. A couple of the kids have bad colds so you spend part of your day minstrating to them.
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There are at least 4 reading levels to work with. Many are having difficulty with math. Then there are the smarter kids who are bored because your class is so big you can’t give them the attention they need.
The supplies you have requested have been denied so you have purchased them yourself for your science lab. The textbooks you have are outdated or students have to share books. The school library no longer exists, so you bring what books you can to school yourself.
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Your job requires you remain alert all day. You must know what your students are doing at all times. You must be always available to them. You blow noses, wipe away tears, talk to the kid who is the bully, make sure they eat their lunches, wash their hands, and are dressed properly to go home.
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At the end of the day you go home to prepare lesson plans, grade papers, and prepare for parent/teacher meetings that the parents may attend or not. Some evenings you help supervise extra curricular activities for the kids.
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Now what system is going to tell you whether this teacher is doing an adequate job. Grades, student behavior, promotion levels…How will all the variables be factored in?

By the way Joe, I know a lot of young people that would like to replace the overpaid journalists who write for the traditional media and punditsize. Let’s find a way to evaluate all of you by one standard and see how many are left.

Thanks for the comment, I’ll try to address your concerns in order.

#1: Extending the school year just makes sense as very few students need the summer months off to tend the family farm. Students forget a surprising amount of the things they have learned over the course of one summer. By giving more breaks throughout the year the learning and teaching experience stay fresh (by the end of a normal school year both teachers and students are burned out and by the end of a normal summer I imagine parents are burned out of having the kids at home). Finally, and most importantly, it gives teachers more time to experiment with longer lesson plan arcs, provide more time to introduce new content (we have some of the shortest school years in the industrialized world). More school time = more time to teach math, science and history/language arts.

#2: If a teacher has not changed his or her lesson plan in 10 years then that teacher is doing something wrong. Teaching is about adaptation, differentiation and life-long learning. Things change in the classroom from year to year, just as they do from day to day. Students grasp concepts quicker or slower. An extra long fire drill makes you miss half a class period that you have to find a way to make up for during the next day (as well as include that day’s content). Learning and using new teaching methods, technology and content knowledge is vital. My expertise is in history/history education, and I can guarantee that we know a lot more about American history now than we did 10 years ago. We have access to new sources and perspectives on slavery, the Revolution, World War II, Civil Rights and more. Good teachers should have the time to integrate this new information into their lesson plans. If you use the same ones for 10+ years you are not doing your job.

Hope that adequately responds to your comment.

Death, I like your ideas. I think most teachers would agree with them. Do you think we should lengthen the school year or just have more, shorter breaks (keeping the time in school the same)?

And Free, I actually mostly agree with you, but not about the 60-80 hour work weeks. There is no way this will make someone a better teacher. Instead of making good, thought provoking, lesson plans the teacher will be exhausted and just teach directly out of the book. I think this is another reason students don’t care at school, because their parents are working 60-80 hour weeks and are never around. We should try to cut the work hours in most jobs in my opinion. My parents were very involved in my education and life and I have a Masters degree and good job because they made sure I studied hard.

As I sit here after work, nursing a beer and reading Mr. Klein’s post I find myself agreeing with a lot of it (The sky is falling!)
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Clearly there are good and bad teachers at every level and age group. I personally do not like tenure at any level because I feel it promotes laziness in one way or another. Both my parents taught chemistry at the undergraduate and graduate levels of university, and I can’t tell you the number of people I heard about who did a BANG UP job until about 5 years after they got tenure, when they realized they could just slide by.
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I support the idea of higher pay for teachers, some of the numbers I’ve seen suggest that in many places as much as 70 cents on the dollar of school levies goes to administrators. I clearly remember my high school where the administration had a plethora of BMW and Mercedes Benz cars while teachers drove a fleet of 1983 Subaru’s and 1985 Cutlass’s.
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Merit pay is a good idea for teachers, but it’s a FANTASTIC idea for administrators.
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apr2563 has a point that college entrance requirements are much higher these days, but teachers haven’t improved at the same rate as those requirements. I have great teachers who were well into tenure, as well as terrible ones at the same point in tenure. I also had fantastic and awful teachers who were new. The idea that one of those crappy teachers can just scrape by for a few years to get tenure and then is almost impossible to get rid of is insane, as is firing quality teachers who don’t have tenure. When I wanted to get into college in 2002 I had to do an ENORMOUS amount of studying of subjects that I had never seen, or was glanced at briefly by the class to get ready for the SAT and ACT exams. On the other hand I got a 5 on the AP Chem test (teacher had 22 years) and a 5 on the AP Bio test (teacher had 2 years).
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This is one of the few cases where unions have managed to really screw things up. In education: pay for performance like the private sector, or expect us to fall further behind the rest of the world.

The reason for a tenure system for public school teachers is simple. Virtually all superintendents are managers by trade, not educators. It is hard to find one who ever taught for years in a normal, academic classroom. The same pattern tends to be true of principals and their ilk. Professional teachers are different from professional administrators. When given a chance, good, and even average, teachers prefer to focus on the quality of education. Administrators think about numbers: budgets, test scores, and the like. These two groups represent two antagonistic worlds. Tenure is the system that protects those who truly care for students and learning from those who look to shallow standards and “public opinion” for guidance.

“Too often critics make their arguments about educational reform too simplistic:
vouchers
charter schools
home schooling
do away with tenure
unions are at fault”
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At least these are multiple options to address a problem whereas the response from the other side is .. wait for it — more money.

To use the analogy fans of HC reform threw out constantly was we spend more money on education than a majority of industrialized countries and with worse results. That would lead a reasonable person to conclude that “simplistic” options you refer are a better answer than more money.

Also I always find amusing those staunch defenders of the public school system (teachers and lawmakers) have a fair percentage of their children attending private schools.

“Joe: Lock yourself in a classroom with 35 8 year olds.
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Some of these kids have special needs but have by law mainlined into the public school. You have a blind student and a student with MS.”
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First this is the silliest argument yet. This is comaprable to someone becoming a doctor then objecting to patients who bleed or joining the military then outraged when sent into battle.

I also find it amusing that the left would use this as an excuse for poor performance since they always tout the handicapped as no different and are “differently-abled”: Flis in the face in what they have been arguing for years.

They do its called circulation and ratings and eventually even the dumbest of editors and programmers see audience and readers approach zero they fire/change. Take a look at those failing now NYT, Newsweek, MSNBC (Hmm all liberal trash heaps)— layoffs firings and sales.

I am sorry but how is quality of education (teachers) and test scores (administrators) at odds with the goals of education. The arguments of tests being biased doesn’t wash. If you are “teaching” the level of scores should reflect that success.

If the focus would shift back to the basics of education and not what is politically driven we might see an improvement. Otherwise the barrels of money being spent is wasted.

“It’s too bad your intelligence level isn’t 1/10 of your arroagance you migh tbe able to walk upright and feed yourself.”
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I am arrogant because I disagree with you and point out that your arguments have such huge holes in them that you could get a tractor trailer or even Rush Limbaugh through it?
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If I were you, I would say that everybody who doesn’t even bother to pay attention to you are being more, if you will, “arrogant” than I am.

“..answer phones for mom’s commercial real estate business..”
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My mother teaches chemistry forty miles from here.
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I do not have one relative who working in real estate and I have an answering service answer my phone. I don’t answer anybody else’s phone.
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How’s “consulting” going.
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I noticed that “consulting” is, often, another word for “unemployed”.
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“You claim to be brilliant in history economics, statistics and law..”
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No, I can tell you for a fact that a huge majority of car salesmen, cab drivers and commercial real estate agents can run circles around you on all of those topics.
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That doesn’t even mean that I am calling myself average much less brilliant.

“To use the analogy fans of HC reform threw out constantly was we spend more money on education than a majority of industrialized countries and with worse results.”
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The US is one of very few totally decentralized systems. England and Ireland, among others, have their national government run their schools and, Germany, a federal republic like the US, have their states run the schools.
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If we have, literally, about 50,000 school districts, we have many problems.
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Of course complex reasoning like that does not appeal to you.

“This is comaprable to someone becoming a doctor then objecting to patients who bleed or joining the military then outraged when sent into battle.”
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No, sir.
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It is like having a doctor in the Army with patients coming fresh from combat having his statistics of death to a pediatrician in a well of suburb.
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My relative who teaches wants to bite my head off when I say this, but, I do understand and agree with the Bush/Obama plan to test students nationally.
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However, it may be best if you compare not the performance of the teacher relative to an arbitrary standard, but, relative to the scores the very same students earned the previous year.
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If Freeper got Ds in the fourth grade, then if he gets a C minus in the fifth grade or the equivalent thereof on a national exam, the teacher should get thanks for it.
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If April always go As, then the next teacher shouldn’t get any significant reward if she continues to get As.

So, freeper, why are you trolling around trash heaps.
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Since you have been here longer than I have, it is obvious that your consulting business is doing far worse than things are for me in commercial real estate.
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Do you troll around trash heaps at night to scrounge for food?

sasquatch08,
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It sounds good to have merit pay and I am glad that they did experiment with it here in NYC, but, it produced identical results as the old system.
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http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/mayor-announces-plan-for-teacher-merit-pay/
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Unfortunately, without looking harder, all I found was the article about how it started in 2007.
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I heard the end results on the radio and, therefore, do not have a link.
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Apparently it is true that teachers are already trying as hard as they can, so, neither threats nor incentives will change that.
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Threats of termination in all jobs has been shown, as I am sure you can guess, to reduced productivity. Watching over your shoulder and fearing making waves does have a way of making sure that you do not improve or innovate.

“If the focus would shift back to the basics of education and not what is politically driven we might see an improvement. Otherwise the barrels of money being spent is wasted.”
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How far do you want to go back?
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How about back to 1900 when 2% of all Americans graduated from high school?
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One thing most often forgotten is that in absolute terms students have been, on average, learning more and more. The problem being, that jobs capable of supporting a person need more and more at a faster rate than schools are improving.
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Backwards is the last thing one would want to do.

“The majority of professors are liberal hired by committees of other liberals. Many schools have “hate speech” codes which eliminates free speech anyway. So why the charade of tenure except to have gas bag professors pontificating on subjects they know little about while ignoring the actual function of teaching.”
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As I said to Sasquach months ago, liberals don’t control academia. Academia is what controls liberals.
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These people are hired based upon a defended PhD thesis.
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Very often, just like other liberals, they read academic studies and trust it over “gut instinct” or being “street wise” as Republicans do.
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Streetwise: person who can not write his or her name but can hotwire a car.
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I have never been mugged or robbed, but, I do not use the term “streetwise”.
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I think the reason never mugged or robbed me is because I am tall.

freeper: you are sillly. No where do I say that any of the teacher’s duties are unwelcome. I am saying, consider a typical day when you judge a teacher’s abilities. You freeper have no ability to empathize and always have a need to be negative, so I don’t expect you to understand.

meld: amen to you. Few people understand the influence administration has on the success of our schools. It is sort of like avoiding who’s running BP or Goldman Sachs.

I did read the article all the way through, hence my initial comment on how Mr. Klein’s perception concerning how promotions worked in the military (specifically in my case, the Army) isn’t accurate.
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My second comment was my view that non-union private schools, based on what I’ve seen my wife go through, can have the same issues and problems as unionized public schools, including teacher retention.
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My last comment was unnecessary, I admit. I should not have implied that Mr. Klein believes the problems in education in this country was soley due to the teachers unions, and I want to apologize to Mr. Klein. He is intelligent enough to realize this, that I am sure of.

Swissarmy,
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Good Post. It’s too bad more people who post here don’t have a more open mind like you have shown in your post. There is much that all of us could agree on if we left my political view right or wrong concept out of our discussions.
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We don’t often agree but that’s OK. We both have that right but I think if we tried to leave the strong partisanship at home and really tried to walk in the others shoes and not have closed minds, we would find solutions that we both agree are best for our country and our citizens.
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Besides you can’t be all bad with a handle like SwissArmy. I am of 5th generation Swisszerland descent.
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Thanks again for the good post.

Worthy as always Stuart.
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I had not seen the study you provided.
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That leaves us with a problem however. How do we increase the productivity of our schools? More money thrown at it doesn’t solve it. Threatening teachers doesn’t either.
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What’s left? The unions are wrong, the liberals are wrong, the conservatives are wrong… who is left? Us libertarians (Please god no! You don’t even want to hear my idea for a school system!)?

deathbypapers you have some good ideas there. I would just want to avoid standardized tests. Also, I would want to make sure that those evaluating really had the ability and knowledge to do so. Not true of many principals.

3X,
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“It’s too bad more people who post here don’t have a more open mind like you have shown in your post.”
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You fail to acknowledge that, basically, all of these posts are showing, at best reluctant support for unionized teachers (including my own).
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swissArmyBrainBETA,
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I have link to NPR on my desktop. It is great when I am doing some of the more boring parts of my job.
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Please send a link to that debate.
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Contrary to 3X’s belief, I am sure that a majority of posters would listen to it.

sasquatch08,
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I AM NOT STUART!.
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I can not play an instrument.
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I do not have long hair (since, if I leave mine uncut I look more like Greg Brady with a white Afro and I never wanted that look.
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I am not married.
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I, far more often than not, do agree with Stuart Zechman and believe he is probably a nice guy in real life, but, I am not he.
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This is the third time you called me Stuart.

Joe: Instead of participating in the cable pundit parade you watched and fact checked their accuracy you might rethink your position that bad reporters are weeded out. Everyday, in newspapers and tv reports grevious errors are made and never corrected. And let’s not bother discussing Politico and Fox News.
Joe, how well did the financial reporters do on the run up to the “meltdown”?
Joe, how well did reporters do on the run up to and coverage of the Iraq war?
Joe, how well did reporters do on looking at regulatory agencies?
Joe, how well did you do on FISA?

The elimination of tenure would probably change nothing. In other workplaces and government agencies substandard workers keep their jobs for years.

The idea of eliminating seniority assumes that it will be replaced with a system that is better. Probably more experienced teachers would be cut due to the cost and not based on their ability.

Testing could be an effective way to measure teacher effectiveness, but now teachers and schools have more riding on the tests then the students. How a student performs on a test does not affect them at all. If the system worked in a way where student took tests in every subject, every year and only through successful completion of these tests could they move on to the next level, then maybe we could evaluate teachers accordingly.

However, this is not what the citizens want. In spite of what they say, most parents would rather that their student be passed on to avoid the social stigma of being held back. Most citizens speak harshly of social promotion but would fight like dogs to get their kid passed or do not want a 16 year old discipline problem sitting next to their 12 year old daughter.

Our problems in education are a symptom of a greater social problem. As a society we want rewards without putting forth the effort required to earn them. We see it in the obesity epidemic, the massive government budget deficits and yes, in education.

So we get rid of tenure, seniority, and unions, then what? Once these are gone and nothing improves, then what?