Voice For Liberty

Category: Education

  • Teacher tenure reform starts

    The system of teacher tenure has suffered a blow that could spread to other parts of the country.

    Washington D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee has fired 241 teachers for poor performance, are more are on notice. This is in a school system where, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, “Ms. Rhee said Friday she took over a system in 2007 where 95% of teachers were rated excellent and none terminated for poor performance. Yet, students posted dismal test scores.”

    The system of teacher tenure in K through 12 education deserves examination, and if we believe that schools exist for the benefit of schoolchildren, it should be eliminated.

    Defenders of tenure say it doesn’t prevent lousy teachers from being fired. Instead, tenure simply guarantees them due process rights. But the problem is that the process is so difficult for school administrators to pursue that some school districts — New York City, famously — create “rubber rooms.” These are rooms where the truly bad teachers report every workday to sit and while away the several years that their cases can take to work their way through the system. In 2007 the New York Times reported that 760 New York City schoolteachers were doing this in 12 “reassignment centers.”

    (By the way, the “work hours” for the rubber rooms was 8:00 am to 2:50 pm. Teachers could leave for lunch.)

    Since the rubber rooms are an embarrassment for all involved, the Times has reported that the past school year was the last for the rooms. Now, the worst teachers will perform administrative duties or be sent home.

    Advocates of tenure also argue that it is necessary to protect teachers from the arbitrary decisions of school administrators. There might actually be some validity to this argument, but tenure is the wrong response to the problem.

    It is said that school administrators — in a system without tenure — would practice “crony” hiring and promotion practices. They would reward their friends and family and punish their enemies or those they simply don’t like.

    These things happen in a system insulated from market competition, and institutions don’t suffer when they do. In the private sector, when a manager makes staffing decisions based on cronyism — instead of hiring and retaining the best possible employees — the profitability of the company suffers. If managers’ compensation is tied to profitability, they suffer when making staffing decisions based on cronyism. Even if they don’t suffer pay-wise, these managers will not perform well on their own evaluations.

    A system of market competition, however, forces each institution — schools, too — to be the best they can possibly be. When schools compete for students and funding, principals might learn to like their very best teachers, even if they don’t care for them personally.

    They also might learn how to evaluate and recognize the best teachers. That’s important, as it is becoming apparent that the personal characteristics of teachers are far more important to student success than the things that schools presently use to reward teachers — credentials, additional education, and longevity.

    The characteristics of teachers are also far more important than class size, which is another factor the education establishment focuses on. Eric Hanushek has estimated that students of the worst teachers will learn just one-half a year’s material in a year, while students with the best teachers will learn one and one-half year’s material in a year. This difference is far greater than the weak effect that school class size studies have found, and even those small findings are suspect.

    Presently some states are considering using student test scores as a way to evaluate and reward teachers. Student test scores are viewed as an objective way to evaluate teachers, one that is removed from the subjective evaluations of school administrators who, as shown above, don’t have a very strong incentive to hire and retain the best teachers.

    Any meaningful reform is strongly opposed by the teachers union and the education establishment. This makes Washington D.C. schools chancellor Rhee’s accomplishment all the more remarkable.

    How did Rhee accomplish this breakthrough? Earlier reporting in the Wall Street Journal mentioned the political support of Washington’s mayor, Adrian Fenty, and the fact that the Washington schools were just terrible. Her challenge lies ahead, as the Journal noted: “Ms. Rhee’s challenge now is to use the new rules forcefully enough to drive improvements because the unions will assume they can wait her out.” The union will probably sue over these firings.

    The education bureaucracy and the system is working against Rhee too: “Unfortunately, most school chancellors are careerists who don’t want to upset the unions because they are always looking for their next job. One example: Clifford Janey, whom Ms. Rhee replaced in D.C., went on to become the superintendent in Newark, N.J., whose schools may be worse than D.C.’s. Ms. Rhee, by contrast, came to her job as an outsider willing to endure the considerable abuse that the unions and their political backers threw at her.”

    As seen in Kansas by the example of Kansas School Board Member Walt Chappell, if you’re not a team player, you’re going to suffer abuse from the education bureaucracy.

    Giving Lousy Teachers the Boot

    Michelle Rhee does the once unthinkable in Washington.
    By William McGurn

    Donald Trump is not the only one who knows how to get attention with the words, “You’re fired.” Michelle Rhee, chancellor for the District of Columbia schools, has just done a pretty nifty job of it herself.

    On Friday, Ms. Rhee fired 241 teachers — roughly 6% of the total — mostly for scoring too low on a teacher evaluation that measures their performance against student achievement. Another 737 teachers and other school-based staff were put on notice that they had been rated “minimally effective.” Unless these people improve, they too face the boot.

    The mass dismissals follow a landmark agreement Ms. Rhee negotiated with the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) at the end of June. The quid pro quo was this: Good teachers would get more money (including a 21.6% pay increase through 2012 and opportunities for merit pay). In exchange, bad teachers could be shown the door.

    Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

  • The long reach of teachers unions

    At one time teachers unions were professional organizations. Now they have been transformed into the same type industrial trade union that represents autoworkers or steelmakers, with the same political clout and parochial interests. This is at the same time that teachers demand respect for being professionals.

    The Education Next article The Long Reach of Teachers Unions: Using money to win friends and influence policy is a must-read for those who think the teacher union is a benign fraternal group looking out for the interests of schoolchildren.

    Even those familiar with the teachers union and their political activity may be surprised to learn that the National Education Association (NEA) has become the largest political campaign spender.

    (In Kansas, the NEA affiliate is Kansas National Education Association, or KNEA.)

    Its spending is mostly on politically liberal organizations and candidates, even though that doesn’t represent the will of all teachers. Internal NEA polls, says the article, show that union members are slightly more conservative than liberal. Other polling show that there is significant support (not majority support) among teachers for charter schools and merit pay. The fight against these two items, both supported by President Obama, consumes much of the union’s energy.

    The problem is that the teachers union leadership is liberal and out of step with their members.

    According to a Harris poll, Americans like and have respect for teachers, but they don’t trust union leaders. As the article explains, when union leaders can say they’re doing things “for the kids,” they can get a way with a lot. Newspaper reporting doesn’t help: “Press coverage of the teachers unions is usually assigned to an education reporter, which ensures the story will be framed around education issues.”

    The article recommends giving the political activities of teachers unions their proper perspective: “Coverage of teachers unions needs to emerge from its current position as an afterthought on the education beat, and assume its place alongside national fiscal and political reporting. Only then will the public see that Big Oil and Big Tobacco have a brother called Big Education.”

    The Long Reach of Teachers Unions

    By Mike Antonucci

    When the Florida legislature, on April 8th, passed a bill that sought to replace teacher tenure with merit pay, the Florida Education Association (FEA) sprang into action, organizing members and community activists to lobby Governor Charlie Crist to veto the measure. FEA, with the help of its parent union, the National Education Association (NEA), generated thousands of e-mails, letters, phone calls, and Internet posts in opposition to the legislation. When Governor Crist delivered his veto on April 15th, the union ran television and Internet ads, thanking him. A few weeks later, FEA gave a much-needed boost to Crist’s independent bid for a U.S. Senate seat by endorsing both Crist and Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek.

    If you think it’s far-fetched to suggest that a teachers union could play the role of political kingmaker, think again. The largest political campaign spender in America is not a megacorporation, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, or ExxonMobil. It isn’t an industry association, like the American Bankers Association or the National Association of Realtors. It’s not even a labor federation, like the AFL-CIO. If you combine the campaign spending of all those entities it does not match the amount spent by the National Education Association, the public-sector labor union that represents some 2.3 million K–12 public school teachers and nearly a million education support workers (bus drivers, custodians, food service employees), retirees, and college student members. NEA members alone make up more than half of union members working for local governments, by far the most unionized segment of the U.S. economy.

    Continue reading at Education Next

  • American education in 2030: teacher pay

    The Hoover Institution’s K–12 Education Task Force has produced a series of thirteen lectures on the subject American Education in 2030. These lectures take a look at what American education might look like in 20 years.

    In one lecture, Caroline Hoxby, a Stanford University economics professor who studies the economics of education, looks at the future of teacher pay and teaching. While her vision of what might happen is positive for both teachers and schoolchildren, substantial change will need to take place for this vision to be realized. Specifically, the nation will have to overcome the harmful effects of our nation’s teachers unions.

    (In Kansas, the teachers union is Kansas National Education Association (or KNEA). Locally in Wichita, the union is United Teachers of Wichita. It should be noted that Barb Fuller, the current president of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, is a former president of the teachers union.)

    In the future, Hoxby said teachers will be paid and managed as true professionals. Teachers will be paid based on what they contribute to student learning. This encourages productive teachers to stay in education, while unproductive teachers are encouraged to improve their skills or find other work. This is the same dynamic that is in effect in almost all fields of work.

    In the future, good teachers will be paid well not because of union contracts, but because they are worth their high salaries. In 2010, at the present, Hoxby says that teacher pay, hiring, and training has more in common with auto industry workers than professional workers. Pay is based solely on seniority and educational credentials, not on how well teachers teach students.

    “Schools paid more to teachers with education certificates even if everyone knew that the credentials were worthless.” She criticizes the present-day schools of education that she says are more interested in “inculcating social philosophy” instead of training effective teachers.

    Factors that will work to increase our understanding of what works include longitudinal databases, which track individual students over time. These database have been helpful in understanding the effects of teacher performance on student learning. Teacher quality has been found to be a powerful effect, with the best teachers producing learning gains of half a grade equivalent per year. Some teachers consistently produced learning losses.

    Once past the first year of teaching, these teacher effects did not depend on credentials or experience, the two factors that teachers unions insist must be the only basis for teacher pay.

    A second factor that will change teaching is technology, allowing students to interact with expert teachers who are remote.

    The third factor is choice and competition among schools. With parents able to choose among schools, there is a reason for principals to seek out and reward the best teachers.

  • When informed, attitudes toward public school spending change

    One of the problems with forming public policy is the lack of information possessed by the general public, and, sometimes, even by elected officials. A recent research report published by the Hoover Institution titled Educating the Public measures the problem.

    Importantly, this report shows the changes in people’s attitudes after they receive correct information.

    I’ve experienced the lack of information about basic facts myself. Last year a colleague and I conducted some “man-on-the-street” interviews during the bond issue campaign. Very few people knew how much the Wichita school district spent. Most estimated levels of spending less than half of actual spending.

    It’s not just the public. Elected officials like Rep. Melody McCray-Miller and Wichita school board member Lanora Nolan have disputed the total amount of spending by the Wichita school district when presented with the actual figures.

    The following excerpt from the press release gives more information.

    When Provided with Accurate Information, Public Support for Increased Spending on Schools and Teacher Salaries Declines, Researchers Find

    Cambridge — The better informed people are, the more likely they are to oppose increased school spending. That is a key finding in a newly released survey, “Educating the Public,” conducted by Education Next and the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard University. The survey is posted on the Education Next website: www.educationnext.org. (The direct link to the study is Educating the Public.)

    Survey results indicate that if the public is given accurate information about what is currently being spent on public schools, their support for increased spending and their confidence that more spending will improve student learning both decline. Education researchers William G. Howell of the University of Chicago and Martin R. West of Brown University also found that knowing how much the average teacher earns lowers support among the general public for salary increases.

    To understand how public opinions shift, Howell and West embedded a series of experiments within the Education Next/PEPG survey by dividing respondents into randomly chosen groups: some were simply asked their opinion about school spending and teacher salaries, while others were first provided with accurate information about each of these issues.

    The average per-pupil spending estimate from respondents to the 2008 Education Next/PEPG survey was $4,231, and the median response was just $2,000; but for these respondents, local average spending per pupil at the time exceeded $10,000. When told how much the local schools were spending, support for increased spending dropped by 10 percentage points, from 61 percent to a bare majority of 51 percent.

    Howell and West find that these differences in opinion based on exposure to key information are consistent across a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, views about the local public schools, and political ideologies.

    “It’s clear that the American public is quite willing to update its views in light of new information about public schools,” Howell and West said.

    Interestingly, note Howell and West, differences also appear among teachers, whom one might believe already have deeply entrenched and well-informed views about public education. Whereas 35 percent of teachers not specifically informed of spending levels claimed that spending should “greatly increase,” only 22 percent of those who were told the amount of money spent to educate a child in their district thought so. Additionally, 29 percent of uninformed teachers expressed strong confidence that increased spending would boost student learning. When exposed to the current spending in their district, however, that confidence dropped by 9 percent.

    As with per-pupil expenditures, the public significantly underestimates how much their states pay public school teachers. On average, Education Next/PEPG survey respondents underestimated average teacher salaries in their state by more than $14,000, nearly one-third of the actual average salaries of $47,000.

  • The inevitability of parental choice

    By Howie Rich

    A year ago, the nation’s largest newspaper wrote in an editorial that it was time to “move beyond vouchers” in the debate over America’s educational future.

    Although it did not reject any particular solution outright, the paper’s recommendation at the time was that America focus its energy and attention on less controversial education reforms. In other words, it was a victory for those who have spent years — and expended untold taxpayer resources — in an effort to demonize parental choice and its supporters.

    Then, two weeks ago, USA Today suddenly changed its tune.

    Not only did the paper enthusiastically embrace parental choice — it also roundly criticized our nation’s teachers’ unions for “protecting failing schools.”

    “Twenty million low-income school kids need a chance to succeed,” the USA Today editorial board wrote. “School choice is the most effective way to give it to them.”

    What caused the turnaround?

    While there’s certainly no shortage of reasons, the initial impetus for the shift appears to stem from President Barack Obama’s rank hypocrisy in closing an effective parental choice program in Washington D.C. to new applicants.

    “Teacher unions, fearing loss of jobs, have pushed most Democrats to oppose vouchers and other options that invite competition for public schools,” the USA Today editorial board wrote. “Put another way, they oppose giving poor parents the same choice that the president himself — along with his chief of staff and some 35% of Democrats in Congress — have made in sending their children to private schools.”

    Of course, it’s not just about failing schools and low-income students. It’s about giving all parents a choice in their child’s academic future, no matter where they live.

    With each passing day, the mountain of evidence attesting to the futility of our nation’s failed status quo grows higher. Correspondingly, in those rare instances where choice has been permitted to take root and flourish, its success is undeniable.

    According to the most recent data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), America’s per pupil expenditure on public education is the highest of any industrialized nation in the world.

    Unfortunately, we are not receiving anywhere near a commensurate return on our investment.

    On the most recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, American students scored well below the average of other industrialized nations on both the math and science portions of the exam – just as they did the last time the tests were administered. And the time before that.

    And in a telling nod to the sort of institutional incompetence that has long plagued our public system, America’s reading scores on the most recent PISA exam had to be thrown out due to a printing error by the company that the U.S. Department of Education hired to administer the tests.

    But our crisis is much bigger than poor standardized test results and bureaucratic errors. Over 12,000 schools across America currently rate as failing or below average — with hundreds of thousands of children trapped inside of them. Of course, each year when organizations like “Teach for America” try to place talented, highly-motivated college graduates in teaching positions within higher-risk school districts, their efforts are always rebuffed by the unions.

    Each year, the purveyors of this country’s education monopoly continue failing children at a record clip – and yet in a perfect example of precisely what’s wrong with our system, they are rewarded for their poor performance with additional taxpayer resources.

    In fact, according to President Obama’s plan — the more children you fail, the more money you get.

    This self-perpetuating cycle serves no one. It doesn’t serve our children, it doesn’t serve their parents, and it doesn’t serve the best interests of our country.

    Nor are we well-served by pretending that our “average” public schools are meeting the needs of most middle income children.

    In an increasingly competitive global economy, we cannot afford to maintain a failed status quo on one hand and mediocrity on the other.

    USA Today’s acknowledgment of this fact – and its support for parental choice – is yet another example of the inevitable march toward a system of education that promotes true academic achievement, a system built around a competitive, parent-driven marketplace where schools are held accountable for their performance.

    The author is Chairman of the Parents in Charge Foundation.

  • School choice is a civil rights issue

    Why does America tolerate this?

    In his commentary Dumbest Generation Getting Dumber, Walter E. Williams reports on some new research about our public schools:

    McKinsey & Company, in releasing its report “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools” (April 2009) said, “Several other facts paint a worrisome picture. First, the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers. In recent cross-country comparisons of fourth grade reading, math, and science, US students scored in the top quarter or top half of advanced nations. By age 15 these rankings drop to the bottom half. In other words, American students are farthest behind just as they are about to enter higher education or the workforce.” That’s a sobering thought. The longer kids are in school and the more money we spend on them, the further behind they get.

    Williams reports that for black and Latino students, the situation is far worse, with these students being two or three years behind in learning. It’s such a problem that even traditional black leadership is noticing:

    Al Sharpton called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that the enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today, in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was “Professor James Crow.” Sharpton is only partly correct. School reform is not solely a racial issue; it’s a vital issue for the entire nation.

    We need the type of competition in education that school choice provides. In Kansas, the public school lobby — firmly opposed to even the gentlest of reforms such as charter schools — retains its firm grip.

    Wichita and Kansas schools claim years of rising test scores. But when we get test results that the Kansas school bureaucracy doesn’t control, we find that test scores are flat. There’s a discrepancy there that needs investigation.

    In the meantime, schoolchildren, especially minority children, remain stuck in a failing system.

  • Education reformer to speak in Wichita

    Noted education activist and reformer John Taylor Gatto will be appearing in Wichita on May 22.

    Gatto will present an insider’s perspective on problems within public schools.

    He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling, which may be read online at the preceding link.

    The event will be held at Northfield School of the Liberal Arts, 701 E. 37th St. North in Wichita. The time is Friday May 22, at 10 a.m.. (Click on a Google map to the location.)

  • In voucher debate, who can we believe?

    Two articles appearing close together in the same prominent newspaper illustrate the problem in trying to make sense of school choice programs.

    These articles are Voucher plan would help sponsor, not students (February 4, 2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution), which is opposed to vouchers, and Will School vouchers improve public education? Yes: New studies show all students’ scores rise (February 12, 2009, same newspaper).

    Here’s an example: The pro-voucher article contains these paragraphs:

    A second 2008 study, this one by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, analyzed two phases of the Milwaukee voucher program and showed student achievement increased with the availability of school choice.

    When the Milwaukee program was initially launched between 1990 and 1996, there were never more than 1,500 students using a voucher. That’s because the state forbade children from using the scholarship to attend a religious school, and the voucher amount was very small.

    After Wisconsin court rulings declaring vouchers constitutional, changes were made to the program. Milwaukee pupils were then allotted a $4,900 voucher and could apply that to a secular or religious school of their parents’ choice. That enabled more families to participate in the program.

    The New York Fed study found no effects of vouchers —- positive or negative —- on any students when the Milwaukee voucher program did not provide much competition or choice. However, once students were given larger voucher amounts, once students could choose from a variety of schools, and once public schools actually faced competition, then students using the vouchers and students who remained in public school both earned higher test scores. This study confirms a 2003 study on this topic by Stanford University economist Caroline Hoxby. (emphasis added)

    From reading this, you’d conclude that vouchers are good for all students, for both those who use a voucher, and those who don’t.

    Then, read this in the anti-voucher article:

    An ongoing five-year examination of the nation’s oldest voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, uncovered little difference in test scores between voucher recipients and their public school counterparts …

    It’s difficult to reconcile these two authors. Both pieces present additional conflicting evidence to support their authors’ position.

    The author of the anti-voucher article accuses a supporter of vouchers in Georgia of “[proposing] to dismantle public education.” If your goal is to preserve public education at all costs, then I suppose that vouchers and other school choice programs are a threat. These programs, however, don’t threaten publicly-funded education. They do, however, pose a risk to the power of the existing education bureaucracy and teachers unions, and that’s why newspaper editorialists — allies to these forces — continue to oppose school choice programs.

  • Stimulus bill payoff to wrong education interests

    The Wall Street Journal analyzes some of the earmarks in the stimulus bill, and finds that specific provisions for spending are going to be wasted — except that they payoff special interests:

    “The Milwaukee Public School system, for example, would receive $88.6 million over two years for new construction projects under the House version of the stimulus — even though the district currently has 15 vacant school buildings and declining enrollment. … The Milwaukee situation is instructive for another reason. The city is home to the country’s oldest and largest school voucher program, which provides public funds for children to attend private schools. … Yet language in the stimulus bill expressly prohibits any dollars from going toward financial assistance to students attending private schools. In other words, Milwaukee can use the money to build schools it doesn’t need, but not to expand education programs that are producing better outcomes for disadvantaged kids. … That $142 billion is little more than a huge stimulus to the teachers unions and lousy school districts to keep doing exactly what they’ve been doing.”

    See A Spending Education: Milwaukee gets money for unneeded schools.