by David J. Goldberg, Program Manager and Special Counsel for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Senator Bradley paints a very bleak – but fairly accurate – picture of the state of public education, particularly for children in poor communities and those trapped in segregated and perpetually-failing urban schools. Crumbling school buildings, entrenched and reactionary bureaucracies, low expectations and apathy are part of his old story. The new story of education he exhorts us to tell is one that reflects not only a fundamental rethinking of both the content and delivery of public education, but also education’s importance and how much we’re willing to invest in it.
I could quibble with some of Senator Bradley’s old story, including the negative characterizations of education interest groups (full disclosure: I work for a civil rights organization and am a registered lobbyist on education issues). I do think he paints my field with too broad a brush; however, on many issues there is enough blame to justify his point.
I don’t want to tell quite the same new story as Senator Bradley either. For example, while I support public school choice generally – and specifically as a remedy for students trapped in failing schools – devoting large sums of federal money simply as a bonus for every district that adopts school choice makes little sense and in many places will be a remedy in search of a problem. Surely, we’ve learned by now that federal money must be more narrowly targeted and major new commitments must come with more rigorous standards and accountability. Most of the Senator’s arguments support these points.
Still, to waste this space nitpicking at a few details I find objectionable in Senator Bradley’s proposals would be an ironically small-minded way to prove his larger point. The scope of the problem does call for both sweeping changes and massive new investments.
Science and math are the same in Chicago as they are in the smallest Mississippi town and in the Arizona desert – and, they’re the same in Europe, India, and China, where students are being far better prepared for the high-skill highly-mobile jobs of the 21st Century. Strict adherence to the idea of local standards in an increasingly global era seems, at its heart, to be based on little more than the argument that “we’ve always done it that way.” It’s hard to draw any other conclusion when even the idea of researching and creating voluntary national standards that states would be free to adopt or ignore – as has been separately proposed by Senators Dodd and Kennedy – meets political resistance.
We know that more time on task helps underperforming students yet, for the most part, we still use the same agrarian school schedule we were using a century ago. Adding hours and days to the school year will mean a lot more money for teacher and staff salaries, facilities costs, even food.
We also know that better trained, more experienced, better paid teachers who have both more freedom to innovate and more support from better trained, experienced, and well-paid principals are far more effective educators. Paying high enough salaries and putting in the supports to make the profession attractive enough to retain the best teachers and principals (and keeping an ample supply of good educators is the only way to make weeding out the bad ones a realistic goal) will also cost a fortune.
Many, though certainly not all, of Senator Bradley’s proposals would be very expensive. For the most part, the Senator fails to give us any clear indication of how expensive, but let’s agree on a nice round estimate of…incredibly expensive. So much so that some will reflexively dismiss them as standard liberal tax-and-spend dreaming; others, perhaps doing some standard liberal dreaming, would say they’re worth the price. If I had to choose between the two, I’d dream big and pay the price.
But we can tell a new American story here too: we really don’t have to choose. Education pays for itself – not in that “Iraqi oil revenues will fund the war” sort of way, but by actually, well, paying for itself. The government spends far less money on other programs – including welfare, Medicaid, and prisons – for people with better educations. Better educated people also earn far greater salaries, generating higher income tax revenue.
A recent study, by Henry Levin of the Columbia University Teachers College examined five programs that have proven track records at reducing high school dropout rates. The focus of the interventions ran the gamut from pre-school to teacher salaries to class size reductions and comprehensive school reform; all they had in common was success at keeping kids in school and increasing the chances that they would graduate.
The study compared the costs of implementing the programs to their payoffs per graduate. Over a lifetime, the average high school graduate pays $139,100 more in taxes than a high school dropout. At the same time, we spend $40,500 less on public health for graduates and $26,600 less on prisons. Graduates were 40 percent less likely to receive welfare payments also.
First Things First, a comprehensive school reform program added 16 new graduates per class of 100 while returning $3.54 to the treasury for each $1 spent. Even the least “efficient” of the 5 programs – reducing class sizes from 25 to 15 – still had a benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.46 to 1, while adding 11 new graduates to a class of 100. That’s a 46 percent return on investment for fifth place.
We also know where to spend the money. Two thousand of nation’s high schools produce half of our dropouts. Bob Balfanz and Nettie Legters of Johns Hopkins University call these schools “dropout factories.”
If we really wanted to attack the dropout crisis, we could invest in something like First Things First for the 2.6 million students in all 2000 dropout factories and it would cost $14.3 billion. In fact, the program works so well that we would have to add an additional $10.3 billion to the bill to pay for all the years of additional schooling for the students who would not have otherwise completed high school.
The result would be at least 416,000 more graduates. Those graduates would earn more and use fewer public health, welfare, and criminal justice resources, all totaling approximately $87 billion in new revenues and savings, a net gain of $62.4 billion. [For a more complete discussion of how the two research studies fit together, see “A Gift to Society – A New Graduate” by Crystal Rosario.
We should tell a new American story about quality education as a civil right for all children, because more than 50 years later we are still failing to keep the promise of Brown v. Board of Education. And, with no end to federal deficits or the costly war in Iraq in sight, we should do it because we need the money.
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Comments: 21
If we do know where those 2,000 high schools are then the money that could be spent in those high schools to improve the graduation rate and lessen the drop-out rate would be well worth it in the future return in the income tax that those graduates would pay alone.
As this is justified by the cost in the return on the investment alone there is no reason not to do it, and this should be pushed through congress.
What will it take to fully fund cost effective programs? Generally, I think the short-term, narrowly focused approach we take to appropriations at all levels of government is very destructive. When we operate in silos, where separate departments of government have separate budgets that are overseen by separate legislative committees and funded by annual appropriations, it is extremely difficult for long-term benefits across departments to be appreciated. Personally, I'd like to see the federal government take a step in the right direction by passing more bills that jointly fund and require cooperation between multiple departments. I'd also like to switch to a two-year appropriations cycle with the off-year dedicated to long-term budgetary planning and oversight.
Do you think the federal government has a legitimate role in education? My own perception is that they do not other than in the instance of a depressed area it would be totally appropriate and a good use of my tax dollars, to go in and provide monetary assistance to that area until they can get themselves out of whatever hole they are in. But I believe in local control of education and that cannot happen with federal dollars.
Despite all the time we spend talking about the last 5 years of No Child Left Behind, the truth is that even now the federal government doesn't control education. Nothing like it. The vast majority of the money, academic standards and policies, personnel rules, laws, schedules, etc are all state and local. The feds provide roughly (I may be a year or two out of date) 8 percent of the money, admittedly too much bureaucracy and paperwork, and a very convenient scapegoat.
What we've really had is 200+ years of state and local control of public education and in thousands of neighborhoods that history of complete local control is looking like an abysmal failure right now. So, I think we're way beyond the question of whether there's a "legitimate" role for the federal government. There's a desperate need for a federal government role.
As for just giving monetary assistance until a depressed area can get out of a hole, I'd ask "shouldn't we do more?" You say it would be a good use of your tax dollars, but what would they spend it on? If it is a school or district that has been run into the ground, maybe by the same people who'll be spending our federal tax dollars when we write the next check, do we really still want complete local control without a clear improvement plan and real accountability for results? Why would we expect that money to be better spent than the money the same people spent last year?
Going back to the example of the dropout factories I used in the article, if we created a fund for those schools, should it just give cash with no strings attached to schools with graduation rates under 60 percent, or should they be required to spend the money on First Things First (or some other proven program that improves graduation rates)? And after they've been getting the money for a few years and had some time to implement the program, shouldn't we compare their graduation rates to make sure they're getting results?
You could certainly say that putting conditions on the money takes away some local control. I'd say that it adds resources and expertise that is often just as valuable as the money itself. I'd also say that the federal money is optional and locals still have complete control of the decision of whether or not to take the money and the conditions that come with it.
Let me give your my frame of reference, in am in a small town in Michigan. I don;t have your understanding of the big picture and the gross dollar impact on the country from a super new investment in educarion. And I am neither going to have any impact in DC or Lansing, nor will I recognize the imapct of the grandeos progrmas that come out of ewither city.
I look at for my community and wonder how to impact the kids in my commuity.
Let me start by saying wehter it is in Washington or it in my community schools the cry is always the same poor us we donpt have enough money the teachers and the adminstraors, and the staff are so poorly paid. Poor us industy has all th emoney. I have not worked in the education system, but guess what it is money for everyone. Crying about it destroys your creditbility. Where I worked we never got enough and we were always pressured to do more with less, and the benefits and pay isn;t as good as our local teacher. Did you ever noitce that industry does just that, more with less. If I could serve cracker and cheese I would cry some more.
I will tell you, that in my community and every place I have lived now with the No CHild Left Behind for the first time all of the schools are actually talking about what the kids are doing and we have some indication of how different schools and systems are doing. I wish we could develop some better measures of the delivery system and the adminstration of our schools, because as I learned in that 'evil' for profit industry what we measured we did improve. We had to learn how to effectively measure services and different activities, but when we figured it out we got better.
Now to your article;
"rethinking of both the content and delivery of public education, but also education's importance and how much we're willing to invest in it." BS, decide on what is the knolwdege and skills that the kids need at a minimum, and what is a reasonble progression, and then measure against those expeectations. Now if the kids that achieve the expected knowldege and skills can't fuction with that level then you might be justified in rethinking content. Do waste your time and my money on rethingking delivery. Identify those systems or schools and teachers that are having the most success at achieveing your expectation and then start changing others to match what works. Oh, but that won;t require the DC and Lansing infastructure.
"there is enough blame to justify", forget the blame game that is never ending. My best example of how successfull companies addressed safety incidents, they look for facts not faults, they analyze what happened and look for ways to prevent reoccurrence. The even better ones take that approach and investigate success, taking out the individuals [no one get individual credit], and look at how to take the causes for success and making them part of the institutional memory.
"public school choice generally", in industry there are one of two ways that is addressed. The products/services that don;t meet expectations are left on the shelf and either the people making the product change (work differently or are replaced) or the the company goes under. There seems to be too much capital invested in the buildings so why can we just change the people. I know in my scool district that the Superintendent feels the school system business is people, to bad for us, I thought it was kids education.
"that federal money must be more narrowly targeted and major new commitments must come with more rigorous standards and accountability", I recognize getting federal dollars might be one o fthose measures that your cohorts use to measure yuor performance. But I think it is simply a way of being lazy about spending the pocal peoples money. Because if the whole school budget were paid locally I would like t think people would be more attentive. The bulk of our budget comes through Lansing so noone is accountable. As much as you talk about rigoruous accountabliliity with the federal dollars, I am extremely skeptival that our local Superintendent, his princicpals and especially a teach would ever be held accountable by the Feds. I would be like you holding accountable a single memeber of any of the orgainzations that suort you efforts.
"problem does call for both sweeping changes and massive new investments." If I were a 'conspiracy' person I would think that were code words for BIG BIG BIG federal dollars and exponential increase in lobbying needs.
"better trained, more experienced, better paid teachers who have both more freedom to innovate and more support from better trained, experienced, and well-paid principals are far more effective educators." It sounds like your don't believe that the colleges providing the curretn teachers and future teachers have the knowledge or capability to properly prepare them, I doub that. I believe that with the curretn educatioin experiecne and desire to succeed is the most important. Well paid, what constitues well paid and why. We have teachers and principles in the 50-100,000 range with health and retirement benefits that are automatically inflatino adjusted [administer by the MEA]. Yuo tell me howmany jobs in industry have that kind of package. My experiince has been that the truly good teachers don't get any more moneyand definately no better benefits than the poor or average teeachers. So how does more pay change anything for the edcuation system?
"So much so that some will reflexively dismiss them as standard liberal tax-and-spend dreaming;" If more money thrown at education is a criteria for labeling something liberal tax and spend, is yuor approach any differnet?
"Education pays for itself – not in that "Iraqi oil revenues will fund the war" sort of way, but by actually, well, paying for itself. The government spends far less money on other programs – including welfare, Medicaid, and prisons – for people with better educations." I am disappointed you weren't so confident in your issue of edcuation that i could stand alone. WHen you brought in Iraq you change the whole discussion, you may not believv that the Iraqis should be helped to move from where they were to liberty and better education, but that should be left to anpther discussion.
I feel that to improve our current edcuation system and the knowledge and skills of our kids we need to develop tools for the local paretns and tax payers to be able to recognize whether their local schools are doing a good job at delivering the edcuation, how they can help in the education process [the best answer i get is the Teachers are professinal trust them."], and a means to hold the local adinstrators accountable (our school board is part of the school system not an evaluator of it).
Thanks for the article and the time you take to read my comments.
Accountabiltiy has its place, of course, but we don't tie pay to direct results in other professions, do we? Should we close down our public hospitals and fire the doctors because they let too many gunshot victims die?
The limited exposure I have had to education has shown me that the best teachers are a special person. It takes a particular personality to excell with the kids and it is different for each grade. But, that is also true of any profession. The exposure to a good educationcan give a kid a real advnatage in life not only in earning a living.
The teachers use testing to determine the progress and areas that need work for each student. I don;t see a means nor a eason to test teachers or administrators. However, I do believe that teachers and administrators should be able to explain what they are doing and give a description of how well they doing.
Based on your experiueince in teaching, using what ever subject your are most comfortable with, can you describe what that would look like if the delivery of the subject were presented well. I am not looking for a precise detail, just yuor image of a good job? And if you ever saw that same subject presented poorly, what did it look like?
What criteria do yuo feel would be approapriate for parents and the gernal public to use so they can tell of their local school system is effective.
I htink there is too much presuming and assuming about education. The common assunption is that math and science are important and arts education is a nice to have, I don;t buy into that. But I never hear how the arts, sciecnes, and math help in every day living. I think that if we could get the conversation move to that and how ell a system is delievery the subjects to achieve those abilities then people would have much more confidence in their systems and would be much more supportive.
With your concern for teachers' compensation, whatt do you think is a fair pay for teaching?
I believe that benefits are part of the total compensation of any individual. I worked for a really good company, our retirement was never pegged to inflation, and today their is not a pension, simply a lump sum and your 401k. My medical benefits have had a copay as long as I can remember and it has grown over the years. Neither of these are true for teachers in our school system.
Aside from the pay, i would like your thouhgts on my other points?
I truly believe in the importance of education, but I just don;t have confidnce is the current way it is being address. I am looking for ways to get that confidence back or to change how it is framed locally so we can improve hwo are kids are prepared.
Thanks for the response! In referring to "money to a depressed area" I am assuming that the local problems are due to a lack of money. That would mean give them the money to pay adequate teacher and administrator salaries, build buildings if need be, purchase equipment or whatever was needed without taking over completely and without "no child left behind" type federal programs. Welfare, plain and simple! If the schools are bad simply because that is what the people want I'm not sure I want to be in a position of telling them they can't have bad schools. But that would be rare indeed!
As far as I'm concerned right now, if we did away with the Department of Education and put that money into cities, counties, school districts where there is a money need it could do a lot. And local school boards doing poorly does not equate to poor people or mangers necessarily. Just loose one high tax resource and it can put a district in Idaho on starvation income! For example, a dam may be the major revenue/tax source for a community and if that dam is breached for environmental reasons, that school district might offer third rate education for many years until things stabilize, no fault of the school board. Most boards are made up of parents who naturally want the best for their children!
I no longer live in the small community where my mother was district clerk for many years but I still subscribe to the local paper and one thing that really gets the natives going is anything that might, in their opinion, jeopardize the ability of their kids to get a good education!
I believe that to equate business to education is a mistake. Their reason for existence is diametrically different! And as far as business being always smaller and better I don't agree. Bigger business have the advantage of economy of scale but loose the personal touch. If you like things run like a business just call your credit card company or take a roll of quarters and try to get a charge removed from you medical bill. That's business!
Education is not in business to make money. nor should it be about money as such. Business pay top executives sometimes more than anyone in education makes excluding coaches and that's another issue! ( But some of coaches money is generated by the teams.)
I'm not saying don't look at things and see what work and doesn't. That is good in government, business, education or whatever. Yes, look at what works, on the local level. And let the local school board do what they wish with it. They are the only ones close enough to the situation and charged with the responsibility for their own kids! States are already charged with the over all monitoring of education.
I believe you've bought into a popular falsehood regarding education because of your "dropout factories" comment. I've raised my kids and was satisfied with the education they received. My grandkids are in school and so far I've not found a reason to criticize the over all quality of the education they are getting. I would say though, that trained teachers should be teaching for six or however many hours the kids are in school rather than having aids doing the teaching and teachers doing government inflicted paperwork for half or more of the time! And I know that is currently being practiced. Basically, I think teachers in general and education in general are getting a bum rap!
How much support from home are the schools getting? How many hours of TV are the kids watching that could be spent on more educationally profitable pursuits? What about computer use that is both unmonitored and excessive? Why are school kids ever allowed to use cell phones to text message in class? I'd go ballistic there if that were to occur in my class!
When I was a kid I had a couple of teachers that, in today's vernacular, sucked rocks! They were lousy teachers, no way around that. Each teacher had approximately 20 kids in each class and 2 classes in each room! Where my wife went to school she had about 20 kids in 4 grades in her room! But we managed to learn in spite of suboptimal conditions because 1. Our parents demanded it and 2. If farm work didn't interfere there was little else to, TV had not been developed and cell phones were only in Dick Tracey! Let's give today's teachers a reasonable chance.
Bottom line is that money spent and programs instituted are not the only thing we need to look at. And Please, Please, don't try to run schools like a business!
To answer some of your questions, Duane, about the teaching profession, I will let you know, first of all, that I live in Texas which ranks very near the bottom in teacher pay. Schools here are primarily funded through local property taxes, so the amount of money a district gets depends on the wealth of the citizens who live there--both corporations and individuals.
Starting pay for teachers is competitive with other non-technical professions (about $38K right now), but mid-career salaries are not very competitive, especially when you factor in the stress level. Yes, the benefits are pretty good. There is a retirement pension, which is attractive these days when most companies are doing away with them. And here in Texas, teachers still get a June - July vacation. Still, in my view, the compensation is not adequate.
Teaching is much like acting. You go on stage every day and you better be well-prepared. To answer your question about good vs. poor performance, it comes down to preparation and natural talent. Like with acting, it's obvious if the actor doesn't know her lines, and no one wants to watch if she's not skillful on stage. So I agree with you that it takes a paticular personality to be a good teacher and that varies to some extent, according to the age level of the student.
We use the classroom model now because it is cheap, but teachers are forced to concentrate most of their effort on the modal of their classroom and anyone outside of that wastes most of his time. If we really want to have maximum impact, we have to teach each child individually.
Yuo may not want to compare to business. Not all parts of a business is directly involved in the delivery of the product or service to the end customer, and yet they are evalated on their deliverables. I believe there are simlarlities in education. Education of the kids is the delieverable. The people responsible should be held accountable for their delivery of that edcuation.
Speaking for myself, and I guess here are many others like me, I don;t have confidence that the current culture of the education system is focused on the effectiveness of their delievery. Te preponderance of information I get from our school system is about their needs and nothing about how they are doing the edcuation or how people could help them, except for send money. I do have friends that are longtime teachers and one of them is fully imersed in the process of education and in the means and methods for monitoring the indvidual students and how hey are meeting expectation throughout the year. Yet, both of their biggest challenges is the administrative system that seems more about making th esystem look innovative and the people in he system to appear in control, looking good.
Noew I have sen similar problems in my work experince in industry, and I think some of the administrative tools that were develop to address that could be modified to the education process.
One of the tools we used was the 360 degreee assessment. This was where each person had to request evalutions from a represnetative sample of the people they interfaced with. In the case of a principle that would mean they would be evaluted by teachers, stundents, parents, staff members as well the administrative staff they work with. In that way the individual couldn't focus on a single person to keep happy. The evaluation sheets were develop to evaluate the key roles and responsiblities the individual had.
I acept my limited knowledge of the education process, I would like the teachers and others idnetify what good delivery systme would look like and hten we could deevelop the means to measure how our local systems are doing.
I do disagree that the locals choose to have poor systems, currently they have to rely on what the local system people say and what their Board says. And unless a culture is built on change people tend rationalize against change.
I try to discount my personal educatioin, because it is so old and it was so counter to the current model education htat is would not be fair to use that as a reference.
Aside from rocket science, I don;t feel there is any profession that is so wrap up in their own mystique as the education complex.
I doubt that you would be as trustful of the people who operated a chemical plant if it were located in you community as people are trusting people who are responsible for the educatio of our kids.
Cindy,
I disagree that a child should be educated individually. I feel the group setting and delivery because it gives them an education in social relationships and it allows them to get a diversity of presentation. When a teacher is focused on a single child they can too easily fall in to a set response to every question, when they must present that sublect to a variety of people that will change there response for each child that questions them and this allows the other studnets to get a slightly different prespective on the topic. THis has proven very iportant to me.
Here in Michigan, with post graduate training, teachers here can double the salary in Texas. THe MEA here actually contacts with the school providing health insurance and reitement programs (at a premium higher then that private industry pays). And the eduation quality is no better than what yo have in Texas. I am willing to stand Detroit schools to any in Texas including Houston, you can quess which I think will be better. But, personally I just want the means to work on my local schools and have confidence they are doing a good, not necessarily the best, job in delivering education to the kids.
If education is so important, it should be more open, and the public should be given the tools to help make the system accountable.
If you believe that that chemical plant in your neigbirhood should be accountable for their practices, trhen why shouldn't the local system be also held accountable?
I can assure you that schools in a small community are watched much more closely than any chemical plant! And I think you will probably agree that when a teacher has to spend over half her time on accountability for the classroom instead of teaching, the students suffer the loss.
As far as evaluation by others there is nothing wrong with that to some extent but having spent most of my career in upper level management for an organization I can tell you that many times those under someone are not in a position to evaluate that person's success. They can evaluate whether that person provides them with the backing and tools they need but the overall picture is not available to them and the manager may not be at liberty to even attempt to explain that!
Some form of evaluation can be done but I would hate to see this take up a significant portion of a teacher's or administrator's time as that time is taken directly from the students who actually need it.
If your education is too old to be applicable, it's probably no older than mine if as old! Though I have had contact with education and educators through both work and children I graduated from high school in 1956 so that is a long way from recent! I suspicion your ideas and thoughts are valid today as people are pretty much the same as they were. Only the interference, such as TV, is new!
On individual instruction, I believe that the best of educators use individual instruction in a class or group setting. I had instructors who did not and they weren't the best of the lot.
On a different level, I took a course in programming after I retired three years ago and the way it was taught was extremely sensitive to the student and whether the student felt they received the help they needed to learn the material. I felt the instructor I had was quite sensitive to individual needs and gave each student the time and effort necessary for success. I was much slower than the youngsters who were my classmates but still managed to come out in the top group in the class and I attribute that to the teacher's skill. At the end of the course we turned in an evaluation of the teacher's skills and methods. This would not be applicable with a group of second graders as they don't know what they "want" to learn!
I didn't say the locals choose to have poor systems, only if they did. I've never seen that occur anywhere I've lived! And I do believe that most educators are very concerned about the effectiveness of their delivery. Granted, there is a political element to administrators and their assistants but the politics has always been with us and is a portion of reality. Just so it doesn't interfere with the teaching!
Appreciaty your comments!
I strongly believe that the time demands on people in industry (at least that was my experience was) was no less then in any other profession. In fact I have to believ that just as you probably did so do good teachers, take work home.
THe best metrics are those that are integral to the nrmal work activities. My experience has been if anything becomes a layer, rather than integrated, it at best drops away. So working with those that doing the work to selec he means and methods for demonstrating performance should not be a noticable burden. AN infact it shuold enhance their work. I have a few personal experinces of that working.
With regard to the 360 evaluations. The point is that no one person has the "whole picture", but if you can get all of the pieces (each person interacted with) then yuo have a much better chance of putting the "whole picture" together.
If a a person is manager then I would think that those doing the work the manage shold have vital information abot the managers effectiveness, not all but a significant piece.
If you would like I would be willing get yuor help in creating a metric for your compure programing course.
To either make yuo jealous or better understand some of the frusration in Michgan. IN todays newspaper, here are a couple of articles about retirement costs. In one example it diescribes bow peopel that have been retired from the school systems can comeback, work 9in one case) as ittle as 2 weeks and qualify for lifetime full health care. To qualify a retieree after 10 years of service has to work 30 years or reach the age of 60, have work have work at least 1/10 of a normal work schedule when they hav reach the age of 60. The case he describe the person worked as a teachers aide. They figure that just over 450 have done this.
The other situation is that hey are offering special incentives for administrators to retire, with full benefits and then hiring them back as contractor in their same job at their base pay withuot benefits (their getting that from retirement). Have you heard the phrase double dipping?
The school districts budget gets reduced by the benefits, but the people of Michigan have to pay them and their pension and their chair never got cold, there are an estimated 500 such cases. The estimates are that this cost Michigan taxpayers $25 million last year. And these deals were done before the person ever signed on to retire. The school districts rationalize them that the get all of that proven experoience and perfromance for less money.
Do you still wonder why I am skeptical and feel there needs to be some accountability?
to read the article, go to www.detnews.com it is the May 11, 2007 cover story "the $1470 an hour Loophole." Part 2 of a 3 part series.
As a former innner-city high school teacher and current university instructor, I would like to add that I felt chased out of urban public schools. Why should I waste my energy, time, intelligence, and creativity - and feel unsafe - at work? Thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand other intelligent, dedicated teachers have had the same dishearting experiences. Result: the talented teachers move to college and university positions - often private and exclusive - or leave the field.
On a broader public policy level, we also need to emphasize the importance of math, science, and technology. Several engineering departments at my university have very minimal numbers of American graudate students. We might be able to cajole and seduce enough international graduate students in the sciences to live and work here for a decade or so, but we must start to create our own pool of trained engineers and scientists.