Boston Globe: A higher bar for future teachers

epiphany · November 5, 2006, 7:20am

marite. Please: I know the myriad ways parents are involved in schools. For me, the details about a different set of circumstances – some practical help in setting up a reconfigured school – do not help to illuminate the issue about why school districts feel it necessary in the 20th & early 21st centuries to have parents do their professional work for them (not their packing work, etc.). It does not explain why it would have been unthinkable to do this when I began teaching. A claim by teachers or parents that “teachers are too busy,” does not cut it with me. The question is, what are they too busy doing? I maintain that this goes back to the heart of the problem. It tells me that they are doing things other than teaching, & what is normally associated with teaching. If teachers can’t manage their classrooms, & then occasionally also assist a principal to review new teacher job applications, then either teaching is too much for them, or they are being required to handle non-teaching tasks in the everyday course of their work. For example, the minimum 9 teachers + one principal in a bare-bones K-8 school makes for 10 professionals IN THE ELEMENTARY EDUCATIONAL FIELD reviewing 200 job applications – or ~20 each. That is not overwhelming. I could do it, & have done it.

The real crime, to me, is that their districts must be exploiting them, & their unions neglecting them, if they are “too busy” to assist their own principal in the task of reviewing apps, esp. since it is done more efficiently by an insider in the field – unless all those insiders are incompetent.

Nor am I swayed by the mention that the principal hadn’t reviewed curriculum materials, & therefore the parents needed to point out outdated materials. Again, this is incompetence. The school didn’t need uncredentialed parents to do this. The school needed a professional, competent principal – which i.m.o it was not getting.

epiphany · November 5, 2006, 7:33am

BG,
Thanks for that link. Unfortunately many of the ideas mentioned scratch the surface. They are helpful additions in some cases (as in the science/math examples). But in most cases the articles which report the reform attempts are not that pertinent in cases where State legislatures refuse to increase teacher salary, refuse to budget classroom materials (thus virtually requiring teachers to pay out of pocket, unreimbursed, so that they can actually run their classrooms), refuse to offer assistance when some classes in CA (for example) have up to 80% English Language Learners in them – & most importantly, when districts & legislatures insist on a policy of “accepting everybody, rejecting nobody” – when non-standard classroom programs for many children would be indicated. (Such as the classroom I described.) The ill-advised mainstreaming movement will not be affected by outside assistance from the business world, because mainstreaming is currently a matter of legislated, public policy that cannot be overriden by the private sector. My beef with the unions is that they focus narrowly on specific “protection” issues (salary, benefits) while neglecting these core issues that affect ability to teach, that affect testing results, that affect teacher retention, that affect the reputation of public schools.

The idea of master & mentor teachers is extremely old. I don’t know why anyone would think that’s a new concept. It long predated my own entrance into teaching.

marite · November 5, 2006, 8:29am

Epiphany:

You are asking for supermen and superwomen as teachers and principals: people who not only have the most up-to-date knowledge of cognitive development, pedagogy, but also African, Middle Eastern, Latin American, Chinese, American history, physics, biology, chemistry, math, English, etc… It won’t happen. It will never happen. And we do have some of the best qualified teachers in the country by virtue of being able to draw on some great schools of education.

My S had a teacher who was absolutely wonderful as a humanities teacher but was unable to depart one iota from her math textbook. Should we have demanded that she be fired because of her lack of knowledge in one area? Should I have demanded that a teacher who was terrific in most others be fired because he had assigned published materials that were not only wrong but contained offensive statements as well?

I don’t expect teachers to be omnicompetent. If any of the teachers (and many actually do) went to some academic centers or educational organization for assistance, they would likely encounter parents of their students. There are specialists in practically every field you might care to think of. Some Nobel prize winners and McArthur fellows send their children to public schools. I just heard from an acquaintance of mine that he’s been invited to give a talk at the high school his grandchild has just started at. That acquaintance is a well-known economist who has advised presidents and traveled to many exotic places. He has funds of stories to tell.

I should also note a couple of other things. Parents do have a role in firing incompetent teachers. But usually, the situation must be egregious before firing is contemplated. I was responsible for having one high school teacher moved (not fired–I recognized that she had some great qualities that would be better utitlized in another class). The powers-that-be recognized her limitations but were waiting for a parent to lodge a complaint (in fact, I was asked to do so in writing) in order to act. Hiring of teachers at the high school does not involve parents. And this is where I have discovered the greatest discrepancy in quality of the teaching staff. The k-8 school itself was started by parents whose children had been shut out of a particular school. From the very beginning, therefore, parents were involved in hiring teachers and principals. That was several years before we joined. A result of this close relationship is that you won’t find parents in the school holding anti-teacher views such as you have read on this very thread.

The system may not be the best, but that is the only one we’ve got, and parents and teachers in my community are trying to make it work for everyone. The schools that are failing are the ones where parents are uninvolved. This is my last post on the subject. I probably have not changed your mind, and you will not change mine.

epiphany · November 5, 2006, 8:39am

marite, I wanted to backtrack & say that I didn’t mean literally that the principal you mentioned was actually incompetent. May or may not have been. The point is, this is part of the core JOB DESCRIPTION. (Reading the curriculum materials!) I can assure you that there’s no Parent Handbook at any public school, which states parental duties as reading curriculum materials & informing the principal as to how current those are.

Similarly, the principal of earlier reference, which I mentioned, was also not doing her job of reviewing curriculum - but shockingly, also not doing something even more essential to her job, which was reviewing the teachers! (for how outdated & how burnt-out & how unprofessional they had become).

What seems to be going over the heads of many parents on this thread, is that the “duties” and “involvement” some of you have assumed, are the kinds of roles it would never occur to you that others would assume for YOU in YOUR fields. Yes, if a TA is grading papers & paid to do so, that’s a legitimately delegated role. But neither a paid TA nor an unpaid college student or parent of a college student would be required to develop a course syllabus, notice outdated curriculum because the prof was asleep at the wheel, participate in the hiring process of people superior to them in authority, in that venue, etc. Why is it O.K. for such to happen on the elem. & secondary levels of education? And I will remind you again that this is a relatively new development, as the teaching profession goes & given the length of institutionalized public education in this country.

epiphany · November 5, 2006, 9:11am

marite, you are very wrong if you think I have unrealistic expectations of teacher performance. When I began teaching, most teachers were excellent. They were also not required to engage in many non-teaching tasks within the classroom & outside of the classroom. They were able to handle these tasks often within multi-cultural environments, so I don’t need a refresher on that, either. I am quite attuned to the demands of the public school classroom. Remember? I teach there.

Teachers who are not asked to perform inappropriate duties are able to excel & improve & develop in many areas of expertise, over time. Self-evaluation is part of their professional responsibility. Making up for deficiencies in areas of less expertise, is also their responsibility. Your S’s humanities expert could have improved her math teaching, as I could – with opportunities provided to both her & to me. She would still always have her particular strengths, but professional growth comes with the territory, as it does for physicians, etc.

I don’t buy your comment that because “it’s the only system we’ve got,” we simply have to live with gross failures (some which you & others have described, some which I have described), or we have to rely on people outside that professional community (parents). It’s up to the professional community to fix it, actually.

marite · November 5, 2006, 10:28am

I’m breaking my word. 
Epiphany, do you expect a physician to be expert in every field of medicine? No, of course not. There are many times when the GP will make a referral to a specialist. At the k-8 level, we hire teachers who are generalists and who may have strength in a particular area. It is utterly unrealistic to expect a teacher who had an undergraduate degree in English, even from the best program in the country, and an M.Ed, even from the best program to be really good at teaching math or science. Same for principals.

We happen to have some parents who are specialists in the very fields that are being covered; in fact, some even worked at companies producing the very texts that were adopted and others actually taught some of the teachers that have been hired not only in our schools but in neighboring districts as well.

The great thing about the teacher who worked with Bob Moses to develop the Algebra Project was that she recognized her limitations as math teacher–she’d originally been hired as a music teacher. So when Bob approached her, she was willing to work with him to identify what concepts needed to be presented and how to present them. She, as the k-8 teacher had a better idea about the how; he had a better grasp of the what.

I’ve told how parents in our school pitched in and helped teachers make the transition instead of moving out in droves. Another school was also asked to take over another failing school. It was an excellent school, quite different from ours. Parents were involved but to a more limited extent and did not participate in hiring decisions. When news came of the merger, middle class parents howled; many left the school altogether. The new school is not at all like the excellent one it used to be. I hear that more families are preparing to leave it. And they are leaving their children’s teachers to cope with the problems associated with low SES, limited English, overwhelmed parents. They’re leaving it to the professionals and taking their kids to private schools or to the suburbs.

emeraldkity4 · November 5, 2006, 11:52am

, do you expect a physician to be expert in every field of medicine? No, of course not. There are many times when the GP will make a referral to a specialist. At the k-8 level, we hire teachers who are generalists and who may have strength in a particular area. It is utterly unrealistic to expect a teacher who had an undergraduate degree in English, even from the best program in the country, and an M.Ed, even from the best program to be really good at teaching math or science.

The way our schools system is structured- it isn’t unusual for a high school Spanish class to be taught by a long term sub who had Spanish in high school ( subs don’t need same certification- he had only a K-8 endorsement)- since for some reason Spanish teachers are very difficult to find- my daughter has had classes taught by a high school english teacher- who became a librarian- who was then stuck teaching Spanish-
Right now- because our current school has added science and math classes & since the district decided force transfer a science teacher ( who was head of long running very popular program to another school) her school has history and english teachers running intro science classes for freshmen, the parents who chose the school because of its reputation are * not* pleased to put it mildly- and I don’t imagine it is such a great deal for the teachers either.

I am happy that my daughter is a junior and in her chem class- she not only has a long time chem teacher, but also a “student” teacher- who has a grad degree in biochem and worked in research for years, until after volunteering in a classroom, found that he wanted to teach.

One of the tenets of NCLB is that all teachers would be qualified in their area of instruction- which I agree with.( but I beleive many states missed the deadline) My older daughter in private school even had teachers without an education degree- who also have been noted as some of the best teachers in the state. I think for 7th-12 teachers- the area of instruction should come first .
How can we have high stakes testing for students- who will have their diploma denied if they don’t pass- without having curriculum and teaching methods that meet high standards?

marite · November 5, 2006, 1:22pm

EK:

One of the reasons I have been as involved in my kids’ education is precisely that I did not wish to undermine the teachers. As I’ve mentioned, we have many people in the community who know far more than the teachers about specific subjects. It can be very hard for these parents to tell their children that what the teachers taught was wrong and yet try to cultivate respect for teachers, especially among rebellious adolescents.

I walked into a private school that prided itself with teaching foreign languages in early grades–something I wanted for my kids. The principal pointed to a large sign that had been written by the resident French teacher. It had several egregious mistakes. I decided not to enrol my kid in that school. I did not want to be constantly denigrating the teacher to my kid. It was no pleasure telling my kid that his teacher had assigned bad materials.

Even extremely well qualified teachers cannot know everything. A teacher with a Ph.D. in anthropology with fieldwork in Latin America will not know much about Middle Eastern history. S/he would be wise to find teaching resources on that topic if s/he is going to teach a unit on the Middle East. And chances are, there will be a parent with expertise on that topic.

What saddened me the most about the school I described in post 246 is that many parents did leave things to professionals. They left. Period. And with their leaving, their once excellent school that was supposed to take over the failing school is now in danger of being overwhelmed by the problems it was supposed to solve. I think part of the reason why parents did not leave our school in droves as happened with the other school is that they had a stake in seeing the school and the teachers succeed–after all, they’d hired these teachers.

emeraldkity4 · November 5, 2006, 3:55pm

Marite I was agreeing with you- Im not sure if that was clear. I don’t expect teachers to know everything- ( although I do hope that a language instructor does at least have college level work in that language if not a degree),
and what we expect our kids to be taught has changed alot from when some of the current teachers were in school 20 years ago.

It is really difficult to be in the situation- when you know things are flat out wrong.My daughter didn’t usually show me much of her work, but when I was checking her spelling assignment, I noticed that a few of the words on the list were spelled incorrectly. So some things I * do* expect teachers to know, but certainly not everything.
Although I had many frustrations with her previous school, I do admit that they allowed parents in the classroom * a lot*.
Not only were parents involved in hiring decisions, but lead book groups that ran from 1st - 6th grade ( and sometimes even higher), an hour a week all year. It was up to parents which books to chose, how to choose them and how to lead discussions. Some teachers did provide guidelines- but for instance I was wildly inappropriate at times.
( I picked To Kill a Mockingbird to read and discuss for 5th graders- a great book- but it probably was more appropriate for a little older)
Since I was a known quantity, it was assumed apparently that I could handle anything- so I was given 8 students of varying reading abilties and interests to lead in book group.
It was quite a challenge, as I didn’t know that one girl, couldn’t read at grade level, and would actually skip class until she knew book group was over. I didn’t find out until I called her mom to ask about why she had been missing group & had a nice conversation with her & developed some new ideas to make it not so stressful.

Her current school, does use parents in the classroom- especially in labs, where an extra adult or two with background in what they are doing is very valuable- parents also volunteer and have raised money to hire a lead teacher for a program to help kids who are way below grade level to learn to read.

I hear however, that some other schools are not as comfortable with parents assisting- ( I hear this from minority parents especially)- they feel like their input and time isn’t welcome- unfortunately, their kids seem to be in the schools that are most challenged and who most need the assistance.

marite · November 5, 2006, 8:00pm

EK:
I did get your meaning. Interesting contrast to our situation. Parents read in lower grades, but did not conduct reading groups in upper grades and did not lead discussions (there were usually student teachers who did so). What parents often did, if asked, was to provide resources to the teachers who in turn shared with students. As you saw from my earlier posts, it did not always happen. But it happened often enough.
I also heard about minority parents feeling marginalized in some schools (not ours). It led to the creation of a charter school. Unfortunately, that school attracts mostly low SES minority students and has done worse than the mainstream public schools with their greater diversity.

epiphany · November 6, 2006, 1:08pm

For me this discussion has been fruitful, as it puts into greater clarity why reform efforts will fail within the current public school system as we know it. That would be certainly for the more populous states with diverse student populations. The reason for the failure would be, as another poster pointed out, the essential brokenness of the system. Simply put, its dysfunctional. Parents are performing site teaching roles (and I dont mean as resources in the classroom, such as occasional classroom aides, such as speakers, field trip organizers in their own fields the latter being a wonderful & thoroughly appropriate role for parents drawing on their intellects, drawing on them as role models, etc.) Teachers are performing not just parenting roles, but much more than that. (Roles I enumerated earlier.) Teachers have abdicated responsibility for the very academic & administrative tasks for which they were trained & in which they should have been educated. Theyve surrendered these obligations to others, thus indirectly transferring power to them. Those dynamics affect their credibility, their effectiveness to initiate change, and very much (I believe) their salaries.

Much of the above Ive seen myself, in person; more of it has become clear since reading all the above posts. To a less extent, it is true of principals as well.

Teacher unions support the current model, rather than opposing it; thus they are an enemy of radical reform. Their battles are waged in support of compliance with the system and against those who oppose the accepted structure & regulations. And when it is assumed by the public in any district that just anyone can take over teaching roles (because de facto theyre allowed to do it), that anyone with a college degree and/or an advanced degree and/or believes their own field is tangentially related to K-12 education (when it isnt), teacher unions are wasting their breath convincing the public that the credentialed teachers are worth a non-humiliating salary. The perception of value is just not there; nor is there the perception of uniqueness & expertise. Therefore, this is beyond the publics seeming preference to spend on priorities other than education.

The retort from parents as to their over-reaching (i.m.o.) involvement in the schools may be that, as weve heard over & over now in this thread, Teachers are too busy. Parents may believe that unless they do it, it wont get done or if they do it, it will get done more easily. (Thus positively affecting their own children.) But that does not address the problem of why they should need to do it in the first place. If teachers were not being asked by their local & state governments, & by their regulatory departments & boards, to do 14 things not related to their jobs, there would be no need for parents to sit in on a trillion board meetings or to remind or inform (gasp) teachers & principals that curriculum is out-of-date, factually in error, or insufficient for the student population in question.

Teachers themselves are not powerful enough (even without the abdications I mentioned), and teacher unions are too controversial in the public arena, for either of them or both together to effectuate radical change. The public has to decide if it wants to that non-teaching roles now being performed by the teacher belong in different categories, performed by other people. You see, the government is getting it on the cheap because the taxpayer will not support massive social services, and because there began to be a movement within education, in the early 70s, that supported the model of the teacher as omnicompetent (to borrow marites term) IN FIELDS OTHER THAN EDUCATION. I never bought into that model. I thought it was dangerous & ultimately self-destructive to the profession. I thought it was extremely unrealistic to pretend competence in social work, social welfare, psychiatry, psychology, law, mediation, & criminal justice. (And that is beyond the pay issue that should arise if a person is performing such a variety of professional roles. It is also beyond the obvious problem of distractions from the academic work itself.) Yet all those areas were by varying degrees inserted informally into the classroom teaching role & eventually became underwritten in various ways as the teachers job came to be described. There was a moral (a PC) component to this drive: teachers SHOULD do everything when others will not. We are the environment of last resort.

To return teachers to the task of teaching, the public could decide to support a move, or a return, to appopriate segmentation of roles. That would require, in the public system, taxpayer supported social services, taxpayer supported psychiatry & psychology for school-age children, a school system efficiently utilizing specialists where specialists are warranted (such as situations described by goaliedad & myself), and resurrecting the controversial H word homogeneity, where at least part-time homogeneous grouping is positive for all such groups. (Amusingly, some groups are self-segmenting now & finding, in their charter schools, radically improved results versus an absurdly & wildly diverse all-day classroom which demands unrealistic & unrealizable mastery by any single teacher, no matter how capable & talented).

And to care enough about reform, you have to be willing to do more than “feel good” about whatever personal history you’ve had with regard to “involvement in education.” You have to be willing to look beyond your own possible successes as a parent involved at your own school(s), and realize that not every parent, every classroom, every school can be compared with a model that may work or may have worked for you or your child. In the classroom I described much earlier here, there were no parents in a position to be of any help in that classroom, as they needed help themselves. (And I’ll stress again that these were not mostly minorities.) The solutions belong within education, not outside of it (such as the government), but those solutions need to be supported by the entire public, as the entire public has a stake in the educational future of this country.

OpiefromMayberry · November 6, 2006, 1:29pm

ephif,

I think I will take some exception to your last post. The system you support is the one that works best for you, which is fine. It does not necessarily work everywhere else on the same level. Not every charter is going great guns. In fact, they are pretty much settling into a pattern that mirrors publics. Some do really well, some do Ok and some aren’t working.

I agree with several aspects you’ve mentioned but I don’t see things turning out that way because at some point, at parent, teacher, principal, super, school board, state legislator, congressman, senator up to president… it’s somebody’s agenda. And that agenda no matter how fluffy and pretty the name isn’t to improve education but to extert control.

At the basic level it’s a pushy parent who won’t take no for an answer. At the highest level it’s a pres who believes the earth is only 6.000 years old.
Your not going to eliminate either, you just have to try to work around these roadblocks. You’ve found your way to work around them and accomplish at the end of the day some parted education to kids. Others to the same.

I mean I agree with your pov on much of this but at the same time, most of what you wish for will only be a wish, so teachers do the best they can.

marite · November 6, 2006, 1:32pm

Epiphany:

Much of what you write is correct. But I don’t see a solution to the problems. Many of them have their origins outside the classrooms, but directly affect the classroom. So teachers have to deal with it. I don’t have to tell you about students who come in without having eaten breakfast; sometimes, they have not been near a shower for a long time. And so on, ad nauseam. So the system may be broken, but it is not necessarily the educational system that is broken.

As for omnicompetence, even in one’s own field one is not competent in all subfields. In medicine, a GI will not perform the duties of an obstretician or gynecologist or eye and ear specialist.

Liping Ma who wrote the very influential book Understanding and Teaching Elementary Mathematics reported that typical Chinese teachers have a traditional education through 9th grade, after which they attend Teacher’s College. Yet, they are more effective math teachers than their American counterparts with a k-12 education followed by at least four years of college.
The reason is partly that even in the lower grades, all they teach is math, and they usually spend about half the day, not the whole day, teaching; they have plenty of time for professional development and consultation with colleagues about how to best teach math, and working out lesson plans.
Contrast the medical specialist or the Chinese math teacher with the typical American k-8 teacher who is asked to teach everything from fractions to Shakespeare plays to African history all within a single day.

If we were to adopt an educational system more like the Chinese one, I don’t know which segment of society would be more opposed. But opposition there would be. And it would still not provide breakfast or intact homes.

padad · November 6, 2006, 2:21pm

Marite,
I have to laugh on your comments on the Chinese system. Here, no matter how much we may disagree with the implementaion of “No Child Left Behind”, we all agree on the principle that all children shoud be given the opportunity to complete a course of study. In China, the system works by “Poorly Performed Students will be left Behind”. Teachers just won’t have to deal with them. The majority of Chinese students do not have the chance to complete K12. What you see coming to this country is a very small fraction of Chinese students who were fortunate enough to keep on passing huge hurdles.

Why is it that posters here are so reluctant to address the issue of funding and teacher salary?

epiphany · November 6, 2006, 3:33pm

Opie, I respect your points, and your pov, & your support of teachers, but I do not agree that we merely have to live with what we have. Same for marite, whose help I appreciate within her own local school or schools, but I disagree with you, too, that my emphasis/re-emphasis is not possible, not realizable, asking for too much, asking for sub-specialties as if in medicine, etc. Quite the opposite, actually. I’m emphasizing a return to the generalist position of the teacher as a teacher, and not as one who solves the ills of society. And may I add that frankly they’re not doing a terrific job of that, either. (Teachers.) Naturally not. It’s not the setting for psychiatry & social work. Nor is the classroom a cafeteria. The students on the free lunch program, who often should additionally be on a free breakfast program, should have a place to go, then, AT school, for that breakfast. It happened at a very poor minority site school I once was assigned to. One cannot think & perform terribly well on an empty stomach. To say that the teacher just has to deal with it is absurd. And certainly it is not fair to the kids who do come prepared to think & work, who don’t happen to be deprived of breakfast because of slightly better circumstances, & then will not learn that day because the teacher is trying to manage nonproductive hungry children elsewhere.

Both Opie & marite are still arguing the No Way Out, which does not further proactive & creative solutions. It’s just surrender. Not that either of you are required to solve the problems. Again, this is up to teachers to give a damn about how their roles & their profession have been eroded, & how it’s up to the proper social departments to perform their tasks at taxpayer expense.

There is a district not too far from me which has as one its departments, “Social Services.” It actually is only part of the district, not individual schools, but it very well could be. Its function is to assist parents in that district to connect with the proper dept’s in the city that will help them with whatever needs might obstruct their children from being productive in the classroom, & the major areas of distraction for them as parents, which do affect support for their children’s education. (Unemployment, housing issues, etc.) Employees from that department could be placed in the field (i.e., school sites), just as social services employees for local governments are sent to the field for many other situations: those are sent now to homes & other settings.

I’m not saying don’t take care of kids’ other needs. I’m saying that teachers are not the appropriate first line or last line for this, but that government has gotten away with it & taxpayers aren’t interested in supporting it, particularly if their own children are not attending publics. (I think many whose children attend publics are indeed supportive, because they see how such a redirection of the teacher’s energies affects the learning of their own better cared for children.)

Opie, the reforms I envision are not ones I’m thinking of for charters. Charters can do much more in the way of individual school decisions & departmentalizing. The ones I’m thinking of are for standard (also called “traditional”) site classrooms. These are the ones most at risk, & the ones I care about the most.

emeraldkity4 · November 6, 2006, 3:40pm

Why is it that posters here are so reluctant to address the issue of funding and teacher salary?

I agree that there are many draws on state funding
for example- while I don’t agree with closing our borders completely to immigrants- instate tuition for illegal immigrants I do blink at.
I also am wondering re teacher pay as compared to other public employees- are we comparing their yearly salary- hourly salary or weekly?

class sizes are also not any smaller

some schools are better- but the funding problems are still the same south of us

Oregon lawmakers plan to give schools at least $300 million more over the next two years, but that won’t bring relief from big class sizes and program cuts.

Instead, districts will have to spend it on health and pension benefits that dwarf the national average, an analysis by The Oregonian shows.

For each teacher, secretary, principal, janitor and other worker, Oregon schools paid an average of $18,300 for health insurance and retirement pay in 2002-03. That was 55 percent more than schools across the nation.

If Oregon were to match the national rate, schools would save about $500 million next year, money they could use to help reduce class sizes that are among the nation’s largest.

“Taxpayers in Oregon are pumping money into the public education system that doesn’t benefit the learning environment in classrooms one bit,” says Jim Green, senior legislative advocate for the Oregon School Boards Association.

And, starting this month, the price gets higher.

As of July 1, school districts must pay 17 percent on top of salaries for state pension costs, up from 12 percent the past two years.

Our district spends over $11,000 per student-

A more accurate look at per-pupil education spending includes all sources of school funding, not just the general fund. Factoring in local property tax levies, federal grants, capital (construction) funds, transportation funds, and other public school expenditures, the states per-pupil spending has increased by 34.8% since 1994, from $7,000.99 to $9,438.14 in 2003. This is an inflation-adjusted increase of 16.5%.
In calculating a lower per-pupil spending rate based on inflation, the League of Education Voters (sponsor of I-884) uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is limited to the high-cost Seattle/Tacoma/Bremerton area. State budget writers base their calculations on a more standard inflation measure called the Implicit Price Deflator (IPD), which is also used by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

According to the states Office of Financial Management: The IPD is used for determining inflation for state budgeting purposes because it is considered more representative of the general mix of goods and services purchased by the state than other indicators available. The other primary inflation index, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), may not adequately allow for the effects of technology and quality changes.

While the states education spending is hitting record highs, school performance and student achievement are down. The problem must be addressed, but simply pouring more dollars into our public schools will not help.

Oh just raise taxes- that’ll help

State and local governments collectively are short $292 billion, making it a ticking time bomb for budgets, said Stateline.org, which tracks state government issues. During recent down times, states faced budget gaps of $235 billion and pensions were an all-too-convenient budget-balancer.

One national study put Washington in the Top 5 for expected retirements in the next decade.

A pension expert, called the state actuary, advises lawmakers and governors how much to contribute each biennium. More often than not, Olympia appropriates less than the recommended amount.

The unfunded liability is a moving target, expanding and contracting as Wall Street roars or whimpers. Right now, it’s at $4.9 billion, said Victor Moore, Gregoire’s budget director.

Over the past four years, as Washington struggled through a nasty recession, lawmakers in both parties skipped $350 million in recommended payments and slid $147 million in gain-sharing.

Pain-sharing

The debt includes $900 million in projected costs for gain-sharing. That’s the much-¬debated benefit added in the last decade that says when Wall Street performance is above 10 percent 8 percent a year is the rule of thumb the extra money is split between the system and current and future retirees.

When the gain-sharing benefit was adopted a few years back, advocates said it wouldn’t cost government anything. It hasn’t turned out that way.

The attorney general says gain-sharing isn’t a permanent contract right and that the Legislature can repeal it.

But that hasn’t happened. Prentice said it’s very hard for legislators, particularly Democrats, to cross the labor unions. It’s hard to even put it on the table for discussion, even though it’s clear that the pension liability will be in direct conflict with salary and benefits and appropriations for state services that unions strongly support, she said.

Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, the new chairman of the state pension policy board, said the key players acknowledge the need to rescind gain-sharing, but that some want to partially replace the benefit with a cheaper one, perhaps worth 50 cents on the dollar.

Gregoire has asked House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, to help forge a proposal that she can include in the new budget she unveils in December.

Far too many of the ideas are still too expensive for me, the governor said.

The look ahead

Gregoire and key legislators say the issue is finally centerstage.

I think the Legislature is committed to addressing it and to being a model employer, the governor said. We’re stepping up.

Her budget director, Victor Moore, said We’re back on track.

The Legislature agreed to set aside a big chunk of change, $350 million, toward next biennium’s pension obligation now estimated at $600 million. The state budget office this week forecast a deficit of over $700 million in the next two years, so the setaside will help lawmakers meet their oft-stated goal of keeping current.

OpiefromMayberry · November 6, 2006, 3:46pm

ephif,

“It’s just surrender.”

I disagree. It is more you have only so much time for this type of stuff. It backs to just being a teacher and working with the kids infront of you.

The chance you asking for comes at and while you may not like it the union level. That is where teachers can pool their resources and pay someone to use the time to lobby for education. Having read their stuff I KNOW it is not all pay related goals they aspire to. Actually alot of the thing you wish for, they wish for.

"Again, this is up to teachers to give a damn about how their roles & their profession have been eroded, & how it’s up to the proper social departments to perform their tasks at taxpayer expense. "

I think by and large they do care and give a damn. The points you argue about call for a union. OR call it a political lobby if union is unappealing. How else can they make their views known to the agents of change? Writing letters to the editor won’t get it done. They need their national to take on the sec of education on a national level. They need to question the agendas of those who establish education policy in this country. It isn’t all about wages, it’s about content of what and how things are to be taught. While I know you aren’t a fan and I don’t belong to one, the union gives them the most and best opportunity to effect change. We both care about classrooms, but you’ve got to admit how much money do have to run newspaper or tv ads to educate the public about the need for funding education?

marite · November 6, 2006, 5:59pm

Epiphany: One mantra on CC is “love the child you have, not the child you wished you had.” I think for teachers, the mantra is “deal with the children you have, not those you wished you had.”
Our teachers are actually well paid. But good pay does not make social problems go away, like the girl who was bullied because her parents divorced when her dad came out as gay; or the kid from Bangladesh who spoke little English when he first came and wrote poems–once he learned enough English–about feeling lonely; or the kid who bullied his way through middle school and high school and ended up shot to death at 19 only last year in some drug deal gone wrong.
In the first case, the teacher did call a mediator; but the problem first showed up in class and so she had to deal with it. And the mediator came and spent half a day trying to teach tolerance; that was half a day gone as far as learning was concerned. And this in a school that is considered excellent and safe (no student IDs, no metal detectors as in a neighboring district).
One way of relieving teachers of some of the burden of trying to keep up and excel in so many different fields is have specialists earlier. In terms of preparation, I’d bet it would make a huge difference for teachers–and it would show in their class performance.

Padad: I am well aware that what Liping Ma describes is not universally available in China. But this is the best practice that could address the problem of generalists being in charge of classes in k-8. When S1 was in k-8, the 7/8 math teacher had originally been a music teacher. Only when she retired did the school hire someone with a math background to be a homeroom teacher. The school could do so because he was only one of three homeroom teachers; the other two had strengths in the humanities/social studies. When S2 was in 6th grade, the math teacher was actually someone with a degree in English. S2 knew a whole lot more math than she did (but she was terrific at humanities and social studies). I contrast this with my own schooling where we had specialists in every single field beginning in 6th grade.

epiphany · November 6, 2006, 8:20pm

"I think for teachers, the mantra is ‘deal with the children you have, not those you wished you had.’ "

Exactly why do you think that this is not already my orientation? Why do you think (I wonder) that you need to lecture to teachers who have committed morally & practically to this profession long before you had children? I am the last person that needs a moralistic lecture from anyone, regarding the realities of education. My posts are abundant with understanding of what I have in front of me. But I see that all the replies have definitely not addressed the issues I raised, merely come back with the same mantra over & over: teachers have no choice in the matter. Yes they do, if the STRUCTURE changes. No they don’t, if they’re content to live with the current structure. This is not about changing social realities, wishing life were different. It’s about changing who & how those realities are dealt with – as well as who pays for those, how the income is generated to pay for that, who sets the standards, sets the pay, how excellence is attracted, maintained, & rewarded.

Utilizing social services as an adjunct to education (rather than inappropriately assigning such tasks --unpaid, I might add-- to classroom teachers) is one way of respecting the daily realities of the children in the classroom. It’s called delegation & specialization. It doesn’t come for free, but selected public districts who have a demonstrated need for that, determined by the population being served, can justify such services, & can justify them on the school grounds themselves. It’s a heck of a lot better than demanding that teachers do such jobs, so that neither the teaching nor the social services are done adequately. That’s not love & acceptance to me: it’s unprofessionalism & an acceptance of second-class efforts.

To acknowledge that the public school classroom of today is very different than the classroom of yesterday is also to acknowledge that additional services are sometimes required if mainstreaming is going to continue to be the order of the day. It is foolish, unrealistic, & dishonest for teachers to make-believe that many of the conditions in today’s publics can be adequately addressed by people who have been trained to teach, not trained to do various other things which require professional intervention, as well as certain kinds of access. There are countries who offer to their citizens, outside of the school walls, massive social services support. We have such needs, but we are not supplying the services for those needs, which is directly affecting the educational product. That is not love, not acceptance. It’s looking the other way. It’s exploitative of those being asked to do a half-assed job at that.

marite · November 6, 2006, 8:31pm

Epiphany:

In real life, I have been supportive of teachers. On this board, I have refused to bash teachers. But you have characterized my real life support of teachers as interference and take exception to what I suggest needs to and can be done in the here and now. This time, I give up participating in this conversation for good.

Boston Globe: A higher bar for future teachers

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