Something We Must Avoid
By Mitch Berg
I was listening to the audio of Keri Miller’s MPR “Town Hall” meeting, Is High School Obsolete, yesterday. It’s worth a listen (although I have yet to find the audio online – I’ll let you know).
But toward the end, there was one bit that I thought needed a response.
One of the panelists, asked what we should do about the problems faced by public high schools, says “we should treat it as a national scandal”.
Oh, good Lord. No. Don’t.
The problems in education have been treated as a “national scandal” twice in my adult lifetime. The first was in the mid-late eighties, when the “teacher shortage” was the big issue. Recruiting teachers was made a national priority; thousands of college grads went into the field; pay and benefits increased (conservative cant aside, teaching doesn’t pay spectacularly well everywhere in this country, although being in administration can be a nice payday). Then, between burnout (the teacher’s unions have turned education into a factory job in all too many ways) and a demographic drop bringing layoffs in many school districts, many of them left the field.
And again, early in the Bush Administration, dropping test scores and zooming expenditures left us with “No Child Left Behind”. Enough said.
Calling something a “national scandal” causes politicians to pose for cameras and propose flurries of legislation to make it look like they’ve done something about the issue. Is the “something” useful – indeed, is it better than doing nothing at all? In many cases, no.
But calling difficulties a “national scandal” is, in any case, not only exactly the wrong approach, but indeed due to the law of unintended consequences will no doubt make things much worse; today, it’d most likely cause politicians on both sides (because Education is the same third rail for the right that gun control is for the left) to pour a lot of extra money into “saving” the current, in-my-opinion unsaveable system.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:40 am
I recall some fuss about what was seen as an impending teacher shortage, but the national effort to “do something about our schools” that I remember was launched with the 1983 report, “A Nation At Risk.”
May 1st, 2007 at 11:29 am
Mitch gets an A on this one: Mainly for restraint, as the points are obvious. The more politicians can get mileage out of dramatizing some exaggeration, especially involving “the kids”, the more they’ll screw it up for their own benefit.
Let the professionals and the parents with enough character to get involved in the district figure it out. Look at the sustained success the states of Maine, Massachussetts, North Daota Minnesota, and Virginia have had – absent any federal program ideas (unless they exported them). The “decline” of education in America is exaggerated and driven by morality judgements – and in the blogoshpere largely devoid of a complete analysis (in the shreiking sector – completely devoid).
May 1st, 2007 at 12:12 pm
My brother went to school for secondary education-History in the 1980’s. Couldn’t get a job after trying for 5 or so years. Some issues he had to deal with:
-Must small schools have little need for history/political science teachers. Where I am from, they only had one history teacher in the high school. He was there for 30 years. That means that district only needed to hire one person every 30 years to teach history.
-Most smaller to medium sized schools required their new teachers to coach sports. My brother cannot coach sports (debate and academic groups advisors weren’t part of the deal)
-He disagreed with me on this, but he put down his College Republican acitivities on his resume. I feel he may have been discriminated against due to his political orientation.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Whether or not teachers get paid “well” is a relative thing. I knew a brilliant, caring, wonderful 2nd grade teacher in a St. Paul private school who got paid about what my secretary does. I knew a long-serving 10th grade Social Studies teacher in a small town 75 miles West of the Cities (with a vigorous MEA chapter), who brought home as much as the local lawyer. Plus had every summer off to work on Master’s credits to change lanes for still higher pay.
The 2nd grade teacher moved to California to be with her boyfriend and landed a job teaching at a private school in San Clemente. And SHE now makes more than that local lawyer.
So are teachers underpaid? Well, that depends . . . .
May 1st, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Leaving it to the parents to work with their school district is the best idea. Some districts are (thankfully) not as broken as others. Case in point….
I borrowed the Bergian method of propoganda acquisition…..bribery. To date, I have yet to pay out one red cent and it has not been for the Junior Logician’s lack of effort (he is at an age where money REALLY talks). I was asking him last night (as we were getting ready to view “24”) if there was any talk about a screening of “An Inconvenient Truth” and he laughed and said “sorry mom – no fun for you!”. Long story short our school district IS teaching the basics and leaving the politics out (so far).
LL
May 1st, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Chuck: What happened to your brother is just about the same thing that happened to me in the early 90’s. Graduated with a secondary ed-social studies (history) degree and….nothing. Biggest problem was the glut of new teachers out there. One person I know who was doing the interviews said they would only look at the first 50 or so applications in a stack and dump the rest. For one position he said there was over 1000 applications and this was for a high school in podunk Minnesota. I probably could’ve gotten a job in inner city New York, LA, etc but I wasn’t that brave! Changed careers and am happy with the job I have now. My dad, retired teacher with almost 40 years in service, said he would never consider teaching today with the kind of kids, administration, etc that he would have to deal with now.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Channeling angryclown, somewhere in flyover country:
Mitch is getting the vapors over a “national scandal” in edeucation. We have so many percolating at present, what’s one more? We need a War on Education! Let’s transfer General Patreus to the Department of Education.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Sorry about interjecting this, but Lady Logician…have you thought that “24” has been BAD lately?! It started out the season so promising and now….stupid Audrey.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Oh my goodness yes Colleen. The only thing that has saved the season is reading Dave Barry’s sarcastic remarks as the show goes along. That and listening to the dialog between the Logical Husband and the Junior Logician. When the dialog gets really bad, they start making up new as it goes along. They keep me laughing hysterically.
LL