Who watches the teachers?
It goes without saying that the education of our young people is one of our country’s top priorities. Taxpayers dole out huge sums of money–on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year–to ensure that the children of America receive the highest quality education possible. Therefore, it stands to reason that we want to spend our education money in the most effective way possible.
Duh.
Kevin Drum has a post today that looks at the idea of merit pay for teachers. His take: Good idea, but who’s going to evaluate the teachers? The principal is the only real manager, and there’s no way that he can accurately evaluate each teacher. He seem to recommend that public schools should hire additional management to observe, evaluate, and manage the teachers. His final paragraph:
So there’s the paradox: I don’t think teachers are somehow immune from needing supervision, any more than any other white collar worker. But there’s precious little of it available, and it would cost a fortune to provide it. Private sector firms seem to think that reasonable levels of management make them better companies, but public schools don’t. Why?
It’s an excellent question. On the other hand, oftentimes I hear that the money that’s supposed to be going to education is often eaten up in “administrative costs,” which is why teachers have such low salaries compared to the rest of the marketplace despite the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend each year. Unfortunately I don’t know where to find the statistics, and even then there’s the question of what exactly adminstrative expenses entail.
In any case, while hiring enough managers to properly run a school is a good idea, it’s going to be hard to sell that idea to legislators and voters–so I think additional funding to hire managers is out. And I imagine the teachers’ unions would be firmly against hiring additional management at the cost of funds that could be used to pay teachers higher salaries and at the cost of some of the teachers’ freedom in the classroom.
I think that the way to fund the idea is to find out what the “administrative expenses” are and to reduce them. Indeed, depending on what they are, better, closer management might actually *reduce* those costs, and the management will pay for itself.
In any case, adding a thin layer of management to schools might be worth a try. It certainly can’t hurt anything, after all.
(Of course, this all assumes that the government should be providing education in the first place. I think that the private sector could do a better job; indeed, the small Christian school that I went to costs significantly less per pupil than the public schools do, and turns out significantly better students on average than the local public schools.)
January 8th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
To paraphrase (and clean-up) P.J. O’Roarke - “Anyone who wonders what’s wrong with education in America never dated an education major when they were in college.”
There just aren’t that many good teachers. Some are consumed with theory, and don’t know anything about the subject they’re teaching. Its been widely shown that American educators are weak on subject content. Teachers tend to be about the process - not the product. Its all about the process of learning for them and they’re not that interested in whether students actually learn anything.
Friday’s Wall Street Journal had an excellent article about wacky new theories in teaching mathmatics. The WSJ made the point that drug companies would never be allowed to experiment on consumers the way the teaching industry experiments on students - with entire generations messed up as a result.
Many teachers went into teaching for 3 reasons: June, July and August. Some are control freaks who care more about breaking the will of their students than teaching them anything.
I’m not sure what more managers will accomplish, except to update the old adage to “those who can’t teach manage.”
With a few exceptions, my memories of teachers are of petty, stupid, and small minded people.
Teaching has to become a better profession including a job track, higher pay, more rigorous requirements, and the end to teachers unions.
January 9th, 2005 at 12:48 am
See, I don’t understand why more rigorous requirements would be helpful. I think our teachers might be over-qualified. Why is a four year degree–and then some–needed to teach little elementary children basic math, writing, and reading skills? Most people look at the average teacher’s salary, then at the costs involved in getting a four year degree, and choose something more profitable.
Now, the principle behind the managers was to provide effective evaluation of the teachers–basically, did they teach well?–so that you could adopt a merit pay system, so that better teachers would get paid more. That way the lazy and overbearing teachers you mentioned above would be paid comparatively less than the teachers who churn out the best and brightest by the classful.
January 10th, 2005 at 11:03 pm
I agree that many would-be teachers go into other professions because the pay is less in teaching. I’ve had at least a dozen friends who have gone into teaching because they were idealistic. They wanted to make a big inpact on kids. Without one exception, they have all left the teaching field with bitterness. Its a hard job and not for those who have romanticised working with kids.
I kind of shudder at how I abandoned two great teachers who had gone way out of their way to help me when I was in high school. When I went off to college, I never looked back, and it must have hurt them to see me go. But, I’m sure they experienced that feeling many times over.
I disagree with you about the skill level needed to teach even elementary school. While the required knowledge is more general than high school, elementary school teachers need to have a solid foundation in mathematics, science, english and social studies. You can only teach what you know, and your knowledge level has to be beyond what you’re teaching in order to respond to all levels of student. If you have a limited knowledge of math, for instance, how many different ways are you going to be able to come up with to explain, say, fractions for both slow students who may have trouble keeping up, and advanced students who are eager to move to the next level?
As a (former) musician, I’ve observed that while some great pianists have been lousy teachers, I doubt that a lousy pianist has ever been a great teacher. IMHO, of course.
Or put it this way, if you’re taking skydiving lessons, what kind of teacher would you look for?
My point is that the teaching profession puts an overemphasis on the theory and process of learning, and underemphasises the knowlegdge required of the teacher. This is true especially at the junior and high school level.
I’ve also been reading about how “No Child Left Behind” has hurt the best and brightest students at the expense of the slower ones. Schools are putting all of the resources at helping slower students pass the required tesets - the advanced students will pass anyway and thus are of less interest to the school.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Teaching English To Non-English Speakers…
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