Some of you may remember Tom Moore, the teacher in the Bronx who wrote a series of dispatches for Slate in 2002. Tom has a blog. He hasn't been keeping up with it as much as one might like, but the archives are full of great anecdotes about teaching, and also persuasivey argued essays on teaching policy. All that, and cool pictures, too!
In posts here and here, Tom explains why the problem isn't about old teachers, and it isn't really about new teachers. New York has spent a ton of money on programs to get people to teach. The problem? Holding on to people. Because while the city will hire you without a teaching degree, they won't actually give you time off to complete your education. And without additional support, teachers either leave or get fired.
I'm not sure how Tom feels about teacher's unions. My sense is he doesn't feel they represent his needs. But I thought of Tom's writing while listening to Kaus on bloggingheads. Kaus briefly pulls out an old carnard -- the Democrats are in bed with unions. With American industry tanking, what unions is is talking about? Not UAW. Not the Teamsters. The teachers.
Yes, folks, Johnny can't read because the teachers' unions back seniority and refuse to endorse any kind of school choice ("even" Mickey exclaims, "charter schools!"). Nevermind that in Jersey, charter schools as often as not benefit wealthy kids whose parents know enough to send their kids there. In fact, the problem with most failing schools isn't seniority, it is recruitment and retention. The media stereotype of the jaded 30 year veteran just doesn't address the reality of the situation.
And that's generally the problem with public policy. Decision-making by anecdote, where the anecdotes are based more on literary convention than on on-the-ground realities. My kid is doing well in private school -- send everybody to private school! High standards are good! All of which may or may not be true. But to have a sense, we need to rely on more than our vague memories of our favorite teacher or where our own kids happened to succeed. All that might not be so helpful in the Bronx...
Thursday, November 09, 2006
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5 comments:
Ona a tangential note, I have to say that Kaus and Wright really seem to be hitting their stride in making their diavlogs entertaining.
Wright seems to have especially improved his game. He straddles the line between self-deprecation and self-pity to entertaining effect.
The Dems' vistory may buoy him, though, which may make the show less entertaining.
Well, I think the real problem is disengaged parents who view school as a babysitting program, and that requires a cultural change rather than any policy change.
We won't know if certain things work (e.g. charter schools) unless they're tried, and the current system ain't working. So, when the teachers union obstructs some kind of reform because it's not guaranteed to solve the problem, it's not good. When the only possible harm of certain experiments is loss of clout to the unions if they work, that's not a good enough reason to oppose them.
why did i take my english B.A. and become a software developer instead of an english teacher? no, it's not because i cannot spell, ruthlessly fragment sentences and have an aversion to proper capitialization. money. don't get paid enough to put up with the parents. kids, i could probably deal with them. but the parents, well...it was bad when i first noticed (in high school) and it's just gotten worse. i don't know how my dad puts up with it (being a teacher, that is).
without a true passion for teaching (another thing i lack), i think it's a job that chews you up and spits you back out, mangled, burnt out and ready to do anything else for a paycheck. hell, even with a passion for it, that can happen.
on the plus side, you do get the summer off...
Usually, I have a number of thoughts on this ready to go (starting with the obvious one that, duh, teachers pay ain't enough to hold onto talent), but the angle I'm finding interesting right now is that education--second (maybe) to road plowing and the local cops--is the most obvious tax-fruit that anyone ever sees. That is, more than for most other things, the causal relationship in our local civic minds between our property taxes and the quality of our youth is clear-cut.
Problems abound, of course:
- not everybody has kids what pays the taxes
- not everybody values knowledge all that much
- a lot of people find the youth to be wanting
The notion that we pay for the quality of kids removes individuals in the community from responsibility, I think. Maybe it was bound to happen as communities got too big, or as populations became too mobile, or as jobs became too scattered. (Do you know your neighbors very well?) People demand "standards" in the false hope that it'll breed an acceptable character in the children, or at least keep the little bastards out of our hair.
It doesn't help that every politician of the last 50 years has vowed to improve educational standards, and without it costin' nothin. Meanhwhile, we're forever disappointed that the little hoodlums keep turning out just like us. Why the hell should we pay for that?
K
K,
Are you saying that people have an idea that by paying property taxes, they have discharged their duty to help the youth, and are thus less engaged in helping them?
Kind of like the argument that a big welfare state drags down charitable giving -- "I gave at the office."
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