Allen Hemphill: State needs to address failing education system
By Allen Hemphill
This seems like a good time to reform what is so obviously a broken and unsustainable system. California once stood at the forefront of change in America, but in education it is a backwater to the changes going on around the nation.
Allen Hemphill
It’s all in the numbers: 40 percent of the total California budget must be spent on schools, and 80 percent of that number on salaries. (Those are minimums.)
There are 330,000 active teachers in California, K-12, and their average salary is $67,000.
(The total U.S. teacher corps is 3.2 million which is more than twice the total size of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard and Air Force. Combined!)
Teaching is a profession that has not been brought into the 21st century. It uses the same teaching methods used 3,000 years ago in Greece — a teacher standing in front of a limited number of students.
The purpose of every labor union since the days of Henry Ludd is to keep technology from replacing labor, and to fight efficiency. Few professions have been so successful as has the teaching profession. Using the phrase, “It’s for the children,” they have successfully tugged at heart strings even when brain cells said otherwise. We still use the same “technology” as did the teachers of ancient Greece — one teacher standing in front of a few students.
We simply have too many teachers — at least too many to pay and provide benefits at the current level — and yet great individual teachers may well deserve more pay. There is no current quality control over teachers — we just do not know who is good and who is bad, and the unions try to keep us from knowing because they want every union dues dollar possible.
In California, we have a “Top Five” paid teaching corps, and a “Bottom Five” student achieving corps, so whatever we are paying, it is not getting the results we are paying for. We pay well above a “Bottom Five” position.
From a strict economic standpoint, it is the 299,000 California teachers times $67,000 (benefits make this nearly $100,000) that is our budget buster. That is an unsustainable number.
Some way we must make our schools more efficient. We can do that by using technology but it will be over the objections of the most powerful political force in California politics, the teacher unions.
Here is a recent example of the political power of teacher unions (Sacramento Bee):
“Legislation to expedite the process of firing teachers for sex, violence or drug offenses involving children was killed Wednesday by an Assembly committee after sparking strong opposition from the state’s largest teachers union. Senate Bill 1530, by Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles, was rejected by the Assembly Education Committee.”
This legislative bill was precipitated by the L.A. teacher who fed his students cookies tainted by his DNA. If in the wake of that singular event, one cannot get a bill through to expedite firing sex-involved teachers fired, imagine the hope of laying off teachers in substantial numbers.
Reach Hemphill at ahemphill@cox.net.
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Mr. Hemphill,
In 2011 the average state teacher salary is actually a little bit higher at $67,871. Right here in Poway it is even higher at $69,945 down 0.5% from 2010-11 (see http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/26/995141/see-how-w.... Also, there were 3% fewer teachers at the end of 2011. Per recent contract agreements, funds have been saved by increasing class sizes, shortening the school year, and pay freezes.
The historical purpose of a labor union is to protect its workers from unsafe working conditions, excessive work hours, and collective bargaining with politically elected officials (or their appointees). But perhaps you can blame your overpaid and underworked teacher for not informing you. Even better, you can go on the internet and do the research yourself and reduce the teaching force to a handful of IT folks who keep the computers running and networks working. Carrying this line of thinking out to a logical conclusion, and given that PUSD typically assumes that all students have 24/7 access to the internet, we don’t even need these IT people and could potentially outsource our education to another country like many successful US businesses do.
If your premise is to point to innovative solutions in education then please be specific and point to these innovations (which you fail to do). Putting blame for your ill-defined problem on teachers and their legal representation is misguided journalism. If you were a real journalist you would be looking at the real problems in education. Here are a couple examples if you need help:
•PUSD receiving state funds to implement outmoded curricula at the expense of PUSD students receiving an adequate education.
•The recent school bond fiasco and the sweetheart deals with Echo Pacific who has provided shoddy construction. Classrooms have mold, stucco is failing off exteriors, and PUSD thinks this will last for 40 years?
Of course this would require real investigation. Finally, selecting anecdotal evidence to reinforce your fear mongering is cheap journalism. Take a look at the OpEd piece written by Kim Brenneman, she provided a more informed perspective for free. Follow my thinking to its logical conclusion. You can use your spare time to vote for more accountable public officials.
First, I am an opinion writer, NOT a journalist –please check any source of your choosing for the difference.
Second, and to make responses shorter, please address my contention that California teachers are among the top five in pay, while their students rank among the bottom five states in academic standing. (See, "The National Report Card" of the US Department of Education)
Consequently, regardless of what we pay teachers ($67,000, $67,871 or $69, 945) we are NOT getting our money's worth.
And finally, I have made my recommendations on school reform in general, and the use of technology specifically in previous columns over the past 30 years of columns, but more importantly just this year in this newspaper. I will be happy to provide you with some of them by e-mail, but a 500 word column limit once or twice a month precludes doing so in this venue.
Mr. Hemphill,
Thank you for clarifying an opinion piece vice journalistic reporting. I stand corrected. With respect to why we are not “getting our money’s worth” I might be inclined to a converse opinion given the following:
•Based on 2010 NEA data, CA had the highest number of students enrolled per teacher in public K-12 schools. This ratio is probably exacerbated by the reduction in budgets and resulting teacher layoffs and increased class sizes. While the benefits obtained for reducing class size are mixed (see http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/05/... one conclusion from the Brookings study is that “academic effects seem to be largest when introduced in the earliest grades, and for students from less advantaged family backgrounds.” Having a lower class size at higher grade levels does not guarantee a better testing outcome, but does trend that way as shown by http://flowingdata.com/2009/11/10/do-we-need-more...
•CA is 29th in revenue per student, but drops to 38th in revenue per student in average daily attendance. This means CA has below national median resourcing and students are not going to class. Kind of hard to blame teachers if students are not showing up.
•CA is 33rd in SAT scores. Apparently about where it belongs based on spending per pupil. However, we should not forget that the state of CA has large diversity. This means more cultures and languages to deal with on a daily basis. Many of whom don’t speak English and require additional resources within the educational system.
•The average salary of CA public school teachers ranks as 4th nationwide. CA is 12th in per capita personal income so, while it’s a high cost of living state, teachers are better paid than the average citizen. This does not mean that they are better paid than the average professional who also has 4+ years of college education. (In fact, teachers cannot move from across districts and receive compensation based on their level of experience like many professionals. Something that their Unions should address if they weren’t so tight w/ Sacramento and local district officials. But I digress.)
•Regardless of teacher salary, pupil performance is based on a multitude of factors- the student, the parents, and the administration. When these fail (as they often do) the teacher is your first and last line of defense to take corrective action and put the student on a course to success. Perhaps the question is not just teacher salaries as you imply, but rather all expenses (as referenced in my prior comment) and how they are (mis)allocated.
Please let me summarize, CA has the most crowded classrooms, below median spending per pupil, large diversity, and still manages to graduate more students than our state-funded universities can accept. Please tell me what is wrong again? I am very interested in hearing about solutions to post secondary education’s diminishing value proposition and the over $1 Trillion in student debt bubble that our political leaders are ignoring at the behest of the financial lobby.
I have also previously discussed the student debt crises in previous columns. Briefly, getting a degree in a poorly paid subject with a high college debt load is a choice. Without looking back at the numbers, a lifetime earning average of psychologists at under $40,000 a year does not suggest getting or repaying large student loans, but a lifetime earning average of Petroleum Engineers at >$120,000 does! Students who take large loans for degrees in Black/Latino/Women Studies, where the greatest employment is teaching Black/Latino/Women Studies are not rational.
As to your first parts — I see comments of "Fourth in pay;" 29th in/revenue per student; 33 in SAT scores; 12th in per capita income;…(did I miss a number?) — every number is better than the 47th our students stand in academics! I'll settle (temporarily) for 33rd in academics if that would please you, or certainly 29th, or 12th or fourth — each of which would match some metric you have enunciated — but an average of 47th! (And an actual 47th in Science, ahead of only ONE STATE — Mississippi!).
In previous columns I have discussed my opinion of the reason — teacher preparation. There are hundreds of current teachers who were university students of mine in required courses, and their school of education invariably stood at the bottom of my classes. I took (free) courses for a second Masters (in Education) and quit half way through because of the lack of academic rigor — a Masters in Education was free, and not worth the money!
I commend a 1998 PBS telecast on incoming Massachusetts teachers who were proficiency tested in literacy at the 9th grade — and 59% FAILED.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec...
One brief quote:
"MEGHN BOND, Prospective Teacher: I can't speak for everyone but I'm going for elementary. My goal is to teach the third grade. And they're just starting cursive, and they're just starting to form their paragraphs, and I can do that. But that's not what they're scoring us on here. They're scoring us on as far as high school. And I'm not teaching high school.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: That kind of comment threw Massachusetts speaker of the house Thomas Finneran into a rage; he publicly called people like Bond "idiots."'
The president of Boston University wrote a public apology and Massachusetts reformed their teaching curriculum with added rigor.
Massachusetts students now regularly score in the top three states in the nation. We average 47th.
QED