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"...the teacher pay penalty is one more symptom of two issues that are fundamental to so many of our education debates-- the desire to avoid paying one cent more than we absolutely have to for public school funding, and the desire not to pay taxes to educate Those Peoples' Children. Both of those desires are getting full expression in the privatization movement." -- Peter Greene in Does Teacher Pay Matter?
TEACHER PAY
Does Teacher Pay Matter?
It does. But teacher pay alone is not enough.
From Curmudgucation
...the teacher pay penalty-- the gap between teacher pay and pay for similarly-educated professionals-- has been growing over the last three decades to reach an all-time high. The gappage appears to have accelerated in the mid-90s.
Some, like the folks at Reason magazine...argue that it's not so bad because blah blah blah shuffling numbers around. But considering averages and other benefits does not improve the picture.
Fernandez also notes the other perennial argument against paying teachers well-- teachers don't care about money and they aren't motivated by it and boy do my old fart hackles raise at every similar argument posted by someone who also posts that damned stupid "Teachers do it for the outcome, not the income" meme.
Teaching is not supposed to be some act of self-sacrifice, immolating yourself so that you can illuminate the lives of students. For one thing, it's not sustainable. It's not even functional, because (as they don't tell you in teacher school), you can give every last atom of yourself and it won't be enough. You will burn out early, and--bitterest of ironies--you won't even be very good at it, because what can a person who has no life of their own teach students about life?
Don't get me wrong-- teaching is absolutely a noble and supremely worthwhile profession of service. But that doesn't mean teachers shouldn't be paid well.
DON'T ELIMINATE THE USDOE
Eliminating the Education Dept. Would Destroy Public Schools
Carol Corbett Burris is the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education.
From Carol Burris in The Daily Courier (Connellsville, PA)
Since President Jimmy Carter created the modern Department of Education in 1979, the department has faced continuous calls for its abolition. This threat has persisted through Republican administrations, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.
Never following through on their campaign promises to abolish it, some presidents have often used the department to push agendas hostile to public schools. Reagan’s department brought exaggerated claims of doom and gloom in A Nation at Risk, denigrating our public schools with a still-existing narrative. And Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, did little to hide her disdain for public schools, calling for abolishing the department she ran.
However, no matter how often presidents promise to ax it, ending the department would require an act of Congress. While there is little reason to believe that Congress would agree, given the volatility of government, one can never be sure. At the least, the promise to abolish the department is a rallying cry and a dominant feature of the right-wing agenda to end what it calls “government schools.”
That right-wing agenda, reflected in Project 2025 and to a more limited extent in the Republican platform, is to eliminate democratically governed public schools. It emanates from the vision of Milton Friedman, who believed that public school systems should be replaced by a patchwork of private, home school, religious and semi-public schools like charter schools. Parents would receive funds in a “savings account” to shop among them. Proposers of this voucher-like funding scheme know that public school systems could not survive without reliable systemic funding streams. The remnant of public schools would serve the children no private or charter school wants.
Why have vouchers "failed to improve test scores or educational outcomes?" Because the most pressing problem in the United States when it comes to education is child poverty.
“…we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.” – Martin Luther King Jr., The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Presidential Address, 8/16/1967
Public School Successes
From Sheila Kennedy
...Some twenty or so years ago, privatization enthusiasts had a standard answer for every perceived government malfunction: let the private sector do it! This approach had multiple, significant drawbacks, and as those drawbacks became too obvious and costly to ignore, the early enthusiasm faded–except in education, where the “market can solve all problems” ideologues were joined by rightwing activists pursuing a vendetta against teachers’ unions, and by religious folks who chafed at separation of church and state and wanted a First Amendment “work-around.”
“How do you improve the performance of the nation’s public schools?” was–and remains– a fair question. Urban school districts, in particular, face multiple challenges, and when the question of how to meet those challenges became an everyday topic following publication of A Nation at Risk, political figures offered two wildly competing suggestions: “the market can solve everything” ideologues insisted that competition from private schools would incentivize public school improvement; supporters of public education lobbied for additional resources, to be deployed in line with reforms suggested by new academic research.
As we know, vouchers won the political debate. It was a disarmingly simple fix, championed by people who not-so-coincidentally stood to gain from it. Unfortunately, however, despite the promises, vouchers have failed to improve test scores or educational outcomes...
The fight over vouchers is an existential battle for America’s public schools
From Linda Blackford in The Charlotte Observer
Advocates of “school choice,” or using public funds to pay for private school, often call it the civil rights issue of our time.
That’s a special kind of gaslighting, not only because numerous studies have shown how little academic progress students make with school vouchers, but also because the school choice movement was actually born out of the horror that parents and politicians had toward the 1954 Brown v. Board decision that would end legal segregation in schools.
That resistance was bolstered by Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s book “The Role of Government in Education,” which objected to any government oversight of any kind, and first suggested some kind of tax code changes to subsidize private education.
“It was this idea — what became school vouchers — that allowed segregationists to frame a racist response to the Court’s desegregation orders as an issue of markets and what we would call today parental choice,” writes Josh Cowen in his timely new book, “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.”
The book is a fascinating history of how the school choice movement began in segregation, then caught steam as a way to help poor and minority students in failing systems.
WHAT DO PARENTS KNOW?
What Do Parents Know About Public Education?
The most important facet of education is the relationship between the student and the teacher. The second most important is the relationship between the teacher and the student's parents/guardians. Communication is important.
From Nancy Flanagan in Teacher in a Strange Land
Kappan recently took a look at American adults’ knowledge of public schools:
Our findings shed light on a key question: What do adults know about U.S. education? Specifically, what do they know about what is taught, who makes decisions, the role of parents, and the belief systems driving education policy? Our results have important implications for how we might support children and improve the education system.
No kidding, Sherlock.
The survey results would come as no surprise to veteran public school educators: Half of adults don’t know what is/is not taught in their local school. Most are unsure about who’s making curricular decisions. Most are unclear on the impact of privatization on their public schools. Some of the surveyed issues (Critical Race Theory and learning loss) revealed a complete lack of understanding.
Least surprising finding: Adults’ perceptions of what’s happening in public schools mainly come from their own personal experiences (and this includes people with no K-12 children in the home). The percentage of people who read books or articles, watch cable news or videos, or listen to podcasts about education is small. People who get their education news from newspapers? Fifteen percent. Second highest source of ed news? Social media.
That’s a lot of guesswork, memes and faulty memories.
FORT WAYNE AND INDIANA
The challenge of chronic absenteeism
From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
Indiana’s battle against chronic absenteeism mirrors a broader national trend that has proven difficult to reverse in the post-pandemic era. Chronic absenteeism is the rate of students absent from school for any reason for at least 10% of the school year.
While the Indiana Department of Education noted earlier this month that the state made progress last school year, with the absenteeism rate falling to 17.8%, the improvement still leaves more than 1 in 6 students habitually missing school.
Allen County’s chronic absentee rates are mixed. Southwest Allen County Schools, for example, posted an impressive absenteeism rate of less than 1%, the lowest the district has seen in more than a decade. By contrast, Fort Wayne Community Schools and East Allen County Schools struggled with rates higher than 20%. However, FWCS did see modest improvement.
Core change: With deadline looming, state must move rapidly on new diploma requirements
By Indiana State Representatives Phil GiaQuinta and Kyle Miller in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**
Indiana is in the middle of redesigning its high school diploma requirements. Given the importance of getting this right, the Indiana State Board of Education and Department of Education are required to engage in a public comment period to hear from Hoosiers about their feedback on the proposal.
When the first draft came out earlier this year, there was widespread outcry from parents, educators and our state universities about how the proposal focused too much on nebulous work-based learning and external internship requirements and would not adequately prepare students to meet admissions requirements to Purdue, Indiana University and other in-state institutions.
Thankfully, the department of education and board of education heard our concerns, and the second draft, which has been unveiled but not yet fleshed out in the form of a draft agency “rule,” is a marked improvement. However, we believe it can improve more.
That’s why we hosted a town hall on the redesign this week and invited local education leaders to join us to discuss the plan’s promises, pitfalls and remaining questions.
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JOIN US
An Evening with Jennifer McCormick
NEIFPE is proud to co-sponsor this event featuring Jennifer McCormick, candidate for Governor of Indiana. We hope you can attend.
Click HERE to register for the September 25th event:
**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]
†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.
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