A Modest Proposal to Improve Public Education

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

For years, academic excellence in American public schools has been progressively subordinated to artificial notions of fairness, diversity and social justice – and to union interests.

Governmental interference and ineptitude and union domination are central to the decline of public education. Well-meaning politicians blundered in creating and expanding social programs that effectively weakened family units, the primary stakeholders in good educational systems. And politicians have imposed broad education policies that benefit the unions which finance political campaigns. Little in public education has improved since teachers’ unions took it over, while academic achievement has suffered.

Unions’ primary interests are those of union management and dues-payers. Though many dedicated teachers may not, self-interested union bosses prize teacher tenure, compensation, benefits and, especially, teacher head count above the kids who they regard as useful leverage in contract negotiations.

Unions have a stranglehold on education policy in Pennsylvania, allowing poor schools and incompetent dues-payers to avoid objective scrutiny. Their only strategy for improving failing systems is more money.

Harrisburg and Philadelphia prove that cash doesn’t produce quality education. By anyone’s standards, these systems fail repetitively while spending far more per student annually than do more successful districts.

The unions’ most misleading argument for pay increases is average teacher pay relative to other professional employment categories.

There’s substantial turnover in teaching, so there are always significant numbers of teachers at the bottom of the pay scale. The statistic also ignores teachers promoted into higher-paid administrative positions and never factors in teachers’ time off, paid sabbaticals or generous, guaranteed benefit and pension packages.

In 2011, the median Pennsylvania household income was about $50,000. A Pennsylvania teacher with a taxpayer-funded master’s degree and fifteen years of classroom time makes an average of $70,000 per year (OpenPAgov.org) for 180 classroom days, plus a few in-service days. Some districts pay six figures.
That’s fifteen work-weeks of vacation, not counting paid personal-day allowances. Teachers can collect immediate pension and lifetime health care benefits after only thirty years, a time when other professionals are just approaching their peak earning years.

Collective bargaining — basing pay on degree level and seniority — is an inequitable way to determine teacher compensation. As in any business, performance should determine pay, especially in failing schools which can least tolerate incompetence.

Good teachers don’t fear objective measurement. Standards and accountability for teacher and student performance are reasonable requirements for improving schools, but standards should be set locally where their relevance and integrity can be best evaluated and measured. Central governments can spend money and make rules, but do little to change what happens in the classroom.
The authority of teachers and principals to maintain discipline must be strengthened so teachers can concentrate on teaching instead of just struggling to maintain order.

High-quality, non-ideological, content-based curricula presented by subject-qualified professionals are essential to good education. Since not all schools have such curricula, teachers or administrators, and because the skills and needs of students differ, school choice is important, too.

Americans have many choices in the lives we live, the products we buy and the services we select. The need to survive in free markets raises the quality of other service-provision businesses. Why not choices in K-12 education, too?
Choices for students stuck in lousy schools, including vouchers, charter schools and tuition tax credits, can break the cycle of school failure. There are moral and civil-rights justifications for school choice. Successful experimental programs should be implemented more broadly, especially in the worst districts. In a free market, superior public schools can attract students from failing neighboring districts, forcing the latter to improve.

To choice, add results-based merit-pay plans for teachers, an end to automatic tenure, and accountability standards for evaluating school administrators. Incentives, positive and negative, work.

If federal and state governments granted 1950s-era autonomy to school boards, administrations and faculties, removed dubious mandates, and if unnecessary administrative overhead were eliminated, Pennsylvania’s kids, parents, taxpayers – and teachers – would all benefit.

For years, politicians who take their campaign cash have voted with teachers’ unions to keep innocent kids in failing schools. In doing so, politicians have denied millions of children they will never meet a chance to get a decent start in life and condemned many to a lifetime of failure.

Jerry Shenk is a Patriot-News/PennLive community columnist
http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/02/op-ed_a_modest_proposal_to_improve_public_education.html#incart_river