How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
...because the good teachers don't have seniority, see? And that's the important thing. To the teachers' unions, anyway. From today's LATimes:
John H. Liechty Middle School opened in 2007 in Los Angeles' impoverished Westlake neighborhood with a seasoned principal, dozens of energetic young teachers and a mission to "reinvent education" in the nation's second-largest school district.
The students had come from some of the lowest-performing schools in the city. But by the end of the first year, their scores on standardized tests showed the most improvement in English among district middle schools and exceptional growth in math, according to a Times analysis.
But when budget cuts came in the summer of 2009 — at the end of the school's second year — more than half of the teachers were laid off. By the end of the last school year, Liechty had plummeted from first to 61st — near the bottom among middle schools — in raising English scores and fallen out of the top 10 in boosting math scores.
So who was laid off? The bad teachers? The ineffective ones? Nope:
Quality-blind layoffs are just one vestige of seniority rules introduced decades ago to promote fairness and protect teachers from capricious administrators. Enshrined in state law and detailed in teachers' union contracts, the prerogatives of seniority continue to guide many of the key personnel decisions made in public schools across the country, including pay and assignments. The effects are most keenly felt by students during layoffs.
Because seniority is largely unrelated to performance, the district has laid off hundreds of its most promising math and English teachers. About 190 ranked in the top fifth in raising scores and more than 400 ranked in the top 40%.
Schools in some of the city's poorest areas were disproportionately hurt by the layoffs. Nearly one in 10 teachers in South Los Angeles schools was laid off, nearly twice the rate in other areas. Sixteen schools lost at least a fourth of their teachers, all but one of them in South or Central Los Angeles.
How can anyone read this and not be furious? How could, say, a Democratic politician read this and not be ashamed of his party's slavish kowtowing to the teachers unions?
Why do we still have to politely tiptoe around the truth? The single greatest obstacle to reforming education in America is the teacher's union. The single greatest reason that poor and at-risk kids get a substandard education is the teacher's union. The only way to improve standards and results in the public education sector is to end their reactionary and appalling stranglehold on reform.
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May '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Also, I would suspend all graduate degrees in Education. If you want to be called "Doctor," you are going to have to defend your thesis before a panel of real scholars and scientists.
May '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
I have been quite surprised that, deep in the heart of the Bay Area, I regularly find otherwise properly-behaving progressives railing with impressive venom about the teacher's unions.
I suspect Republicans have a window here...I would council mostly ignoring all other unions and mounting an all-out attack on teachers' unions. Democrats will have to defend them, but the public will side with the Republicans.
Other unions are still sacred ground; you'll never get anywhere coming across as mean to nurses or firefighters, but teachers are, for the moment, fair game, and this fact should be taken for the golden opportunity it is.
Jul '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Oh, when they had to trim the budget in our town, they cut the police force and fired firemen.
The administration in the schools is intact.
Jun '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Public education exists to justify the public school bureaucracy. It's a jobs program for an army of government clerks. Like most things the government does, the results are inconsequential. Leviathan must be fed. A diet of small children is easily digested and they don't struggle like adults on the way down.
Aug '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Why not suspend education as a major altogether (since classroom technique is important, there's a need for education classes, but a whole major devoted to it?)?
Those who wish to specialize in teaching young children general knowledge rather than teaching older children a specific subject could be re-grouped into maybe... "early childhood development" or something (isn't that already a major anyhow?). Those who wish to teach a subject could major in that subject with a minor in classroom technique.
I've shared a few math classes with "math ed" majors (majoring in education, with some sort of focus in math -- I'm not even sure they had to minor in math). They were sweet people, and usually OK at arithmetic, but I shudder to think of them let loose on a classroom of innocent math students.
They had very little understanding of why mathematical ideas are true, other than "because the teacher says so". That's hardly the way to develop mathematical aptitude in children, as children with the most aptitude are most likely to demand better explanations.
The math majors laughed at them. Hard not to.
Aug '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Michael Tee: Oh, when they had to trim the budget in our town, they cut the police force and fired firemen.
The administration in the schools is intact. · Dec 5 at 1:45pm
And still impeding the creativity and initiative of the better teachers, I venture to guess.
May '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Why not suspend education as a major altogether (since classroom technique is important, there's a need for education classes, but a whole major devoted to it?)?
My thinking is, after the herd is culled, there will be so few people left to teach "education" that the whole thing will collapse.
Jun '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
The public schools where I live are excellent, the public won't accept less. The problem in LA isn't lousy schools, you got a lousy public.
Edited on Dec 5, 2010 at 2:21pmJul '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Really, Pilgrim? By what grade do kids in your schools learn about the American Revolution and the Constitution? How many of them know about James Madison as opposed to, say, Harriet Taubman?
The tests measure what was taught. Not what wasn't.
Many are the college graduates I've interviewed over the decades who could not tell me what happened between 1861 and 1865 or name the first three Presidents.
Jun '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Kenneth
Really, Pilgrim? By what grade do kids in your schools learn about the American Revolution and the Constitution? How many of them know about James Madison as opposed to, say, Harriet Taubman?
The tests measure what was taught. Not what wasn't.
Many are the college graduates I've interviewed over the decades who could not tell me what happened between 1861 and 1865 or name the first three Presidents.
OK, you got me. I was defining "excellent" by state standardized testing, NEAP, advanced placement opportunities, percentage of grads going on to college or service acadamies etc. Many of them wouldn't be able to survive your interview now, or four years from now, when they graduate college. I recall with fondness a secretary. Evelyn, I shared with my boss about twenty-five years ago -- 50-ish somewhat dowdy, small town high-school graduate polished by "business college." She routinely corrected the grammer and usage of the judge and lawyer she worked for and would have been insulted by your "obvious" interview questions. People of that era understood that four years of HS were not to be wasted, few got another chance become an educated person.
Edited on Dec 5, 2010 at 3:14pmJun '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Pilgrim: The public schools where I live are excellent, the public won't accept less. The problem in LA isn't lousy schools, you got a lousy public. · Dec 5 at 2:07pm
Edited on Dec 05 at 02:21 pm
I write on instruction from Mrs Pilgrim, a gifted and accomplished teacher and counselor, to state that my prior comment was both glib and incorrect. Our school district does, in fact, have under-performing schools, just not where anyone we know sends their kids. This may also be the case in the LA Unified School District, though I am hesitant to assert that as a fact, having no knowledge in the particulars.
Edited on Dec 5, 2010 at 3:05pmSep '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Jeffrey Hart's article from 1996 National Review archives titled How to Get a College Education.
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
What is required -- and the struggle will not be easy -- is the abolition of public sector unions. Only in their absence can states genuinely balance their budgets (which should include annual contributions adequate to their future pension obligations). Only in their absence can the schools be reconfigured in such a manner as to serve the students. Absent an abolition of public sector unions nothing of real substance can be done.
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Pilgrim
Pilgrim: The public schools where I live are excellent, the public won't accept less. The problem in LA isn't lousy schools, you got a lousy public. · Dec 5 at 2:07pm
Edited on Dec 05 at 02:21 pm
I write on instruction from Mrs Pilgrim, a gifted and accomplished teacher and counselor, to state that my prior comment was both glib and incorrect. Our school district does, in fact, have under-performing schools, just not where anyone we know sends their kids. This may also be the case in the LA Unified School District, though I am hesitant to assert that as a fact, having no knowledge in the particulars. · Dec 5 at 3:03pm
Edited on Dec 05 at 03:05 pm
Speaking as a script writer, I know there's a story here.
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Pilgrim People of that era understood that four years of HS were not to be wasted, few got another chance become an educated person. · Dec 5 at 2:37pm
Edited on Dec 05 at 03:14 pm
That's when HS was supposed to be rigorous and definitive. A high school education was the basic foundation of citizenship. College was a filigree, icing on the cake. For specialization and for the elites.
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
I agree, Paul, but it's hard not to despair. My most optimistic scenario is that a voucher/choice system -- giving parents the right to choose any school to assign their education dollars to -- might, might slowly starve the teachers' union into irrelevancy, or some kind of vestigial influence.
Jul '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
Practically every time I read stories about Our "public education" the issue is always the teachers. Granted, I get it: what they're teaching, how they're teaching it, why they're teaching it.
The Parents are never mentioned. Do Parents not notice that their children are not learning English? Not learning math? And if they do, then why are they not assisting at Home? Does the P.T.A. no longer exist? If it does, then where are the flames and pitchforks?
Why are Parents exempt from criticism?
Jul '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
I have taught Special Education for Emotionally Disturbed children for the last 40 years, most of the time at the Middle School level. I have some problem with the assumption that young teachers are the best. Most of the new teachers I see have been brain-washed in university education departments where instructors have little or no actual classroom experience in the schools. The teachers they produce are ill prepared for the reality of inner-city schools. The problem, as I see it, is that most teachers never leave school. They go through their own education and immediately begin teaching without any real world experience. If they are not naturally talented then all the training they receive is for naught. I have never been a great believer in the unions, although when I began teaching in New York in 1967 my first contract was to $4500 per annum, and we had no preparation time allotted. Without the union the pay scale might well have remained low and working conditions unbearable. Unfortunately, the balance of power shifted too far. I have no problem with a return to appropriate balance. Community control would also work for improvement.
Jul '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
I spend a major portion of my time doing paperwork mandated by the federal government. The Special Education department is Seattle Schools has nearly as many administrators as teachers. They need them in order to meet compliance with government regulations. I am required to write an Individual Educational Program (IEP) for each of my students. It is on average 24 pages long. Every year they add further requirements to the document and its appurtenances. The government continually establishes through Department of Education new hoops that school districts need to jump through in order to get back the tax dollars taken from local communities. Local communities have nearly zero input into how their schools are run and the curriculum taught to their children. Get the federal government out of our schools and see how quickly they improve.
Jul '10
Re: How Public Schools Trim Their Budgets: They Fire the Good Teachers...
One further point in reference to young teachers: Most are easily manipulated and controlled by administrators in the school. Most administrators are deeply committed to the programs which are being developed in the universities by professors working under federal grants. They all talk the same language, use the same buzz words, and push the same meaningless programs. The trend these days is for the ambitious to spend a couple of years in the classroom and immediately begin taking classes in preparation for administration. The programs they use in their classrooms may work and, certainly, seem impressive. However, when a teacher is only going to spend a couple of years in the classroom before beginning an administrative internship it is easy to do things which in a life-long career would be unsustainable. Once they become administrators they begin to push others to do what they themselves couldn't do. I think you can get the picture from this brief description.