The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
On the thread following Rob's post last week about the rapidly declining membership numbers of the National Education Association, I noted -- in response to Diane's question about how much of the decline was attributable to pink slips -- that, while the seniority-based layoffs that prevail throughout much of the country are indefensible, there is a good case to be made that public school teachers have actually been overhired because of political, rather than educational considerations (primarily powerful teachers unions pulling out every stop to swell their ranks).
In today's Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute's Andrew Coulson makes a similar argument. And the numbers he marshals in its service are eye-opening:
... Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers' aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.
... If the additional three million public-school employees we've hired have helped students learn, the nation may be better off economically.
To find out if that's true, we can look at the "long-term trends" of 17-year-olds on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.
... The implication of these facts is clear: America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement—people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.
The issue is not that "those who can't, teach." Anyone who's ever had a great instructor knows that. The issue is, far too frequently, that those who can't become public employees.
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Aug '10
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
I may sound a bit like President Obama when he recounts the jobs "saved or gained." But as a teacher, I think there are many factors to consider. You might just conclude that it is a miracle that we've been able to stay at a plateau! If we consider the rising number of kids that are in poverty/or are immigrants, along with the reduced emphasis on education within the family home, we are lucky we've been able to do this well. Additionally, consider the amount of distractions that now compete for kids' time. When a student gets home now, there just isn't a TV with five channels. Now there is a game system, a personal game system, a cell phone, a laptop/computer, and the internet full of sites that distract. And fewer moms are at home to encourage education. There are SO MANY factors going against the hard work of learning and studying (kids AND adults have smaller attention spans and therefore want instant rewards for little effort placed) that schools are fighting what seems like a loosing battle. So, do we need more adults at school to encourage kids? In a word, yes.
Feb '10
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
I'm always surprised by the amount of busywork that the school system gives to teachers. Instead of focusing more on teaching and teaching preparation, they often stay late hours complying with this or that bureaucratic requirement.
Dec '10
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
A friend of mine is the principal of a local school and won't touch certain federal money because of the overhead of compliance verification.
Mar '12
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
There's also an obvious synergy. We send people to ed schools, where they learn much Lefty theory, and a bit about teaching, and then send them to teach subjects. And higher ed is about to contract. Take the surplus PhDs and send them to teach high school, and take the high school teachers who don't really know their subjects and help them find new jobs.
And close down the ed schools.
Apr '11
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
One thing that continually astounds me is the frequency that those who are not in education (Gates and his crew, some here, and generally everywhere) profess to know all the answers to our problems and that it's just so easy to teach, but we have lazy morons as teachers. First of all, that is true in some cases, but on the whole it is not. Maybe we do not have the best and brightest going into education, but we should be asking ourselves why that is not happening. To the point I made about people thinking they have the answers, in what other field is this even tolerated? I have gone to many airports and flown on planes many times, does that make me qualified to profess that if only people listened to me on aviation, we'd have no problems? No. Just because you attended school doesn't mean you know best. Is reform necessary? Are the unions a problem? Yes. But constantly attacking teachers (who 10 years ago everyone laughed at us and wondered why we were working for peanuts, funny how that's changed now) won't help. With the constant attacks, I'm leaving soon
Apr '11
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
@ scarlet
Ed schools are a nuisance at times and many do teach courses of dubious quality. I am someone who double majored in history and education at college, got a MA in history, is currently working on another MA. If districts were more selective about who they hired and if superintendents and building administrators did proper observations, then you could remove those who are struggle before tenure is granted and then only grant tenure to those teachers who are truly deserving and produce results. Yes, some are going to shut down when they get tenure but many of those who I know who have it and myself recently, continue to work hard to try and do the best we can for our students. The idea that there are huge swaths of teachers just kicking back and doing nothing is a false one.
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
All -- and particularly Michael,
I don't mean this as an attack on teachers by any means. My father was a public school teacher and I have immense respect for those who do the job well.
There are aspects of our educational travails that are cultural rather than political in nature. No systemic policy reform, for instance, is going to change the culture of broken homes that so frequently predicts educational difficulties. Thus, we're left only to haggle over the aspects we can meaningfully change.
Yes, unions, ed schools, and bureaucracy are all problems. But they are all symptoms rather than causes. They all stem from the fact that the vast majority of American education is publicly financed and publicly administered. That inevitably invites decisions to be made on the basis of something other than what's best for the students and the schools.
Contra Michael's assertion, many of us on the right (including myself) don't profess to know what's best for schools. That's precisely why we favor the kind of decentralization that would hand power to those who do know and allow experimentation that could help cultivate best practices.
Apr '11
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
@ Troy.
I realize you are not one to attack teachers, you're far classier than that and I enjoy what you write on the site immensely. I too am for decentralization in that I believe education should be brought back as close to the local level as possible, but as someone who teaches in a Title I school that is heavily dependent on state aid, this is unlikely at this point. I'd be happy if we could go back to a pre-RTTT/NCLB era. I think you'd be surprised the kind of experimentation that goes on at least at the classroom level. Most teachers I know are constantly tinkering with things to improve, but I am with you and others who say that there needs to be a way to move some of these people into other careers, but that is the job of administration and they have been dropping the ball on that for years. I am a little confused as to how the fact that education is public necessarily leads to decisions made not for students (not that I'd argue that this isn't happening, just why necessarily being public makes this happen Thoughts?)
Aug '10
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
Troy, I know you were speaking to the other Michael, but I do want to respond to your points. I'm not completely against your idea of decentralizing and experimenting. However, I'm not sure how this is truly going to help. In those locations where charter schools and school choice have been adopted, only very modest changes have occurred. And if one considers the students that go to these schools, it is particularly obvious why there would be an improvement at all. Parents who are more involved in their child's education apply for these schools. So, I think one can make an accurate assumption that the kids whose parents are more involved are going to do better. We need to remember that teachers only have kids for a very short time. Out of the 8760 hours in a year, teachers get them for about 990 hours. If for most of those 8000 hours, students are in broken homes worried about what they are going to eat or where they are going to live next, those short hours at school aren't going to be very effective. You are right, the answer lies in the culture.
Aug '10
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
Additionally, I do think teachers matter. I see some teachers who are unsuccessful in the classroom. However, they are unsuccessful usually because of the challenging circumstances they face in the classroom. With very little teachers can do to discipline, it becomes easy for kids to literally take over the classroom. This is especially true at the middle school level, an extremely important stage that sets students up for success or failure in high school. The reason there is such a challenge with these kids? It goes back to the home! So many of these kids aren't taught proper behavior or aren't disciplined at home. And the parent or grandparents of these kids (depending on who they live with) either don't or aren't able to support the school in discipline. I've seen the same teachers who lack the success with these students become "rock star" teachers when they have advanced/ honors kids. Now why is that? Again, the home. The parents are more involved and have higher expectations of their kids. And so they meet those expectations. Do the types of teachers matter? Yes. But I think only marginally so.
Aug '10
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
The vast majority of teachers are there for honorable reasons and work hard to teach our culture's kids. What we need to do as a society is support them, not look for ways to punish them. We need to look at social policy and find ways for better support from local organizations and churches. We need to find an answer to the drug problems in our culture and we need parents to take their responsibilities seriously. The answers don't lie in the classroom. They lie in the culture outside that classroom. We can keep tweaking the laws and requirements as much as we want, but as long as we don't get to the origin of the problems, we're only going to get marginal improvements.
Edited on July 9, 2012 at 11:52pmJun '12
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
As with most things, the situation on the ground is much more complicated than the numbers show. My wife is a supplemental teacher in a Title 1 school (for those that don't know the ed lingo she helps the kids that struggle to make it on standardized tests, Title 1 is federal funding to help this happen) and she spends a ton of time on the documentation required for the job. Another factor is the resources required for special ed at various levels. I struggle with this one, as a pro-lifer, we need to keep these kids engaged, but it is very expensive in both time and money to mainstream them. Still another drag on performance is the surrounding culture, there aren't very many places that glorify hard work and intelligence any more.
May '12
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
Adding to Michael H:
A Psychologist in my neighborhood (Gordon Neufeld) is ringing the alarm bells on child development. He warns that children will not learn well until they are ready to learn. In an unready child, creativity and self-motivation suffer most.
These days, children arrive in kindergarten having had less attention from mom and less independent play time over their first five years than in previous generations. In an analogy to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, student who don't feel secure are not eager to pursue intellectual independence. Their early development needs have not been met and they are not ready to explore new things.
Kindergarten teachers then push them to learn, which means the teacher wants them to learn more than they want to learn: learning is something teachers do to students, not something students pursue with help from teachers. The cycle of passive learning begins.
Mar '11
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
Failure is failure. Educators such as those commenting here and the millions of others striving in public schools may truly be working themselves to death or they may instead comprise a legion of witless sloths, it is immaterial. Simply having good intentions is not sufficient.
If you reward failure you get more of it and as this nation is pouring spectacular amounts of wealth into public education it is rewarding failure.
Are the problems mentioned here that educators face pertinent to their difficulties? Perhaps they are and that is also of course completely irrelevant. Does anyone actually imagine other fields of endeavor are not burdened with their own host of difficulties?
If disruptive students are not expelled, if poor performing educators are not fired, and if failing schools are not shuttered then there is no possibility for improvement in our dismal school system. If this cannot be done then there is no path forward for public education and parents should simply be given vouchers so those who have the largest stake in a child’s future success make the decisions.
Aug '10
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
Roberto,
I completely understand your frustration! In fact, I share it! I'm not against vouchers. However, I think you are missing the real problems and you are blaming the wrong people. Parents who would use those vouchers to go to better schools really have no need. Their kids are most likely already in advanced classes and getting the best education money can buy. Kids from families that value education are getting educated second to none. It is the rest of the students that are struggling. If we send our military to a foreign country and don't give them the proper tools... say knives instead of guns, helicopters that don't work, etc., would you then blame the soldiers when they fail to win? Teachers don't choose the students. However, companies DO choose whom they hire. If a worker doesn't perform, he is fired. A school can't fire students. And even if they could, it would just create more problems in our society as they would be out on the streets. Sure, we can expel a kid. But then the public school down the street has to take him. Please reconsider the direction of your frustration.
Mar '12
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
I am NOT a teacher. I have had the oppotunity to volunteer to support middle school and high school English teachers. True Eample: One Enjglish teacher for an average of 60-90 students per year fo 7 & 8 grade divided into five classes for a yearly average of 15 students per class. Also avg. for each class: 15 = 3 high achievers, 9 average, and 3 students of which 1 is autistic, 1 is on IEP for acting out in an inappropriate sexual manner; 1 on IEP for being a physically aggressive drug user. I'm not hearing much about just who all the brainiacs who want to solve education's ills think gets the teacher's attention in such classes. Oh, yes, this teacher has 45 minutes with each class. And only is only in union to have insurance against suit. And the administrators, special ed support, and guidance counselors are all too often pathetic. I had one great teacher in 8th grade and one in high school (graduated 1966), and my schooling was far superior to what I see today.
Mar '11
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
You err sir. In your analogy the students are not the employees they are the customers. I have had many vocations, in them all the words for those who were unable to complete the tasks they were paid for was the same: "Former Employees".
You mention educators that struggle with those that do not wish to learn in that case the question is clear, "Why are they there?". To be blunt sir you represent exactly the failings of your profession. There are dozens of students in a classroom, are they all to be held hostage to one who does not wish to be there? Did you not yourself recognize how easy it was for a disruptive student to "literally take over the classroom". You forget your responsibility sir, it is not to coddle the anarchist but to provide the best to those who are giving their all.
Mar '11
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
This is such a tragedy how? If one classroom is unable to provide a proper environment for a problem student is it so beyond possibility that another may be exactly what this malcontent needs?
Not all teachers suit all students, as well as the reverse! Has no one here ever had to deal with a tormentor in school and been forced to share a classroom with such? Is it so difficult to imagine how that would make it impossible to learn? The reasons for difficulty are as endless as the permutations of mankind. Expulsion could be the gift some student is waiting for, do not so blithely assume you know their minds or the cause of their troubles.
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
I too am for decentralization in that I believe education should be brought back as close to the local level as possible, but as someone who teaches in a Title I school that is heavily dependent on state aid, this is unlikely at this point. I'd be happy if we could go back to a pre-RTTT/NCLB era.
Completely with you on this, Michael. I'm speaking in ideal terms. You're certainly right that, in the short term, hoping for any such sweeping change is quixotic. But sometimes you have to dream the impossible dream and continue reasserting the message in the hopes that it will sink in with time. I know a lot of people who have been working on public-sector employment for decades, for instance, who are just now seeing their advice on reining in the collective bargaining process bear some fruit. It is the work of years and decades, not of weeks and months.
Re: The Teacher Surplus and the Economic Deficit
I am a little confused as to how the fact that education is public necessarily leads to decisions made not for students (not that I'd argue that this isn't happening, just why necessarily being public makes this happen Thoughts?) · 8 hours ago
Take for example the underlying issue of this post -- an excess numbers of teacher on payroll. Here in California (which is always an extreme example, but also the one I know the most in-depth), the California Teachers Association dropped oodles of money on a campaign in the mid 90s to get the state to subsidize smaller class sizes. Despite being the most expensive education initiative in state history, the program had no effect on educational outcomes (and most of the research on similar initiatives elsewhere suggests that this was to be expected), but it did have the effect of swelling the CTA's ranks (the reason they pushed for it).
As Roberto points out below, you've created a model where the client groups of public education inc. are perceived to be the customers just as much (if not moreso) than the parents and students. There's an inevitable principal-agent problem.