Their accusations?
The normal rehashing of deficencies. The study was filled with "bias" and "analytical flaws, including:
- The researchers didn't account for hours of work completed outside of the school day.
- The researchers also didn't take into account how hard teachers work: the study did not include quantifiable data detailing the work they complete outside of school during the work week.
- The researchers didn't deduct the cost of supplies they pay for out of their own pocket.
- Researchers should not have included the benefit of job security, as many teachers have been laid off recently.
In the face of these accusations, the Heritage Foundation didn't back down and has directly addressed them:
- Concerning work hours: Researchers did not make assumptions but based their figures on reliable, self-reporting by teachers. The data suggested that the median work week for teachers is 40 hours.
- Concerning pay: The average private school teacher receives 10% less in compensation while working equally as hard. That fact adds credence to the argument that the average public school teachers receives an inflated compensation package.
- Concerning out-of-pocket expenses: The federal government provides teachers a $250 income tax deduction for classroom materials. And this is to say nothing about the fact that many private sector workers also pay for business-related items out of their own pockets.
- Concerning layoffs: Despite budgets cuts, public school teachers were still only 50% as likely as other white-collar workers to be laid off during the past 5 years.
What the unionists on the political left really want is one thing: That teachers' pay be increased. The assumption is that this pay increase would attract better teachers.
However, as the Heritage Foundation response points out, the research indicates pretty clearly that below-market salaries are not keeping potentially high-quality teachers from becoming teachers. Instead, it's the hiring practices that ignore important qualifications, such as college grade point averages and specialized degrees.
It's no secret that undergraduate teacher education programs in many institutions are viewed as an embarrassment. First, the quality of education majors in many instances is below that of many other majors. Second, for all of the increase in the base of human knowledge since the 1960s, if schools and departments of education at the nation's universities have similarly expanded their base of professional knowledge, then why are the nation's public schools not delivering a better product to their students?
Let the discussion begin...
To read the Heritage Foundation re-assessment, click on the following link:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/01/critical-issues-in-assessing-teacher-compensation
I would not want to question the assumption that the better among our teachers are those who, as students, outperformed their peers. Nevertheless, I don't take it as given that the better qualified the teacher, the more likely his or her students will perform at above average levels. I have always believed that parents have a great deal more to do with their children's performance in school than we are led to believe by the teachers' unions and other interested parties. I believe that children perform better in school when they come from homes where a parent checks his or her child's homework, where parents make their children go to bed at reasonable hours of the evening, where parents ensure that their children get proper nourishment, exercise and discipline. Parents, not teachers, are primarily responsible for ensuring that children can work hard in school and that they do so. I don't deny that the training that teachers receive matters in this regard, and I recognize that there are too many teachers who conduct themselves unprofessionally in class. But the primary problem with elementary and secondary education in the U.S. stems from poor parenting and not from low teachers' salaries.
ReplyDeleteThere is plenty of research to support your opinion, Eternal City. Yes, parents quite likely are the single, most important factor in motivating children to engage in learning (all other relevant factors being normal). This is especially the case when it comes to "in home" fathers. There is also plenty of research indicating that "good" teachers build on that motive and "exploit" it in such a way that learning and subsequent academic achievement on standardized tests takes place.
ReplyDeleteTO your point, there also happens to be a scad of literature indicating a negative correlation between teachers' salaries and student achievement as that is measured on standardized tests.
Lastly, there are anecdotal data suggesting that the "brightest" of college graduates do not necessarily make the best of elementary/secondary school teachers. (Perhaps for a high school AP course, that's not accurate.) It seems, instead, that a "C" or "B" average college graduate makes for a good teacher.
Why?
Perhaps for two reasons: 1) it is thought that they have struggled to learn the material themselves, so they are more psychologically attuned to the difficulty of learning the material and emphatize better with the broad range of students who aren't particularly interested in a subject or intellectually capable of mastering it; and, 2) elementary and high school studies are not about preparing young people for a college major but of ensuring that young people are well-prepared to pursue the educational program that is best for them post-graudation. Some will not go to college and many will. Both need to be prepared for their chosen pursuit. TMM would note that these are speculations because there is no solid research to make a solid argument in either direction.
TMM's point was not that increasing teachers' salaries would lead to increased student achievement. Nor was TMM's point that hiring bright college graduates would increase student achievement. His point was that the problems with elementary and secondary academic achievement since the 1960s indicates that undergraduate teacher education programs and departments/colleges/schools of education have not demonstrated themselves worth the investment that has been put into them since the 1960s.
I entirely agree with the positions you outline in the last paragraph of your response to my initial comment. I did not think that the point of your piece was to argue anything else but these positions. My comments were intended to endorse what you said in your original piece, and to extend the conversation to the role of parents, a role which the Mainstream Media and the teachers' unions find it "politically" convenient to ignore.
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