Category Archives: Teachers

An absolutely vital key to successful education is high-quality instruction. So how well is Colorado doing in keeping effective teachers on the job in classrooms like mine? (Answer below) On a new iVoices podcast, you can listen to Sandi Jacobs – vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) – talk with my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow about her group’s new State Teacher Policy Yearbook and where Colorado fits in: To dig more in depth, go take a look at NCTQ’s Colorado report (PDF).

With a proposal in the state legislature, Georgia is having a debate right now over universal vouchers for K-12 students. The bill, sponsored by state senator Eric Johnson, would attach $5,000 to each child for their parents to select the public or private school of their choice. The debate over such a radical change makes events down in the Peach State worth watching closely: Will one state dare to make the leap to truly competitive, student-centered, customer-friendly public education? Are our schools foremost a jobs program for adults or a place to serve the needs of students? I think most parents and many teachers would choose the latter, but connecting that perception to constructing a more competitive system of consumer empowerment is easily lost in the heated rhetoric that inevitably follows the word “vouchers”.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) blogger urged union members all over the country to “wear blue to school” today in support of the massive spending proposal in Congress. Say what? I guess AFT has its own reasons for believing in the “magical money tree” (then they must believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy – like I do, too). Makes me wonder why they didn’t urge union members to wear green instead? My teacher has some blue on her sweater. I wonder if that’s just a coincidence. It’s not like anyone has come up to her and say, “Hey, I see you’re wearing blue today. Is that to support record levels of federal deficit spending that will further stagnate the economy, and mortgage future generations to pay for it all?” If I were to ask her why she’s wearing blue, she might just pat me on the head, and smile, and tell me to go back to my art project.

Are Colorado teachers underpaid, overpaid, or compensated about right? Many people have different opinions on the matter, but it’s always good to root opinion in fact when possible. In its most recent estimates the National Education Association ranked Colorado 29th in average teacher salary at $48,707, just a hair under the national average of $48,969. But as Terry Stoops explains in his new John Locke Foundation report (PDF), even the NEA admits that these data aren’t very good for apples-to-apples comparisons. So he went a step further and factor in cost of living, pension contributions, and average experience to see which state’s teachers are getting the most compensation value for their work. What did Stoops find?

Because of the fact that I communicate with you over the Internet, you’d probably guess I’m a big fan of online education. Well, I am. It doesn’t work for every kid, but it sure deserves to be treated fairly as another educational option. Cyberschools well may be the wave of the future, and it’s growing more popular with parents and students in Colorado all the time. In today’s Rocky Mountain News, Nancy Mitchell sheds light on the rising trend of cyberschools: Growth in the programs, which had spiked from 166 students in 2000 to 9,150 in 2006, eked up to 9,222 in 2007. But in fall 2008, that number grew to 11,641 students – an enrollment that would rank it 19th among Colorado’s 178 school districts in size…. In return for greater accountability, the law provides more funding. Before, online schools were prohibited from receiving funding for students who had been home- schooled or were in private schools the year before they enrolled in virtual classes.

Last week I asked whether the federal “stimulus” bill and its magical money tree would do any good for education reform. It didn’t take long to have that naive question soundly rejected. The Flypaper blog’s Obama Administration Reform-o-Meter has taken a plunge with the news that the $125 billion in education funding attached to the so-called emergency spending measure is becoming less reform-friendly. Take the Senate committee’s approved version: The Teacher Incentive Fund (which supports merit pay programs): gone. Charter school facilities dollars: gone. Money for data infrastructure projects: gone. Language ensuring that charter schools have equitable access to the money: gone. The teachers unions firmly in control of the Democratic Party: back with a vengeance.

Times are tough out there. I don’t have a lot of perspective yet, but there’s no doubt the economy is hurting. And that means not only are real people hurting, but – as the Wall Street Journal reports – so are private schools: Trinity Episcopal School survived Hurricane Ike last fall. But then another storm hit — the economy. The Galveston, Texas, school, where tuition is between $5,000 and $8,000 a year, has seen its enrollment drop 12%, says David Dearman, the head of the school. Many parents of its students were among the 3,000 workers laid off by the area’s largest employer, the University of Texas Medical Branch. At the end of 2008, the school’s endowment was $800,000, down about 20% from July. The school has ramped up donation efforts through its Web site, and held car washes and bake sales. It stopped using substitute teachers — other staff members now step in when a teacher is out sick. “Our school will survive, but it will take years to recover,” Mr. Dearman says. Trinity Episcopal School is one of many kindergarten-through-12th-grade private schools caught in the middle of an economic tempest: anemic endowments, dwindling donations, financially strapped parents slashing […]

Earlier this month I let you know about the teachers union’s efforts to organize two New York City KIPP charter schools, and shared with you the insights of a couple people who know a lot more than I do about this stuff. But then I read something this nice teacher lady Kathy Kullback (who is a friend of the Independence Institute) wrote over at Backbone America about her own professional horror story with poor school administration. She concludes with this insight often overlooked among education reformers: Poor school leadership practices are why teachers’ unions flourish and why there is tremendous growth in the charter school movement. I applied for positions to charter schools close to my home and where I had previous relationships because they have their own hiring practices and do not participate in the non-renewal ban. Not only was I treated very well, but they also gave me recognition for a job well done. How often do any of us receive that! [emphasis added] Figuring out how to seriously improve school leadership across the public education system is a very difficult policy knot to untangle. But in the meantime, high teacher-friendly praise for charter schools!

If Barack Obama and the Democrats really are going to pull $122 billion off the magical money tree and send it to fund education programs in the states, could we at least hope the dollars are spent sensibly on effective reforms? For example, will the feds dump freshly-printed greenbacks into traditional, union-controlled teacher licensure programs that do nothing for the bottom line of education? Or might they consider using the cash to improve the quality of the teaching workforce – you know, boost effective performance pay so we can reward good teachers, and repeal harmful tenure laws so we can get rid of bad teachers? Surely some reasonable share of the $122 billion could be used to make a real positive difference. Right? I’ve already been told my problem is that I’m not old enough yet to be properly cynical about all this. I’m not ready to admit that, but I have been trying to find the seeds to plant a magical money tree in our backyard. That way, I can have my own bazillion-dollar weekly allowance without hitting up my parents or the federal government.

Update: In a column for the New York Post, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Marcus Winters explains in more detail the potential problem posed by unionizing charter schools. Yesterday brought a report in the New York Times that the teachers union – namely, the American Federation of Teachers – is seeking to organize two New York City KIPP charter schools. In the article, a friend of the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center brought up the problem with that development: “A union contract is actually at odds with a charter school,” said Jeanne Allen, executive director of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington group that supports charter schools. “As long as you have nonessential rules that have more to do with job operations than with student achievement,” she said, “you are going to have a hard time with accomplishing your mission.” To elaborate on this point, and to look at the development in the broader context of charter schools and unions, syndicated columnist and former Colorado education commissioner William Moloney joined Ben DeGrow for a 10-minute iVoices podcast discussion: Meanwhile, the Eduwonk tries to take a more “middle-of-the-road” approach in dealing with the conundrum of charter schools and unionization (H/T Alan […]