Category Archives: Teachers

Are our schools and officials doing enough to ensure that enough skilled and effective candidates are getting into classrooms to teach kids like me? A recent Wall Street Journal article suggests the answer is still No, but a successful program is showing there’s hope for more change: Unions keep saying the best people won’t go into teaching unless we pay them what doctors and lawyers and CEOs make. Not only are Teach for America salaries significantly lower than what J.P. Morgan might offer, but these individuals go to some very rough classrooms. What’s going on? It seems that Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money – the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of “education” courses to be certified. The American Federation of Teachers commonly derides Teach for America as a “band-aid.” One of its arguments is that the program only lasts two years, barely enough time, they say, to get a handle on managing a classroom. However, it turns out that two-thirds of its […]

Thinking about last week’s Denver teacher sick-out, it doesn’t make me happy to see teachers walk out on the kids in their classes. But seeing Ben Hummel’s latest cartoon at least made me chuckle a bit: The leader of the the non-union teacher group PACE is right that “children deserve teachers who are dedicated to their education.” I might add, and not so much teachers who are dedicated to sunbathing. But then I see what’s going on in Los Angeles – requiring teachers to skip an hour of school each day to carry picket signs (H/T Flypaper blog) – and Denver’s situation doesn’t seem so bad. Still, I would like to have good teachers, professional teachers, who are there for me during school hours. But you’ll have to excuse me now … it’s summertime, and I’m ready to play in the sun, too!

Over at Jay Greene’s blog, Greg Forster takes on the issue (via the extraordinary education investigator Mike Antonucci) of states with growing teacher workforces and flat – or even shrinking – student populations: Maryland, for example, expanded its teacher workforce 10 percent from 2001 to 2006, while enrollment grew less than 1 percent. California, which is still carrying around an extremely bloated teacher workforce from its apparently failed experiment in class size reduction, has just announced that it’s cancelling the large majority of its planned teacher layoffs. Greg goes on to point out that growing teacher-to-student ratios largely have not resulted in smaller class sizes – in part because teachers have their classroom time limited or some are working in non-classroom positions. So who gets the best of this arrangement? Well, the teachers’ unions make out like bandits. More teachers means bigger budgets without the hassle of selling the membership on dues hikes, and more political clout because the public school gravy train is larger. Jay Greene himself has made the point that to an extent more teachers in the system pushes down the overall quality of the teaching workforce, because there is a limited pool of talent. It’s just […]

Last week I gave a “cautious hooray” to the new Innovation Schools Act, which makes it easier for individual schools to free themselves from the red tape and union rules that crush reform efforts. The movement came to life last December when Bruce Randolph School asked for autonomy. Bruce Randolph and Manual High School have had a hard time getting the local teachers union to approve their requests. Now another Denver school – Montclair Elementary – has come forward, reports the Rocky Mountain News, only to face similar obstruction: Montclair teachers voted 22-1 in favor of seeking autonomy, and the staff sent the request to DPS and to the teachers’ union on April 18. DPS board members unanimously approved the request on May 15. But Kimmal and his principal, Shannon Hagerman, say they’ve had no response from the union. So Friday, the last day for teachers in DPS, Hagerman, four parents and 21 teachers went to union headquarters downtown. “We don’t want to go through the summer without any agreement with them,” Kimmal said. Union leaders, including Denver Classroom Teachers Association President Kim Ursetta, were out, attending a Teachers Union Reform Network conference in Vail. At least they weren’t sick […]

The Denver Post says that the city’s teachers union is about ready to throw under the bus an innovative pay plan, including huge pay raises for newer teachers: Talks fell apart May 16, and teachers Monday petitioned the Colorado Department of Labor to take over negotiations — an initial step before a strike could be called. Perhaps the most contentious issue is ProComp — the system that has caught the eye of national education experts as a merit-pay plan embraced by the union…. Under the district proposal, a teacher would get $3,000 for working at a high-poverty school, choosing a hard-to-fill position such as special education or math, or teaching in a high-performing school. Sixty-three percent of teachers would get three or more incentives, DPS officials say. On average, teachers would receive $6,000 in incentives, said Tom Boasberg, DPS chief operations officer. Annual starting pay would rise from $35,000 to $44,000. District officials want to pay teachers more for good performance and to recruit top-notch teachers with higher salaries. Kids like me all over Colorado need high-quality teachers to give us the best educational advantages we can get. I hope the two sides can come to an agreement that benefits […]