Lots Of Children Left Behind
Thanks to the teacher's union. From The Wall Street Journal, a piece that once again makes it clear that teaching children is a secondary agenda of the teachers' union:
Here's a quiz: Which of the following rejected more than 30,000 of the nation's top college seniors this month and put hundreds more on a waitlist? a) Harvard Law School; b) Goldman Sachs; or c) Teach for America.If you've spent time on university campuses lately, you probably know the answer. Teach for America -- the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up 42% from 2008. More than 11% of Ivy League seniors applied, including 35% of African-American seniors at Harvard. Teach for America has been gaining applicants since it was founded in 1990, but its popularity has exploded this year amid a tight job market.
So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly. Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year's applicants. Districts place a cap on the number of Teach for America teachers they will accept, typically between 10% and 30% of new hires. In the Washington area, that number is about 25% to 30%, but in Chicago, former home of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, it is an embarrassing 10%.
This is a tragic lost opportunity. Teach for America picks up the $20,000 tab for the recruitment and training of each teacher, which saves public money. More important, the program feeds high-energy, high-IQ talent into a teaching profession that desperately needs it. Unions claim the recent grads lack the proper experience and commitment to a teaching career. But the Urban Institute has studied the program and found that "TFA status more than offsets any experience effects. Disadvantaged secondary students would be better off with TFA teachers, especially in math and science, than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience."
They say some school districts are easing their caps. But, why have any caps?
The proverbial dangling carrot. More money for the children...and every bond measure supported by the RE-education unions always pass - without fail.
Yet no matter how much money we sink into this black hole, kids are coming out with little to no remedial education and the RE-education union continues to grow.
"So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly. Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year's applicants. " (quoted from article above).
I had a mentor once tell me... "Well educated people ask the correct questions, and demand the correct answers ..." I don't get the sense that unions and the government would be to keen on this idea.
Empowering youth with education, self esteem, independence and the ability to create wealth makes them libertarians, independents, republicans and constitutionalists - You know - hard working tax paying red blooded Americans. The same people who need the least amount of government support and handouts - and traditionally are no big fans of the union. Thus, having well educated students who will one day be productive members of society -- just makes their base of dependents and welfare recipients (and voters) non existent.
I heard of an idea once to pay KIDS to go to school...I think that would be more effective than blowing it on teachers Re education unions (teachers still remain one of the lowest paying professions even when taking into account their 3mo annual break - I have a few friends who are teachers, and they dislike their union more than I do, which says a lot).
Vouchers are a good idea - and the elimination of tenure. School teachers should be rewarded and compensated for producing students with passing test scores and for having a high percentage of their students being admitted into higher education- or at least being in a place to have a CHOICE to do so.
Feebie at April 25, 2009 6:12 PM
So, I know a lot of people who want to do Teach for America, know why? they pay off your student loans. I wish I had done teach for America.
I'll be paying off student loans until 2025.
I don't agree with a cap. But it makes sense for schools that are going to have to get a teacher for a couple of years and then have to retrain a new one. Like most jobs, it takes a year to really get into it, when finally they leave to go on to their multi-million dollar careers in finance, the schools have to retrain someone new...teach for america people are basically advertising the thing that you say to advertise: I plan to be here for two years. It doesn't make good business sense to grab the teach for america people.
duck at April 25, 2009 6:42 PM
Like most unions today, teachers' unions are part of the problem.
Cheezburg at April 25, 2009 7:54 PM
Stop presses: I agree with Cheezburg on something!
The teacher's unions got a major concession out of Congress and Obama - the voucher program in DC is dead. So Obama's kids can go to a tony private school, but you inner-city rabble are stuck with the decaying public schools.
The unions now are no better than the guilds of old. They don't do anything for their members except create an artificial shortage in labor supply to increase the cost of such labor. What the NEA and AFT do for education, the AMA does for medicine, the IBEW does for electricians, etc.
brian at April 25, 2009 8:38 PM
Why caps?
So your union-protected idiot, who cannot spell her own name properly, isn't completely embarassed by a high-school graduate with a passion for the subject.
Radwaste at April 25, 2009 8:49 PM
Typical keeping the power. Actually those that get refused should be happy they did. Read a frightening article about the program from FrontPage Magazine.
http://tinyurl.com/ccpns7
Education needs to be transformed from a "Right" to a privilege. Need to thing on that some more myself.
John Paulson at April 25, 2009 10:42 PM
Thanks for bringing the hypocrisy of the teachers union to light on yet another issue. The DC voucher program the democrats and the teachers union killed is a pathetic example of this.
Under the voucher program many minority kids were able to be educated at thousands less than the $12,000 per year it cost the DC public school system to bring children to school where they learn nothing, get assaulted, and have very little chance of going to college.
Meanwhile, the attendance, graduation rate, and college admittance numbers were astoundingly higher in the private schools where poor minority with a voucher actually had a chance at making a decent living and contributing to society.
Brett at April 25, 2009 11:01 PM
Let's say that there are 179 days in a school year.
Let's say that the school day is 7 hours.
Let's say that there are 15 kids per classroom (I'm compensating for bureaucracy/infrastructure).
Let's say that the teacher's salary is $60,000 per year (I'm including medical/dental and 401k matching...).
That means that teachers are being paid about $3.20 per child per hour... all parents should use this to figure out what to pay your babysitter when it's "mommy and daddy time".
Blackjack at April 26, 2009 3:35 AM
If I could get a babysitter willing to take $3.20 an hour, I'd move them into the house full time and provide room and board to boot. The difference between a babysitter and a public-school teacher being, of course, the fact that I can FIRE a babysitter that sucks, or even choose not to use one and at all and take care of my child myself. There is no such consumer protection for the 'customers' of public schools. We're stuck paying for public school teachers whether we have children in the school system or not. Babysitters, therefore, can and should charge more per hour per child, because they're actually held to a performance standard.
Celeste at April 26, 2009 5:12 AM
Touche Celeste Touche... I was going for tongue in cheek but I think that a lot of parents are under the impression that schools are for babysitting...and I think the teacher's unions may feel the same way...
I remember Mr. Feeney from the old tv show "Boy Meets World"... "Open a book"...very sage advice, of course I learned that from my mom...
Blackjack at April 26, 2009 6:01 AM
Dunno Blackjack, most teachers I know, inluding mamalady, have had their caps moved so much that they are teaching 32-35 students. If you can imagine managing 35 3rd graders, and trying to get them ready for a state mandated test, the answer is OI!.
This is always the same problem. Union or schoolboard, run by career technocrat. Whose sole purpose is to keep their little kingdom going. what has been said about retention, IS an important point. If they had to sign a longer contract, you would get people who really want to teach as a career, rather than those who are going to use it as something that looks good on a resume. I wonder what the stats on retention are for this program to start.
IF you are going to use superbrite people for short term taching, then you need to get them in as consultants, to work in conjunction with long term people. That would prolly be best...
SwissArmyD at April 26, 2009 9:13 AM
At a cocktail party for one of our doctor friends a few years ago, Husband and I met the headmaster of one of the hard-to-get-into private schools in Austin. We had a really interesting conversation with him, and one of the things he mentioned about his school is that he prefers to hire teachers that are NOT traditionally certified and that don't have public school experience.
Austin ISD costs the taxpayers just shy of $8,500 per student. The private school we'd like our kids to attend runs about $9,000 to $11,000 per year. It will be worth every penny. (In looking up the data on how much our per student expenditures are, I came across this little gem: 28.3% of AISD students have "limited english proficiency." Wow. So, it's pretty much guaranteed that their families contribute SIGNIFICANTLY less financiallly than ours does, but they consume significantly more resources...Again, wow. Yet another reason to send kids to private schools. I don't need my children competing with someone who doesn't speak the language for the teacher's attention.)
One of the lobbyists in my office, a former public school teacher and yellow dog D, regularly lamented the possiblity of vouchers last session. The argument was that "public money should not be going to private school." Sorry, but public money shouldn't be going to ineffective schools. It should go to PROVEN learning institutions. "But that's not fair, because private schools can pick and choose who they admit." So? If I have an intelligent, well-behaved child, why in the world should they be in the same class as someone who is behind grade level and a discipline problem?
(What a disorganized rant! I'm sorry. I'm a product of public education.)
ahw at April 26, 2009 2:22 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/04/25/lots_of_childre.html#comment-1644963">comment from ahwPrivate schools, according to a Parisian-born, half-French, half-American friend of mine who taught in one, pay far less than public ones. Because of that, she left a private school in Los Angeles to go teach at public one in Seattle. She's an amazing teacher -- I know, because she used to be my French teacher -- and she's been teaching for her entire adult life, but the certification process for Seattle public schools was crazy. They made her pass a test to teach math -- a subject she is, let's say, not very at home in -- and if she didn't pass, she couldn't teach in Seattle. Teach French, that is. And anybody taking French from her, I have to tell you, is damn lucky to have her as a teacher.
Amy Alkon at April 26, 2009 2:41 PM
Private schools, according to a Parisian-born, half-French, half-American friend of mine who taught in one, pay far less than public ones.
This is what I've always heard, too. It's understandable considering that they're trying to compete with schools that are free (to their customers, not the taxpayers). I assume they try to make up for it by being having better working environments.
This general topic is one I've discussed with quite a few people, including a few public school teachers - one of whom is my dad. I'm always amazed at the strength of the gut-level opposition to the idea. Even when they're smart enough to see the economic reasons why private schools would be better, they don't want to give up the social engineering that ahw mentioned. They also don't want to make it explicit and well-documented, because they're afraid people won't support it. After all, they know better what to with our money and kids than we do.
Shawn at April 26, 2009 4:05 PM
I teach at a private school. Our administration also prefers to hire new teachers who (1) did not major in education, and (2) have not taught in public school. Our board's philosophy is that it is vital to have a teacher who is passionate about his or her subject. I majored in English and history, not education, but I run an orderly, engaged, academically-rigorous classroom. More experienced teachers have mentored me, I've gone to many training workshops, and I constantly research ways to improve my classroom. Seriously, I don't understand why most people think you need to major in education in order to teach children. A few of our elementary school teachers were education majors, but every one of them left higher-paying public school jobs out of a conviction that there are far better ways to educate children than the fads that are currently fashionable in the public school arena. If you have children, do them a favor and research classical education.
Brandyjane at April 26, 2009 5:28 PM
duck (April 25, 2009 6:42 PM) opined, "schools... get a teacher for a couple of years and then have to retrain a new one."
That sounds like a plausible excuse until one discovers that Teach For America does the training before the new teacher begins work in the classroom. So what is the school out? Ten minutes showing the new teacher where the faculty bathroom, photocopying machine, and principal's office is, that's what.
Bottom line, the government school establishment and its parasites the teacher unions and university schools of education resent Teach For America because TFA's corpsmembers do no worse and often much better than union-obedient state teaching credential holders who've gone through the university school of education mill.
By the way, has anyone else ever wondered why Teach For America doesn't place its surplus qualified applicants in private parochial schools located in disadvantaged neighborhoods?
Micha Elyi at April 27, 2009 4:03 PM
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