The upcoming teacher crisis
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- teachers across subjects get paid at the same rate table. Math & Science teachers have a higher opportunity cost but they get the same wage as a PE teacher. I've talked with people in the union and other people, and basically they don't believe that free market principles should dictate how much people get paid.
- new teacher burnout: new teachers get the worst classes to teach, while the most experienced ones get to pick out their favorite ones. In addition, new teachers will have to teach many different classes compared to more senior ones, so this adds a lot to the load. In addition, at least at my wife's school, she was laid off every year for 5 years based on the seniority system. She got very high teacher evaluations but that doesn't matter in the seniority system.
- layoffs hit the young, cheaper and more energetic teachers, while keeping the expensive older teachers.
- it is nearly impossible to fire bad teachers. Some of the teachers slept in class, took field trips to the mall, or spent half a semester teaching handwriting. Everyone knows who the bad teachers are, but it is a bureaucratic nightmare to do anything about it.
- it is really hard to switch to different schools or districts. If you have a personality conflict you are sort of stuck with each other. Compare this to private industry - I've seen many people who were bad fits at one company do really well once they moved on.
... and I could go on. Basically, if someone wanted to be a teacher and asked for my advice, I'd tell them to stay away from the field unless they really really really want to be a teacher.
Probably the best thing they can do is move away from a seniority based system. Give the principal a lot more leeway in how teachers get assigned/paid. And make the school extremely accountable for performance.
Of course, the teacher's unions, which are run by senior teachers, won't go for this. I think we're kind of stuck with the situation we have, for better or wose.
What I mean is that in a normal environment you'd start off as a teacher, and if you were capable you'd get more management responsibility, and could conceivably smoothly transition from junior teacher to senior teacher to department head to assistant principal to principal.
The way it works now is that they are two tracks - basically the workers (the teachers) and the management (the administrators), and the two don't mix. Teachers will organize staff parties, and it is controversial if administrators dare show up. In the past administrators would also teach a class or two - that practice is really frowned upon now.
So the above is a long-winded way of saying that there is a bizarre structure between the union and the administrators, and the whole thing would need to be untangled, not just the union side of things.
Administration vs teachers. This can vary school by school from what I've seen/experienced. At the school my wife just finished four years at staff parties were staff parties, even administrators came. The teachers and administrators had close bonds and when half the staff and 100% of the administration at the school were fucked due to district level bureaucracy and the requirements of a federal grant this year there was very clear solidarity between the two groups. The principal that will be taking over the school for the next year however immediately alienated all of the staff members and replaced a bunch of them with people from his previous school. The mans reputation preceded him of course and it wasn't a good one, regardless of his reputation his actions were very discouraging and in many cases poor judgement.
As far as tracks for progression and salary for teachers I don't think a traditional corporate structure would work just as it doesn't often work for engineers or programmers. I know plenty of programmers that never ever want to enter management and struggle to find companies that will pay them according to their experience and not their position on an org chart. Additionally with teachers many teachers, my wife for example, there may be zero desire to become an administrator. As such we should be willing to pay teachers that are good, and have experience accordingly regardless of their moves into administration.
This may not be the case where you are located, but here the teachers union represents the teachers who have one type of contract, and there is no body that represents the administrators. Administrators have individual contracts and can be terminated quite easily by the district. Teachers are on standardized contracts created by the teachers union and so it is harder to remove them. Unfortunately you don't see many administrators removed because there's a good old boy system in place. The people at the district level overseeing administration all know each other and have been around forever. People owe each other favors or their kids play ball together and other bull shit. A new superintendent was hired a year ago from another state and the first thing he did was eliminate a lot of positions that were filled by unqualified individuals or that shouldn't have even existed. Some times a little fresh blood at the top is necessary to clear out administrative problems. I don't envy him though, he'll probably be tossed out on his ass in another year or two due to problems beyond his control. The school districts budget shortfall for next year is over 50%.
Presumably you think too that society is injured by giving people legal representatives? I think teachers as anyone deserve to have proper representation in legal matters, in sub-legal matters, in pay negotiation, etc..
This is one where parents can have an impact. As in most areas, the local school system here has a school that's in a "white collar" area and the students do well on standardized tests. Another school in the same system is in a more rural area and the students overall do not do as well on the standardized tests.
Talking to some teachers who know, one big difference is that in the white collar area, the parents pay attention to what's going on in the classroom. If they think a teacher is slacking, they are calling the principal, the school board, and the superintendent until something is done. In the more rural school, few parents really challenge the administration to address issues in the classroom.
The applicant pool is plenty well stocked, so there is no "shortage" of teachers. What there is, perhaps, is a shortage of qualified teachers in the classroom. In other words, due to budget cuts, layoffs and position cuts (i.e., not hiring a replacement after someone retires or quits), there are not enough employed teachers to adequately teach all the students in the states with a so-called shortage.
But there are plenty of qualified people looking for teaching jobs -- more than enough for current openings and then some. So what this is, is a money problem. There's no teacher shortage, there's a budget shortage. We're not allocating enough funds to adequately fill needs in schools across the country.
Or at least, that's how I see it.
There are plenty of Milwaukee area private options that exceed the outcomes of the public school system for well under $14K.
My wife is a teacher, and a severe behavior problem impacts the entire classes performance, but it takes so much of her attention away from teaching.
Spending per pupil has risen every year over the last 20 in Milwaukee and performance & outcomes have dropped dramatically. Logic dictates that there are many other forces in play.
The education system and the problems therein (i.e., issues affecting student success) are certainly far more complicated and nuanced.
There are two reasons there's lots of special education positions open. The first is that many teachers don't have the necessary endorsements. The second is that many teachers have zero desire to get the endorsements. Special education in many schools is underfunded and under supported. In our overzealous attempt to prevent peoples children from being labeled as different we've hamstrung the programs. Then you have the mainstreaming of severely dysfunctional children in order to make them feel normal. This can cause greater problems for those children and negatively impact the education of every child. I'm not an expert on this topic but I've heard enough about it to see why so many teachers aren't willing to work in special education.
I'm thinking this isn't a strong "attractor" to our country's best and brightest and results in the impending demographic bomb of the teaching profession.
"Trained to be stupid/Taught to be nothing at all/We're taught to be nothing"
There was an article just today about teaching methods that don't require teachers in the classroom at all: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1521077
I'm not saying we go to that extreme but there's a lot that can be done in education and technology and a teacher shortage is exactly the type of thing that would jump start that development.
Danish schools have maps so old the Soviet Union is still on them (they are still in process of facing them out).
3 Years ago my school still had a couple of 386s for the kids to play on (they did also have a few more modern computers, but still)
Not having teachers at all simply doesn't work since many schools do more babysitting than teaching (or at least that was my experience with high school). For teacher-less teaching to work, you'd have to assume at least 9/10 students are self-motivated and are willing to do work without someone breathing down their back and, really, it's not going to happen.
Do you have any thoughts about why 90% of kids (by your statement, if I read it right) aren't able to motivate themselves to even behave in class never mind push themselves?
To my mind this is a shortfall of the welfare system. I'd have no problem with cutting child focussed family allowances if a child is constantly absent, bullies, is persistently disruptive or is violent or abusive in school (without a doctors note pre-warning teachers of a mental condition, say).
This needs a correspondingly strict youth offending policy and willingness to allow prisons to get very full in the short term in case there is a corresponding upturn in crime rates as unruly elements of society adjust to having less money because of their unsocial actions.
I'd also cut compulsory education back to about 14years and offer more practical courses in place.
So I think that the power structure in the system will prevent an improvement in efficiency like what you describe.