Is It the Teachers Stupid?

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The problems with government education in the US are almost too numerous to mention. Donna Foote spent time observing the efforts of Teach For America teachers in a Los Angeles inner city school. She thinks that improving the teacher corps will fix the schools:

It's the teachers, stupid! The single most important factor in student achievement is the quality of the teacher. And yet, we have no effective system to attract, train, retain and promote high-caliber candidates for our schools. Today's teachers score in the lowest quartile of college grads and too many of the schools that train them are diploma mills. By making its program highly selective and attaching status to the job, Teach For America has proved that it is possible to get the best and the brightest into our classrooms. But no one—not TFA, not the districts, not the unions—has figured out how to keep them there. TFA's most recent alumni survey indicates that one third of former corps members are still teaching K–12. Critics charge that the recruits' short forays into the classroom exacerbate the critical issue of staff churning in our neediest schools and gibe that TFA really stands for Teach For Awhile. But the truth is, up to half of all the country's 3.5 million teachers bail within five years. Low pay, low status and low satisfaction undoubtedly drive many out. The transformation of teaching into a financially rewarding profession with high standards of admission—and accountability—would go a long way toward establishing staff stability.

.....In Washington, D.C., the reforming schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, is a 1992 TFA alum. The founders of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), the wildly successful chain of 57 charter schools, are 1992 TFA alums, too. Nationwide, there are now 360 school leaders and 16 elected officials who got their start in public service with Teach For America. By 2010, the ranks of America's next generation of leaders will be seeded with 20,000 high-achieving alums who will have seen the crisis in our classrooms firsthand. _ Newsweek_via_JoanneJacobs

As long as schools of education are dominated by ideologues rather than educators, and as long as teachers' unions protect teachers who cannot teach, and as long as teachers' unions apply political pressure to restrict school choice, the problems with most government schools will remain intractable.

Teachers' unions and their enablers among the US Democratic Party, think that throwing money at the problem will do the trick. Just pay teachers a professional wage and give them a professional's respect, and things will be fine. Certainly unions would collect more dues that way. Bad teachers would be paid more just like good teachers. The unions and their enablers in the US Democratic Party would simply ratchet expenditures on schools into the stratosphere, without requiring better outcomes. Government education: an oxymoron? No, the education is there. An education in drugs, delinquency, drinking, lifelong psychological neoteny. It's the system, stupid!