Education

Dear Board members,

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Hate to tell you but in just a year, you’ll be negotiating another teacher contract. This year, you’ll be negotiating two contracts: Support Personnel and Custodians.  Those are the bad news. 

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The good news is that other people are thinking and writing about collective agreements and the impact that current methods used to compensate teachers in collective agreements have on the overall cost of education. One such report was highlighted in this week’s issue of The Education Gadfly, published by the Fordham Foundation.  This is their review:

Frozen Assets: Rethinking Teacher Contracts Could Free Billions for School Reform

 
Education Sector
Marguerite Roza
January 2007 

This paper by the insightful and prolific Marguerite Roza analyzes eight common provisions in teacher contracts, showing how each contributes to overall education spending. For example, experience-based pay accounts for about 10 percent of the more than $500 billion America spends on K-12 education annually. Salary increases linked to educational credentials (e.g., a master’s degree) and class size limitations each account for about 2 percent. The other contract provisions account for smaller percentages–sick, personal, and professional-development days; teachers aides; and excess health and retirement benefits (above those provided in other professions) each tally between 0.5 and 1.3 percent of total spending. Of course, even 1 percent of $500 billion is a big number, which brings us to the report’s fundamental assertion. We spend billions on teacher perks with little or no evidence that the money is spent wisely, or wouldn’t be better used to recruit stronger teachers, reward the best teachers, or target resources to the neediest students. This paper is best read as a national overview; it doesn’t dig into specific examples or variations between states or districts. But it poses key issues. Have we made optimal tradeoffs in our public-education budgets or are they simply haphazard accumulations of myriad decisions made in years past? You already know the answer. But the unions don’t want to hear it. The Washington Post caught Antonia Cortese of the AFT saying that the report was "on thin ice for its sweeping … and often inaccurate" assertions. Reg Weaver of the NEA could only repeat his favorite mantra when asked about the report: "fully fund public education." One hopes more substantive discussions are occurring somewhere. One can be confident that Dr. Roza will keep raising such issues and for that we are grateful. The report is online here.

by Eric Osberg

This is the Introduction to the report: 

State and federal accountability systems are putting immense pressure on public schools to improve the performance of low-achieving students. To respond, schools must be able to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, strengthen curricula, and take other steps to provide struggling students with the help they need.

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But such efforts are expensive and, as the nation faces the cost of caring for an aging population and other challenges in the years ahead, it is unlikely that education will receive a great deal of new funding. Education leaders, as a result, will increasingly have to scrutinize their existing budgets to find ways to fund their reform initiatives. One potentially valuable source of funds for reform are common provisions in teacher contracts that obligate schools to spend large amounts of money on programs that lack a clear link to student achievement.

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Education is a labor-intensive business—an estimated 60 percent to 80 percent of the more than $500 billion per year spent operating the nation’s public schools goes directly to paying and supporting school employees, and teacher contracts play a big role in determining where such resources are deployed. Much of the money is directed to basic salary costs. But many common provisions of teacher contracts require school districts to spend substantial sums to implement policies which research has shown have a weak or inconsistent relationship with student learning.

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THE PRESIDENT: Good morning.

In recent days, we have seen shocking acts of violence in schools across our Nation. Laura and I are praying for the victims and their families, and we extend our sympathies to them and to the communities that have been devastated by these attacks.

I have asked Secretary of Education Spellings and Attorney General Gonzales to host a conference on school safety this Tuesday. We will bring together teachers, parents, students, administrators, law enforcement officials, and other experts to discuss the best ways to keep violence out of our schools. Our goal is clear: Children and teachers should never fear for their safety when they enter a classroom.

As we work to keep our classrooms safe, we must also ensure that the children studying there get a good education. I believe every child can learn. So when I came to Washington, I worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and I was proud to sign it into law. The theory behind this law is straightforward: We expect every school in America to teach every student to read, write, add, and subtract.

We are measuring progress, and giving parents the information they need to hold their schools accountable. Local schools remain under local control. The federal government is asking for demonstrated results in exchange for the money we send from Washington. Thanks to this good law, we are leaving behind the days when schools just shuffled children from grade to grade, whether they learned anything or not.

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Mathew McGonagle, 36, of Contoocook, who recently resigned as assistant principal at Rundlett Middle school in Concord, pled guilty to one count of felonious sexual assault and two counts of misdemeanor sexual assault in Belknap Superior Court yesterday. The charges followed a lengthy investigation by the Belknap County Sheriff’s Office and Belknap County Attorney’s Office undertaken after a young woman reported that McGonagle sexually assaulted her during the 1999-2000 school year when she was a student at Gilford Middle School.

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There is a war raging all around us.  It is a global war.  It is a war that the United States cannot afford to lose.  No one has died in this war, and no one is likely to.  But there are casualties.  Their injuries are not physical; they are mental.  And the suffering is life-long.  I’m not referring to the Global War on Terror or the War on Drugs.  I’m talking about the Math War.

While the United States is, militarily, the world’s only superpower, we are, mathematically, merely a second-rate power, and losing ground every year.  In the Math War, the superpowers are Singapore, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belgium.  In assessment after assessment, those countries prove that their weapons – in this case, mathematically-competent 4^th, 8^th, and 12^th graders – are more accurate and advanced than our own.  Their strategies are more focused.  Their national resolve is stronger.

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