Evan Thomas
Schooling the Candidates
Why the '08 contenders don't talk about education reform.
Last year McKinsey and Company, the nation's best-known business consulting firm, ran an international survey to try to determine why certain countries—like Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea—seem to have the best schools. The answer came back, somewhat unsurprisingly, that these countries have the best teachers: educators who are respected, rewarded, and held accountable for their performance in the classroom.
This may seem obvious, but you would never have guessed watching the Democratic debate in Las Vegas the week before Thanksgiving. All the candidates give lip service to the importance of education to the nation's future. And it goes without saying that accountability is the key to performance in any job. Yet when John Roberts of CNN asked the candidates if school boards should be able to reward teachers or fire them based on performance, all the Democrats headed for the hills, hemming and hawing and obfuscating their answers.
What's going on here? In short, the power of the teachers' unions. The National Education Association is a big hitter in the Democratic Party (sort of the way the National Rifle Association holds sway with Republicans). The NEA is all about job security, so you won't find Democrats leading crusades to weed out bad teachers. The Republicans don't do much better. They say they are reluctant to meddle in local school governance and instead push for vouchers so kids can go to private or parochial schools.
There is only one politician of note who has really tried to take on the teachers' unions, and he is not running for president—yet. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired Joel Klein, a former Justice Department antitrust chief in the Clinton administration, to run the city's chaotic schools. Klein managed to get a third of the school principals to sign an agreement that would allow them to be terminated for cause. And he got the teachers' union to agree to give up this absurd privilege: in New York, for many years, teachers with seniority could show up at any school they wanted and teach there, shoving aside teachers with less seniority. Klein won the right to stop low-performing senior teachers from exercising this droit du seigneur. Some of them just went home rather than teaching wherever they wanted to—and were still paid in full. That doesn't sound like an enormous step toward teacher accountability, but it was a struggle for New York to extract even these comparatively modest concessions from the teachers' union, and it shows how far there is to go. Teacher accountability is at the heart of true education reform. If only the presidential candidates would even dare to discuss the problem.
Editor's note: The National Education Association responded to this column with a letter to the editor.
© 2007
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Member Comments
Posted By: 4solutions @ 05/30/2008 10:22:55 PM
Comment: Better Schools
April 26, 2008 by 4solutions
Do we really care that the US is not number one in the world in terms of school results? Ranking close to number 23, isn???t our real concern. Our concern needs to be whether all children have the opportunity to master the basics, learn responsibility, and be able to learn according to their potentials and interests.
Classroom discipline is one major challenge. Class size, learning environment, school costs, reading mastery, and a more productive learning program, are all important. These topics and much more is available to read and download at no cost at Practical Safety And Education Solutions, found byGoogling to psaes.info. After reaching the site, the article Better Schools is offered in the Personal Assisted Learning manual, or linked directly to Better Schools. The principles in this writing are based on proven experience and research. We owe it to our children and society to bring about better results.
Posted By: mjkittredge @ 03/17/2008 12:44:52 PM
Comment: One of the problems with k-12 education, is that a lot of seemingly random subjects get taught to students. Their time gets wasted, they are forced to sit through classes that aren't the least bit interesting to them. No wonder they fail. Ask any student after graduating high school (or "dropping" out) what they remember from all those years of school, and what information they learned in school that they actually make use of on a regular basis (or at all, ever). You'll most likely find that years of their lives were spent listening to long dull lectures, copying notes into a notebook, and filling in either (A)(B)(C) or (D) with a number 2 pencil. How that prepares them for the "real world", I have yet to discover.
The most useful things I learned in school, were basic math, basic english, and how to touch type. Everything else was a big waste of my time, unfortunately. I have yet to find any use for the 8+ years of music class or gym class or art class or history class or science class.
Education reform shouldn't be about improved test scores or lower dropout rate. Focusing on those things wrongly assumes by default that what is actually going on in schools for 12 years is worthwhile. Reform begins when USEFUL subjects get taught, things that people will actually make use of in their lives on a regular basis. To me, school beyond elementary is a bad joke.
Posted By: Dr. D. @ 12/04/2007 12:16:05 PM
Comment: Schools are a symptom of our society, not a cause of our ills. Unless you've ever set foot in a classroom with the lack of respect from administration, parents, politicitians, board members, and the media, you have nothing to say. Every time there is a fiscal shortfall, schools are targeted. Schools don't see increased funding, because the current line is "cut spending". We would have to actually give something to have equal and quality schools. Americans are selfish middle-age pigs. And paying teachers more won't help, because you cannot be lured into a classroom with money. You'll never make it. You have to want to teach to make it. You can be pushed out because of little money, but not brought in. And incentive pay will never work because you can help kids learn but you can't make them. As an educator you are dependent on the efforts of students. Evaluating teachers is completely different from evaluating other professions, and using the corporate model on schools will kill them and the institution that in years past provided the best educated workforce on the planet.