Buying a Better Education: Guest columnist, Matt Miller, in today's New York Times Op-Ed section has a unique idea for improving education in the tough inner city schools in America: spend more money.
Okay, that's not new, but his approach is worth considering. He wants to keep the estate tax (the so called "Death Tax" that only a tiny few ultra rich folks pay) to fund a dramatic increase for teachers of inner city school kids, including paying nice, lawyer sized saleries to teachers who are recognized for their excellence in teaching or who teach math and sciences.
As we all should know by now, qualified math and science teacher in all but the wealthiest suburbs of America are as rare as dinosaurs. And truly good teachers in any discipline are difficult to come by. Miller proposes to correct this problem by making a few excellent teachers millionairs by the time they retire.
This novel approach deserves serious consideration. Public education in America has sunk to all time lows and predicates impending disaster if we don't start placing a proper value on it. The Bushites' No Child Left Behind fiasco has only succeeded in making the problem far worse.
Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with Miller's idea. How is an "excellent teacher" identified. I've witnessed a variety of attempts to make such determinations, and at best they are only accurate about 33 percent of the time. That means about two out of three "excellent teachers" are not excellent at all, and if we toss in the possibility that people who are designated as such have the opportunity to become millionairs based on such a categorization, you can be assured that considerable chicanery will be devoted to achieving that status. There's nothing like discoverying that someone elevated to such high status is actually guilty of criminal behavior or witnessing some principal's brown nosing lacky being designated the star faculty member.
Generally speaking, true excellence in teaching is properly measured against the success of one's students. This can take a long time to determine, however. Jesus and Socrates are two prime examples of such problematic measurements. Each was executed before they could earn their proper accolades as educators. Unfortunately, there was no pot of gold to spend in their retirement years.
Okay, that's not new, but his approach is worth considering. He wants to keep the estate tax (the so called "Death Tax" that only a tiny few ultra rich folks pay) to fund a dramatic increase for teachers of inner city school kids, including paying nice, lawyer sized saleries to teachers who are recognized for their excellence in teaching or who teach math and sciences.
As we all should know by now, qualified math and science teacher in all but the wealthiest suburbs of America are as rare as dinosaurs. And truly good teachers in any discipline are difficult to come by. Miller proposes to correct this problem by making a few excellent teachers millionairs by the time they retire.
This novel approach deserves serious consideration. Public education in America has sunk to all time lows and predicates impending disaster if we don't start placing a proper value on it. The Bushites' No Child Left Behind fiasco has only succeeded in making the problem far worse.
Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with Miller's idea. How is an "excellent teacher" identified. I've witnessed a variety of attempts to make such determinations, and at best they are only accurate about 33 percent of the time. That means about two out of three "excellent teachers" are not excellent at all, and if we toss in the possibility that people who are designated as such have the opportunity to become millionairs based on such a categorization, you can be assured that considerable chicanery will be devoted to achieving that status. There's nothing like discoverying that someone elevated to such high status is actually guilty of criminal behavior or witnessing some principal's brown nosing lacky being designated the star faculty member.
Generally speaking, true excellence in teaching is properly measured against the success of one's students. This can take a long time to determine, however. Jesus and Socrates are two prime examples of such problematic measurements. Each was executed before they could earn their proper accolades as educators. Unfortunately, there was no pot of gold to spend in their retirement years.
posted by Jim | 12:06 PM
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