(c) by Mark Dempsey
Teachers' salaries have lost ground, even as the plutocrats have prospered, so teacher strikes are in the news. Some states' (Oklahoma) school districts even implemented a four-day school week to cut costs. And teachers are not alone in the U.S. Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston reminds us that the bottom 90% of median, inflation-adjusted incomes have increased only $59 since 1972, while expenses for housing, healthcare and education increased far more than wages.
Productivity and real incomes have increased, though. As evidence of that, if $59 were an inch on a bar graph, the bar for the top ten percent's income increase would be 141 feet high; the bar for the top 0.1% would be five miles high. In non-newsworthy words: income increases in the U.S. have gone almost exclusively to the wealthy.
That increased income for plutocrats seldom translates into funding for public institutions, though. So school districts respond to teacher strikes by pleading they don't have the money in their budget for higher salaries or benefits--even though our local schools spent enormous amounts pre-paying for vacation time and for high salaries for administrators. Budget shortfalls threaten not only current teacher pay, but also retirement benefits.
Yet salary disputes remain a symptom, not a cause, in the ongoing political war between the plutocrats and the educators. Teachers are a prominent target because they have a powerful union that prevents our wealthy plutocrats from dominating all public policy.
For their part, the billionaires want education "reform," and have funded education movements with the likes of Michelle Rhee, former superintendent of Washington D.C. schools. There, she made her bones as a "Tiger Mom" reformer / administrator who fired teachers she deemed incompetent.
Typically, these well-funded "reformers" promote three strategies to improve education: 1. (Union busting) charter schools 2. Merit pay for teachers (because they're motivated by money!) and 3. Constant testing--to demonstrate whether teachers are providing "value added" in their classrooms. Unfortunately, frequent testing often means teachers "teach to the test," teaching only what tests cover, and sometimes teachers even cheat by providing students with answers. After all, their employment depends on those test results.
Science validates none of those three strategies as producing better educational outcomes. Nevertheless, the education "reform" billionaires funded Waiting for Superman, a film featuring Ms. Rhee, which also touted the Finnish schools as the ones to emulate. Don't get me wrong, in Finland, schools are very good indeed. Oddly enough, though, Waiting for Superman omits mentioning that Finnish teachers are tenured, unionized and well paid.
But if the charters / merit pay / testing strategies do not correlate with better educational outcomes, what does? Answer: childhood poverty. Only two percent of Finnish children are poor. In the U.S. that figure is 23%.
That is why, however important it is, better teacher pay is not all that needs to occur to improve educational outcomes. Even if the teachers are victorious in getting higher pay, the impact on childhood poverty is likely to be minimal.
Even with more teacher pay, the plutocrats next move is to say "OK, we've paid you more, where are the improvements in educational outcomes?" None will be forthcoming, demonstrating to the public that teachers are no better than those welfare bums. The fact that this educational "reform" movement ignores systemic problems like childhood poverty will not even appear in the editorials written to the tune of clucking tongues by the plutocrats' hired pundits.
The cultural revolution needed to turn this around is painfully slow to develop. Better to manage our expections to be modest, then, rather than wishfully thinking that returning education to its better-funded past will be a panacea.
...
Thanks to notwaitingforsuperman.org for many of the above facts.
Teachers' salaries have lost ground, even as the plutocrats have prospered, so teacher strikes are in the news. Some states' (Oklahoma) school districts even implemented a four-day school week to cut costs. And teachers are not alone in the U.S. Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston reminds us that the bottom 90% of median, inflation-adjusted incomes have increased only $59 since 1972, while expenses for housing, healthcare and education increased far more than wages.
Productivity and real incomes have increased, though. As evidence of that, if $59 were an inch on a bar graph, the bar for the top ten percent's income increase would be 141 feet high; the bar for the top 0.1% would be five miles high. In non-newsworthy words: income increases in the U.S. have gone almost exclusively to the wealthy.
That increased income for plutocrats seldom translates into funding for public institutions, though. So school districts respond to teacher strikes by pleading they don't have the money in their budget for higher salaries or benefits--even though our local schools spent enormous amounts pre-paying for vacation time and for high salaries for administrators. Budget shortfalls threaten not only current teacher pay, but also retirement benefits.
Yet salary disputes remain a symptom, not a cause, in the ongoing political war between the plutocrats and the educators. Teachers are a prominent target because they have a powerful union that prevents our wealthy plutocrats from dominating all public policy.
For their part, the billionaires want education "reform," and have funded education movements with the likes of Michelle Rhee, former superintendent of Washington D.C. schools. There, she made her bones as a "Tiger Mom" reformer / administrator who fired teachers she deemed incompetent.
Typically, these well-funded "reformers" promote three strategies to improve education: 1. (Union busting) charter schools 2. Merit pay for teachers (because they're motivated by money!) and 3. Constant testing--to demonstrate whether teachers are providing "value added" in their classrooms. Unfortunately, frequent testing often means teachers "teach to the test," teaching only what tests cover, and sometimes teachers even cheat by providing students with answers. After all, their employment depends on those test results.
Science validates none of those three strategies as producing better educational outcomes. Nevertheless, the education "reform" billionaires funded Waiting for Superman, a film featuring Ms. Rhee, which also touted the Finnish schools as the ones to emulate. Don't get me wrong, in Finland, schools are very good indeed. Oddly enough, though, Waiting for Superman omits mentioning that Finnish teachers are tenured, unionized and well paid.
But if the charters / merit pay / testing strategies do not correlate with better educational outcomes, what does? Answer: childhood poverty. Only two percent of Finnish children are poor. In the U.S. that figure is 23%.
That is why, however important it is, better teacher pay is not all that needs to occur to improve educational outcomes. Even if the teachers are victorious in getting higher pay, the impact on childhood poverty is likely to be minimal.
Even with more teacher pay, the plutocrats next move is to say "OK, we've paid you more, where are the improvements in educational outcomes?" None will be forthcoming, demonstrating to the public that teachers are no better than those welfare bums. The fact that this educational "reform" movement ignores systemic problems like childhood poverty will not even appear in the editorials written to the tune of clucking tongues by the plutocrats' hired pundits.
The cultural revolution needed to turn this around is painfully slow to develop. Better to manage our expections to be modest, then, rather than wishfully thinking that returning education to its better-funded past will be a panacea.
...
Thanks to notwaitingforsuperman.org for many of the above facts.
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