An Exercise in Self-reflection

I have spent a number of hours writing my last four blog entries about education, a subject which I readily and repeatedly admit I have little more than the usual rudimentary experience (I went to school and sent children to school). I substitute taught nearly 50 years ago and can barely remember the experience. I have currently embarked on a limited teaching venture in a local charter school which was more informed by my preconceived notions of education than instructive in how the system works.  Therefore and in a word everything I wrote about education is dogma – it is true because “they said it.”[1] So why did I choose to believe the particular “theys” that I cite in these blog entries? In this exercise of self-reflection I will in no particular order sum up a few (probably a minority) reasons why my argument took the particular shape that it did.

Ms. Ruby Payne was the first “they” whose argument I bought.  The book was recommended to me by a retired police officer who runs a homeless shelter for women and uses the book as part of his efforts to get these women out of poverty so I had an advocate for the ideas who I respected and who was effectively applying the principles. However, the ideas themselves made sense to me because the internal arguments were logical, the examples (presumably from real life) were compelling, but probably most importantly they fit with how I see the world work. I believe success depends on organization and perseverance and much of the non-material poverty that holds people back according to Ms. Payne results from a deficit of these resources.

I believe James Heckman when he sites non-cognitive learning as crucial because, when a Nobel Prize winner talks (on NPR), I listen. I am impressed with academic credentials. The argument itself must make sense to me but if it comes from someone like this I am likely to not only listen but also believe. Similarly, teaching emotional intelligence comes from the Yale program dedicated to that pursuit led by Marc Brackett who I heard speak.  I am very likely to believe those sorts of credentials.

I cite the Kipp Schools and use their statistics to support their success. This is less than ideal if one is looking for disinterested information sources. I do feel that if these statistics weren’t accurate they would be questioned by other sources.  Public school teachers who commented on the Kipp results did not question there accuracy but brought up the fact that charter schools can self-select students.

Among the reasons I chose these sources for my story on education is that I respect the referring source, I respect the academic credentials of the source, and probably most importantly their data supports a story I can create that fits with my emotional predispositions.  As mentioned elsewhere, it is our emotional predispositions that for the most part drive the “they” we listen to.[2]

For this particular subject the motivating principle is equality of opportunity and the moral emotional predisposition is fairness.  I don’t think this is so important to me because of an altruistic nature.  Equality of opportunity is not merely the founding principle of democracy it defines democracy. That is, the less equality of opportunity the less democracy we have. 

Democracy is the foundational belief on which the health and wellbeing of my relations and myself depends.  Therefore, anything that diminishes equality of opportunity weakens my fundamental wellbeing. I defend equality of opportunity as a matter of survival.

My position, I am sure, would stand in stark contrast to a libertarian who would see longer public school time as little more than a socialist plot promulgated by eastern intellectual elites to indoctrinate our children.  He would site other sources or create a completely different argument for how our children should be raised.

I have taken a stand on public education. I readily acknowledge but make no apologies for the fact that it is wholly based on dogma. This is the level at which we all conduct our public discourse and participate in our democracy. A newsfeed (from a particular source) by a particular person (friend or foe) feeds into the story we already have about how we should look at this particular subject. Our knowledge is incomplete and our perspective is by definition subjective.

The take home lesson is this. If we are going to close the divide of mistrust and polarization that is so badly hurting this country we need to go into any conversation with an understanding and acknowledgement of our predispositions; we need to get a sense of the subjective perspective of the people we engage; and we need look for common ground and points of on which we can compromise.  

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[1] http://geoffhberg.blogspot.com/2017/01/

[2] http://geoffhberg.blogspot.com/2017/02/font-face-font-family-font-face-font.html

The Cost of Better Schools - and the Benefits

More school hours, days, and years are all going to cost more money. I will look at teacher pay, where the money comes from, and how it might be distributed.

Teacher pay:

The average teacher salary for 2016 – 2017 was $60,000 with a range by state from $40,000 to $80,000. Recent teacher strikes in West Virginia ($45K Rank 48), Oklahoma ($45K Rank 49) and Arizona ($47K Rank 43) have highlighted what is perceived to be the plight of underpaid teachers.[1]

On the other hand critics of the argument for higher teacher salaries site the fact that teachers have a 6 hour work day, work fewer days per year, have generous defined pension benefits, and have a kind of job security that is not commonly found in the private sector.[2],[3]

For the purpose of this post lets divide the issue into salary and benefits.

To begin with teachers who are making 25% less than the mean teacher salary probably have a case that they are underpaid. Second the six hour day doesn’t include lesson planning, test and work correction, and after hours parent and student counseling. Finally in the new world order teachers would have more scheduled work hours and days. Another reason teachers in this system should get paid more is because in this system they are very good teachers and should be paid accordingly. Teaching is hard and important work.  As long as they are delivering at the expectations of this new system they should have the pay and respect commensurate with the quality of that work. Therefore, increases in pay would be in order.

With respect to benefits, first I think all public service retirement plans should be transformed from a defined benefit to a defined contribution.  The costs then would be known up front and more clearly negotiable. Politicians would not be in the position of making promises and then underfunding them for their short-term gain.

The problem of health care expenses for both employees and retirees would be solved with the passage of the GHE.[4] Health care costs would either be known and fixed or shifted to another sector of the economy.

With respect to job security, people should be hired, fired, promoted, or disciplined based on the quality of their work no matter what profession they are in. Inevitably, some people are employed in a profession they either never were or no longer are capable of doing competently.  Therefore employment should not be based on tenure, seniority, longevity, or union status.  Nor should it be based on budget constraints or the capricious judgments of administrators and public officials. The ongoing mentoring and team building through the use of cameras in the classroom could also be a means of monitoring teacher proficiency and making sure that teachers are performing at whatever level of competence we expect them to achieve and maintain.

Paying teachers more by acknowledging their extracurricular efforts, longer hours, and more days along with a switch to defined contribution retirement plan and employment based on measurable performance would be an appropriate approach to changing teacher pay. In addition to whatever the increase cost of teacher pay, there is the additional cost of 2 years of all day pre-K. If that is the case, where will the extra money come from?

I am not sure how much this would cost but I have a pretty good guess – about $180 billion per year. There are 3.2 million public school teachers. If their salaries increased by $40,000 per year that would cost $128 billion. In addition there would need to be 500,000 preschool teachers at an average annual cost of $100,000 per year for another $50 billion.

I would propose we could get that money from healthcare and I would do that by amending my Guaranteed Healthcare Entitlement (GHE). I proposed that the $3.3 Trillion we spend on health care be fixed until, as a result of medical inflation in other countries, our per capita medical costs matches the per capita expenses of other OECD countries. I would suggest amending that formula by saying we decrease that spending by an additional 1% for each of the first six years so that we get to that OECD mean faster and we could use that money to fund the added expense of our education system.  I don’t think this would stress the medical profession (any more than the GHE would). In the first year there would be $33 billion dollars that would grow to $198 billion by year six. It will take a while to reconfigure the system and train literally an army of pre K teachers so we don’t have to come up with the money in the first year. That said that is a lot of money coming from the federal government so how would it be distributed?

With respect to this I have a few very generic suggestions. I would say money should be distributed to states in the form of block grants. Perhaps universal all day pre-K should be a priority. Expanding school hours and days are measurable changes that could be compensated through these grants. However, I feel mandated curricula standards from Washington would be counterproductive. Recommendations on how to foster emotional intelligence and character along with intellectual intelligence would be helpful but states and local school districts should be left to determine how to implement such instruction.

At the state level I would suggest implementing a Guaranteed Student Entitlement which I briefly mentioned in my January 31 blog entry. To remind you, in 1992 the then commissioner of education for Rhode Island Peter McWalter proposed what he called the Guaranteed Student Entitlement (GSE).  In the program the cost of a solid education for each student would be determined.  This would cover basic subjects, electives, arts, and physical education.  The state would guarantee that each student would have this amount spent on him or her throughout the state.  Recognizing that there are students with special need, these students would get an additional stipend above the initial base stipend.  At the time the base stipend was approximately $7000 and additional funding of $1500 went to students who were either low income or had English as a second language.  They would get $3000 if they were identified with a learning disability. 

This system didn’t fly and I think one reason was that it would require local school districts to cede funding to the state. However, if additional federal funding were available through the state then this could go to pay for extra school hours and days in all school districts and the additional funds for educating disadvantaged students.  This would keep most of school funding local and provide the financial support for both parts of this program.  This would address one issue brought up in more than one comment by former teachers about charter schools – the fact that they were selective and didn’t have to take difficult students or can dismiss them back to public schools. In this system whatever school ends up with them would get higher pay per student for dealing with these types of students.

Ever since the publication of a Nation at Risk[5] the quality of our educational system has been called into question and after 35 years we have very little to show in the way of improvement. This is my proposal for a way forward. I would also add that in addition to improving our educational system this is an anti-poverty program with attendant saving in welfare costs, gun violence cost, out of wedlock births and abortions that go with poverty. It is also hopefully an inoculum against mental health issues for the next generation. Finally if we do, through education, raise most of the next generation out of poverty the cost of this kind of program should go down.

This is my two cents on the cost of education in this country. I would love to hear yours.[6]

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[1] http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2018/04/teacher_pay_2017.html

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2014/08/07/low-teacher-pay-and-high-teacher-pay-are-both-myths/#4ef2eeb031af

[3] https://www.usnews.com/debate-club/are-teachers-overpaid/average-public-school-teacher-is-paid-too-much

[4] See Fixing Healthcare Part 3C: Odds and Ends http://geoffhberg.blogspot.com/2018/03/fixing-healthcare-part-3c-odds-and-ends.html

[5] https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

[6] Any comments you leave in the comment section come directly to me and also can be seen by other readers.