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]
[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.
Nice, Geoff. Well considered and presented.
ReplyDeleteI might add one thing. It seems to me that you are making an implicit argument here:
a) that the public sector actually does provide vital public services, as vital as police, fire and defense to our civilization;
b) that among those public services is public education; and
c) that due to their existential nature, these services require adequate resources based on the actual need, not some arbitrary measure of size.
I think this implicit argument needs to be made explicit, literally every time we discuss matters of governance and public policy.
Ironically, in 21st Century America, both liberals and conservatives alike tend to frame the public education question as what's right for THEIR OWN children -- a personal choice -- and not what kind of education we expect as a BASELINE for our NEIGHBORS. In thinking about ourselves and what services we get for our own tax dollars, we've forgotten that this is about what kind of community we want to live in. It shouldn't limit the education we seek for our own children but it should enable basic numeracy, literacy and critical thinking skills that EVERYONE needs to participate in our Republic.
This is NOT just an example of an argument for "large government" in opposition to "small government" Libertarian Fundamentalism. This is an argument for necessary government. Consider this: we don't expect the CBO to produce an analysis of our missile defense or drone programs in terms of an ROI. Of course not. That would be silly because the systems are response to an existential threat. How big are these systems? Big enough to get the job done. THAT's how we need to think about SOME other government services too, not the least of which is public education.