The Daily Caller

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Politics

TheDC Analysis: Teachers aren’t heroes and pretending they are only muddles the debate over education reform

1:11 AM 10/04/2010
Jamie Weinstein
Senior Editor

Teachers are not heroes.

I know, you are not supposed to say that. You are supposed to only speak about the unbelievable job that teachers do under impossible circumstances all the while being paid slave wages. But, for the most part, this is American mythology.

Last week, MSNBC — a cable news station similar to Fox News but without viewers — promoted “Education Nation,” a weeklong series highlighting the problems and potential solutions to our nation’s public school system. From the little I saw, it was largely positive, with great guests proposing innovative, reform minded solutions.

But intermixed in the substance was the sort of flowery rhetoric that you would expect and we as a society have been forced to accept. For instance, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explained that we should want our “best and the brightest” to go into teaching and that teachers do “the most important work in society.”

This sounds nice and it seems like the right thing to say, but it is also poppycock.

Do we really want our “best and brightest” to go into teaching? How about having them become CEOs of innovative companies that create jobs and expand our economy? How about they go into the sciences and invent ways for us to live our lives better?

Mark me down as one who doesn’t think we should hope our very “best and brightest” go into teaching remedial math. I prefer them curing cancer. I’m quite content with having a reasonably competent, acceptably intelligent, friendly and committed person teach addition and subtraction to America’s tots, thank you very much.

Public school teachers also aren’t so unbelievably underpaid as we hear repeated over and over again. This doesn’t mean we don’t need to change public education compensation schemes – we do; good teachers should be paid more, bad teachers should be paid less (or fired). But, on average, teachers don’t seem to have it as bad as we pretend.

In a 2003 article in EducationNext, University of Missouri-Columbia economics Professor Michael Podgursky took a look at the claim — propagated by Teachers’ Unions and regurgitated uncritically by us all — that teachers are horribly underpaid. His conclusion? It’s nonsense.

According to his research, public school teachers work less than 190 days a year, while professionals like accountants and lawyers work closer to 240 days a year.  What’s more, teachers spend less time in the “office” — indeed, some state union contracts stipulate just how many hours teachers are allowed to be on campus. And while they surely take some work home, so do other professionals. The short of it is: teachers have a GREAT work schedule.

This, indeed, is part of what makes teaching an attractive profession. Besides the three main reasons to be a teacher – June, July, and August – the limited amount of time one spends on campus provides more time for a family life. You can make more money being a lawyer, but you probably won’t see your family as much.

What’s more, when Podgursky crunches the numbers, the average salary of public school teachers on a per hour basis isn’t so bad compared to other professions –  they actually fare better than accountants and some types of engineers.

So, in sum, it turns out that teachers are generally not struggling in coal mining conditions for migrant worker wages.

NEXT: Mythology muddles important debate about education reform

Tags: Education, Fox News, msnbc, Reform, School, Schools, Teachers, TheDC
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  • DefendUrRights

    Some of the worst people I know are teachers.

    And some of the worst crooks are administrators. What’s new?

  • riseabove

    Even though I agree there has to be some changes, I don’t believe teachers in general are the villians. Proper learning starts at home, with parents. We need to take some responsibility here. And as much as I know I’ll get pounded for saying so, some kids are spoiled brats…a direct result of poor parenting. We can’t expect teachers to perform miracles. Personally, I wouldn’t last a day in a classroom without tearing my hair out. While I wouldn’t exactly call teachers heroes, I definately salute the vast majority of them for putting up with crap we, ourselves can’t be bothered with.

    • clw

      I do agree to anxtent. I frankly think the Public Schools should have plain uniforms, just standard pants/school shirt, and should enforce the bullying policies and conduct codes. I definitely don’t salute the MAJORITY of teachers, in fact I’d salute about 3% of them. That said, I made sure my kids were literate LONG before they left grade school, and I wasn’t one of those idiotic parents running cigarettes and coffee to the school bus for their kids.(Yes, I’ve seen it). Some of those kids are flat out disrespectful, and should be tossed on violation-one. Let their parents teach them.

  • clw

    THANK YOU Jamie! Absolutely, you nailed it! Teachers are NOT “all that”. The Public School System is right up there with the County Health Dept (our new healthcare), the DMV, the Post Office, Amtrak, Fannie/Freddie, Medicare, and Medicaid… it STINKS, and so do most of the teachers and administrators.

    Schools are now cutting foreign language teachers and sitting kids in front of computers with “Rosetta Stone” type language programs, and the kids far prefer it to teachers lecturing because it’s interactive. Perhaps kids could attend school online, like the college kids do, where it’s SAFER, there are far less extraneous ISSUES to contend with, and they might actually get educated.

    For what people spend on daycare, school supplies, school lunches, school clothes, gym clothes, mandatory RANDOM school expenses… families would probably come out ahead for once. I can’t tell you how many times my kids were forced to watch “an inconvenient truth” and in classes that were not even REMOTELY associated with that movie! The level of liberal indoctrination is obscene!

    My kids had maybe TWO teachers between them, out of probably 100 teachers, who they recall with GREAT fondness. That’s SAD. My daughter tutored English for two years in college. Frankly, I’d rather fork over $250/wk for a tutor to come and lay out the lesson plan each day for my child to be schooled at home if I couldn’t do it myself.

    • Tex Expatriate

      Ditto and double-ditto! I’m seventy-three years old and was educated in genuine public schools, controlled by parents in school boards in conjunction with administrators. We studied real subjects: government (aka civics), history, literature, science, and math, algebra, calculus, and geometry. Often Latin, French, or Spanish as well.

      I started college at the age of twenty-one at a big-name university, and by that time Education Schools were beginning to get started. To get students at my school they had to take the people who flunked out of the other Schools. B.Ed, M.Ed, and E.Dd degrees were jokes around campus. (As were the Journalism students; the promising writers were found in Arts and Science then.) As an undergraduate I did a land office business writing papers for Journalism students and B.Ed and M.Ed students who couldn’t write a cogent essay. I’m not proud of that today, but it put food on the table for my wife, son, and me.

      Later on the M.Ed and E.Dd (also called D.Ed)degrees earned respectability and in most schools today require the same rigor to earn as the M.S., M.A., and PhD degrees. But the lowly B.Ed degree still means you likely don’t know the topic you’re teaching.

      You can test this empirically. Take a teacher aside and try to engage him or her in an intellectual conversation. It’s practically impossible, and more than a little bit sad. If you want to feel really bad, take an administrator aside and engage him or her in conversation!

  • dahni

    Changes in the Teacher’s Union, along with the Autoworkers, Public Employees, etc. all need changing. Teacher’s do a great job when they are permitted to do what is best for learning and for America. So long as locally elected School Board Members can fire individual teachers because one of their children didn’t get a good grade in, or didn’t make an athletic team, they need union protection.

    The further we move parents and politicians from everyday operation of the schools, the better the schools will function. Get out of the way and let them do their jobs professionally; and they remove them if they don’t do so.

    • clw

      I’m sorry to say, that if you are talking about PUBLIC schools, we, the parents, OWN them. They are paid for by our tax dollars. So any chance of us being “moved from everyday operations” (so that teachers won’t have to deal with anyone taking notes on how they are, or are not, teaching well) is HIGHLY unlikely, and I’m doubtful that the schools would function better.

      Workes in the Industrial Age needed unions, because it was a time fraught with underage workes, abusive “management”, dangerous, HARSH, working conditions, ridiculously low pay, LONG hours… today’s pampered teachers do NOT need unions for “protection” from people whose children “didn’t get a good grade”, or “didn’t make an athletic team”. (Poor babies. How frightening for them!)That kind of “justification” fails to pass the smell test.

      Teachers unions are about looking out for union members. Teachers join teachers unions because they are looking out for THEMSELVES. Neither of those two parties have the children as a priority, and THAT much is crystal clear.

      • avank

        Obviously you have never been in an inner city school.

        Btw….most of us get 8 weeks off, and use that time to take a vacation since we don’t get vacation time…or we take classes as we have to keep up our credits. Or we make materials for our classrooms.

        Wonder what you do, but do you have to buy all your office and paper supplies like we do or else go without? Is your work environment in the high 80 degrees for three months of the year? We have yet to get our student workbooks….don’t ask me why. We buy our own paper to copy pages from an old one, as well as most of the other materials in the room. Most students don’t bring in supplies, so we also provide pencils, crayons, erasers, markers, scissors and on and on. It is ridiculous. If it were so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it instead of say how easy it is?

        Oh yeah. I was forced to join the union for this job-or I don’t get dental/vision insurance. I did not join at my last job. Teachers are not the culprits.

        • des1

          Awww, only 8 weeks of paid vacation? Or do you consider it unpaid time off, which means you get paid a full-time salary for working 44 weeks?

          Teachers aren’t the only problem, but they’re a huge part of it. They block legislation for reform and fight what could help kids better learn. Many are happy to use their classes (and captive audiences) to vent their impotent political views. Bottom line, teacher’s unions are as antithetical to learning as for-profit insurance companies are to better health care. Funny how Liberals love to pick and choose when to have principles.

        • Momma M

          Don’t get vacation time? WTH? Really? How about “Christmas Vacation” (or whatever is PC to call it)… Spring Breaks? You NEVER have to work on a holiday… EVER! Talk to a real-working-man/woman… Please… Whining bunch of useless over-paid glorified babysitters!

        • clw

          …there are always exceptions to the rule; great teachers in tough inner-city schools where they get no respect and little reward. HOWEVER, that’s probably 10% of teachers nationwide? I am not willing to bankrupt our entire economy for the teachers unions, ESPECIALLY until they become more logical and reasonable about benefits and pensions and scrap the “rubber room” where the lousy teachers get paid to happily sit all day!

        • clw

          Might I just add, Avank, that I have a dear friend, who takes herself to the west side of Chicago every week, on her OWN time, and her own DIME, to take those same kids to a place where they’ve learned boxing? It’s a rough neighborhood, she’s uber-suburban, white, and not someone you’d likely see there. She doesn’t get PAID to do it. It’s dangerous. Clearly her love for inner-city kids over-rides her need for “protection” from outside sources. She doesn’t have a UNION to protect her and her interests.

        • clw

          ‘we also provide pencils, crayons, erasers, markers, scissors and on and on”.

          Well then why are we given a HUGE list of supplies, (not the OLD lists where you bought things for your OWN child) I’m talking about the more recent lists where the parents are asked to buy 6 large boxes of kleenex, 3 boxes of gallon sized zip-loc bags, 6 glue sticks, 20 folders, 6 reams of paper… nothing personalized, because NOW it goes to a supply CABINET for ALL the students to use. It really GALLS me! I knew my kids were not using all that stuff. Oh, and then you get ANOTHER list halfway THRU the schoolyear!

  • truebearing

    Nice analysis, Jamie. You nailed it. Get the parasitic union out of education and the good teachers and students will both benefit. The bad teachers would be out of a job, but that is exactly where they should be.

  • emem

    Some would say Harvard represents the “best and brightest” and look at the banking industry filled with Harvard alums, and our progressive president.

    There have been lots of changes to schools, children have civil rights when it comes to locker searches for say – weapons. Equal emphasis seems to be placed on social issues versus formal education, ad there seems to be little discipline. And then no child is allowed to fail so as not to create insecurity.

    With that said, and given the educational statistics, teachers should be paid for performance, like everyone else. And in my area, someone earning $70K a year for a part-time job can contribute to their own healthcare and retirement.

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