Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Reasons to Avoid Government Schools - Part 3

See also, Reasons to Avoid Government Schools Part 1 and Part 2.

Teacher quality in government schools is undependable.

There are many high quality and gifted teachers that pass through the government school system. Few choose to stay in a system that rewards bad teachers equally with the brightest and the best. The high achieving teachers who remain in the government school system do so at a great personal sacrifice.

The problem with teacher quality has many factors.

1) Those preparing to teach in government schools have on average the lowest academic performance of any other major.

Academic Abilities of Teachers
"Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of 1972 high school seniors, Vance and Schlechty (1982) found college graduates with low Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores more likely than those with high SAT scores to enter and remain in the teaching force."

"Ballou (1996), using data from the Surveys of Recent College Graduates, found that the less selective the college, the more likely that its students prepared for and entered the teaching profession."

"Data from the 2001 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study yielded similar findings. Recent college graduates who taught or prepared to teach were underrepresented among graduates with college entrance examination scores in the top quartile."

The Conspiracy of Ignorance" by Martin L. Gross
"The average college-bound high school senior ... may well have an SAT score that's 50 points higher than the one his teacher earned -- 1,016 versus 964."

"Quantitative means are lower in Education ... than in other fields, the GRE reports dispassionately. In other words, test-takers seeking to enter the field of education came in the absolute bottom.... "

"The National Center for Education Statistics confirms this grade inflation for teacher trainees throughout the country. The average grade in education courses was 3.41 (A-) while it was only 2.67 (B-) in science, even though science students tend to be considerably brighter. "


2) Programs to prepare government school teachers are light on "hard sciences" and other challenging course work.

As mentioned above, most students can earn an easy A in Education classes. The classwork is light on actually facts and heavy on educational theories. Many teachers begin their careers after being indoctrinated into the latest educational fade, like whole language and new math.

Micheal Gurian author of the book Boys and Girls Learn Differently reported that very few teachers have received any instruction on the neuro-biology of brain development, and almost none on gender differences. Is it no wonder that much of the academic instruction in government schools is not matched to the needs of the students.



3) Salaries of teachers in government are not tied to classroom performance or classroom management skills, but to credentials which require little academic proficiency or have little classroom application.

The Conspiracy of Ignorance's
"So fervent is the desire for that credential, both for prestige and an automatic pay raise, that the graduate schools are crowded with ambitious teachers. In one recent year, some 106,000 master's degrees were awarded to teachers."

"But lest we be impressed, it should be remembered that these are mainly not advanced degrees in knowledge, such as English or biology, but only in the supposed "art and science" of teaching, adding little that is scholarly to the teacher's armamentarium. One study of 481 master's degrees in education showed that the graduate students took 26 credits in still more education courses and only 9 in the liberal arts. Only 1 in 5 were required to write a thesis, and 1 in 25 to show proficiency in a foreign language."

"[The] Ed.D. degree has lower academic requirements than the Ph.D. in virtually every respect. The thesis of an Ed.D. tends to be a "practical" dissertation on some school situation rather than a universal academic concept. Perhaps equally important, certain Ph.D. requirements (such as mastery of a foreign language) are usually waved as being "unnecessary" for Ed.D. candidates. More accurately, the language requirement is often too difficult for education administrators, who are seldom scholarly individuals, either in personality, background, or training."

"Administrators generally come from undergraduate schools of education, where they studied barely more arts and sciences than a graduate of a two-year community college. Then they go on to take a master's and a doctorate in education. What do these programs look like in content? Are they well balanced between administration and the liberal arts?

Hardly. They are narrow courses devoid of noneducational learning. It appears that there is not a single required course in conventional knowledge, whether literature, or science, or math, or history, or philosophy."


"What kind of academic training is that? What about excellence in general knowledge? What do they know about literature and philosophy, let alone math and science? If they know little or nothing about history, how can they design, or even approve, a course of study in American history? If they have never taken physics or chemistry, how can they design or approve a rigorous curriculum in science? Of course they cannot, nor can most principals with similar administrative backgrounds."


4) Much of the coursework in science and math offered in government schools are taught by teachers with little or no training in that specialty.

Teacher Experience
"In 1999, 41 percent of eighth grade students in the United States received instruction from a mathematics teacher who specialized in mathematics (i.e., majored in it at the undergraduate or graduate level or studied mathematics for certification), considerably lower than the international average of 71 percent."

"In science, U.S. eighth graders ....more likely to receive science instruction from a teacher who majored in education (56 percent of U.S. students compared with 30 percent of international students). "


5) It is very difficult to fire a low performing or abusive teacher.

Teachers Unions: Are the Schools Run for Them?
"It takes a school district seven years and costs an average of $100,000 to fire a single incompetent public school teacher."


Weeding out bad teachers
"In California, under current law, once a teacher reaches permanent status, it can take a district two years or more to complete the state's dismissal process, which involves about a dozen stages."

In California, that is the best case senario. Usually it takes much longer. In my local school district a teacher was fired three times before she actually lost her job. The teachers union sued to get her reinstated each time. After the third dismissal she finally stopped teaching because she choose to retire with full benefits.

In another post, I outlined the problem of teacher sexual misconduct.

"From a study of 225 cases of admitted educator sexual abuse in New York State:

** None of the abusers was reported to authorities

** Only 1 percent lost their license to teach

** Only 35 percent of abusers received a negative consequence for their actions: 15 percent were terminated or, if not tenured, they were not rehired; and 20 percent received a formal reprimand or suspension.

** Another 25 percent received no consequence or were reprimanded informally and off-the-record. Nearly 39 percent chose to leave the district, most with positive recommendations or even retirement packages intact."


Reward Good Teachers, Not Bad Ones
"Best estimates are that five percent of all teachers should be fired because they are damaging children. Charter schools, which have more leeway in personnel decisions than public schools, fire 4.9 percent of their teachers per year. ....Highly respected companies in the private sector, like General Electric, cull 10 percent of their weakest performers every year in order to maintain high standards of quality and customer service."

As long as government schools can not easily remove low performing teachers and reward excellent teachers, the government school system is doomed to mediocraty.

"The current system rewards bad teachers equally with good teachers. Why would we want to do that? It doesn’t make sense to keep giving across-the-board pay raises to bad teachers; it sends the wrong message to them and it keeps them in teaching. If we had a system that rewarded good teachers and discouraged the bad ones, wouldn’t we soon have more good teachers and fewer bad ones?"

Next, see Reasons to Avoid Government Schools -
Part 4
: Institutionalized education wastes time

Part 5: Socialization

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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you inferring that parents that homeschool their children are more qualified than public school teachers?

Should a parent choosing homeschooling have to show any form of qualifications in each of the subject areas they are planning on instructing their children? What about the parents whose SAT scores were even lower than 1010 you mentioned above?

Certainly their are some issues within public education that need to be addressed, but would you not agree that some system should be in place for those that cannot educate their own children at an appropriate level? Not all public schools are awful places, and not all teachers are underqualified. Of course, I believe that all people should have the right to choose the best path for educating their own children. As a public school teacher, however, I do not feel the need to wield an all out assualt on homeschool parents in an effort to make "my side" look better. In fact, I appreciate greatly the amount of concern homeschool parents show towards the education of their children. My concern and passion, however, is to provide a quality education for those students whose only option is the public school system. - T

Janine Cate said...

This is not an attack on teachers, but on the ineffectiveness of government schools. The fact that as many children do as well as they do is a testament to the efforts of dedicated teachers and involved parents.

In the example I used of the grade school teacher that was fired in my district, former students testified before the school board. These were adult men and women who sobbed while describing what this women did to them when they were 9 years old. Over the course of her career, there were literally hundreds of children whose lives she negatively impacted. I know nothing about her educational background or certification, but she was not a good teacher.

The fact that she was fired three times and still made it to retirement is wrong. It is unfair to all the truly wonderful teachers who taught in the district who will receive similar pay and retirement benefits. It is unfair to all the students that were forced to endure a year in her classroom.

As a teacher, doesn't it make you mad that teachers like her are almost impossible to get rid of ? Or worse, get promoted to administration?

The educational background and qualifications of homeschool parents are a separate issue. Homeschool parents do no receive a taxpayer funded salary or retirement benefits. Even if a homeschool parent is as ineffectual as the above mentioned teacher, only a few children, not hundreds, would be impacted.

Anonymous said...

Janine-

Thank you for your thoughtful response despite my anonymous post (maybe I should come up with some silly pseudonym like "The Public School Defender"). While I am frustrated that such a teacher would be difficult to get rid of, you must understand that on the other extreme you do not want to make it easy to get rid of a teacher. Sadly there are more than a few parents out there who enjoy throwing out false accusations against good teachers to try to get them removed. I am not a big fan of unions, but I do appreciate the protection they provide in such instances.

You mention that in a homeschool situation that parent only impacts one student, but should there not also be an alternative for that one student? Why should we leave her or him behind? That is the basic premise of the public school system.
Certainly aspects of the system need tweaking, but I find it unfair to ask people to "avoid government schools" when some of them truly work.

Some of your points about misuse of taxpayer money are curious to me, as in my area we are continually penny penching to make it through each year. Do you realize some of the costs it takes just to run a school? Do not underestimate costs of transportation, heating and cooling, electricity, and maintainance work. As far as salaries, I cannot complain either way. In Michigan we are always one of the top 5 states in terms of pay, yet I do not feel as though the salaries are excessive. Starting salary is around $33000 in my district with the top end being around $62000. In many states those numbers are far lower, and in some cases do not bode well with the cost of living. If you believe districts should pay less than they are, then where do you think the highly qualified teachers will come from? It costs money to pull math majors away from engineering, biology teachers away from medicine, and social studies teachers away from being lawyers.

Thanks again for the discussion, I know sometimes people come across as angry or vicious in writing... I hope that is not the case with me. I just love thoughtful discourse on education issues, and like to take on challenging subjects with quite different philosophies.

-T

Janine Cate said...

>Sadly there are more than a few parents out there who enjoy throwing out false accusations against good teachers to try to get them removed.

Eventually, I will get around to doing a post on the problem of students and their parents behaving badly.

This, of course, is another reason to avoid government schools. :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks--you've made an excellent case for keeping education majors and bad teachers out of the schools. Now maybe you can make the case to keep them out of the homeschool arena, too, as a majority of homeschool blogs I read are by homeschool moms who used to be teachers and, presumably those low performing education majors for whom you show such contempt.

Janine Cate said...

Craig,
There are a great many current teachers and former teachers who are very talented. It can become very unpleasant for those "over achievers" to teach in government schools. Many choose to go someplace where their efforts and talents are more appreciated and better utilized. One of the most rewarding uses of a talent is to bless the lives of your own family.

Another reason why you might find former teachers among the ranks of homeschoolers is that they know from personal experience just how ineffective the system can be. Teachers in government schools are more likely to send their children to private school than the average parent. The fact that "insiders" are less likely to entrust their children to the system should be a warning to the rest of us.

I have no contempt for teachers. I have contempt for a system that rewards the "average" teacher equally with the really bad teacher and the extraordinary teacher. The only reason the government education system works at all is because of the hard work of some remarkable teachers, parents and administrators who carry the load for the slackers.

Anonymous said...

I wonder who carries the load for the homeschool slackers?

Anonymous said...

Nice blog.

The people here seem to forget that "homeschooling" is a misnomer. It is "home-based education". As a homeschooling parent myself, I handle the math and science instruction (math major) and English reading and writing (I work as a translator). My wife teaches her Japanese. We both teach her how to cook. My mother (former secretary) teaches handwriting. My father (avid artist as a hobby) does arts and crafts. A piano teacher at the local university provides piano instruction. She also participates in other art and gymnastics classes.

She has an avid interest in nature. This week, she will catch and tag butterflies at a local park with their homeschooling program.

We find the best learning opportunties for our kids.
This is "homeschooling" today.

JapanDude

Janine Cate said...

Japan Dude,
That's a good point. Thanks for your comment.

Anonymous said...

The post of Japandude demonstrates the incongruence of the qualification argument. Janine's original post discussed how a weakness of "government schools" is that they retain teachers with sub-par qualifications. Yet, in "home-based education" you are fine with not having a certification system to ensure that whoever is instructing in the home actually can teach the subject? Just because you have a math major does not mean you can teach someone to do math (let alone science for that matter). If you have set foot on a college campus you have seen a least one professor that is brilliant in her or his field, yet cannot TEACH a subject with any clarity. Whether you teach one student or one hundred, should you not have to demonstrate some form of competency for the well-being of the children?

I find it interesting that "homeschooling today" involves a process of going outside the home to find "experts" in certain fields to educate your children on a certain subject if you cannot. How do you reach a comfort level that the "expert" is any more qualified to TEACH than that unionized, mind-wrecker of a government school employee down the street?

-T

Janine Cate said...

I took Japan Dude's comment and used it as the basis of another post entitled Home Based Education. Thank's again Japan Dude.

Janine Cate said...

T,

>Whether you teach one student or one hundred, should you not have to demonstrate some form of competency for the well-being of the children?

Demonstrate to who? Do you really trust the government to micromanage parents?

Anonymous said...

How about demonstrate to anybody...

The regulating body does not have to be the government, how about an advisory panel of homeschool parents? Are you afraid of being held accountable? I do not expect the government to micro-manage parents, but I do expect them to protect the safety and well-being of children who might not be receiving a proper education. After all, it will be my tax dollars that pay for the results of the poor education.

Janine, as a GOOD homeschool parent doesn't it make you mad that there are some unqualified parents out there that give people a negative view of homeschooling?

Homeschooling and public schooling are BOTH viable options for parents, but they also BOTH have eye opening weaknesses. Again... I feel it would be so much more productive for you to take on the issues of homeschooling than to convince people that public schools are places to avoid. As for myself, I think I need to spend some time on another blog trying to work on the public school issues! Thank you for your time, and best of luck in your teaching.

- T

Henry Cate said...

"Janine, as a GOOD homeschool parent doesn't it make you mad that there are some unqualified parents out there that give people a negative view of homeschooling?"

Have you found any unqualified homeschooling parents? What does it mean to be an "unqualified homeschooling parent?" One way objective way might be to say they have children who are learning less than the lowest ten percent or twenty percent of children in public school. I'm not aware of any parents who are doing worse than public school.

Now I will admit that there are probably a few bad homeschooling parents in the United States. But before anyone tries to pass laws or meddle with a system which is working very well, they should address the millions of children who are being failed in the public school system.

The issue of a possible few bad homeschooling parents is really a several orders of magnitude smaller issue than what is happening in public schools. In fact if public schools clean up their act there are homeschooling parents who would return their children back to public school.

Jorgon Gorgon said...

Many (by no means all) of the homeschooling cases I am familiar with have withdrawn their children from public schools because--specifically--of their concern for the ongoing "secularization" of public education. These are the kinds of people that would teach biblical fundamentalism, young earth creationism, a warped history of the United States and recite the "evolution is a lie" mantra to their kids. I sincerely do not think that that kind of homeschooling is good for any child. It seems to me that the whole question of qualification revolves around this issue. If we had a well-educated general population, comparable to that say, of parts of Western Europe, homeschooling would be much less controversial.

Janine Cate said...

>These are the kinds of people that would teach biblical fundamentalism, young earth creationism, a warped history of the United States and recite the "evolution is a lie" mantra to their kids.

I know very few homeschoolers who fall into that category, thought I don’t wish to criticize those who do. I would much rather the parents make those decision than a governmental institution. While parents might have misguided motives at times, a government institution only has self-serving objectives.

In addition, we live in the information era. It is next to impossible NOT to hear or see information that challenges your point of view. Even extreme prejudices can be unlearned through personal experience and further information.

Most people won’t have an opportunity to test the principle of physics or other hard sciences, but sooner or later something will call into question a faulty presumption. And in fairness, most scientific principles have little bearing on my everyday life. I benefit by scientific discoveries, but I don’t necessarily need to understand how and why they work. I just know that I turn my computer on and it works.

If anyone (homeschooled and public schooled) considers that their education is lacking and wishes to enter a specialized field, there are literally hundreds or resources available to remedy the situation at the click of a button.

So I prefer to leave the responsibility to the individual and his family.