Education: Smarten Up!

If I had an additional day, I probably would have given further time to education, the environment, and so on. As it is, I have to wrap this up tomorrow, so going to do Education quickly.

I was listening to Molly Ivin's Bushwhacked as I drove around today; she was covering the Texas "Miracle" and the fuzzy accounting that was used to promote that testing.

Basically here's how it works in theory, if I understand correctly. Students are graded every so often. If the test scores for the school improve, the school receives more money. If the test scores for the school drop, the school gets less money. This has several negative effects; one being that struggling schools are going to continue to struggle. Ambitious motivated teachers will seek postings in more successful schools (where they are better compensated). Programs not directly tied to increasing test scores will be cut.

And there is no proof that doing better on this standardized test will lead to greater success later in life. Even during the Texas "miracle" when scores on the state test were jumping by leaps and bounds, scores on the SAT and the ACT remained constant.

Conservatives see the educational process as kind of like a factory (and they have for years). Kids go in, educated students come out. The factory workers (i.e. teachers) aren't producing the right kind of kids? Well start scaring them so they work harder or better. Cut their salaries, mandate longer hours, and so on and so forth. The problem with this mentality is that teachers aren't factory workers. I personally think we, as a society, should treat teachers more like we treat doctors or lawyers.

Incidently if you are pro-teacher and you want to get really mad, check out these words by David Horowitz, which go some way to understanding the conservative view of teachers (for a good rebuttal of Horowitz, check out this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow).

The first step in understanding the public education mess is to realize that IT'S NOT ABOUT MONEY. Teachers -- despite the widespread myth -- are overpaid and underworked. . . . As a result of the contracts negotiated by their unions, teachers are not required to be at their job more than six hours and 20 minutes a day. When you add to that the fact that teachers only work nine months out of the year, and then calculate teachers' pay on the basis of the eight-hour-day and 11-and-a-half-month year that the rest of us work, the pay for a seventh-grade science teacher in New York City is between $60 and $70 an hour. That amounts to an annual salary of well over $100,000.

Of course another key to understanding conservative disdain for teachers is that they tend to vote Democratic.

For some real anger about President Bush's educational plans, check out this article by Greg Palast. For a more satirical look, check out this article by Joyce McGreevy.