Hire Ed: Is college worth it?

I plan to show President Obama's speech to my (first) first period class on Tuesday. What could be controversial about encouraging students to work hard and stay in school? Nothing particularly, but I expect Obama to say something along the lines of: "all students should go to college."

I agree that students should continue learning, but I don't think this learning must necessarily take place a a four year, or even a two year, college. What about vocational education? What about internships? Should we really encourage students to go into massive amounts of debt when they have little hope of getting a job that helps them pay off their student loans? With the national unemployment rate at nearly 10%, college may not be the best idea.

This week, NPR spoke with some experts about debt and higher education. One student on the panel is racking up $50,000 in debt to get a Masters in Journalism (at Columbia). Of course journalism is a field where higher education isn't necessary, but that's the point-many of the best journalists have learned on the job. (One report even suggests that all Journalism schools should be closed since there are almost no jobs that will be able to pay back this money.)

Education is an investment, but each student needs to ask, "will there be a return on this investment?" If there isn't a clear link between career and college, I would advocate for community college and on the job training.

Rubber Rooms

I've heard of rubber rooms (places where teachers wait to see if they will be allowed back into the classroom) before. Although they aren't called "rubber rooms" in Los Angeles, there are teachers (I know at least one) who are sent to school district office buildings (every school day from 8 to 3) while they are being investigated.

I see the purpose of these rooms, accusations of abuse need to be taken seriously and the teacher must be away from students while the investigation takes place. But, what is unacceptable is the fact that teachers spend years in the so called rubber rooms. Furthermore, if (tenured) teachers who commit crimes are entitled to these benefits, what about teachers who are merely incompetent?

This week's New Yorker had a great article on Rubber Rooms. Author Steve Brill's main points are:

1. Cases involving teachers in the rubber room accused of "incompetence" take "forty to forty five days-eight times as long as the average criminal trial in the United States."
2. Clearly, bad teachers need to be removed. A study from the Brookings Institute found that "having a top-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough to close the Black-white test score gap."
3. Teacher tenure is a huge problem because the majority of teachers get it. It is almost impossible to be labeled "unsatisfactory." Almost all teachers are rated "good or great," only about one percent of tenured teachers were labeled "unsatisfactory." One education reformer argued that this is "ridiculous...if you look at the upper quartile and the lower quartile, you know those people are not interchangeable."
4. To solve this problem President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan propose to financially reward schools and teachers for raising test scores. If the districts and the union don't want to hold teachers accountable (they don't-they've pushed laws against using test scores to evaluate teachers), they will miss out on millions of dollars.

We're Taking Over

Yesterday, the Los Angeles School board voted (6-1) to open the district schools (and some proposed schools) to charter schools.

This is great for charter schools (like mine) and bad for unions. The union (UTLA) doesn't get money from the teachers at charter schools, but schools like Green Dot get the option of bidding for these new and current schools. These will not be (as some comments on the Times page suggest) private schools, but public schools with competition.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-schools26-2009aug26,0,4203620.story

Baby College

Geoffrey Canada is sending babies to college. Although it's actually their parents attending, and technically it's not college, it is almost as ambitious. Baby College is a critical training program for inner city parents that aims to stop the cycle of poverty. The "college" teaches good parenting skills that most middle and upper class parents already know-how to discipline your child and the importance of reading to him or her every night.

By starting these programs at infancy, and continuing them to college, Canada hopes that this will be the "tipping point" in the fight against urban poverty. This idea follows the idea in my previous post-that education must start early (before preschool). It's working. He has the statistics and a book (Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough) to prove it.

Head Start

This article is fantastic.

The author argues that preschool programs like Head Start are necessary to thwart the high cost of illiteracy and incarceration. His main points are:

1. "[B]y waiting until kindergarten [to spend money on education], we throw money at kids when it's too late."
2. "Early-childhood nurturing has traditionally been the province of families. But families are deteriorating."
3. Kids who received early childhood education "were more likely to be employed—and to earn more—and less likely to be on welfare. They also committed less crime and had lower rates of teen pregnancy."
4. Preschool spending, with a rate of return around 16%, is a "sound economic investment."

Promoting early childhood education isn't about doing the "right" thing, it's about doing the logical thing. Investing in early childhood education raises our standard of living and costs less in the long run.

According to CNN, one billion was cut from the Head Start program. Won't we just pay for this later?

Now Hiring

As a Special Education teacher, I have an aide/paraeducator in my classroom. Yesterday, I went to school to look over resumes to choose one. The job pays 15-20 an hour. People with the following qualifications were applying:

1. BA from an Ivy league school
2. Juris Doctor degree
3. Peace Corps volunteer
4. Master of Arts/Education (about 6 with this qualification)
5. As much as 10 years experience in education

Really? Either they are liars, or this is another indicator of the downturn.

Green Day

I had my first day at Green Dot this week. "New teacher orientation" was on Wednesday. According to another teacher, there were at least 30 Teach for America teachers present. I could tell who they were, they actually had a little sparkle in their eye. Although I'm a bit more pragmatic (studying for my GRE), I'm thrilled to work with them. The smiley new teacher next to me mentioned that she went to school on the east coast. When asked which school, she modestly replied, "Harvard." Of the 50 or so teachers, only 3 wore reading glasses.

This is a huge improvement from my last school where most of the teachers graduated from schools that end in .com and had calendars marking down the days to their retirement. Young teachers from schools with low admission rates are not inherently better teachers, but they can't be worse.

Another improvement at Green Dot schools is the absence of tenure. Most teachers at my old school rested on their laurels knowing that they couldn't be fired, even if they thought the definition of teaching was to physically be in a classroom.

I'm not teacher of the year, but I am excited to be a part of this innovative program.