海角大神

The聽Wonkblog聽headline 鈥淭each for America teachers aren鈥檛 any better than other teachers when it comes to kids鈥� test scores鈥� buries the lede.

That smart, motivated folks with a crash course in pedagogy are as effective as seasoned teachers with four-year Education degrees (indeed, many would have advanced degrees) is rather damning of the traditional method of selection and preparation. Indeed, Max Ehrenfreund, the author of the piece, acknowledges this beginning in the third paragraph:

It鈥檚 a longstanding debate. While the requirements vary considerably from state to state, education majors tend to be among the weakest on campus, as evidenced by standardized test scores and performance in core curricula. Here, though, Ehrenfreund mixes apples and oranges:

That should be a non sequitur. Teach For America novices shouldn鈥檛 stand out as 鈥済ifted educators鈥� in a field of veteran teachers. That they do is a damning indictment of the latter.

The piece does got to some of the problems.

I鈥檝e been arguing for close to 20 years now that it鈥檚 shocking that we get as many talented people teaching in our primary and secondary schools as we do. The schools of education not only have a poor academic reputation but emphasize rote memorization and conformity to the orthodoxy; that鈥檚 not a recipe for attracting our brightest minds. Those traditions are carried on in the workplace as well, so the most creative, innovative personalities are driven out. Those who persist despite all that are alienated from their colleagues.

The pay, frankly, isn鈥檛 the main issue. While teacher pay was horrendous 30 years ago, a vestige of the fact that it had long been a field dominated by women (who were presumed to either be in it only long enough to find a husband or to have a husband as the primary breadwinner), it鈥檚 quite competitive now* and still has the lure of reasonable hours, substantial vacation time, and extremely good job security and retirement benefits. The lack of autonomy is a real issue, though, in attracting and retaining talent.

UPDATE: Actually, not so much. 聽While today鈥檚 salaries are indeed competitive, they have been for decades. The聽National Center for Education Statistics聽shows the national average salary rose from $8626 in 1969-70 to $15,970 in 1979-80, $31,367 in 1989-90, and聽41,807 in 1999-2000, to $$56,383 in 2012-13. But that鈥檚 purely an artifact of inflation. In constant dollars, the salary has been remarkably steady over that period.

My perception is based on my home state of Alabama, where I graduated high school, completed all three degrees, and taught college. There, there has indeed been a significant real increase in teacher salaries over the years since I was in high school. In other states, such as Alaska, there has been a marked decline in real dollars.

James Joyner is editor of the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.