NJ Education Report

Here’s two “must-reads” for you. Andrew Rotherham, who runs the thinktank Education Sector and blogs on Eduwonk, has a piece in US News and World Report on accountability and No Child Left Behind. As long as we’re on our merit pay/teacher accountability tear, we’ll pull out this quote:

Shortly after the law now called No Child Left Behind was first passed in 1965, a frustrated senator remarked, “I want to change this bill because it doesn’t have any way of measuring those damned educators…. We really ought to have some evaluation in there, and some measurement as to whether any good is happening.”

The speaker? Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Also, Megan McArdle, who writes for the Atlantic Monthly has a great piece on the auto industry. Stay with me here – there’s lots of parallels between the UAW and the teachers’ unions. After all, the National Teachers Association was modeled after industry unions at a time when teachers were poorly paid and treated. Now, decades later, NEA’s industrial mindset – all employees are interchangeable like workers on an assembly line – has morphed into robust resistance to merit pay.

Teachers are professionals, right? They have Master’s degrees, pursue annual professional development, use sophisticated technology, synthesize massive amounts of material, and have the awesome responsibility for educating our kids. Perhaps the industrial model was once suitable; it’s not any more. Like other professionals, higher productivity – in this case, student achievement – should be rewarded by higher compensation.

McArdle writes,

I also really loathe and despise the way the unions use work rules and featherbedding to make their companies and industries less productive than they otherwise would be. Salary and benefit negotiations seem to me to be neutral; there’s a zone of possible agreement, and I don’t care if the unions claim all or most of the value in that zone. But the way economic growth happens–the way we become a richer, more productive society–is to produce more stuff with the same amount of people. The union goal is to keep the number of people at least even, and if possible increase it, regardless of the level of production.

Nor am I a fan of seniority rules and job protection. Most of us function perfectly well without these, and I don’t think that advancement solely by time-in-grade, or protecting everyone who does not actually set the plant on fire from being sacked, is either reasonable, or economically desireable. I understand that people want these things, but I would also like to be able to force other people to buy me dinner at will; this does not mean that I should be given that right. I too, would enjoy being protected from ever losing my job no matter what, and having all my raises based on my ability to keep my butt in a chair. But I don’t think this would be good for my employers, my readers, or for that matter, me.

Think about this in terms of New Jersey and NJEA. (And it doesn’t hurt this analogy to throw in the new bill introduced yesterday in the State Legislature guaranteeing employment for school aides, regardless of school needs.) We recognize that all the programs and technology in the world are meaningless without the conduit of a good teacher and that the key to teaching children is the art and skill of an enlightened educator. However, the engine driving NJEA (sorry) is the goal of keeping as many teachers employed at the highest possible level of salary, benefits, and job protection. Why is it unreasonable to incorporate teacher accountability into the equation?