Educational Success is About $$: Improving Teacher Quality in Poor Schools

I'm new to blogging, and am just learning the power of its flexibility. I suppose one way to make an impact is to write about things I know. A later entry (although it would be more appropriate today, since it is the day of al Nakba) will discuss the 60th "anniversary" of the state of Israel, and why it is as much to celebrate for Arab peoples as Columbus Day is to Native Americans.

For today, I wish to post some thoughts I have about educational quality in the United States, particularly as it relates to the poor, and how the infusion of capitalistic features could make a difference. Let us first say that these ideas are not ideas I would propose internationally. However, love it or hate it, America's primary deity is the dollar, and so much of the disparity in educational quality and outcomes is related to how our behaviors represent true worship of our god.

There are three elements of our educational system that can be explained as resulting from our lack of consistency in applying the power of our capitalist worldview to all of our citizens. By extension, these undesirable symptoms of this lack of total application can be ameliorated by making the assumption that people who grow up under the influence of this religion (we can call it a $pirituality, if you wish) will make decisions in line with this upbringing. Each day, I will discuss one of these three threads, and make my argument that a focus on money, and understanding that people want more of it, can be used to improve education in the United States.

1) Teacher quality: It's no secret that teacher quality in poor schools is "poorer" than in more affluent schools. One reason for this has to do with the policy of using the seniority system for filling teaching positions. In Philadelphia, where I worked for 4 1/2 years, teachers with the most years of teaching get first pick of all the vacancies. It's not 100% true that experienced teachers are better at their jobs than new recruits, but it is a truism. You can imagine the combination of safety concerns and race/class attitudes that make it harder to fill schools in impoverished areas. So, by the time the newer teachers get their turn, guess which schools are the only ones left on the list?

Another terrible policy that Philadelphia has (and many other urban districts. See the reports on the funding gap by EdTrust here: http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Product+Catalog/main.htm#ff) is a budgetary practice that has got to go. Schools are given an amount of money for teaching staff. The way this line item is calculated is to take the number of students in the school, and divide it by a predetermined student:teacher ratio (for example, we want our schools to have 1 teacher for every 25 students).

Now here's the problem: Instead of then calculating an amount of money that the school can spend, perhaps by multiplying the number of allotted teachers by the average salary in the District, schools are just given an allotment of teachers. This means that, if you are a school in the best neighborhood in Philadelphia, and consequently, all the teachers that sign up for your school are the most senior teachers (which means they are the most highly paid. Salaries are set by your degree and years of experience), then your budget for teachers will be extremely high.

If you are in the worst neighborhood, and all of your teachers are rookies, your teacher budget will be extremely low. Both schools have the same number of teachers, but the amount of money that the more affluent school spends on its teachers can be much, much higher than the money spent on teachers in the poorest school.

Here's an example: In 2006, when I did a study of the funding gap in Philadelphia, I found that the average number of years of experience in the poorest schools was about 9, compared to 16 years of experience in the most affluent schools. Using actual teacher salaries, I determined that the schools in the lowest quartile of poverty for the District, paid teachers an average base salary of $61,905.45. By contrast, schools in the highest quartile of poverty paid teachers an average base salary of $53,234.12. This is a difference of $8,671.33 per teacher! For an average school with 30 teachers, this represents $260,139.90 in teacher salaries every year. What does this mean for students? If a low income high school student has 6 teachers per day, she is taught by teachers paid a combined $52,027.98 less per year than her counterparts in a wealthier high school in the District. From the time this low-income students enters high school until she graduates, our District spends $208,111.92 less on her teachers than on the teachers serving wealthier students over the same period of time, If this student attended the highest-poverty schools from kindergarten through graduation, the District will have spent a combined total of $676,363.74 less on all her teachers than on the K-12 teachers serving the city’s most affluent public school students.

How does this happen? It is actually quite simple. When teachers with more experience migrate to lower poverty schools, they take their higher salaries with them. The result of this system is a massive transfer of funds from our less-advantaged to our most-advantaged schools. The use of salary cost averaging hides this “reverse Robin Hood effect” from the public eye.

According to one team of economists, “Estimates of teacher performance suggest that having five years of good teachers in a row could overcome the average seventh-grade mathematics achievement gap between lower-income kids and those from higher-income families.” Considering the powerful relationship between educational attainment and future earnings, it is understandable to conclude that educational equity is “the civil rights issue of our time.” We must, if only for ethical reasons, address these inequities immediately.

First suggestion: Pay teachers more money to work in the schools in need of the most help.
Second suggestion: Allot an amount of money - NOT a number of teachers - for each school. Principals I have spoken to said that they would prefer some say in the teachers that work with them. Further, that they would choose a mix of newer and more experienced teachers in their faculty. Changing the budgetary practice would force school administrators to counterbalance more experienced teachers (who cost more) with lower teacher: student ratios (by hiring less expensive teachers).