Show Me The Money!

Jon Chait's smart take on Paul Tough's education article from last week observes that the schools that have been most successful with poor inner-city kids "attract a small cadre of extremely bright and dedicated teachers, often willing to work 16-hour days." This is good for those schools and the kids who attend them, "but you can't find enough [people like that] to staff every school in the nation, or even just the poorest ones." In the past, "teaching was able to attract a lot of highly skilled women because they were excluded from most professions on the basis of their gender." These days, that gender segregation externality no longer operates on the teaching labor market, so "if you want highly skilled teachers who work investment banker hours, we have to pay them like -- well, if not quite like investment bankers, then a lot more generously than we pay them now."

In short, on a small scale you can find eccentric individuals willing to engage in Stakhanovite efforts to make things work. But such endeavors are not a systematic solution to anything. If you want to replicate these results on a wide scale, it would take, among other things, a very large sum of money.

Comments

I am much less up t speed on this than you all so be gentle. Matt noted something I never realized (stupid me) regarding women in the workplace. The thing is the women-in-the-workplace issue is huge (see Ehrenriech, B, Flanigan, C., and a million other commentators) is one of the main difficulties it seems that women still have generally. My point in all of this is, money is only one way to convince highly-skilled women back into education. Would states and local districts benfit by providing some of those resources and services that commentators say that business does not provide? In other words, what if school district policies included stated goals regarding child-care, time-off, and well-though out methods of balancing disparities between the advancement of women who choose and and don't choose to have kids? Can disticts/states realistically provide a more attractive alternative than business because of the benefits? Thoughts? Sorry if this is too obvious.

Posted by Gus | December 3, 2006 4:04 PM

Or, at leat in part, we need to reduce the rewards to investment banking, as well as other highly paid professions. This is another point in favor of Dean Baker's call to expose professionals in the US to greater competition from abroad (primarily by combinig univeral professional standards and immigration). I also think it presents an example of the tax code altering the pre-tax distribution of income. Presumably, if all kids in the US had geniunely equal access to a high qulaity education, subsequent labor market outcomes would be less unequal than they are now (one can argue about the size of this effect - and I'm on the skeptical side here - but its hard to believe there is no effect at all). However, we don't afford such access to all kids becuase there aren't enought very committed people willing to do the necessary kind of teaching work. And that shortage of Stakhanovite teachers is partly a result of the "distracting nuisance" of much higher paying jobs. If you increased the taxes paid on very high income occupations (like investment banking), you would reduce the differential to teaching, and induce more people to take up that profession. That would push us closer to genuine eqaulity of access, which in turn would reduce the inequality of pre-tax income.

Posted by Rich C | December 3, 2006 4:12 PM

I have to say that too much is being made of these "16 hour days" being worked by these teachers in the schools mentioned in the Tough article.

I have worked with these schools and know that these teachers do not work 16 hour days every day. The teachers do work very hard. They are at school by 7am and the school day doesn't end until 4pm and they have very little time to rest in-between. After school there is usually 3 more hours of work to be done. Weekends bring more time, probably another 8 hours. So we are looking at not 16 hour days but 12 hour days and probably around 70 hours per week.

Now, 70 hours is a lot, particularly when 45 of those hours are in front of children. But 70 hours is also a long way from the 100 hour weeks of investment bankers. Also, teachers get a lot more vacation. So let's not fixate on that statistic and get all depressed about how impossible it will be to replicate these schools' success.

More than pay, working conditions and the belief that you are contributing to something successful are important factors in talent attraction and retention. Teachers in these schools know that disrespect from the students will not be tolerated and they have the support of both parents and administration in this regard. Even 40 hours a week in a place in which you are constantly being mentally abused is too much for anybody, no matter what you pay. Also, many of these teachers come from schools in which they felt they were all alone and not part of anything they could be proud of. The KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools teachers know that they are working within a model that has succeeded and can succeed as opposed to working within a context that is infused with the acceptance of failure.

Perhaps these qualities are even harder to replicate than getting more teachers to work 12 hour days, but it is not clear that doing so necessitates the same dollars you would need to pay investment banking wages.

Another part that hasn't been mentioned is that the people operating these schools work very hard and put in longer hours than an average school bureaucrat. Some of this might have to do with the fact it's harder to run a school outside the system but it does help create an environment of hard work and going above and beyond which is what these schools are good at instilling from student to teacher to administrator.

So, yes, it is impossible to populate a school system with people willing to work 80-90 weeks, year after year. But what about with people willing to work 70 hours a week, with 10 weeks of vacation, working in a place that respects them and gives them pride to be a part of it? Impossible?

Posted by djslippyb | December 3, 2006 4:41 PM

One thing that might help would be to increase the number of teacher assistants. Even with great pay, I don't know of many teachers who want to work 16 hour days. Working 16 hour days sucks and isn't fun. On the other hand, a lot of the work that is being done by teachers working 16 hour days doesn't require a fully-trained teacher to accomplish. Passing out stuff, grading papers, moving kids around, lunchroom duty, monitoring of after-school study halls, these are things that can be done by average adults with basic competency.

Teachers could plan 16 hours worth of work and activities, but have teacher assistants to actually carry out much of it. That way teachers could focus on the things that actually require specialized knowledge . . . instruction, assessment, identification of learning problems and formulating means to address those needs. Assistants could carry out the drudgery. Instead of paying one teacher double, hire 2 extra assistants for that teacher. Perhaps that would also be an inducement to attract teachers to low-performing school district - instead of grading papers and refereeing kickball, you would get to do more "teaching".

Posted by William | December 3, 2006 4:44 PM

If you want to replicate these results on a wide scale, it would take, among other things, a very large sum of money

As I pointed out on the prior thread, even if you had unlimited amounts of money, among the other things it would take to get teachers like this is the elimination of the teachers unions. Since no union would ever let its members work 16-hour days. The only people that work 16-hour days are non-unionized professionals.

But you will never, ever, ever see liberals like Matthew advocate the elimination of a union. Even if we know very well that the unions are obstructing education.

Posted by Al | December 3, 2006 4:50 PM

And, of course, I'll reiterate that it is simply Chait is utterly lying when he writes that "Schools are mostly funded locally, which means rich districts can easily afford to pay teachers more than poor ones."

Inner city schools like (again, I'll go back to my prior example) Newark, NJ, are funded mostly by STATE funds, not local. And those schools spend far MORE per pupil than suburban schools.

So remember that the Reality-Based Community is simply lying about these things.

Posted by Al | December 3, 2006 4:55 PM

The ongoing discussion of the policy implications of Paul Tough's article assumes the accuracy of the empirical analysis. But far from demonstrating that these intensive charter schools work, Tough gives reason to believe that special schools select from among special students. It appears that unusually motivated parents "select" the Bronx KIPP school and I suspect that this sort of selection effect operates more generally. If the academic achievements of incoming students are elevated, then the school is not particularly successful at educating students, it is successful only at attracting above-average students. Tough dismisses this criticism as "a trivial one," countering that "KIPP is clearly doing a great job of educating its students." The problem is that until Tough and others solve the thorny methodological issues plaguing these studies, we simply cannot conclude that KIPP and other schools really are superior. And if that is the case, then there are no policy implications to discuss.

For the record, the selection effects that I believe may account for the putative success of these schools operates at elite universities as well. Professors like me attract superior students, but we don't necessarily give them a superior education. They succeed in life based on the qualities for which they were admitted.

Posted by David W. | December 3, 2006 5:08 PM

The fetish about unions is just that: a fetish, i.e. a functionally unrelated item which has been invested with symbolic power.

The goal isn't to get women to work 16 hour weeks. The goal is to educate children well. If there's a small set of teachers willing to work 16 hour days, that's unrelated to the goal of teaching children. It's a reflection of a few individual's willingness to struggle in the face of structural impediments. The presence or absence of a teacher's union is not one of those structural impediments. A teacher's union is simply there to prevent teachers from being hired on the cheap. Non-union schools willing to pony up better-than-union conditions would attract union teachers to their halls like bees to roses.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | December 3, 2006 5:16 PM

Al,

Read this:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03234.pdf

Posted by djslippyb | December 3, 2006 5:22 PM

djslippyb: I have. What's your point? It confirms my point that often inner city schools spend MORE per pupil than suburban schools. That's not universal, to be sure. But it shows clearly that Chait's generalization is just completely false.

Posted by Al | December 3, 2006 5:32 PM

I don't understand what some of you are thinking. It is good for society that intelligent women can now work at jobs which better utilize their brainpower than school teacher. You want the most talented people in the most important and demanding jobs. Elementary school teaching is a low skill relatively unimportant job. It is a waste of resources to fill such jobs with people who could do more critical jobs.

Also society gets a greater return on its investment by improving schooling for the good students (as compared to the poor students) since the payoff to society from a better doctor, scientist or investment banker is greater than the payoff to society from a better sales clerk, elementary school teacher or truck driver.

Posted by James B. Shearer | December 3, 2006 5:40 PM

It confirms my point

I enjoy the way Al's point has migrated from its starting position.

Posted by Jon | December 3, 2006 5:54 PM

But it shows clearly that Chait's generalization is just completely false.

No, but it does show your generalization to be false and anyway Chait's talking about teacher salary not per pupil spending.

Some figures on teacher salary:
Examples of teacher salary discrepancies for the 2002-2003 contract year in urban versus their nearby suburban districts are as follows: The starting salary for New York City Public Schools was $39,000 while for the nearby suburb of Scarsdale, NY the starting salary was $41,488. Maximum salary for NYC teachers is $ 81,232 in contrast to Scarsdale where it is $106,305. Chicago, Ill has starting salary $34,538 and a maximum of $ 63,276, while its suburb of New Trier Township starts teachers at $39,608 and has a maximum of $ 94,545. Philadelphia, PA and its suburb of Upper Merion are in the same predicament. Philadelphia starts teaching salaries at $33,249 and has a maximum of $ 69,056, while Upper Merion has salaries of $35,025 and $ 84,605, respectively.
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/winter03-04/teaching.html

Posted by djslippyb | December 3, 2006 6:12 PM

I'm in my second year of an alternative certification program in a pretty bad inner-city district. Work about 50-55 hours a week (25 of that teaching, which, believe it or not, tires one more than desking). I'll do it for at least a couple more years but will probably go to grad school. One of the reasons will be money.

The starting pay is actually good - $42k with summers off. But the increases are paltry. Even if I get a masters, I'm looking at hitting the $50k mark (today's dollars) in ten years. My city's police and firefighter pay schedules start off about the same as those of teachers but increase more over time.

Posted by Steven | December 3, 2006 6:37 PM

Inner city schools like (again, I'll go back to my prior example) Newark, NJ, are funded mostly by STATE funds, not local. And those schools spend far MORE per pupil than suburban schools.

So remember that the Reality-Based Community is simply lying about these things.

But, of course, New Jersey is an unusual case because its courts ordered school funding to be equalized. To generalize from this to systems funded from local property taxes is ridiculous.

Posted by Scott Lemieux | December 3, 2006 6:42 PM

As djslippyb points out, the hours that teachers at KIPP and like-minded schools work is a little exagerated. I work at a KIPP school and the teachers work hard, but 16 hours is not a normal day. Most teachers at my school work 7 AM to 6-7 PM with some work at home afterwords. 12-13 hours is a better estimate of a normal day. Even with these hours my school recieves several hundred resumes every year for a handful of openings and our teacher retention is excellent. People want to work in schools where they are supported and treated like professionals. Little things can make a big difference; at most urban schools teachers are sharply restricted in how many copies they can make, while my school has one of the fanciest copiers I've seen outside of a Kinko's and we have unlimited copies.
To address another point; the concerns over "creaming" the best kids from the regular public schools is way overblown. Our 5th graders come in testing around the 20th percentile on nationally normed tests. If we really were trying to take all the best kids, we aren't doing it well. Sure, some of the families of our students are savy, informed parents who actively seek out our school, but most are not. Parents don't always know what they are getting themselves into when they sign up their child for KIPP. But just like we work hard to instill new attitudes and skills into the students, we are trying to teach parents new things as well. We give parents a lot of responsibilities (signing off on homework, coming in for conferences, etc) but we give them the support they need. We have as many stories of parents turning around and buying into our school as we do with the students. KIPP and other schools like it are not the answer to all of America's education problems, but there is no denying the success that these schools have had. If you're interesting in learning more, KIPP schools all have open door policies. Make an appointment to see for yourself.

Posted by bcs20 | December 3, 2006 6:57 PM

James Shearer says what most conservatives believe, but generally don't have the balls to say in public.

I would like to know which fields are more important in Shearer's opinion than education, and why. Doctors and scientists I could believe. But investment bankers? Only a market fundamentalist could think that. Investment banking is a profession with little or no social value. It often makes other people worse off, and the fact that it offers very high pay is a bizarre offshoot of our particular economic system, not a measure of its inherent worth. Many lawyers also make far more than teachers, despite offering little social value, especially if they work in corporate law.

And as to James' argument that we should focus resources on smarter students: First of all, what is to happen to the dumb students? Do you think they're simply going to meekly accept their lot in life? That way lies revolution. Secondly, we do not, in fact, focus more effort and money on our smarter students. We focus more effort and money on students in wealthy suburban districts, which is not at all the same thing.

Posted by Firebug | December 3, 2006 7:38 PM

A federal judge ordered billions extra to be spent over recent decades on inner city schools in Kansas City. Where's the data that showed that closed the race gap?

One advantage to being an old fart is that every new fad idea reminds you of old ones that failed. Take a look at the Coleman Report of 1965, which was commisioned to prove that inner city schools just needed more money to thrive, but ended up proving the opposite.

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 3, 2006 7:57 PM

Also society gets a greater return on its investment by improving schooling for the good students (as compared to the poor students) since the payoff to society from a better doctor, scientist or investment banker is greater than the payoff to society from a better sales clerk, elementary school teacher or truck driver.

Right. Society needs to subsidize doctors rather than teachers -- even though fewer and fewer in this country can actually afford to access quality health care.

And with all that capital floating around the inner cities, "society" could really use some better-trained investment bankers.

"Society" benefits? Who are you talking about when you say "society"?

Posted by StJoe | December 3, 2006 8:00 PM

If society overinvests in doctors, lawyers, and bankers, then the lower returns to capital will signal a shift in resources towards other more profitable investments. It's all Econ 101!

Posted by Barbar | December 3, 2006 8:21 PM

Matt,

I dunno. It strikes me that we need teachers to bridge the achievement gap between rich and poor kids. I've long thought that a National Service-style program, where young college graduates are encouraged to devote a year to social work are needed to maintain some kind of class-mixing in society. Couldn't we supplement existing teachers with National-Service volunteers, ensuring that the brightest teach at inner city schools which really need them?

I don't think there will be a lack of college graduates. (Chait, funnily enough, points to his own wife). Of course, this requires political will too -- and defnitely an expansion of the burreaucracy (which conservatives will never like) not to mention opposition by teachers unions. But the educational system doesn't need to be restructured, just augmented with lots of idealistic college graduates, who'd want to devote a year or two of their lives to the task.

Of course, if we do ever succeed in bridging the gap (or more realistically, bring it down to a reasonable rate) then we come to the problem you outlined in your earlier post on Tough's article: if all parents started raising their kids in what Tough calls "concerted cultivation" wouldn't that mean that parents had to spend disproportionately large amounts of time with their children? But that's another story.

Posted by shreeharsh | December 3, 2006 8:29 PM

Couldn't we supplement existing teachers with National-Service volunteers,

Shreeharsh -- your intention is laudable, but this attitude is precisely a big part of the problem with the way America is approaching education, not part of the solution. Volunteers are extremely inefficient, in general. This is especially true in teaching, and especially in poor schools, where even professionally trained new teachers spend their first year or two frantically learning to cope with the unbelievable challenge of teaching dozens of exuberant, unruly adolescents. This is not a problem that can be addressed by volunteers.

There is a general attitude problem about social and public tasks in American society: we think that "public" goods can be best addressed with free or low-cost volunteer work, done out of the goodness of one's heart. This is, in most cases, simply not true, and volunteers are in many jobs worse than useless. We don't build our highways with volunteer or corvee work crews; we hire, train and pay professionals. In New Orleans we discovered incompetence and financial mismanagement at the Red Cross; that's because the Red Cross is to a large degree a volunteer organization, and isn't always held to exacting standards of professionalism, so you can't expect it to handle vast challenges with exemplary professionalism. The same is true of teaching. We have serious problems with the education system in the US. They aren't going to be fixed by well-intentioned first-year college grads.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 3, 2006 8:45 PM

"even though unions are obstructing education" -- Al

I see Al is back on the anti-union rant without a shred of evidence about how unions adversely affect education. He did not bother to address the questions put to him on the previous edu posts (Nov 30) so I assume he has none. I concede that some work rules protect a few relatively incompetent teachers, but they also protect lots of good teachers from some relatively incompetent administrators. I stll don't know if his teaching relatives are interested in giving up their union contract and taking the 30%+ cut in wages and benefits working in non-union primarily private schools. As I pointed out before, my union rep never said to me "Gee you are working too many hours, cut it out."

"Elementary school teaching is a low skill relatively unimportant job. It is a waste of resources to fill such jobs with people who could do more critical jobs...Also society gets a greater return on its investment by improving schooling for the good students (as compared to the poor students)" --Shearer

This is all well and good if we give up on the universal free public education and educate the cream of the crop, leaving the majority without the skills to succeed in our society, a goal that conservatives have been working on for years. If we embrace equal educational opportunity for all, elitists like Shearer must be called out for what they are, apologists for the current system of radically unequal educational opportunities. Return on our investment in early childhood and K-12 education must also be counted in reduced crime rates adn fewer people becoming criminals (clogging courts, prisons, and generally making mayhem) because they got a decent education and were able to find meaningful work. Shearer's comment about teaching in elementary school being a relatively low skill job shows how little he understands about schools. His comment about the unimportance of teaching shows that he doesn't understand that the next generation of Americans is our most precious resource and that educating them is imperative to our national survival and prosperity.

Steve Sailer apparently didn't read the initial article that indicated educating poor (often minority) children takes *substantially* more money and different teaching techniques, subject matter, etc. to catch them up with their more affuent peers(?). Inner city schools (I taught at one in the Denver area) face problems that money can help alleviate, but funds are often earmarked for particular things hence a school could have a great computer lab but a limit of copies a teacher can make. I remember having to document every copy I made for my class. I started going to a copy store and paying out of pocket because it was such a struggle to use office equipment that any other professional uses as a matter of course. I also remember using outdated textbooks, minimal library resources, and lousy buildings. Bottom line, teachers are often not treated like the highly educated professionals they are. People get tired of this and leave for better paying jobs.

The conversation about the 12 vs the 16 hour day seems like splitting hairs. The point is that teachers regularly put in many out of school hours in order to keep up with the workload and that this work is basically unpaid. And as Steven points out to the non teachers on this thread, teaching (especially the in class in front of students part) is very taxing, physically and emotionally. That is why there are several former teachers in my office. We get paid more for doing less stressful (educationally related, but no classroom) work.

Posted by beyond_left_right | December 3, 2006 8:51 PM

shreeharsh: I've long thought that a National Service-style program, where young college graduates are encouraged to devote a year to social work are needed to maintain some kind of class-mixing in society...I don't think there will be a lack of college graduates...lots of idealistic college graduates, who'd want to devote a year or two of their lives

If you're talking about volunteers, I think you've already got about as many as you're going to get. The campus where I teach is saturated with notices for similar programs, many with very significant financial inducements. Great programs but appealing only to a subset of students.

If you're talking about "volunteers", in the sense of mandatory national service where you get to choose between fighting in Iraq or the Newark public school system, then of course you'll have plenty of (bitter) conscripts but they're likely to make the school system worse rather than better, especially if you force them into that 16 hour workday.

Posted by eeyn524 | December 3, 2006 8:56 PM

Elementary school teaching is a low skill relatively unimportant job.

No, being a bond trader is a low skill relatively unimportant job. Bond traders could largely be replaced by $300 computer programs, freeing up more people to take on jobs that are more critical to our society, like elementary school teaching.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 3, 2006 8:59 PM

Sure, some of the families of our students are savy, informed parents who actively seek out our school, but most are not. --bcs 20.

bcs20, you undermine your own argument. Savy or not, these parents are self selecting, not the average parent in the district. Simply taking the time to get a child into a KIPP school shows that they are more motivated and interested. And parents that simply don't apply or drop out because it is too much for them, screen out the student population of the hardest to teach.

Posted by beyond_left_right | December 3, 2006 9:00 PM

I have to leap in on the "16" or "12" hour workday, first raised by djslippyb, and the comparison to investment bankers.

Dude, there are a LOT more teachers out there than there are investment bankers. Even paying a lot more money, you wouldn't get more teachers into the lousy places. The plain fact is that the state (meant generally, at whatever level, be it municipal, state, or federal) should pay for education in those difficult places, just as it pays for the national highway system. Wyoming gets all those highway dollars, and Maine gets so few? What the?! Treat education the same way, for the same reasons of national interest, and see what happens.

But no, yahoos like Al continue to argue about all the wrong things. It ain't the union, it's the society that doesn't value education. That's the freaking problem.

Posted by mainemc | December 3, 2006 9:41 PM

Hey, James B. Shearer on December 3, 2006 05:40 PM, eat it. Seriously, have YOU taught elementary school? Here's what the present status quo is, with teachers who mean well but don't have an adequate background (and can't, given today's standards, unless they are far higher qualified than required for your "low skill relatively unimportant job"):

- math phobia, so math isn't being taught well, leading to an innumerate population,
- science phobia, so science is taught according to facts out of a book, and
- a lack of arts and music, since reading is so damned important that it's shoved into lower and lower classes.

Do you have ANY idea what it's like to be in front of that many students, who have no chance to get out their energy, to play and experiment? Have you been in a school since you left it?

Honestly, you sound like an arrogant ignoramous. Probably well-meaning, but totally devoid of knowledge about the reality of elementary school teaching.

Please. be quiet. You're not even wrong. (If you can quote the source of that, perhaps YOU know enough esoterica to go into elementary school teaching, ya yahoo...)

Posted by mainemc | December 3, 2006 9:48 PM

eeyn524, brooksfoe:

When I suggested a national service program, I was thinking of one which works, i.e. a purely volunteer one or a conscription (again, whatever works), but your criticisms, I think, apply to both.

I guess I haven't encountered that many volunteer programs in college, especially, as you say, those with significant financial inducements. If despite, all this, only a small percentage of students opt for them, then, I guess, it makes me think more than ever that we definitely need a national service program -- simply so that some kind of class-mixing occurs and entitled college grads at least encounter different kinds of people.

But you're right, there's always going to be the darned efficiency issue, especially if we hope to get something useful out of these programs. And no, if conscripts were made to work those 16 hr days, we'd have a revolt on our hands.

Still, makes me wonder whether there isn't some possible way of of channeling people into these kind of programs. But it's probably wishful thinking.

Posted by shreeharsh | December 3, 2006 9:53 PM

Beyond_left_right,
My point was not that there is not some self-selection going on, clearly there is. I just think it is less than commonly thought. I think the average parents in my district are very unhappy with the public schools and realize the kind of low quality education their children are receiving, often because the parents are the product of the same school system. The average parent is at least willing to think about charters or Catholic school, as long as they are exposed to the options. Most parents who come to KIPP haven't searched our website or saw KIPP on 60 Minutes, but have a friend with a child at our school, or saw our principal at a block party. These parents often aren't searching for our school, but are prepared to give their children something better and happen upon our school and give it a chance. Having worked at both traditional urban schools and now at charters, the parents really aren't any different. We have the parents who are hard to reach, the parents who back their kids no matter what they did, and the parents who call teachers horrible names, just like any other school. We just have strategies and structures that help parents and students be succesful. Finally, if we are attracting such a self-selecting pool of students and parents, why were they so unsuccesful at their old school and wait until 5th grade(when KIPP starts) to become motivated enough to change schools when our district has many elementary charters and Catholic school?

Posted by bcs20 | December 3, 2006 10:12 PM

BCS20: You write that there is less self-selection than is commonly thought. The point of my original post was that the Tough article which motivated the current debate basically denied any meaningful self-selection--he called it a "trivial detail." Yet the anecdotal evidence he presented depicts substantial selection effects. Students entering the fifth grade of the Bronx KIPP school "scored well above the average for the district" on their math tests, while on their reading tests, "they often scored above the average for the entire city." So this school, at least, appears to be quite different from your school, where perhaps self-selection is more muted, as you observe. So who is right? I don't claim to know. We need to talk about the studies that attempt to control for selection effects (methodologically, a difficult task). We cannot base public policy on anecdotes (hence, I'll refrain from telling you stories of the wonderful, very hard-working public-school teachers in my son's urban elementary school).

Posted by David W. | December 3, 2006 10:34 PM

Inner city schools like (again, I'll go back to my prior example) Newark, NJ, are funded mostly by STATE funds, not local. And those schools spend far MORE per pupil than suburban schools.

Al's comment doesn't just extend to New Jersey. Take New Orleans -- before the hurricane, it spent nearly $300 per student more than the rural areas of Louisiana, albeit with much lower test scores. Or take Washington, D.C. and New Haven -- two inner cities that are the 14th and 21st top-spending school districts in the entire country.

Is it still true, on average, that top-spending schools can get better teachers than poor districts? No doubt to some extent. But note that some of the lowest per-pupil expenditures are found in Utah, which has much, much better school performance than DC or Newark or New Haven, which spend 2.5-to-3 times as much money.

Point is, the subject of school spending and performance is a whole helluva lot more complicated than the typical liberal cliches equating money with results.

Posted by John Doe | December 3, 2006 11:48 PM

Also, notice that Chait made this point:

Tough cites a study of schools in Illinois that found the highest-quality teachers concentrated in the richest schools and the lowest-quality teachers concentrated in the poorest schools.

Well, yeah. But that's not necessarily because the richer schools offered higher salaries (for all we know, the extra money is spent on buildings, administrators, school organizations, etc., etc.). Anyway, even if the salaries are unequal, you'd still find the same result even with equal salaries across the board -- richer school districts are the very districts that are more likely to: 1) be situated in prestigious and desirable locations; 2) have a student body that comes from high-achieving two-parent families, and that is therefore much easier to teach. Teachers are human beings like everyone else; they tend to migrate towards jobs that give them the most pleasure and prestige, even apart from salaries.

Posted by John Doe | December 3, 2006 11:54 PM

My brother's two cents on this post:

http://allintensivepurposes.blogspot.com/2006/12/education-and-spending.html

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | December 4, 2006 12:13 AM

Al-

Re: teacher's unions.

Your point might be taken more seriously if you didn't make it sound like a jihad against all unions and the very idea of them and press the point that "liberals" will always support them no matter what.

I know actual liberals who don't like the teacher's unions as they exist today at all. I know actual teachers that don't like those unions, too.

Isn't the point of many on this thread and part of Matt's post is that teacher's should be treated more like professionals and not laborers by pay, status, working hours, etc.? That doesn't necessarily mean that they still couldn't be unionized. Medical doctors are another professional group that's lately talking a lot about forming some kind of union(s,) as more and more are basically losing self-employment status in all but name. Unionization of some kind of a different type than the current teachers' unions does not mean that they cannot act as professionals. There is nothing in the idea of a union that causes the problems you see, just the style of many current unions.

Posted by artappraiser | December 4, 2006 12:56 AM

Somewhat related Letter to the Editor in the New York Times today which I found very thought-provoking and which I thought Matt might find interesting, too, as he often deals with more than one of the themes in it:

To the Editor:

While Prof. Richard H. Sander’s study finds a disparity between the grades of black and white law firm hires, that does not explain the racial disparity in success at those firms. Other studies prove beyond dispute that grades have almost nothing to do with career success.

Further, grades are so subjective that it is ridiculous to suggest that law school graduates with a 3.5 are so vastly superior to those with a 3.0.

As a black Ivy League law school graduate, I found that coming from a blue-collar background with only one parent having graduated from high school greatly affected my fitting into a law firm in many ways. For example, I identified with the secretaries, paralegals and even the janitors, and had a hard time telling “underlings” what to do.

Thomas Wilson
New York, Nov. 30, 2006

Posted by artappraiser | December 4, 2006 1:11 AM

firebug, I must confess I am a little unclear on exactly what it is that investment bankers do all day. However I am under the impression that it concerns allocating capital which is a very important job for any society. Do it poorly and you end up with Alaskan bridges to nowhere.

As for the dumb students, I think it is better to prepare them for jobs they can perform adequately. Telling a stupid kid he can succeed in an intellectually demanding profession if he just studies very hard is a cruel lie.

Posted by James B. Shearer | December 4, 2006 1:51 AM

beyond_left_right said:

" ... Shearer's comment about teaching in elementary school being a relatively low skill job shows how little he understands about schools. His comment about the unimportance of teaching shows that he doesn't understand that the next generation of Americans is our most precious resource and that educating them is imperative to our national survival and prosperity."

There are lots of jobs like collecting garbage which are important in the sense that somebody has to them but unimportant in the sense that it is not hard to find people who can do them adequately and there is little advantage to finding people who can do them exceptionally well. Of course our children have to be educated but there is little payoff in having exceptionally intelligent elementary school teachers when a person of average intelligence can do the job adequately. Studies have repeatedly shown that high spending schools do not consistently perform better than low spending schools.

Intellectual types overrate the value (especially for the less intelligent) of an academic education both for individuals and for society at large.

Posted by James B. Shearer | December 4, 2006 2:11 AM

Just to be clear, Chait is flat wrong when he says that "schools raise most of their funding locally." On average, schools get a little over 40 percent of their funds from local sources, with about 50 percent from state sources and the balance from the feds. As this table shows, the last year most school funding was local was 1974.

Posted by Kevin Carey | December 4, 2006 9:52 AM

djslippyb: No, but it does show your generalization to be false and anyway Chait's talking about teacher salary not per pupil spending.

It's funny that you initially link to the GAO report but when you want to discuss teacher salary you immediately move on to an AFT report (which is the equivalent to linking to a tobacco-company report on the effects of smoking). Let's go back to the GAO report, shall we?

"Average teacher salaries influenced per-pupil spending in areas where
inner city schools spent more per pupil (Boston and Chicago), where
suburban schools spent more per pupil (New York), and where spending
was mixed (Oakland). For example, in Chicago, where inner city schools
generally outspent suburban schools, the median inner city school average
teacher salary was $47,851, compared with $39,852 in the suburbs. In
Oakland, where spending between suburban schools and inner city
schools was mixed, the average teacher salary at the median spending
school was $60,395 and per-pupil spending was $4,849, compared with
$52,440 and $4,022 at the median spending inner city school."

Posted by Al | December 4, 2006 11:04 AM

beyond_left_right: I see Al is back on the anti-union rant without a shred of evidence about how unions adversely affect education. He did not bother to address the questions put to him on the previous edu posts (Nov 30) so I assume he has none. I concede that some work rules protect a few relatively incompetent teachers, but they also protect lots of good teachers from some relatively incompetent administrators. I stll don't know if his teaching relatives are interested in giving up their union contract and taking the 30%+ cut in wages and benefits working in non-union primarily private schools. As I pointed out before, my union rep never said to me "Gee you are working too many hours, cut it out."

I'm sorry if I didn't address your posts on the earlier thread - I don't always go back to the older threads. In fact, my wife did leave a unionized public school to teach at a non-union private school, and took a significant pay cut as a result (and she did this before we were married, so it wasn't a result of relying on my salary). And of course, my point was never to point out all of the anti-education policies of teachers unions - just that the teachers unions would never permit their workers to work the 16-hour days we are talking about here, even if we had unlimited funds to pay teachers for that. Among the anti-education policies of the teachers unions is to oppose pay-for-performance. That is, even if we had the funds to hire some of these great teachers in a public, unionized school, the teachers union wouldn't let us spend any more money on them than on an equivalently credentialled teacher who was mediocre in the classroom and worked strictly from 8am - 3pm.

Posted by Al | December 4, 2006 11:23 AM

artappraiser: Your point might be taken more seriously if you didn't make it sound like a jihad against all unions and the very idea of them and press the point that "liberals" will always support them no matter what.

Well I don't want to generalize from teachers unions to all unions, although I think most unions are more harmful to society than helpful (unions were, at one point in time, an essential element of society, but that time has long passed; now they are only beneficial to society when they act on behalf of the lowest paid workers, not six-figure salaried workers).

But come on, it's pretty rare to find liberals who don't generally support unions.

Posted by Al | December 4, 2006 11:33 AM

Back in the early 1990s, I started reading Bill Bennett's Our Children and Our Country: Improving America's Schools and Affirming the Common Culture, and he pulled a variant on the same stunt: his examples of thriving inner-city schools that didn't rely on money as a big part of their fix had school principals who had tremendous energy, organizational ability, etc., etc. His principals could have been Fortune 500 CEOs if they'd chosen that path.

I, too, concluded, "this isn't replicable," set down the book, and never trusted Bennett's judgment about anything again.

Posted by RT | December 4, 2006 1:46 PM

What Matt says, and you have to read the fine print on the most successful inner city schools as well. In some (if not perhaps more than some) cases they are schools premised on the idea of helping kids in need but end up skimming off the kids without significant behavioral problems and with engaged parents earning more than the median income of that area.

Posted by Linus | December 4, 2006 3:17 PM

A brand new blog by a professor in Educational Policy at the University of Maryland, and head of a Montessori school in Williamsburg VA, addresses the KIPP story in a different way.

"Tough describes the experience being "slanted" by a group of KIPP students as " a little unnerving." The "discipline and uniformity" of the KIPP classroom, he goes on to say, goes against the grain of progressive education principles that place a premium on individuality. People new to Montessori classrooms similar things. They are fequently "unnerved" by the quiet, the intense focus of the children, and the seriousness with which they persist in their work. Progressives have always found this aspect of Montessori off-putting.

Such discomfort begs the question of what students are gaining through these sorts of programs. For Montessori students, the discipline is internal -- driven by an innate desire to learn and an intentionally cultivated ability to concentrate. And what to the untrained eye may look like uniformity is, in fact, the result of choice. Over time -- ideally beginning at around three and extending through childhood -- the Montessori child will come to know the experience of deep concentration as a natural part of life (a good portion of which is spent in school). The inner discipline cultivated through free choice within a carefully prepared environment enables the child to guide her own behavior. The "outcome" of this kind of education is a human being who is independent (even willful), curious, and compassionate."

Here is the link to the full post: http://montessoritrek.blogspot.com/2006/12/making-studentsand-human-beings.html

Posted by Keith | December 6, 2006 2:32 PM