3. No Child Left Behind remains thru 2009. At that point, likely reauthorized with few changes, no matter who wins Presidency.
This assumes Dems control both chambers, so Ted Kennedy in Senate and George Miller in House remain education chairs. Both support NCLB.
4. Many districts facing “shortfalls.” Eye of beholder.
From taxpayer point of view, an example: Boston going to spend $32 million more in 2008-09 than this year, or +4%.
But they want to spend +8%, not +4%, or ANOTHER $33 million (+65mm total).
Enrollment falling a bit.
From new Boston superintendent’s point of view: “Someone else gave away big raises. Not me. I don’t have the political muscle to cut central office staff, like in DC. Nor to re-negotiate the wage increase, or consolidate schools. Only choice is to cut discretionary programs.”
Boston teachers’ point of view: “Fine, our salaries are higher than any other district in MA. But look at the friggin cops. They’re earning over $100k, some over $200k! Who says cops are more valuable than us?”
5. Lots of change among MA’s urban superintendents:
Boston’s is new.
New Bedford to announce soon.
Lowell just hired. One of the BMGers is quite familiar with the process there and I’m hoping he’ll shed some light on how it looks from the inside.
Springfield and Worcester looking, too.
Nationally, fewer people want the job. It’s perceived as having all the responsibility with little real control over staffing or budget. Insert your own funny EB3 analogy here.
Urban numbers: of 100 ninth graders, roughly 60 get high school diplomas, <10 get college diplomas.
However, if a supe candidate says “crisis”….
a) Hard to get hired. Crisis implies need for big change.
b) Risk losing most educated parents who at the very least are willing to send kids to urban elementary schools. Akin to “talking down the economy.”
6. Controversies like MCAS and charters from back in the gubernatorial campaign?
Alas from my p.o.v….no matter what studies come out, neither charter opponents (want to introduce poison-pill funding formula) nor proponents (want to lift cap on charters in state’s 20 lowest-performing districts) seem to have traction.
Opponents did get on the scoreboard: for first time, Board of Ed rejected a new charter recommended by DOE. Globe called foul. But Gov’s BofE appointees seem to be 2 mildly pro to neutral, 1 anti, 1 neutral.
Despite occasional forays by those with serious ideas on MCAS change, I don’t see much action here.
7. Biggest issue getting little attention?
GGW .02 is: school culture in urban middle and high schools.
Need more stories like this, where teachers are put in a position to succeed.
(Disclosures: insignificant role among 150 people involved with Readiness Project subcoms; work for a charter school; on board of a pilot school).
Thanks GGW for posting on all this. I have to say that I find ed policy to be really, really dizzying; so many moving parts.
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p>By “school culture”, do you mean student culture, teacher/admin culture, or family/community culture? My solution for urban education? Families. (Glib enough for you?)
Connects to a story on Today Show from earlier this week, which they took from an NY Times feature. That’s the kind of culture — combine aggressive relationship-building with no-nonsense clear and consistent discipline….
I don’t mean in tone….I mean really doing it, huge adult energy directed at 1-on-1 communication with kids and their parents.
I love how education policy and management now has to be called “reform”. Because let’s face it, any system which consistently scores the best in the country — and would be in the top 5 if compared stand-alone to other nations — is in dire need of reform.
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p>1. I already cheered the idea of a SecEd, and doubly cheer that it isn’t Dana Mohler-Faria. Now, let’s see what this Reville guy does — he has a bit of a Rorschach approach to many issues…he’s taken enough different approaches that everyone thinks he agrees with them.
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p>2. Pre-K education is a universal policy plank of the Democratic Party at nearly every level. Elect Hillary Clinton and probably Barack Obama, and we’ll be well on that path.
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p>3. Despite Kennedy’s support, an NPR report a month ago made clear that there is not enough support to renew NCLB in Congress. Clinton is drifting against it, while Obama favors it. Re-authorizing Bush’s law, overseen largely by someone who called public school teachers “terrorists“, is a tough sell.
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p>4. A shortfall is when you don’t have enough money to pay what you’re obligated to pay. Districts have a shortfall and are reacting by cutting busses and closing elementary schools because they pay going rates for staff with extensive training and master’s degrees. I’d like the CEO of Comcast to lower my cable bill by taking a voluntary pay cut, but that doesn’t mean I think he’s obligated.
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p>5. Superintendents have to make everybody happy, including groups that have almost directly opposed interests. Miserable job. They do get rather high pay, but as the most visible person in a sector currently structured to fail, there’s little reason to keep up such a post. Far better to retire after a few unremarkable years, and make almost the same money as a consultant who doesn’t get blamed when things don’t improve.
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p>6. Charters…eh.
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p>7. School culture is a problem beyond urban schools. It’s a youth and family culture problem that affects not just poor urban areas, but poor suburban and rural areas. It’s just tough to make a sexy movie about suburban schools, so nobody realizes. Was Columbine an urban school?
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p>8. The real under-reported story: the state and federal government’s bluff is being called. After decades of hectoring and threatening, the Commonwealth is realizing that it doesn’t have any solutions about struggles in public education, just complaints. A once-cocky DoE thought it could come in “shake things up”, and watch tests scores rise. From Chelsea to Springfield, they’re being proven very, very wrong. The best efforts of these professionals rarely change things, showing that the problem is rarely the school’s staff. Consequently, there are about eightyteen steps a district goes through before the state “takes over” — and rarely does that even happen.
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p>Since government is reluctant to accept failure for ameliorating a problem, government is following its instinct and denying that there is a problem. Thus the practice of under-reporting high school graduation rates. Oddly enough, in an environment where “tough reform” means “setting high standards meant to lead to a X% failure rate and then blaming states for failing X% students”, states aren’t playing along. Closer to home, the state DoE is dismantling its Education Quality Audit apparatus for much the same reason.
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p>”Education reform” hasn’t changed too much in education aside from making politicians feel good about themselves. Rather than admit the failure to solve these problems, they’re trying to make problems in education disappear.
Where Deval should step up and make it happen.
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p>Everyone across the state is facing the same pressures:
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p>1. Declining state aid.
2. Increasing health care costs.
3. Need to recruit and retain new teachers.
4. Broken system for building, refurbishing new schools.
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p>I see the need for a grand bargain among the MTA, the state, and municipal goverments.
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p>It goes something like this:
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p>1. Fix the public employee healthcare problem. The GIC plan does bring cost down. Aggregating all the public employees in the state into one health care plan would give it the power to get health care companies to compete for the business.
2. The local unions are steadfastly opposed to this. What needs to happen is that they have to realize that the current HC situation is going to eventually cost them more jobs. The thing to do is to get out in front of it and make the bargain fair. E.g. – fix the percentage contributions of all state and municipal insurees. Tie salary increases to switching to the GIC. Towns can afford the salary raises at 3-4% if they don’t get hit with 10% to 12% increases in HC costs every year.
3. The Department of Education has to have more control over school design in the buidling program.
4. A new set of incentives has to be put in place for younger teachers. I don’t think it should be targeted as much at fresh out of school folks as folks who just got professional status. Maybe a student loan forgiveness program. Maybe help with obtaining mortgages.
5. And the big daddy of problems: How does the state distribute aid in a predictable, equitable way? Towns without commercial/industrial revenue are always being torn apart at the seams.
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p>Bottom line: Teachers have to accept a change in the status quo. Each municipality going out to bid for health insurance is ridiculous. I have heard of a town (Duxbury) where HC costs went up 65% in two years. Teachers will be forgoing raises for the foreseeable future as long increased health care costs gooble up school budgets. They should do it now when they have a stronger bargaining position and get a good chunk of the savings put into their paychecks. The funding needs to be adjusted – the state might just need to revisit some other taxes that can provide a stable future.
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p>I taught for 15 years. I left because I realized that my salary was going to increase about 2% a year while the cost of living is going up at 4% per year. I wish I could find an analysis of teacher’s salaries in Massachusetts in real dollars over the past twenty five years.
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p>I watched my colleagues and realize that in MAssachusetts it is virtually impossible to teach, buy a house and raise a family even on two teacher’s salaries. I think in the future we will see fewer and fewer 30 year veterans. And that is a shame because teaching is a vocation, it is an incredibly difficult skill, and it is vitally important.
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p>Piecemeal, but, average massachusetts teachers salaries follow:
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p>2001-02 48,232
2002-03 51,942
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p>An average increase of 6.6%
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p>03 to 04 – 53,733 3.4%
04 to 05 – 54,701 1.8%
05 to 06 – 56,369 3.0%
06 to 07 – 58,188 3.2%
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p>Source
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p>If you use the BLS inflation calculator , you’ll see that the average teacher’s salary has outpaced inflation. (i.e. $48,232 in 2001 equals $56,468 in 2007.
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p>I don’t see statistics reaching back 25 years, but at least in recent history teachers seem to be doing ok in the $$ department.
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p>
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p>A couple earning $116,000 can’t afford a house? That’s just crazy talk.
Gary,
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p>To start, let’s realize some key points about average teacher salary. The average teacher salary doesn’t accurate reflect the median teacher salary. In addition, lots of schools artificially were increasing teacher salaries around 02-03 at the high end. The deal known as the “Lexington Plan,” was to give teachers in their last three years an extra 5K to get out of teaching early so they could be replaced by cheaper new hires. Once you have 25 years in, Masters plus 60 credit hours, you are making some pretty good money – 80K in Brookline. But starting out, you make low forties in a good district.
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p>Additionally, everyone who teaches in Mass has to have a masters degree. For my wife and I, our student loan debt per month is $500 for the master’s degrees alone. That is significant.
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p>So, teachers by in large do not have the ability to save a lot of money in the beginnings of their career. When we got to the point of having kids, yeah, we were making 53K a piece, but then you talk child care, etc. And we both worked summers. In fact, I worked Saturday and Sunday midnight to 10 AM for the Globe while my wife stayed home during my daughter’s first year.
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p>I also noticed that if you took the average from 03-04 and 06-07 and put it into the BLS calculator, teachers were losing to inflation. And I would furthermore say that the rate of inflation in the Greater Boston area was certainly outpacing the rate of inflation in the nation as a whole.
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p>After leaving teaching, my income increased 50%, I got a 10.5% raise, and a bonus totalling 22% of my salary. With that, I was able to buy a small house in a working class neighborhood in North Andover. How working class? – five doors down from Route 495.
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p>Anecdotally, I can say that I know very few teachers who buy houses on their salaries without a high earning spouse or some help from their families. What I am saying is not that teaching is a poorly paying job, I am just saying that teaching is becoming a poorly paying job for people with Master’s degrees.
at anything other than the great big firms–that is, a minortity of attorneys– do only slightly better, and have triple-quadruple the student loans.
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p>Who doesn’t struggle to save early in their careers?
I would say that the point I am trying to make is that the overall structure of municpal finance is such that there is going to be significant downward pressure on teacher salaries. Eventually, in my case last year, that downward pressure is going to result in the exit of qualified teachers. I care more about getting the system fixed so that teachers make more, schools have more resources, and less of our education dollar goes to health insurance. And that our towns can stop the intergenerational fight that is toxic.
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p>On the salary thing, teachers never have the promise of some big payday later like doctors and lawyers.
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p>That’s waht drove me out – a contract with 2% raises, and health care costs, which I paid 25% of, going up by 10% a year. Thus, a 1.4 % increase.
Yes, working for the government in a position like this involves a tradeoff of salary for intangibles, and some tangibles like good health insurance. But most people in the private sector pay much more than 25% of the premium, and our premiums go up just as fast. Teachers also qualify for a pension that most in the private sector would kill for. Defined benefit doesn’t really exist out here anymore.
But…
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p>No teacher’s pension is going to put their kid through college.
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p>Teachers never have the homerun year, the bonus, etc.
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p>And they contribute 13% of their salary to their pension.
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p>I know that you are unconvinced, so I will not waste more time trying to convince you.
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p>I would like to hear what you think of the larger issues involving school finance.
I know teachers aren’t valued enough. I’m just saying that it isn’t all that bad. No homerun year, but infinitely more job security, especially as seniority accumulates. The numbers above count stipends, I believe, but not summer work.
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p>Paying more (but less than everyone else) for health insurance premiums is a hard sell, hardship-wise.
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p>Likewise, paying a portion of salary into a pension program that is a defined benefit program is an even harder sell to those of us whose pensions consists of our 401(k) and an IRA if we’re sufficiently solvent.
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p>As for financing college, your guess is as good as mine. Unless you left for the private sector and scored a tenfold increase in salary, in which case bully for you.
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p>My family does OK– would like to do better– but the financial planning types inform me that, for our kids’ college, we should be setting aside almost our entire net income. Oh, and, because we wne to law school, our student loans are nearly as much as the mortgage, and will take nearly as long to retire, so I’ll still be paying off my own degree when I’m paying for my toddler’s. Yay.
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p>So, getting out of teaching for this reason seems to me like getting out of the frying pan and into another part of the frying pan.
debated teacher pay, with similar back and forth as in this thread.
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p>here’s what they had to say (pdf).
Teachers’ pay must be adequate, else there’d be no teachers.
It’s all for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds …
Conservatives look at the world and say ok, Liberals look at the world and quote Voltaire.
get Lasic?
One of the biggest problems with being a superintendent in Massachusetts is that you are in a horrible budget year every year. The lack of state aid, the constraints of Proposition 2.5, and the increased demands for higher student performance create the perfect storm of impossible expectations. With 2 out of 3 constraints, the job would be perfectly do-able.
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p>The problem is not with urban districts. The really tough problems are in places like Saugus and Winthrop where there is no growth in local revenue. It becomes a game of managing budget reductions, where even a budget environment that provides for level services or limited growth after inflation would make this a really fun challenge. Had I known 20 years ago where we were headed, I would have gone to work in Connecticut.
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p>That said, Mr. Goldstein asks me to comment on the search process. It’s sort of like being a goldfish who is asked to critique the bowl. It’s a tough position. That said, the changes in the larger districts in Massachusetts are (for the most part) not remarkable.
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p>BOSTON: Tom Payzant had a long run and retired. The search was a little strange, with the New York candidate elected than bowing out to take a job in the Spitzer administration – think he wants to have that decision to make over again? Boston is unique in that the school committee is appointed by the mayor, so things work very differently there. The new superintendent appears to be doing well.
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p>SPRINGFIELD: This is the remarkable part of the process. The school committee voted to give the incumbent superintendent a three-year extension of his contract, but the financial control board (which decides on things like contracts) wants a change and has retained an out-of-state consultant to run a search. Grab the popcorn, this should be a good show.
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p>WORCESTER, LOWELL: Both are highly-regarded, long-term superintendents who are interested in new challenges. Both went after the commissioner’s job, both announced their intent to leave their current jobs. You stay in these jobs long enough, there are enough people in town who don’t like SOMETHING you did. You never make friends, you only make enemies, and you are never a prophet in your own land.
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p>NEW BEDFORD: Incumbent superintendent reaches retirement age, committee does a thorough search and is happy with their new hire.
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p>While there is a need to develop quality candidates for the job of superintendent, there are still enough qualified applicants that districts can make a good hire based on their perceived needs. I think it is harder to hire a good high school principal or, even worse, a SPED director. I am open to any reasonable offer to be a superintendent, but you can’t pay me enough to be a SPED director.
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p>Or maybe I am in the wrong business. Maybe I should consider a career move to be an executive director of a charter school.
for the thoughtful response.
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p>
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p>you’re right. it just sounds like a job where you can’t maneuver.
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p>in a charter school, you get the same increase (or not) that the local district gets. if boston rises by 4%, then our budget rises by 4%.
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p>but it’s such a small operation, such a “family business feel”, that staff understand that raises are probably the same range as the revenue increase. so at least you’re rarely in the position of making cuts to programs to support a teacher contract with a 6% raise that you can’t afford.
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p>the other thing is that families “know what they’re getting into” when they choose a particular charter (or at least learn when they go to the first orientation). that we can’t afford a library. or art and music class. few teams. few extracurriculars or electives. just one foreign language. pretty much all available resources go towards academics — teaching and tutoring.
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p>but i assume for a superintendent is that it’s hard to tell a broad group of people we can’t have X, right? because people hear it as “he’s doesn’t value books or art or languages or sports” — instead of “we have limited resources, we need a Less Is More approach.”
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p>another thing i’m exposed to more locally is political pressure on the superintendent to say “we can’t improve without a lot more money.” so she says it. but then in a different setting, she implores staff to simply do better, to improve, to rally and suck it up and make hard changes….and they ask “but didn’t you say we couldn’t do it without more money?” that also seems kafka-esque.
Charter schools have an easier time of it financially for a couple of reasons.
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p>First, there are two huge budget-busters that hurt public schools. Health insurance and out-of-district special education tuitions. Charters don’t get hit with the high special needs costs, and don’t have a benefit obligation for retired teachers.
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p>Second, the charters have the ability to manage enrollment. If they are doing well, they can make a set number of seats available, while public schools need to educate anyone who walks through the door. For example, a charter school can limit enrollment to 22 students per class and stop admitting children if they reach the limit. If a public district has a policy to limit class size to 22 students, you need to hire a third teacher if you have 45 students in a particular grade.
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p>2. Not really on out-of-district special needs. The charter formula already subtracts all $ spent on out-of-district placements.
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p>Ie, BPS this year spent $780 million of state/city $ for 57,000 kids, or about $13.5k per kid.
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p>After the formula is applied, a lot of stuff is (appropriately) subtracted. Out of district special ed is one thing. Boston charters get in the $10k to $12k range, depending on age of kid.
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p>So the more a district spends on out-of-school placements, the more its charters lose. The less a district spends on this, the less charters lose.
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p>3. I disagree on health care. Charters have to pay health care too, and our premiums are rising as fast as anyone else’s! Ours is Blue Cross.
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p>3. It’s easier for a regional school district than a municipal district. If we want to reduce costs in a municipal district, we need the agreement of every collective bargaining unit on both town and school sides of the street. We also have a bunch of retirees that we need to provide benefits for. Obviously, as charters are more established, they can begin to face retiree health benefits, but I doubt that’s a big part of your expenses right now.