Education Matters

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Teach for America, a recent piece in the New York Times notes (A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America), has become a high-status program, due in part to the recession. It’s extremely competitive and offers a secure job in a time when there are few jobs to be had, even at the entry level. This is the sort of thing that the Obama administration ought to be putting at the center of the debate over jobs.

I think this is one of those rare opportunities to transform the professional aspirations of an entire generation; the numbers suggest that the program could be three times bigger without loosing status. Most of the problems associated with the program– especially teachers who leave education after their term is over– could be fixed by programs designed to increase teachers salaries and to reduce burnout.

If economists are correct job growth will continue to be slow over the next several years. The poorer school districts need the teachers, and education as a profession needs to be promoted as one of the central occupations of our culture. Or, to use the jargon, as an essential investment in human capital necessary in a post-industrial economy. Ignorance is so 2005.

Posted in: Writing

Cheater Pie

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At one level, the ongoing effort to stop cheating in college (To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery) is simply the ongoing effort to get relatively young adults to take their life seriously. In that sense,there’s nothing to worry about because most students eventually start taking their lives seriously. At some point, the game of college inevitably gets consequential.

The myth of the frat boy conning and cheating his way through college is just that, largely a myth. At another level, though, cheating is an inevitable by-product of mass education– or, at least, of the worse aspects of mass education. If a teacher gives the same generic assignment on Shakespeare every semester for twenty years (“Discuss the role of the Jester in…”) it’s easy to buy the paper.

Reasonable class sizes and workloads make this less likely, of course. As the article notes, too, in writing a lot of cheating– plagiarism– can be eliminated with a good explanation of how and when to cite your sources. It’s the multiple choice test that’s really at the heart of all of the anxiety about cheating, becuase it’s so technically simple. There’s no ambiguity about the answers.

I imagine that a lot of students at these high-stakes schools would be tempted to cheat even when they have a fairly good grasp of the material. At the top of the status pyramid seemingly incremental changes in grade point averages could– or could seem to–have all sorts of repercussions. It’s that pressure that makes cheating as American as apple pie- or steroids …

Posted in: Professional, Writing

Real Reform

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The pubic school system in the U.S. has long been the Afghanistan of the right wing: the place where all of their dreams of hegemony and empire are destroyed. In modern times, the right’s dislike, if not hatred of public education is certainly rooted in the Civil Rights movement, and in desegregation. But it has deeper roots as well.

How do you nurture an abiding hatred of the government when just about everyone has attended a government-run school? Even worse, the public schools have long been strongly unionized. So the right’s strategy has been to take (what they consider) their money elsewhere: to charter schools. It’s just white flight.

The Obama administration should have a clear cut education agenda: stop the attacks on teachers and strengthen the public schools through full funding. There’s no shortage of good ideas about how to improve the schools, either; my favorites are integrated environmental curricula, like the “Edible Schoolyard” project.

Instead, Obama keeps pushing Bush-era policies and not surprisingly teachers are getting nervous about the ongoing threat of massive layoffs (Teachers’ Union Shuns Obama Aides at Convention). Meanwhile Secretary of Education Duncan works the appeasement angle.

Duncan’s remarks are interesting. She sent the National Alliance of Charter Schools a speech, but didn’t appear in person, and she “challenges” them to do better, etc., implying what’s now become obvious: a charter is no magic panacea for anything; charters don’t do better, as a whole, than the public schools.

He political advice is telling. “I think building stronger relationships,” she says, “with CBC, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, building better relationships with the leaders of the civil rights organizations…” In other words, your class and race roots are showing, and you’d better fix it.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Union