NY Times Article Sums Up Education Reform Debate Divisions

The current debate over education reform was a highlighted topic in an article that ran in Sunday's (4/10/11) NY Times Week in Review, titled "The Deadlocked Debate Over Education Reform." Across the nation, the discussion about education reform among experts and advocates is becoming increasingly polarized, with sides taking hard lines against opposing views and/or approaches.

As is often the case with morally charged policy issues....false dichotomies seem to have replaced fruitful conversation. If you support the teachers’ union, you don’t care about the students. If you are critical of the teachers’ union, you don’t care about the teachers. If you are in favor of charter schools, you are opposed to public schools. If you believe in increased testing, you are on board with the corruption of our liberal society’s most cherished educational values. If you are against increased testing, you are against accountability. It goes on. Neither side seems capable of listening to the other.

Read the entire article here.

60 Minutes: NYC charter school's $125,000 experiment

This Sunday (3/13/11), 60 Minutes aired a segment on New York City charter school, The Equity Project. 

The Equity Project (TEP) was founded in September of 2009. TEP holds to three core principles: rigorous qualifications, redefined expectations and revolutionary compensation.

This publicly funded, but privately managed charter school offers a salary of $125,000 to qualified teachers: that's more than double the national average for teachers. TEP's strategy invests most of its operating budget into pay for teachers. TEP founder and principal, Zeke Vanderhoek believes the rigorous recruitment strategy to separate the mediocre teachers from the all-stars will yield excelling results for their students.

But is higher pay helping this charter make the grade?

"When the fifth graders took the New York State math and reading exams, the results were disappointing. On average, other schools in the district scored better than TEP."

Watch the whole 60 Minutes segment below:




To read transcript of this 60 Minutes segment, click here.

Kristof: Pay Teachers More, Stop Demeaning the Profession

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has an excellent column today on the profession of teaching and the impact teachers have on their students.


He points out several things we all should keep in mind when considering reforming education.

1. “Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children.”

2. “Changes in relative pay have reinforced the problem. In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.”

3. “Consider three other countries renowned for their educational performance: Singapore, South Korea and Finland. In each country, teachers are drawn from the top third of their cohort, are hugely respected and are paid well (although that’s less true in Finland). In South Korea and Singapore, teachers on average earn more than lawyers and engineers, the McKinsey study found.”

Finally, we can all agree with Kristof that the denigration of teachers needs to stop.  Who is going to go into a profession that serves as a punching bag for partisan politics and/or politicians?  The top graduates of our schools will not go into a profession that is not respected.

Contact your representatives--local, state and federal--and tell them to stop dumping on teachers.  They are not the problem – they are the solution.  And they deserve our respect.

Read the entire column, Pay Teachers More, New York Times, March 12, 2011.

NBC's "Education Nation" series takes a look at the film "Race to Nowhere"

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

To watch a clip of the film and read a brief summary of the screening at St. Gregory College Preparatory School in Tucson, Arizona, click here.  To watch the panel discussion that followed the screening, click here.

For more information about the film or to learn more about hosting a screening in your community, visit http://www.racetonowhere.com/.