Over the past half-century, the number of
pupils in U.S. schools grew by about 50 percent while the number of teachers
nearly tripled. Spending per student rose threefold, too. If the teaching force
had simply kept pace with enrollments, school budgets had risen as they did, and
nothing else changed, today's average teacher would earn nearly $100,000, plus
generous benefits. We'd have a radically different view of the job and it would
attract different sorts of people.
Yes, classes would be larger—about what they were when I was in school. True,
there'd be fewer specialists and supervisors. And we wouldn't have as many
instructors for youngsters with "special needs." But teachers would earn twice
what they do today (less than $50,000, on average) and talented college
graduates would vie for the relatively few openings in those ranks.
What America has done, these past 50 years, is invest in more teachers rather
than better ones, even as countless appealing and lucrative options have opened
up for the able women who once poured into public schooling. No wonder teaching
salaries have just kept pace with inflation, despite huge increases in education
budgets. No wonder the teaching occupation, with blessed exceptions, draws
people from the lower ranks of our lesser universities. No wonder there are
shortages in key branches of this sprawling profession. When you employ three
million people and you don't pay very well, it's hard to keep a field fully
staffed, especially in locales (rural communities, tough urban schools) that
aren't too enticing and in subjects such as math and science where
well-qualified individuals can earn big bucks doing something else.
Why did we triple the size of the teaching work force instead of paying more to
a smaller number of stronger people? Three reasons.
First, the seductiveness of smaller classes. Teachers want fewer kids in their
classrooms and parents think their children will be better off, despite scant
evidence that students learn more in smaller classes, particularly from less
able instructors. Second, the institutional interests that benefit from a larger
teaching force, above all dues-collecting (and influence-seeking) unions, and
colleges of education whose revenues (tuition, state subsidies) and size (all
those faculty slots) depend on their enrollments. Third, the social forces
pushing schools to treat children differently from one another, creating one set
of classes for the gifted, others for children with handicaps, those who want to
learn Japanese, who seek full-day kindergarten or who crave more
community-service opportunities.
Nobody has resisted. It was not in anyone's interest to keep the teaching ranks
sparse, while many interests were served by helping them to swell. Today, we pay
the price: lots of money spent on schooling, nearly all of it for salaries, but
schooling that, at the end of the day, depends on the knowledge, skills and
commitment of teachers who don't earn much and cannot see that they ever will.
Compounding that problem, we make multiple policy blunders. We restrict entry to
people "certified" by state bureaucracies, normally after passing through
quasi-monopolistic training programs that add little value. Thus an ill-paid
vocation also has daunting, yet pointless, barriers to entry. We pay mediocre
instructors the same as super-teachers. Though tiny cracks are appearing in the
"uniform salary schedule," in general an energized and highly effective
classroom practitioner earns no more than a feckless time-server. We pay no more
to high-school physics or math teachers than middle-school gym teachers, though
the latter are easy to find while people capable of the former posts are scarce
and have plentiful options. We pay no more to those who take on daunting
assignments in tough schools than to those who work with easy kids in leafy
suburbs. In fact, we often pay them less.
Instead of recognizing that today's 20-somethings commonly try multiple
occupations before settling down (if they ever do), then making imaginative use
of those who are game to teach for a few years, we still assume that teaching is
a lifelong vocation and lament anyone who exits the classroom for other
pursuits. Instead of deploying technology so that gifted teachers reach hundreds
of kids while others function more like tutors or aides, we assume that every
classroom needs its own Socrates.
Despite all that, and to their great credit, most teachers are decent folks who
care about kids and want to help them learn. But turning around U.S. schools and
"leaving no child behind" calls for more. It also requires passion, brains,
knowledge and technique. Federal law now demands subject-matter mastery. Such
qualities are hard to find in vast numbers, however, especially when the job
doesn't pay very well. Yet fat across-the-board raises for three million people
are a pipe dream. (Adding $10,000 plus benefits to their pay would add some $40
billion to school budgets.)
Maybe we can't turn back the clock on the numbers, but surely we can reverse the
policy errors. With hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs now turning over each
year, at minimum we should insist that new entrants play by different rules that
reward effectiveness, deploy smart incentives and suitable technology,
compensate them sensibly, and make skillful use of short-termers instead of just
wishing they'd stay longer. And this time let's watch what we're doing.
This article originally appeared in the March 11, 2005 edition of the
Wall Street Journal. The March 22, 2005 edition published several letters in
response, available
here (subscription required).