[Vision2020] MSD Pay and Tenure--a reply

[John Harrell]

Hello Mr. Ted Moffett,

You may have hit on something here.

You said, "When our capitalist economic system financially rewards the best 
and the brightest far more for other professions than teaching, what does 
this say about the priority given or the respect shown by our society for 
the profession of teaching?"

This is an interesting observation. Lets apply it to schooling. 

The government schools are a monoply, and as such there is no competition. 
So, if competition was introduced (in some way - and I am not discussing 
government vouchers or any other funding model - just the abstract concept 
of competition), could this possibly reward the best and the brightest 
schools and therefore the teachers? I don't know for sure, but I would think 
most certainly. 

The higher level institutions (if one really wants to call them that) may be 
used as examples. Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, etc., are all rewarded 
because they are considered the best (maybe, maybe not - another discussion at 
another time), and therefore I would assume that the teachers at those 
respective institutions would also be rewarded. I believe that even here, UI
and WSU are considered as different quality levels and I understand the teacher 
pay is similarly rewarded at different levels.

Cheers!
John Harrell

--- Ted Moffett <ted_moffett@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Dale and Others:
> 
> Parental involvement is a critical factor in a child's education.  I won't 
> list facts and figures (this is not a research paper) but most people would 
> consider this assertion obvious.  And given this assumption,  I think one of 
> the best arguments for sending a child to a private school is that the 
> parents pay for this education directly out of their pocket (unless there 
> are vouchers or grants etc.), and therefore are motivated to be involved in 
> the education of their child, to get their money's worth, as it were.  Or 
> maybe this is backwards:  the fact that parents pay for a private school is 
> evidence they were more involved with their child's education to begin with.
> 
> Either way, I believe if you take two groups of children of identical 
> potential, and put each group in the same school, with all variables equal 
> except one group has parents who basically ignore the child's education, and 
> the other group has parents who read to and with their children every day, 
> enthusiastically discuss ideas with them, and help them with their homework 
> every night, you would see a major difference between the two groups in 
> educational performance.  Of course I am assuming someone else is not giving 
> the child of the neglectful parents a lot of educational attention outside 
> of school.
> 
> Therefore one of main causes of the difference in performance as measured on 
> students test scores between private and public schools is due to this one 
> variable of parental involvement.  The actual quality of the education in 
> private vs. public schools does not explain the whole difference between the 
> measured performance of the students.  Might not some of the test score 
> results of students in public schools in recent years be due to the 
> increasing number of families with both parents working who have less time 
> to be involved with their child's education?
> 
> If you took all the children from public schools and put them in private 
> schools and vice versa, and measured their performance years from then, I 
> believe you would see the public schools performance as measured on test 
> scores go up, and the private schools performance go down.  And not solely 
> due to the fact that the private schooled children might be better educated 
> at the start of the experiment, or because the pool of students in private 
> schools is skewed towards a congenitally brighter group, or from a wealthier 
> background, which are all important variables to consider, but in large part 
> because the group of children in private schools have parents who are much 
> more involved in their child's education.
> 
> One of the other variables that influence the differences in makeup of 
> private school children compared to public school children is the fact that 
> private schools are not forced to educate every child that shows up at the 
> door.  They can reject children that are disruptive or perform poorly, or 
> are handicapped, children that the public schools must attempt to educate, 
> with only the most extreme cases being expelled.  This variable clearly 
> skews the performance of the public schools in a disadvantageous manner.  
> Some of the disruptive students who perform poorly are probably influenced 
> by a lack of nurturing parental involvement in their life, so this variable 
> in part just leads us back to my main point.
> 
> I don't doubt many of the facts you present about MSD spending, Dale.  My 
> experience in the MSD revealed some serious faults with the public 
> educational system, including teachers of questionable skill with 
> comfortable tenured jobs!   But I think you overlook other variables that 
> weaken your case that the public schools are a bloated entrenched liberal 
> bureaucracy that wastes money without putting education first.
> 
> There are reasons why the public schools might need to spend more money per 
> child than a private school, valid reasons that address educational needs 
> that the private schools do not address, such as attempting to educate 
> neglected children whose parents look at school as state subsidized day 
> care, or busing children to school from remote rural areas, or dealing with 
> seriously disadvantaged or handicapped students, or funding a football team 
> that travels all over Idaho, a football team I might think to be a waste of 
> money, but that supports activities many parents and youth and the community 
> wants as part of MSD.  Another factor to consider is that the public 
> schools, being tax supported government institutions, need an added layer of 
> bureaucracy to deal with all the reporting requirements and documentation, 
> etc. imposed on them.  If you looked at all the expenses connected to all 
> the programs and services and administrative costs that public schools 
> incur, this partly explains why public education is more costly per child 
> than private in some cases.
> 
> Doing an exacting item by item cost comparison between, say, Logos in Moscow 
> and the MSD, would reveal, I believe, that there are programs that MSD 
> offers that do drive up costs compared to Logos, such as the Moscow Bears 
> Football team, but that this program and others are ones the community 
> wants.
> 
> As far as salaries for public school teachers and administrators being too 
> high, I believe the argument over this can cut both ways.  Of course you can 
> point to schools where the teachers do a good job on a salary that is equal 
> to or below the average salary at MSD.  So why increase teacher salaries?
> Because the cases of some schools getting by with low paid teachers does not 
> prove that paying higher salaries will not attract more qualified and 
> motivated teachers to the teaching profession which could improve public or 
> private schools.
> 
> You hear it often stated, at the U of I, in the corporate world, etc. that 
> the justification for paying the U of I President, or the deans of certain 
> colleges, or the CEOs of some corporations, the huge salaries or stock 
> options or golden parachutes etc. is that it's the only way to get the best 
> people for the job.  Odd how this argument seems to be abandoned by some 
> when looking at the salaries of some other professions, teaching among them.
> 
> When the best and brightest can become a lawyer, a doctor, a statistician or 
> a computer engineer, etc. and earn far more than ANY public school teacher 
> in Idaho within a few years of entering their profession, do these people 
> favor teaching in the public schools as a option?  When our capitalist 
> economic system financially rewards the best and the brightest far more for 
> other professions than teaching, what does this say about the priority given 
> or the respect shown by our society for the profession of teaching?
> 
> I know you can quote average professional salaries and claim that teachers 
> in Idaho are reasonably well paid in comparison.   But this ignores the fact 
> that a lawyer or doctor or computer scientist who is among the best and 
> brightest, and at the top of their profession, can earn way more than ANY 
> public school teacher in the state of Idaho, no matter how long they teach.  
> This fact is well known, so I need not give facts and figures.
> 
> The best and brightest in our universities, when looking at maximizing their 
> future financial success, almost never consider going into teaching in a 
> public school, unless they have some other side venture they might be 
> working on to supplement their income.  "There's no money in it" they will 
> say!!!!!!!!!!This well known fact weakens your thesis that public school 
> teachers are overpaid, and raises serious questions regarding your thesis 
> that raising public school teaching salaries will not result in attracting 
> better qualified, brighter teachers who can improve public schools.
> 
> Ted
> 
> 
> >.
> >
> >As they say in California: "yea, uh-huh, whatever".
> >
> >The argument just continues to fall apart from there:
> >
> > >Just like vouchers are way out for people not to work
> > >with the community to better the local educational system.
> > >With vouchers, they can relieve themselves of the responsibility
> > >of working in the community by benefiting from the labor of others
> > >who worked to make their community a better place with better
> > >schools.
> >
> >This is also a *very* interesting argument. If there were vouchers, just
> >*where* would those kids go to school? In the local community (as opposed 
> >to
> >Donovan's thinking, I guess, of bussing them out of state).
> >
> >It's absolutely *ridiculous* thinking that the only way you are going to 
> >get
> >community involvement is by having government schools. That's absolutely
> >backwards from reality.
> >
> >As has been pointed out many times, competition in education drives prices
> >down and quality up. Monopolies are always the worst possible option.
> >
> >What the liberals are *really* afraid of is that parent will have 
> >educational
> >choice -- and parents may not choose what the liberals are feeding.
> >
> >This would probably only *really* hit home if every MSD parent had to write 
> >a check for $1,000 every month of the school year (since the cost at MSD is 
> >over $8,000 per child). I think if parents knew what was being charged for 
> >the education they are getting, there would be quite the little uproar.
> >
> >Best,
> >Dale Courtney
> >Moscow, Idaho
> 
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