still thinking

OK so I’ve been thinking some more about education. President Obama is currently on TV answering questions via his internet discussion hookup. Education of course was the first question out of the gate, i.e. how do we fix it. His response was capital and reform. So I agree, but……… As my daughters and I have discussed many times, you can agree with the generalities but the devil is in the details. California is currently in lay off mode for teachers and other public workers. As I read the local paper’s letters to the editor, it is once again the “outrage” that it is the younger teachers that are being laid off and the older teachers are the ones that get to avoid the layoffs and keep their jobs, i.e. “it’s the young teachers that better relate to us” idea. The over-riding assumption with the general public, it seems, is that the younger teachers are the better teachers and that the older teachers are “excess” baggage. Another assumption is the idea that “relating” (however that is defined) somehow equates to learning. As a department chairman for over twenty years I can assure you that is not the general rule. Poor teachers exist at every level, as do good ones. That’s what the initial evaluation process is all about when determining who gets tenure. The poor teachers, hopefully, are weeded out. Unfortunately, at the University level, research demands have tended to over shadow the basic role of “teaching” at any level of education. What happens after tenure is granted is a topic for another discussion. Teacher quality is a much broader question than a young versus old discussion as is the question of who gets laid off first. However, I do agree that the system with regard to “layoffs” does need to be revisited. But I am sure there is no perfect answer and any system designed will have distracters.

My greater overall concern is with current and proposed approaches to the idea of “merit”, be it with regard to retention or merit pay. It’s hard to disagree with merit. But yet how do you define it let alone define it so it has universal application. Unfortunately, good intentions could only screw things up worse than they are now if we are not careful, especially, if we somehow link capital expenditures with merit, i.e. schools with the higher merit experience receive the large amounts of investment capital. I remember a favorite case study in the MBA curriculum that illustrated the point that during periods of product sale downturns perhaps you should increase marketing expenditures in that area, not decrease them. Admittedly this is not always the case. But, knee jerk responses often head us in the wrong direction. Tangent to this concern is the idea of somehow handicapping those teachers who are teaching in those low merit institutions when in fact perhaps these same teachers are the ones who should receive the greater amount of merit pay – for their dedication and love of teaching in that environment. That is one of the reasons, I believe, that education administration and merit pay must, somehow, remain basically at the local level. Who else better understands the question of merit? On the other hand are they capable at the local level, let alone motivated, to evaulate merit? Oh, it is a stormy sea upon which we relaunch this ship. (Note the Cambria influnce!) My thoughts are running too rapidly and with too much variety to organize them now. Daughters give me some direction!!