Joy Leiker of the Muncie Star Press has an article on Superintendent of Public Instruction (But Certainly not a Creationist) Tony Bennett’s latest proposition for changing the rules about who can teach. On its face, it seems more or less plausible: cut out the bureaucracy and focus more on the substantive education, making sure the teachers have more expertise in the subject areas they are teaching.
But, not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t trust the messenger. There has been a fervor for breaking the teacher’s unions – and where proposals for education reform might tend to break the union, my cynicism leads me to believe that’s the purpose of the exercise.
I don’t know the specifics of Bennett’s proposals – my fault. But as a general rule, I would suggest that the younger the child, the more important the teacher have received education about how to teach as opposed to, necessarily, education in the particular field. It’s much more important that a first grade teacher know how to communicate with six year olds than that the teacher know differential equations before teaching the kids addition and subtraction.
My passing impression of the education system is that there is plenty of unnecessary bureaucracy and job-protecting jargon. But, efforts to cut through those things should be coupled to a commitment to paying and treating our educators like professionals. The article briefly mentions Bennett’s apparent belief that teachers can cram their continuing education in during some unspecified period of the day reminds me a bit of Wal-mart managers who locked their employees in the stores and required them to work without pay.
What’s a Ph.D in education get you (besides THREE degrees worth of education classwork)? A higher grade of pay and a title that confuses people into believing you are a medical doctor.
All those education classes didn’t help the administrator in charge of math curriculum in my kid’s school system to know what a syllabus was. To say the least, I was quite impressed (but, not in a good way).
I recall a short story I enjoyed where a guy started out in school administration and, after years of hard work and achievement, worked his way up to a teaching position.
Administration positions (historically) have tended to attract education majors who were (in no particular order):
1) greedy.
2) bossy.
3) unable to teach, but stuck with the degree.
4) smarmy.
5) political (may be an amalgam of several of the previous entries. research is inconclusive).
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can put degrees behind someone’s name all day long if you want – but that doesn’t mean that person will be able to teach it.
Knowing the information and being able to teach it to kids are two very different things.
True, Amy.
I would hope we could ease the education requirements for principals and superintendents. Both positions require management and political skills not gained in teacher schools.
I don’t know, varangianguard. Certainly there are some bad administrators out there. There also are bad teachers, bad lawyers, bad doctors, bad business owners, bad social workers, and so on.
I’m curious if the inadequacy of administrators compared to those who remain in the teaching ranks has been documented in studies or if this is just your sense of things. I’m fairly sensitive to this idea because my dad is a school administrator, and he works his ass off, so reading broad brush statements like this really drives me nuts. He’s now in a position where he is making very good money, but the early administrative jobs, such as assistant principal, dean of students, and small school principal, aren’t much more lucrative than being a teacher with seniority, and in some cases are less lucrative on a dollars per hour basis. Most teachers, and all good teachers, work very hard, and I realize that 7 hours a day 9 months a year doesn’t begin to capture the time that teachers have to spend to be good at their jobs. I remember seeing my dad come home after a full day in the classroom and then two hours on the football field only to sit in his recliner grading papers. Still, the sort of hours that he put in as a teacher doesn’t begin to compare to what has been required of him as an administrator.
Also, there is less job security. If three school board members decide they want to go in a different direction, then an administrator has no choice but to find a new job, and possibly sell his or her house, move his family, etc.
As I said, it would be interesting to see if there have been any studies on the evaluations of teachers who become administrators as compared to those who remain teachers. My anecdotal experience, with my own high school teachers who became administrators, is different from yours. In my experience, most administrators are in their jobs because, just like teachers, they care about the education of students. Schools, like all other organizations, require management and leadership. There seems to be a utopian fantasy that schools would be uniformly awesome if each teacher were his own one room schoolhouse. I’m not sure I buy it. In the real world, everyone has to answer to someone.
Good commentary by all.
As I have married into a 2nd generational “educator family”, I find one common aspect to all of this that many people, (especially the media) misses…
It comes down to the STUDENT and the PARENTS, initially.
I hear my wife say time and again, that if the STUDENT would SHOW UP…or COME PREPARED, or NOT doze off, they WOULD (easily) get the education they’re supposed to be getting.
That is the one parameter of NCLB that has the “bosses” scratching their heads.
At parent/teacher nights…seems only the parents of the GOOD students show up, while the ones on the edge of failure or those actually failing can’t be bothered to come out. And the educators do more than their share to give every student every chance to pass…the kids simply don’t take the offer.
All the money dumnped into the system hasn’t proven to adversely affect test scores or graduation rates to the positive side, and it’s NOT the teacher’s fault.
Change the STUDENTS and PARENTS mindset first, and the rest shall follow.
It’s sounds way too simple to be practical, but it has to work (as it has in the past), because what we have in place now sure isn’t doing much good, except for those that already have the work habits and personal accountability to succeed.
B.G.
John M, you bring up a valid criticism to my broad brush swipes. Let me refine my snarkiness.
I would have to presuppose that any research you propose would likely be tainted because the entire concept is almost completely subjective in nature. Evaluations have little or nothing to do with objective criteria, and are written in full knowledge of who is doing the evaluation. In effect, since there is no control, no anonymity for evaluators, and an extremely limited sample size, you get results than are less than useful in any concrete sense (not that people don’t use them anyway).
I don’t want to pick on your father, but what makes him (or any other superintendent) worth the differential paid from that of classroom staff. Hours in? Competence?
Working long, hard hours doesn’t automatically qualify one for high pay. Ask the single parent who works as a retail manager. Competence? As defined how? Subjectively, that’s how. If it’s results-oriented, then how does a superintendent qualify for high pay, if graduation rates don’t rise, and test scores continue to lag?
Perhaps the problem lies in perception. When I was in high school, the superintendent was a lot like your Dad. Worked his way up the ranks, worked long hours, but wasn’t paid quite as extravagantly as too many are today. Since then, as pay has risen to unheard of heights, more and more one hears about superintendents who are there for the money, the prestige, and the power. It’s not that there are “some” bad administrators, but that one hears about so many “bad ones”. And, like bad pennies, they turn up again and again hired by (I assume) doofy school boards.
Just like the other professions who rarely chatise their own, education administrators don’t have a “they really suck” list either. So, the smarmy, political ones keep churning out the bad press over the good ones, over and over again. I have had the distasteful experience of having to witness this in my local school system during the last few years. And, former superintendent Smarmy easily got another high-paying job at another educational endeavor. How? Politics. And, since I watched this farce play out, I starting watching the news for others school systems around the state. Not very promising.
So, just as a disclaimer, yes this is exactly just my sense of things. Yes, it is subjective (how could it not be?). Yes, it is unfair to those who aren’t that way. But, since nothing is done differently, the good ones will have to continue to be lumped together with the bad apples. But then, that’s their choice.
But how do you determine that a particular superintendent is in it for “the money, the prestige, the power”? Money? Well, yes, typically the superintendent is, by a large margin, the highest paid employee of the school corporation. Power? It’s in the nature of the job. Prestige? Well, I think that’s overstating things. But these things are in the nature of the job. Any superintendent’s job is, by comparison to others in the district, lucrative, powerful, and prestigious. It’s not surprising that critics would accuse the superintendent of being overly motivated by such things, but it’s also not terribly informative.
I realize, of course, that there are plenty of hard-working people who don’t make big money (of course, whatever you think of education degrees, is it realistic to compare a superintendent to a retail manager?). One point is the uncertainty. Classroom teachers have union protections and tenure. Superintendents and other administrators serve at the pleasure of the school board. At least a couple of Indiana superintendents have been fired in recent years not for misconduct, but because of philosophical differences with the school board. That absolutely is the school board’s right. But the uncertainty has some value, doesn’t it? Getting a new job for an administrator often means uprooting one’s family, etc.
Finally, it’s a market. If school board A thinks it can offer a salary only 60 percent as high as what school board B pays its superintendent, yet end up with someone as good or better than school district B’s superintendent, then what’s stopping them? There seems to be an implication in your post that being at all motivated by money is somehow obscene or improper. Why? Administrators have kids, grandkids, hobbies, and outside interests. Taking a demanding but high-paying job is a tradeoff: give up a bunch of time and take on a bunch of headaches in the near term for some financial reward in the long term. Is it that offensive that someone who would do the job for $150,000 wouldn’t it for $100,000? Seems like a pretty standard cost-benefit analysis to me.
Where to begin, John M?
While it isn’t often possible to determine the real character of a person from several structured interviews, I think that a little long term observation of a person’s professional behavior can be a clear indicator of the less-than-flattering descriptions I have been writing about.
Having several prettily scribed pieces of parchment hanging on one’s wall doesn’t necessarily infer anything in practical terms beyond the fact that one successfully completed the requirements to acquire those pieces of parchment. Look up the requirements sometime for advanced degrees in Education.
Is it realistic to compare a retail manager to a school superintendent? Sure. Not comparing them is elitist.
Both manage a group of asst. managers and associates, depending upon the size of the school system or the business in question, the total numbers might well differ. Both have to deal with customers. Both work long hours under a salaried structure. Both should have a clear understanding of various management techniques and be somewhat knowledgable in the product being sold. Both have a superior organization that they are responsible to, and are subject to dismissal for any or no reason (in Indiana). In effect, the skills required are very much the same, and it doesn’t take an Ed.D to run a business. Where you seem confused is a scale issue. But, if you compare similarly sized organizations, then the differences melt away into insignificance.
The money itself isn’t the point. The point is that it is public tax money being thrown at managers whose skills differ little from their non-educational equivalents. Yet, many times, for the same work, superintendents seem to be paid at much higher than market-value, because it is someone elses’ monies being spent by school boards. I truly believe that if the monies spent on administrators were tied to a school boards’ personal bottom line, salaries would be much lower.
It is completely immaterial whether a superintendent has no children or twelve, a spouse/partner or not, or supports their entire extended family. “Need” doesn’t determine my pay, why should it determine a superintendent’s? You like your Dad having money? I understand that. But, that’s your perspective, not mine.
Please remember, nobody “makes” anybody become an administrator. If the work is too demanding, go to the private sector. If one truly has a career as an administrator out of a sense of civic duty, or for the love of educating the young, then shouldn’t the money be secondary? It is my distinct impression that it isn’t.
What is offensive to me is that my tax dollars are being frivilously spent on a person whose skills are not specialized or even rare. There are plenty of non-Ed.Ds out there who would be quite competent runnning a school system of any size. It is just a matter of scale and perspective. In this, State Superintendent Bennett is quite right.
You misunderstood my point about family. My point wasn’t about “need” or supporting one’s family. My point was that while having a job like that is financially lucrative compared to the typical job in education, it requires a time commitment that limits the ability to spend time with friends, family, hobbies, and the like. I’m certainly not arguing from a need perspective, as is quite clear from my post. Your cheap shot was quite unnecessary. Yeah, I can’t wait to get my greedy hands on my taxpayer funded inheritance. You read me like a book.
Money isn’t secondary for anyone. No one goes into education expecting to get rich, but there are limits. Teachers wouldn’t work for minimum wage, for instance. I think you underestimate both the responsibilities of the job and the interest that private sector types would have in such jobs (superintendent pay seems high compared to other educators’ pay, but not so much compared to the private sector). The comparison of school children to transient customers is completely unhinged from reality, for instance, and dramatically changes the equation. Again, if the belief is that lowering pay dramatically and eliminating licensing requirements will lead to better results, then by all means give it a shot. I’m less than convinced that the results would be positive. Setting aside the Ed.D. issue, do you think any education is necessary for the job? Anything beyond a high school diploma? Nothing more is required for retail management.
Sorry. Your writing led me to believe your concern was about money. My point is everybody works hard in education, not just superintendents. You should know, as you already mentioned your father sitting at home grading papers (for free). You seem to expect superintendents to be compensated for their evenings when the common folk (teachers and lower administrators) aren’t.
I disagree with your assessment of my comparison of children (which was about parents being the “customers”, btw) and transient retail customers. We will just have to disagree, as I see no way to convince you.
I hardly underestimate anything about the responsibilities of being an educator. I have been listening to educators and observing their behaviors my whole life, which I can only assume is quite a bit longer than yours, since I could name dozens of examples just off the top of my head, and you seem limited to a single instance. Certainly, our perspectives differ.
Education cannot be defined by acquiring little pieces of parchment. Explaining why would be an entire survey course for Western Education in the 20th Century.
This is subjective, of course, but for Ph.Ds and Ed.Ds, the more that one demands to be addressed as “Doctor”, the less deserving one is of the title, in my opinion. Education administrators are among the worst offenders.
They should be Ms. Ttttt Jjjjjjj, Ed.D. Some superintendents actually refer to themselves that way. Kudos to them. For the rest, it is just narcisscism. For example, how would you like to have a medical emergency on a plane, have the flight attendant search the passenger list for doctors only to come up with an Ed.D titled as “Dr.” on the passenger list? That would be so helpful (that, -is- sarcasm).
Education -is- necessary for the job at hand, but degrees aren’t, especially at the “advanced” levels. If you cannot understand the distinction, then I’m done here.
Lots of resentment there, V, and we certainly aren’t going to work through it here. As for your last paragraph, I’m not sure where in this thread I argued the opposite. My only point was to differ with your belief that school administrators, as a class, are scum of the earth. Feel free to revel in your self-righteousness
“For the rest, it is just narcisscism.”
That broad generalization is pretty pathetic.
Being a superintendent seems to me to be a thankless job with no job security, and an infinite number of people to please, none of whom are the ones he/she is really there to serve. By all means, let’s just let anyone think anyone can do it. The terms of service will only get shorter than they already are – around 3 years, I believe.
1. I long for the day when I hear just one politician say, “The major problem with public education is the people who’ve used it as a political football for the last fifty years.”
2. Bennett is obviously not that guy, and for an educator dedicated to education, and a science teacher dedicated to the biology standards, he sure has some weird associates. How the idea that our schools would be better off run as a collection of entrepreneurial fiefdoms survived the era of AIG and Goldman Sachs is beyond me; I’m not even sure how the idea survives a trip to the local Home Depot for anyone paying attention. We don’t need geniuses in every principal’s position, and god knows we aren’t going to find them if we do. We need, above all, organizations which are well directed, in which supervisors see their jobs as keeping the chains oiled and the nuts and bolts tightened, not dreaming up big ideas to get themselves noticed.
3. You’re right to distrust the messenger, Doug, and doubly so when he brings a complex, ground-shifting proposal to the table without letting anyone else see it first and demands approval in a two-hour session. Let’s add to that that the experienced educator who says something like “fourth-grade math teachers should have more hours in their core curriculum and less in education”–as though twelve hours of college calculus would improve teaching ten-year-olds their times tables–is not to be trusted at all.
Sure. Resentment.
I resent having had a superintendent who (recently, in the district I reside in):
Consistently failed to produce improved results in test scores or graduation rates, even while garnering “good” evaluations from his employers.
Ran an ethically-challenged office.
Fought being fired by the school board, causing not only large legal fees to be paid, but a large separation settlement. Where if he really cared about the kids, would have never done so. Why? Because all that money showered upon him and his attorneys came from a self-insured entity that had to shift resources from “the kids”. Nice. And all funded by tax monies, something that only grows on trees for those reaping the benefits of them.
And that is just where I live – now, today. I can count examples from the donut counties, the townships, oh, lest I forget, IPS. And then, there are the historical examples.
Yes I have some resentment built up there. Good catch. You’re a sharper cookie than I’ve been giving you credit for.
I – never – said superintendents were “scum of the earth”. That is solely your touchy, defensive projection. I said “tended” to be somethings, “scum” wasn’t one of them. You want to quibble with an over-generalization? That’s fine. But, I stand by my generalization over your single example any day of the week. You seem to think cherry-picking your own familial example proves your point? It doesn’t. Your Dad is a great superintendent? Luck for the school system where he works.
Tipletma. C’mon. Don’t be naive. Even you and I are narcisscistic, to a cerain extent, for even participating in blogs. If you don’t think Americans are generally narcisscistic, then you need to open your eyes.
Mary. My district’s superintendent gets 450,000 thank you’s a year, plus $1/year healthcare, plus a nice car with gas and maintenance, plus extra contributions to his retirement account. Thanks like that, are thanks that most of us could use. I’d even hate to consider what some other school systems pay around here.
The terms of service are direct reflections of performance, or lack thereof. The only job where poor performance seems to be subordinated to a winning personality is TV weatherperson. For the rest of us, results count. Look at IPS. They have gone through a series of superintendents over the last decade. Why? Because the “solution du jour” each was hired for, failed to produce improvements in test scores or graduation rates. Next.
You’re all over the place. First, you keep insisting that I am relying upon only one example. I mentioned in my first post in this thread that in my experience, the high school teachers I had (three come to mind) who became administrators tended to be strong teachers. Two of them were among the very best teachers I have had at any level. Your idea of relying upon your wealth of knowledge is to say, essentially, “and I could give you more examples.”
Once again, having made your mind up about administrators as a class, you are holding them to standards that you wouldn’t expect of others. Your old superintendent didn’t “really care about the kids” because he sued for wrongful termination. You seem indifferent to whether his termination was wrongful. Because tax dollars are at stake, anyone who cares about the kids who shrug off the termination, no matter how improper. Would you hold a fired teacher to such a standard? Nah, because that teacher was fired by an evil administrator!
“The only job where poor performance seems to be subordinated to a winning personality is TV weatherperson. For the rest of us, results count.” You’ve gone off the rails, V. Really? School administrators are the only people for whom personality has an impact on job security? My goodness. And you think I’m naive.
“Scum of the earth” is a characterization. You have made clear that you consider the typical administrator to be a greedy, bossy, smarmy, failed teacher who is robbing the taxpayers. I don’t think my summary of your position is inaccurate.
Doghouse Riley is RIGHT on the money– and from my nearly 25 years of teaching–and my mom’s experience after 42 years — I wouldn’t trust one word out of the mouth of Tony Bennett. Even though she’s retired for two years, she’s scared to death of what he’ll do to public education in the next 3 years in Indiana.
I’m a bit late to the table, but well said by Doug, Amy and Doughouse Riley.