Merging Career and College Paths.

 As we close another school year and high school graduates up and down the state go into the world armed with the knowledge and skills they’ve acquired, it’s important for us to reflect and look to the future. Education has always played multiple roles in the social development of our country. At the same time that schools are charged with maintaining and passing on our history and traditions, they are entrusted with giving tools to younger generations so that they can forge their paths into the future. Historically, while at times schools have been pillars that upheld the unequal and unjust social structures of segregation and ethnic biases, they’ve also been the laboratories where racial integration first took hold and has created generations of young adults for whom that era seems anachronistic and just plain odd. And as we embark on the 21st Century we must again ask ourselves what will California schools look like over the next 50 years?

For over two decades our state and our nation’s economy has moved away from industrial manufacturing towards a more service and information based economic model. We have moved from the creation and maintaining of widgets to the creation and managing of billions of gigabytes of information that travel around the world at amazing speeds. Furthermore, we continue to move from a nation based economy that competes with other nations in a zero-sum game to a globalized economy. Today’s graduates are some of the first graduates that will compete for jobs with a global workforce. And it’s not simply blue collar jobs factory jobs that are being outsourced, but jobs formerly considered “safe,” such as engineering and design are also up for grabs in this new “flat” world we live in. Given this, we must ask, are our schools doing all they can to prepare students for this new environment?

California schools operates under a model geared towards preparing every single child in high school for college. Every student follows a rigid academic program that adheres to the A-G curriculum required to enter California State Colleges. This is a laudable goal, to give every child the opportunity to go to college if he or she so desires. Especially because this came on the heels of tracking students, often with no other criteria than ethnicity, into either the “college track” or the “vocational/career path.” However, according to Edsource.com “in California, about half of public high school graduates go on to a publicly supported two- or four-year college. Others will attend private institutions in state, or private and public ones out of state.” Even if California does slightly better than the national average, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, roughly 30% of high school graduates in 2007 did not enroll in college. How are these students being served?

Perhaps a much better model is the Multiple Pathways proposal. The Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access, out of UCLA,  has been studying Multiple Pathways and have put out a series of papers. The paper by Jeannie Oakes and Marisa Saunders caught my eye. It’s entitled “Reforming California’s High Schools: College Prep for All? Reinvigorated Career and Technical Education? Or Multiple Pathways to both?”  In this paper the authors tear down the dichotomy between preparing for college or vocational education and propose that “California can and should prepare all student for both college and careers by creating Multiple Pathways through high school.” They propose that California schools must adopt programs which include the following three elements:

1. A college preparatory academic core (satisfying the A-G requirements for entry into CA public universities; 

2. A professional/technical core well grounded in academic and real-world standards; and 

3. Increasingly more demanding opportunities for field-based learning that deepen students' understanding of academic and technical knowledge through application in authentic situations.

For over a decade we’ve been seeing the poverty gap widen in this country. In our state the median income isn’t enough to purchase the average home, even after the crash and credit crunch. I truly believe schools must be vigilant to maintain the role of education as the great equalizer, the Silver Bullet that gives all students a fighting chance in an a very competitive job market. College for all? Of course! This must continue to be out goal. However we can ill afford to create a social underclass by not giving the non-college bound high school graduate the important skills needed to navigate the new global economy. Moreover, these are real world skills that would benefit all high school graduates.

 While the devil is in the details. It’s clear that schools in the future must look vastly different than what they look like today. Currently schools find themselves preparing students  to enter a job market that does not yet exist and we can barely fathom.  Today’s jobs in the biomedical field, web engineering and e-commerce development were non-existent when today’s graduating Seniors were born. Schools cannot keep up with the changes that our economy faces, however this is an argument for strengthening our public schools by creating programs and alliances with private industry in which truly no child is left behind because they are prepared with the necessary tools to take on the jobs of the future and not an irrelevant multiple choice exam.

School enrollment to set record highs

Here is an interesting article from the Washington Post on the growing number of expected school enrollment...

Public school enrollment across the country will hit a record high this year with just under 50 million students, and the student population is becoming more diverse in large part because of growth in the Latino population, according to a new federal report. (Read the article)

As expected enrollment grows it becomes more and more important for education leaders, teachers and parents to ask themselves what schools will need to look like in the future. The answer is important to us all.

Pay teachers like babysitters.

A little humor that arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago...


Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they work; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Overcoming the Teaching Penalty (First in a Series)

When my early thoughts of becoming a teacher first started nudging me, I resisted. I admired some of my teachers, but to be honest, the income level was a big deterrent. As time passed during my senior year in high school, and some of my friends were thinking of being lawyers and doctors and architects, I was increasingly considering, with a high degree of consternation, becoming a teacher. I knew that becoming a teacher meant giving up the ability to make more money in other professions. What I didn’t know was that teachers are in essence penalized for their career choice.

Don’t misunderstand me. I have yet to meet an educator who decided to step into the business of opening up the world of knowledge to children because of the money. Teachers are teachers because they are passionate about teaching, about learning, about their subject matter, but most of all, about their students. Not one of them expects to get rich. They expect to get paid fairly for an increasingly difficult job. However, over the past decade, as the demands on educators have increased, teacher salaries have fallen further out of step from equally educated peers with comparable jobs.

The Economic Policy Institute recently published a study entitled The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground. In short the study concludes that not only do teachers make less than other professions, a study wasn’t required for that, but that over time teachers have been falling further and further behind comparably educated people in the US. Furthermore this penalty has been worse for women and those who’ve made teaching their lifetime career.

Here are some results from that study:

• Public school teachers in 2006 earned 15% lower weekly earnings than comparable workers. A gap in earnings that grew by 1% since the original study was done in 2003.

• From 1979 to 2006, teachers disadvantage in weekly earnings relative to comparable workers grew by 13.4 percentage points, with most of the erosion (9 percentage points) occurring in the last 10 years. In other words, teachers are falling behind at an accelerating rate.

• US Census data show that in 1960 female teachers had a wage advantage of 14.7% over other comparably educated women. Yet by 2000, that advantage had turned into a 13.2% wage disadvantage. A slide of 28 percentage points.

• Teacher's weekly wages were nearly on a par with those in comparable occupations in 1996 but are now 14.3%, below that of comparable occupations.

• If we take relative compensation data through the 1990s and break it down by age, nearly all of the increase in the weekly earnings gap between teachers and comparably educated and experienced workers occurred among mid-and senior-level teachers. Early career teachers (age 25-34) experience roughly the same wage disadvantage today as in 1990.

• In 15 states, public school teacher weekly wages lag by more than 25%. In contrast, there are only five states where teacher weekly wages are less than 10% behind. and no state where teacher pay is equal or better than that of other college graduates.

Even this brief summary offers a lot to think about. The one ray of light in the report is that benefits have helped ameliorate the wage gap when considering total compensation. While the weekly wage gap has grown by 15%, when benefits are considered as part of a total compensation package, teachers have only fallen behind by 12%. Yet, if like me, you’re a lifer, the results of the study are at best discouraging. What is clear is that, for the political leaders that make decisions on the future of education and the labor unions that represent teachers in our state and nationally, there are no simple solutions. Simplistic solutions like merit pay or performance-pay are no more than political sound-bites that, like “No Child Left Behind,” “Homeland Security” and “The Patriot Act” are nothing more than misnomers intended as tools of deception, a cloak for supplanting real improvements in education with a conservative agenda that advances the social goals of a few and the financial benefits of the privileged.

Teacher compensation is a hot potato issue these days, for political leaders, school boards and teachers unions. Nevertheless, it’s one that must be discussed soberly and honestly. And lets engage in that dialog by accepting that teachers’ incomes are below the average of comparably educated people and that there is no denying they are falling further behind. Over the next few weeks I’ll be digging more fully into the EPI report and the topic of teacher compensation. I’ll try to show all sides of a variety of proposals and I acknowledge that my 20 years as an educator may color my conclusions. Yet I intend to back up these views with what at time seems in short supply when it comes to the debate about the future of education: reason.

I welcome your suggestions and thoughts as we continue a discussion about shaping the future of education.

Happy Day of the Teacher!

Mortgaging the Future

It’s been a tough school year for teachers in our state. This year we have faced challenges from the all sides of the political spectrum, and now we face almost $5 billion in devastating budget cuts. As we approach the end of the 07-08 school year and we look back, California teachers faced much more than the “regular” challenges of being educators. This past school year we had to deal with a push to re-authorize the NCLB legislation at the Federal level and not by the right, which we’ve learned to expect, but this time the push came from Democrats whom we’ve counted as allies in the past. Rep. George Miller and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in what I can only surmise as a misguided attempt to not cede the “education issue” to Republicans, were sponsoring the legislation. Teachers were able to organize and push back; the Miller/Pelosi bill never came out of committee.

As the NCLB came to at least a temporary halt, California educators now must contend with a proposed $4.8 billion in cuts to the state’s education budget. Programs are being cut, thousands of teachers have been told they would not be rehired. Schools have been closed. So as teachers bring the current school year to an end and begin planning for next school year, the outlook is bleak for many, devastating to some.

While Governor Schuwarzenegger’s proposal for a 10% across the board cut may be the political expedient way out. It’s also the lazy politician’s way out. He can claim fairness and at the same time make none of the extremely difficult decisions that a leader is elected to make. Cutting $4.8 billion from the education budget is a travesty.

At a time when companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and many of our state’s leading biotech companies are clamoring for engineers and scientists. At a time when they are importing these highly educated workers from other parts of the world to make up the shortage, we are cutting funding for colleges and universities, where engineers come from. High Schools are cutting staff and are looking at overcrowded classes and science labs where conditions will be unsafe and less than optimum for the hands on experience that science requires. In essence, this budget proposal is mortgaging the future of our children and our society.

Our state leadership is making our children pay for the mistakes of the past with their future, because they want to avoid making even more difficult and unpopular decisions. So they buy their political careers today by mortgaging the future of the next generation. The true mark of gutless politicians.

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Assemblymember Misses the Mark...Big!

Recently, California Assemblymember Martin Garrick, (Rep.) sent me a letter. Well, myself and all other constituents of the 74th Assembly District. Normally I would have passed this off as the simple act of of a state legislator using his franking privilege and letting constituents know what he is doing up in Sacramento; casting himself as the defender good and slayer of evil. But this one was difficult to dismiss.

You see, the letter was dated March 14. It was the weekend that thousands of teachers up and down the state received layoff notices. It was the week in which the Oceanside School District announced it would close two schools and the Vista Unified School District sent 133 layoff notices. Both of these districts within the Mr. Garrick's district. However, there was no mention of these catastrophes in his letter, no mention of the Governor's proposed $4.8 billion budget cut to education for next year, and no mention of the irresponsible stance by Republicans in the State legislature that they would not pursue any sort of revenue enhancements.

Assemblymember Garrick, Vice-Chair of the Education Committee, however, does address his stance regarding the high school exit exam. He states that the exam is a vital part of setting and meeting high standards in California schools. Yet he goes on to say that the exam is "not unfair, nor is it too difficult. In fact, the exam may be too easy." Even so he expresses pride in joining "fellow Republicans in voting against legislation that would allow students to graduate even if they fail the exam."

I'm left asking who is working on avoiding the proposed devastating budget cuts? Who is working on ensuring that students who must pass the exit exam aren't sitting in croweded classrooms and overburdened teachers? Who going to explain to the students of the state why they must endure the consequences of a fiscal blunder that they had no part in? I'm sure that while schools are closing, programs are being cut, and teachers are being laid off, parents will be happy to know their kids must pass the exit exam in order to get a diploma.

I suppose that while the Titanc was sinking it was important to polish the brass handrails.

Implications of $4.8 billion in education cuts

Budget Crisis Insanity

State Democrats determined to raise taxes

Legislative leaders, saying school cuts under the governor's proposed budget are unacceptable, are prepared to dig in for a long fight to get about $5 billion in tax increases. (Los Angeles Times)

It's about time some sanity was brought into the debate over the California budget crisis. How does a rational leader possibly come to the conclusion that cutting $4.8 billion to the education budget is the right thing to do? When Governor Schwarzenegger took over one of the first things he did is eliminate over $6 billion in California taxes by cutting vehicle registration fees. It was a hugely popular decision in a state that has had a long love affair with cars. However, it suggests that this fiscal crisis was created by the current administration's reckless desire to cement it's popularity after coming to power in such an irregular fashion.

Two years later, the state faces a fiscal crisis and the Republican governor wants to kowtow to leaders by repeating the mantra of "no new taxes." I suppose the governor believes we are spending too much on the children of California.

NCLB Update

Last night at the State of the Union Address, President Bush called for re-authorization of the No Child Left Behind Law. However given the previous draft of the bill and the fierce opposition that it engendered among various quarters of the education community, including teacher unions and parents, it looks like the bill is very unlikely to be passed this year. The Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) was battered along with other members of the committee, with complaints from teachers, parents and others who oppose the bill last year. At the same time the president gave them little support.Because of that Congressional Quarterly reports that...

"President Bush’s passionate call for reauthorization of his signature domestic policy achievement — the 2002 education overhaul known as No Child Left Behind — may ring hollow to lawmakers badly divided over how to proceed." CQ

Education and the American Dream

The American dream is alive and well, as long as, in Oz-like fashion, we pay no attention to the life support machines preventing it’s demise. For the first time in our history we have a generation of high school and college students who don’t expect their lives to be better than their parents’. The phenomenon of coming home from college isn’t something students do during breaks and holidays, it’s what many do after graduation because housing is unaffordable. College graduates in recent years have found themselves competing for jobs not only with their peers in the US, but with well educated graduates from places like India, China and Latin America. As the world gets smaller and flatter, education takes on a critical role for the nation’s future. At the same time, teachers face a mountain of challenges.

When teachers step into the classroom they face students of varying abilities, skills and preparedness. There are students of various language backgrounds and at various stages of language acquisition. Teachers face students with special needs and those that require special accommodations. We face a culture of entitlement and a push-button instant gratification mentality. And as if the challenges inside the classroom walls weren’t enough, those from outside are particularly daunting. Underfunded mandates from Washington, budget cuts, legislation, litigation and political obfuscation. How we deal with these challenges will determine the future of education both in our state and the rest of the nation.

It’s important to remember that in public education, nobody is turned away. No matter their abilities, their previous education or their socio-econoimc background, there is a desk in every classroom for any child that comes through the schoolhouse doors. And as a former principal of mine was fond of saying “Parent’s don’t keep the good one’s home.” For teachers, that is an awesome responsibility. It’s the ultimate trust. In twenty years of teaching I have yet to meet a teacher that takes that lightly.

As a matter of full disclosure I’ll say that as I mentioned above, I’m a 20 year high school teacher. I’ve taught Spanish and most of the Social Sciences. Recently I’ve taught AP Macroeconomics, AP Government and World Religions. Yes, I am an active member of the California Teacher’s Association (CTA) however in this blog I do not speak for that organization. All ideas and opinions expressed here are my own. Join the conversation!