www.SchoolReport.com
Vermonters for Better Education

---

Return to Education Report Index | Return to VBE Index | Vermonters for Better Education Homepage

---

 

________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT September 17, 2001 Vol. 1, No. 26 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  Covering education news in Vermont and beyond... Informative, provocative, unique... Published by Vermonters for Better Education  VBE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to enlist parents and the public at large in achieving quality educational opportunities for all the children of Vermont by monitoring the state of education in Vermont; promoting the value of educational freedoms for all parents; and giving parents the evaluative tools with which to identify excellence. Libby Sternberg, executive director: MAILTO:LSternberg@aol.com OPPORTUNITIES TO HELP Because of the tragic events of last week, the Vermont Education Report will devote most of this issue to a list of how people can help the victims in New York City, Washington, Pennsylvania and beyond. As with all charitable giving, we urge donors to research philanthropic organizations on their own. The following list was compiled by Changing Our World, a philanthropic and fundraising firm. (http://www.changingourworld.com).  Silver Shield Foundation The Silver Shield Foundation is collecting funds for the educational needs of the children of the firefighters and police officers who perished in their heroic duty. For information on making a contribution, please call Martin Duffy at our offices, 212-499-0866, ext. 27 or send e-mail to silvershield@changingourworld.com. September 11th Fund The United Way of America and the New York Community Trust have announced the establishment of the September 11th Fund in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Anyone wishing to contribute to the Fund may send their donations to the United Way, 2 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016, or by calling 212.251.4035. Donations are also being accepted on United Way of New York City's web site: http://www.uwnyc.org. International Association of Fire Fighters http://www.helping.org/wtc/iaff.adp  Help fallen fire fighters and their families by donating to the International Association of Fire Fighters' Emergency Fund. New York State Fraternal Order of Police Fund The New York State Fraternal Order of Police has set up a fund to help police and their families affected by the tragedy at the World Trade Center. http://www.helping.org/wtc/nyfopwtc.adp New York Times Neediest Cases Fund  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/nyregion/13NEED.html  The New York Times Company has begun a special campaign to raise money for the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center through its Neediest Cases Fund. Donations can be made online at http://www.charitywave.com or sent to: The New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund, P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, NY 10087. American Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/  To make a secure online donation to the relief efforts, visit: http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html, or call (800) HELP-NOW (800) 435-7669) or (800) 257-7575 (Spanish). Or send your donation to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013. To donate blood, please call (800) GIVE-LIFE (800-448-3543), or contact your local Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/where/where.html. Catholic Charities USA http://www.catholiccharities.org/  Catholic Charities agencies nationwide are mobilizing to help victims and their families recover from the devastation in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. To contribute to the organization's disaster relief fund, send checks to Catholic Charities, P.O. Box 25168, Alexandria, VA 22313-9788, or contribute online at: http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/donation/donation.htm. United Jewish Communities http://www.uja.org/  United Jewish Communities has opened the UJC Emergency Relief Fund to assist in the recovery, relief, and rehabilitation of the victims of this tragedy and their families. Checks should be made payable to UJC Emergency Relief Fund and sent to: UJC Emergency Relief Fund, 111 Eighth Avenue, Suite 11E, New York, NY 10011. Helping.org  Helping.org has posted a list of Web sites and charities accepting online donations and aid for those affected by Tuesday's terrorist attacks. For more information, visit: http://helping.org/promos/cs_wtc.adp. National Organization for Victim Assistance The National Organization for Victims Assistance has established a Fund for Terrorist Attack Victims. For more information on how you can help, visit: http://www.guidestar.org/partners/helping/index_ext.jsp?npoId=357764.   STATE NEWS... STATE BOARD OUTLINES COMMISSIONER HUNT The deadline for the applications for Commissioner of Education in Vermont is Tuesday, September 24, 2001. On Friday, September 28, the board will review applications and choose semi-finalists. October 8 and possibly 9th are slated for interviews of semi-finalists. From that group, finalists will be chosen. On October 15, the board (and possibly others) will interview finalists. The chairman of the State Board of Education is David Larsen. Comments about the search process can be directed to him at larsen@sover.net. Suggestions for applicants can be sent to the National Association of State Boards of Education. They can be reached at: BrendaW@nasbe.org.  COMMENTARY...  IS THERE A TEACHER SHORTAGE? by Chester Finn, director of the Fordham Foundation  http://www.edexcellence.net/  (This commentary is reprinted from "The Gadfly," a weekly e-newsletter of the Fordham Foundation. To subscribe, majordomo@edexcellence.net and write "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message.)  Education issues aren't foremost in our minds today, but I will note that the K-12 concern that reached my ears most frequently in recent weeks is the vaunted "teacher shortage" that our schools are said to face. As summer vacation ended, the press was full of accounts of extraordinary measures that public-school systems were taking to ensure that their classrooms would have enough adults ready to receive the children. Teachers were imported from India and Austria. "Emergency" certificates were given to all sorts of people who had never taught before. Signing bonuses were paid to individual teachers-and sometimes finders' fees handed to the agencies that located them. Substitute teachers were readied for full-time classroom duty. And so forth.  Surely, the journalists said, this sort of thing will only worsen in coming years-and would I please confirm that? After all, doesn't America need to hire two million-or was it three million-new teachers in the next decade? I believe I was being invited to say that the only possible way to forestall this crisis would be to dump zillions of dollars into salaries, crash training programs and suchlike.  Talk about old-paradigm thinking! The most striking thing about the U.S. teacher "shortage" is the extent to which it has mostly been induced by rules, customs and practices that could be changed with a flick of the policymakers' wrists. But instead of changing the rules, we proclaim a crisis. One senses that some groups see their interests advanced by this.  Almost everyone who has looked at the "teacher shortage" has noticed that it's spotty, not universal. It's concentrated in certain subjects (e.g. math, science, special ed), in certain kinds of communities (inner cities, rural towns), and in certain parts of the country (sun-belt states with rapid enrollment increases and those that are swelling their teacher ranks as part of a class-size reduction strategy).  Many states still train far more teachers than their schools can hire. (A 1999 Pennsylvania study found that state producing 20,000 newly certified teachers annually even though it had just 5100 teacher openings per year.) Communities with static and shrinking enrollments face few shortages. Cushy suburbs in major metropolitan areas have plenty of applicants for nearly every classroom position. So do most charter and private schools-which are free to hire almost anyone they like. And it's common knowledge that the United States contains a vast "reserve pool" of teachers, people who trained for this occupation, or formerly engaged in it, but who for various reasons are not teaching today. In fact, most "new hires" in American schools are not freshly minted teachers bounding out of their preparation program. A third of them are former teachers returning to the profession while another quarter are teachers who prepared to teach at some earlier time but put it off.  Why are some schools having trouble finding enough grown-ups for their classrooms while others are awash in applicants? Look to the education field's bizarre policies and practices. Look, in particular, at four common practices that make precious little sense.  Uniform salary schedules. It's crazy to pay the same salaries to people in high-demand subjects (e.g. high school science and math) as to those in high-supply fields (e.g. middle school social studies). It's insane to pay teachers in tough schools and challenging assignments the same as those in pleasant, low-risk settings. It's nuts to give identical compensation to outstanding and inept teachers, to hard workers and clock-watchers. Yet we do all those things in public education. If instead we developed a rational, market-sensitive compensation system for educators, shortages would wither.  Certification. Today we make the public-school teaching force pass through the eye of the state-certification needle. Yet private and charter schools don't do that, nor do colleges and universities. Though there's mounting evidence that traditional certification has little bearing on classroom effectiveness, we still require it-and the ed-school based training that is its universal prerequisite. There's also mounting evidence that people who lack traditional certification-such as those in the Teach for America program-can be as effective as those with it, yet we're stingy with these alternate pathways into the classroom and grudging toward people who follow them. In most places, they must still take the Mickey-Mouse courses, though they may have longer in which to do so.  Personnel management. In most communities, those running public schools-their principals-have little say over who teaches in them. Due to seniority systems, bumping rights, union contracts and centralized personnel offices, the principal has scant control over who is assigned to his school, who leaves, how much they're paid, how to reward excellence, how to cope with incompetence. No effective modern organization operates this way. It's a hold over from old-style industrial management and government civil-service procedures. But industry and government are moving beyond it. Only the public schools remain mired in it.  People and capital. Whenever a school system has a spare dollar, it usually spends all hundred cents on teacher salaries. It almost never looks seriously at alternatives: at completely different ways of structuring schools (e.g. a few master teachers working with a large number of aides and tutors) or other education delivery systems (e.g. technology) that might boost productivity and effectiveness. So nothing changes. And "shortages" are proclaimed.  It's no bad thing to import well-educated people from other lands to teach young Americans. In this, public education is following the lead of Silicon Valley, which looked overseas when it couldn't find enough U.S. workers with the proper knowledge and skills. But we wouldn't have to do this if we made these few (albeit profound) policy changes. Our shortages would melt away. Our schools would improve. Our children would learn more. And our teachers would get better, thus easing our quality problem at the same time along with the quantity challenge. ELSEWHERE...  MORE ON GOVERNANCE Two weeks ago, we published information about the different governance structures of state education boards and commissioners. The National Association of State Boards of Education has a very useful chart on their web site containing information on each state. It can be found at: http://www.nasbe.org/Educational_Issues/Governance/Governance_chart.pdf  *    *    * The VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT is published by Vermonters for Better Education 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701, 802.773.5240 Contact Lsternberg@aol.com for more information.