Matt Yglesias has a good post on the teaching trade — making the case, essentially, that teacher turnover isn’t such a bad thing. So long as we get some good, productive years out of those turning-over teachers.
It’s not a popular position with the teachers unions, and plenty of the comments (predictably) accuse Matt of insulting and devaluing experienced teachers.
I get this a lot myself, of course. Support merit pay, or acknowledge the data-supported notion that teacher productivity doesn’t go up much after they get their legs in the classroom (after three or four years), and you “hate teachers.”
The truth is, though, that skilled teachers are one of the most valuable assets our economy has. Teacher quality is far and away the most important thing a school or school system can provide. But we pay teachers based on seniority, not skill, and we put up barriers to entry that benefit no one but the teachers unions (who like to create artificial teacher “shortages” and then push for higher compensation).
Alternative certification, which Matt is supporting (and which the Center for American Progress has put out a paper about expanding), is one way of trying to recruit skilled teachers who don’t have the time or patience to deal with the rigmarole of traditional certification. Programs like this, such as New York City Teaching Fellows, have had a lot of success bringing bright young folks, and people changing careers later in life, into the system. They may have higher turnover; but 10 years of a good teacher in the system beats 30 years of a bad one.
Of course, there’s a lot more you’d have to change about the system to make it attractive to a higher quality of candidate. In general, I’m supportive of higher teacher salaries — if decoupled from seniority and all the other union-created barriers to accountability. You could give principals more control over their schools, so that they’d be run more efficiently, according to a set vision. You could create a career ladder, that would allow teachers to rise based on skill (the idea of master teachers, etc., has been around for a while).
I looked at what some teachers in the New York City school system think about all this back in 2004. The column’s called “Teachers’ Secret,” and gets into what I think a lot of teachers don’t want to say in front of their colleagues and union.
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