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You make some good points in your posts, but I have a couple of comments. First, I personally do not think graduation rates are great indicators because they are not standardized. If NY and CA have higher standards for graduation, which i believe they do, rates could be lower. Additionally state reporting could be skewed and possibly flawed based on how it is counted. Who knows, maybe only failures are counted and dropouts are not included, its hard to say without getting hard data. I could be wrong about this though, and if I am I should furthermore say that the data itself is flawed because it is NY State graduation rates not long island. Check longislandindex and you see graduation rates in long island are much higher than ny state and nationwide average.
As for AP scores, don't kid yourself, a lot of students and many average students take AP exams these days. They have increased dramatically in the last 10 years, partially because newsweek uses them as indicators. The fact that NY state leads the nation is nothing to shake a stick at and this is a standardized test given equally to all students. Some long island schools have top programs in the country or even the world (2 years ago great neck was in the paper for having the highest performing AP psychology program in the world). The NY Times notes that Long Island is one of the front runners in NY state:
=== http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/ed.../08report.html
"We don't know exactly why New York has always been the leader, but it's probably that so many schools on Long Island have had such a strong A.P. culture that it brings up the average," said Trevor Packer, who heads the A.P. program.
===
As far as other standardized tests go:
Nationwide SAT scores are pretty uniform across the board but many states have low participation meaning the poorer students don't get averaged in. The fact that states like NY, CA, CT, etc have nearly 100% participation and maintain average scores means the better schools are really outperforming nationwide averages.
Another indicator is nationwide ranking systems like US news and newsweek. A handful of long island schools always make it into the top 100. You might say that only matters for these top schools, but when you compare test data from these schools and other long island districts the gap is not so wide to suggest the other districts are leaps and bounds behind.
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I guess my point is that you seem to be saying we have an average education system in long island and not much payout, but that seems to be a gut feeling from you, and referring to NY state data is flawed as it includes NY city and other areas that have been lower performing. Long island eduaction has its pros and cons but I think overall the education system is excellent and people want to live here partially because of this.
I don't discount what you say here. My data could be skewed one way or another and there are many factors to include in any assessment. My information wasn't supposed to be a final conclusion on all matters of education based on two admittedly simple factors. I was simply building a very rudimentary model based on the parameters another poster had set to define "bad system from a good system."
I understand that using a whole state includes NYC and Upstate NY, but we were arguing on the basis of states when people mentioned Pennsylvania and Florida as comparisons to NY. I would say that your interpretation is a "gut feeling" also, simply because you talked about a lot of factors but brought little evidence other than an article from the NY Times. The fact is that none of us are prepared to write dissertations on the educational effects of overpaying teachers.
Furthermore, I will tell you that I feel AP scores are a poor indicator of the overall health of a school district simply because they only report on the health of the top students of the school. Favoring children that can afford tutoring or even affording to go to college. I'll give you an example. My HS on LI graduated 500-something the year I graduated. However, our class was almost 800 strong in 8th grade. Where did 300 students go? They dropped out! Yet, our AP scores were through the roof because if you were an Honors student you were constantly given attention and support to do well in these classes. Many of my peers in honors went to top Universities. Our school's SAT score was unfairly high because the school didn't encourage people to take the exam if they weren't in top programs and almost guaranteed to score well. So, on the outside our scores and placements looked wonderful. However, the class, and community as a whole, did very poorly. I consider a 30% drop out rate to be very poor for the amount of money that we pay our teachers. Surprisingly enough, it seems to be par for the course in New York.
I don't discount what you say here. My data could be skewed one way or another and there are many factors to include in any assessment. My information wasn't supposed to be a final conclusion on all matters of education based on two admittedly simple factors. I was simply building a very rudimentary model based on the parameters another poster had set to define "bad system from a good system."
I understand that using a whole state includes NYC and Upstate NY, but we were arguing on the basis of states when people mentioned Pennsylvania and Florida as comparisons to NY. I would say that your interpretation is a "gut feeling" also, simply because you talked about a lot of factors but brought little evidence other than an article from the NY Times. The fact is that none of us are prepared to write dissertations on the educational effects of overpaying teachers.
Furthermore, I will tell you that I feel AP scores are a poor indicator of the overall health of a school district simply because they only report on the health of the top students of the school. Favoring children that can afford tutoring or even affording to go to college. I'll give you an example. My HS on LI graduated 500-something the year I graduated. However, our class was almost 800 strong in 8th grade. Where did 300 students go? They dropped out! Yet, our AP scores were through the roof because if you were an Honors student you were constantly given attention and support to do well in these classes. Many of my peers in honors went to top Universities. Our school's SAT score was unfairly high because the school didn't encourage people to take the exam if they weren't in top programs and almost guaranteed to score well. So, on the outside our scores and placements looked wonderful. However, the class, and community as a whole, did very poorly. I consider a 30% drop out rate to be very poor for the amount of money that we pay our teachers. Surprisingly enough, it seems to be par for the course in New York.
I will grant you this, you did attempt to propose ideas of how you might fix the problems you perceive and I give you credit for that since its more than most are willing to do. I don’t personally agree with you and think the problem is not as bad as you are making it. Teachers are paid a living wage on long island which has a very high cost of living no matter how you slice it. N.Y.C. so costly you need to earn six figures to make middle class
(granted this is for NYC but long island is not so far off). Paying a teacher 30,000 in NY metro area is somewhat like minimum wage or below in many other parts of the country based on cost of living. No offense to those that make this amount of money, there are a lot of people who are underpaid and struggle to make it on these salaries.
You did not provide any data either, except for the dropout rates which you then agreed could be and are most likely flawed. I don’t see any hard evidence that substantiates your claim that long island education is mediocre. You say things like, 300 students dropped out, and the community as a whole did very poorly but have no evidence for this and its an isolated incident based your experience. Articles can be found that tout the advances, improvements and general excellent standing of long island schools but I have yet to read a real source, other than a blog entry, that states long island schools are anywhere near average compared to the country.
I will have to disagree with you about looking at a state’s high level performers as a measure of their educational system. It is one of the few indicators that we have a lot of data on while failure rates and low level performance data can be highly skewed. At least we can say Long Island is doing an excellent job of preparing its higher functioning kids because the earn higher levels of regents diplomas, have a dropout rate of only 2%, and score top in the nation on standardized AP tests. http://www.longislandindex.org/filea..._Highlight.pdf
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Here is the data that supports my previous claims
36% of all NY students take at least one AP exam, only 25% nationwide.
23.4% of all NY students score 3 or higher, top in the nation, compared to 15% nationwide
(Also keep in mind based on the earlier article that since Long Island “leads the state” the percentage taking and performing well on AP would be much higher) http://professionals.collegeboard.co...eport-2008.pdf http://professionals.collegeboard.co...ation-2008.pdf
Furthermore, I will tell you that I feel AP scores are a poor indicator of the overall health of a school district simply because they only report on the health of the top students of the school. Favoring children that can afford tutoring or even affording to go to college. I'll give you an example. My HS on LI graduated 500-something the year I graduated. However, our class was almost 800 strong in 8th grade. Where did 300 students go? They dropped out! Yet, our AP scores were through the roof because if you were an Honors student you were constantly given attention and support to do well in these classes. Many of my peers in honors went to top Universities. Our school's SAT score was unfairly high because the school didn't encourage people to take the exam if they weren't in top programs and almost guaranteed to score well. So, on the outside our scores and placements looked wonderful. However, the class, and community as a whole, did very poorly. I consider a 30% drop out rate to be very poor for the amount of money that we pay our teachers. Surprisingly enough, it seems to be par for the course in New York.
You continue your drumbeat of "overpaid teachers" but have given no evidence that at a lower rate of pay, they would produce similarly or better according to any empirical metric. Until then, your argument is based solely upon gut feeling. I look forward to further elucidation.
You claim that AP scores favor kids who can afford tutoring or who get tutoring. If tutoring provides the advantage, then we need MORE teachers and perhaps teachers as good as those private tutors who give this advantage; I'm sure you'd agree. Nevertheless, you give no support for this argument.
If success is correlated with higher SES, and it is, it seems clear that people in the higher SES strata can afford better schools. Better schools means higher paid teachers, teachers who are more competitive. Not too long ago you were arguing that teachers were somehow buffered from real market forces, but somehow you ignore the reasons why the better districts pay more - to attract and retain talent.
Wait - I have to provide evidence but you don't? Go start by researching the NCLB requirement for "highly qualified teachers".
You aren;t going to double the number of teachers. One, total cost of employment won't be halved; two, you're not going to find the current number of teachers to work at the salaries you propose, much less twice the number. You still haven't answered my question: Who do you think is going to work for this pay? Have you considered that the high demand for LI teaching jobs is related to the high pay, and if you cut pay, demand for these jobs will drop?
Please provide data if you're going to dispute my argument. And, if you lowered salaries down to my proposed levels and did away with defined benefit plans then why would it be absurd to expect student to teacher ratios of half the current level? I think you fail to recognize just how taxing a defined benefit plan is on a community's budget.
Your insistence that data be provided is fun to read, because your own arguments are built primarily on your own assertions.
Let's be clear, the onus is on the person indicting the system to do four things.
1) Demonstrate a harm (vis a vis benefit) of the status quo.
You have not done that. You have not demonstrated that students are harmed by teacher salaries or teacher pensions. Your suggestion that pension money be spent on more teachers suggests that you've backed off on your claim that high taxes is a harm, as increasing the number of teachers would, at best, maintain taxes as they are.
You have not demonstrated that the taxes are a harm. All states are taxed to support education. You happen to live in a state and in an area of the state that attracts people who want to send their kids to these quality schools. That point suggests that there is more net benefit than harm to the current manner of taxation. The onus is on you to argue otherwise.
You also asserted, without evidence, that taxes suppress economic performance. While this generally may be the case (and I have no reason to believe it is), it is non-unique to this argument. It demonstrably fails to apply to this situation. If your argument had merit, then Florida's economy would be booming, sans income tax, yet their economy is in shambles, their median incomes are well-below average, their foreclosures are among the worst in the country, and their teachers are paid among the states for the lowest teacher pay in the country. Besides, taxes in the US have increased significantly since the 16th amendment was ratified, and the GDP has exploded ever since.
If we look at harms on balance with the advantages of the status quo, it seems quite evident that the NY schools, particularly those on LI, are among the best in the country. Now, I've given you empirical scoring that indicates that NY HS grads are more competitive in college and score better in placement tests. Your response was that AP scores don't give the whole picture. I'll grant that, but it stands to reason that other states, with poorer teacher pay, are not preparing their HS grads in a manner similar. Moreover, I've shown that there is a correlation between AP scores and college performance, and all you did was pimp the source; doing so is clever, but presumption lies with the status quo. The onus is on you to demonstrate that the rest of the student-performance picture is relatively bleaker, and that the cause is teacher pay.
Overall, the failure to outline a harm is the biggest flaw in your argument. You've drawn others in to make claims about education quality, but you've offered no empirical measure of your own for determining instructional quality, and without that you are incapable of making any valid determination of harm to students.
2) You need to causally link the harms with the that which you want to change. You have not done that.
A) One harm, I suppose, is the high taxes. Because you have failed to show that, on balance, high taxes significantly outweighs the benefits of a superior school system, this doesn't warrant a response.
B) You have not demonstrated that students are suffering as a RESULT of taxes or pensions. This does not warrant a response.
C) You have not demonstrated that teachers' salaries and/or pensions have suppressed the NY economy. As such, this does not warrant a response.
3) You need to describe a working solution, and demonstrate that it works.
You have not done that. In fact, you have advocated both cutting taxes, and keeping taxes the same by re-routing pension dollars to the hiring of more teachers. As of now, I'm puzzled. I don't know what you are advocating.
You have wielded your academic prowess to advocate cutting nearly in half the salaries of those who teach the liberal arts trivium, a cornerstone of education since Martianus Capella (400 AD Roman curriculum). Brilliant! The second part here is to demonstrate that your solution works. Show how cutting these salaries enhances instruction. You seem to assert, without any evidence, that jacking up the salaries of those instructing "hard science" or techne will improve overall instruction, but you've offered no models that show this is the case. Give me an example of a state that slashed liberal arts instruction, thereby improving college placement or graduate quality of life for those not college bound. Now, I know that you advocated channeling money "wasted" on things like English to the sciences, but that would keep taxes where they are, so you abandon any benefits of lower taxes. So, I'm further puzzled.
I look forward to you developing your proposals further. Can't wait.
4) Then you need to outline the advantages of your new proposal, showing clearly that your solution solves the problems that warranted the change to the status quo.
You have not done that at all. Your proposals do not reduce taxes, and you've not given us any reason to believe that your ideas will enhance the quality of instruction (primarily because you've not equipped us with any means for measuring quality of instruction).
(I'd like to thank my rhetoric professors for teaching me how to think critically and to argue. What I outlined above are the 4 stock issues of policy argument. They come from Aristotle and Quintilian. If TomOnLI gets his way, students will be learning these concepts, if they learn them at all, from people being paid less to run the Carvel down at the mini-mall.)
I have to disagree with tomonlineli’s “solution” for a number of reasons. For starters making a 30K starting salary is absolutely ridiculous. That will have a direct negative impact on the quality of teachers on LI. Maybe you will weed out some teachers who aren’t there for the right reasons but you are also going to lose many great teachers who are in the profession b/c they truly love teaching. NYC teacher’s starting salaries range from $45K to $70K so if I can do the same job that I love for 15K -40K more then why wouldn’t I go teach for the city? Or I could go live elsewhere (PA, etc.) where there is a lower cost of living and still making a starting salary of $40K and do the same job that I love. Your plan will create a negative impact on education on L.I. b/c you would lose quality educators.
If you start paying science and math teachers more than others, then I can agree that the shortage of quality math and science teachers would be dissolved but I think eventually it would lead to a shortage of elementary teachers, special education teachers, reading teachers, etc. If I could make up to $40K more a year by teaching math, then I would go into that field. Eventually it would create a lack of quality teachers in the lower grades.
Tomonlineli also proposed getting rid of less worthy classes such as “art, English, or music”. If we asked 100 people I think everyone would have a different opinion on what is the most valuable subject in school. I could argue that literacy skills are the most important subject taught. Most children can read and write but they struggle with comprehension skills such as inferencing and synthesizing. How can students learn science if they have poor literacy skills? Reading specialists are in high demand at the elementary level right now. And what happened to creating well rounded individuals? How would we be preparing students who are planning on heading to liberal arts universities?
Another suggestion of tomonlineli’s was sending children who have a talent in a specific area to a specialty school. Who’s paying for these specialty schools? Would they have to go to private schools? If so if then only the privileged children would be able to seek out and study what they are interested in. And if the other students don’t have the $ too bad, you are stuck at the public high school taking all science and math classes. I think that will increase the drop our rate. Students learn best when we are teaching to their interests and to their learning styles. We can’t just focus on math and science b/c in your personal opinion those are the most important subjects.
We have to teach every single individual child and we need to meet their individual needs. As teachers we aren’t just preparing students to become chemical engineers, we have to teach everyone. It is the right of every child in this nation to receive a free and appropriate education (IDEA). I don’t believe teaching just math and science counts as an appropriate education for all students, we would be leaving behind so many students and that would truly be a disservice to many.
Another indicator is application over-flow. I had the pleasure of sitting on a board that hired one of the recent Suffolk Community Professors and we had to sort through over 1000 applicants. In the end we chose a very strong applicant, but many of us were convinced that we could have chosen an equally strong applicant at 70% of the salary.
Okay, quick question. If many of you thought you could hire an equally strong applicant at 70% of the salary, why weren't you offering 70% of the salary initially? Are the Suffolk Community professors unionized and there is a minimum salary you are allowed to offer?
Last, I would abolish any type of pension/defined benefit plan for teachers. This is one of the key reasons why schools are very expensive on Long Island. It's not so much paying the teachers salary while they are working, but paying a portion of it for the rest of their life. Southampton did a small study about five years ago that came to the conclusion that for every one police officer on the street they are paying the retirement and health care for three to four retired police officers. For one police officer on the street the town of Southampton had to pay approximately half a million dollars in retirement funds. I don't see why a teacher has a right to earn their salary after they are done working? They can squirrel away money just like the rest of us if they want to save for their retirement.
This is your best idea. The rest of us have to make do with funding our own retirements via 401(k) contributions and guess what? We didn't quit en mass and have a national riot, did we? We just accepted that that is the way things are and we can't rely on our employers to be "big daddy" for our entire lives. Having protected classes of public employees with 1950s benefits and 21st Century wages that are solely a cost center to the taxpayers (i.e., at the expense of everyone else) is just not feasible these days.
This is your best idea. The rest of us have to make do with funding our own retirements via 401(k) contributions and guess what? We didn't quit en mass and have a national riot, did we? We just accepted that that is the way things are and we can't rely on our employers to be "big daddy" for our entire lives. Having protected classes of public employees with 1950s benefits and 21st Century wages that are solely a cost center to the taxpayers (i.e., at the expense of everyone else) is just not feasible these days.
It is feasible if you choose to do it, the same reason corporations no longer provide them (with some assistance of the Bush administration). Corporations no longer provide pensions because they have chosen not have them. The Bush administration passed legislation that forced corporations to fully fund their pensions, which seems, on its face, to be a good idea, except that the requirement pushed many corporations to the brink of bankruptcy. Specifically, what this means, is that corporations were not allowed to use projected earnings or the maturing of pension monies to project the solvency of pension accounts. This law was pushed by corporations and passed by W. Bush and the GOP Congress for the soul purpose of threatening bankruptcy. They also pushed for and received the gutting of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which helped guarantee the solvency of pension benefits.
Once bankrupt, and many of these corporations, like United Airlines manufactured their bankruptcies by shoving assets into shell-corporations in order to claim they couldn't afford benefits and pay, they can request the reorganizing of pension liabilities and other retirement liabilities (it's really the same thing GM is up to right now).
My point is, the myth that corporations can't afford pensions is a myth. They can, they just like to raid the pensions. How else is it that CEO rates of compensation can increase by 40x over 30 years at the same time that so many pensions have become insolvent? They can afford it, but they choose to duck paying it.
We can CHOOSE to cut the pensions for our teachers too, but many of these pensions are paid for as well. The money is, by law, set aside and invested. Illinois used to have a perfectly solvent pension program for its teachers until Blagojevich CHOSE to raid that fund. It's all a matter of choice.
I'm inclined to think that good teachers are underpaid, not overpaid. It's like auto mechanics - think you're getting ripped off? Try and do it yourself.
And, it's absurd to think that someone needs a Masters Degree in Chemistry to teach HS chemistry. Or, that someone who has one is in some way, "better qualified" than someone with a BS; or even, a BS in Biology or Geology.
More important, it seems to me, is a certain facility for getting the kids interested, and getting their attention.
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Very slippery
