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QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I think that teacher shortages have existed in the United States for a long time. The pandemic has certainly made the teacher shortage worse in many ways, right? In particular, what we’re seeing is that enrollments and completion in teacher preparation programs have decreased 30 to 35 percent over the last 10 years, so the number of people who are enrolled to become teachers have just decreased substantially over the last 10 years." -- Tuan Nguyen, associate professor of Education at the University of Missouri in Teacher shortages improve, but not everywhere
TEACHER PAY
Yes, What We Pay Teachers Matters
Who is going to teach your children and grandchildren when there are no more teachers? Why would someone choose teaching as a career?
From Nobody Wants This Substack by Anne Lutz Fernandez
Public school teachers once took home salaries in line with workers in similar professions. Through the eighties and into the nineties, they paid a small penalty for choosing to teach; in 1993 the average salary of teachers was about 5% lower than that of others with college degrees. A new report by economist Sylvia Allegretto at the Economic Policy Institute reveals that three decades later, that penalty has grown to nearly 27%—an all-time high.
This penalty has worsened as teacher salaries began a prolonged stagnation.
There are those on the right who argue that this gap isn’t all that meaningful. A recent piece in Reason tries to downplay the impact of the teacher pay penalty by pointing out that averages obscure state-by-state differences. It’s hard to see how this helps their case, though, when teachers pay a penalty in every state and when more than a dozen states across various regions—New Hampshire and Colorado, Oklahoma and Oregon, Georgia and Arizona among them—pay penalties worse than the national average.
Opponents of raises for teachers frequently claim that teachers’ benefits balance out their low pay, but Allegretto’s analysis shows they don’t. When total compensation packages are accounted for, the teacher pay gap is reduced, but only to 16.7%.
Then there’s the argument that teachers aren’t motivated by money...
SCARING THE PUBLIC ABOUT EDUCATION
Cynical Politicians Try to Frighten Us with Inaccurate Stories about Teachers and Public Schools
Attacks on public education continues during this election season. Lies abound.
From Jan Resseger
In the current polarized political season, the press is filled with articles spawned by desperate politicians looking to frighten voters with stories about the collapse of our society. In this narrative of collapse, attacks on the public schools loom large.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Matt Barnum and Melissa Korn quote Donald Trump: “Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs… We will cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory.” “The former president has said he would deploy federal powers to pressure schools and universities that he considers to be too liberal. One strategy that he has described would launch civil-rights investigations of schools that have supported transgender rights and racial diversity programs.”
It doesn’t seem to matter in today’s political environment that the extremist political rhetoric about what’s happening in public schools has been shown to be inaccurate. Here is Education Week‘s Sarah Schwartz reporting the response of the American Historical Association: “The longstanding battle over how to teach America’s past has been particularly contentious over the past few years. Conservative commentators have accused history teachers of rampant left-wing bias, ‘indoctrinating’ students into hating their country and rejecting its founding ideals… But this portrait of American classrooms as ideological incubators is largely a fiction… Instead, the research, from the American Historical Association, finds that teachers overwhelmingly say they aim to develop students’ historical thinking skills—teaching them how to think, not what to think—and value presenting multiple sides of every story… The finding echoes history teachers’ responses to attacks on their work…. (I)n interviews with AHA researchers, teachers explained that it was important for them to remain neutral and nonpartisan. ‘I am going to teach the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m going to tell it like it is and how it happened.’ one teacher from Texas told the researchers. Another, from Illinois, said they didn’t want ‘students knowing my views.'”
INDIANA'S NEXT GOVERNOR
Gubernatorial candidates far apart on education
Mike Braun, Republican candidate for Governor of Indiana, proposes to continue the same right-wing anti-public education plan that has damaged the state's public schools since 2011. A vote for Jennifer McCormick is a vote for Public Education.
From School Matters
The two major-party candidates for governor of Indiana have released their education agendas, and they couldn’t be any more different.
Republican Mike Braun wants to further expand Indiana’s already radical school choice programs, protect “parent rights” and double down on the culture wars. Democrat Jennifer McCormick wants to strengthen local public schools, increase support for preschool and hold accountable all schools that receive state funding.
Both say they want to raise pay and benefits for teachers – a worthwhile goal but likely a tough sell with a legislature intent on cutting taxes.
Their most substantive differences are over funding private schools. Braun wants to expand the state’s nearly half-billion-dollar voucher program to include the wealthiest 3% of Hoosier families. He would also double funding for the “education scholarship account” program, which pays for tuition and services for students with disabilities and their siblings.
VOUCHERS ARE DRAINING INDIANA'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Vouchers nearly universal at half of Indiana private schools that take them, data shows
Indiana started with a small voucher program, and expanded it year by year until almost every child in the state is now eligible for a voucher. Voucher advocates in Indiana hope that the only remaining limits are soon removed so that all students in the state, rich and poor alike, will qualify for a voucher.
Most of the students who use vouchers were already enrolled in private schools. The cost of the voucher program is near $500 million for about 70,000 students. The public schools of Indiana enroll one million students.
Indiana's Constitution requires the legislature to fund a single public school system.
"Knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it shall be the duty of the General Assembly...to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all."
From Chalkbeat Indiana
...critics like Fuentes-Rohwer of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education say the $439 million price tag for the program in 2023-24 represented a costly diversion of public resources from public schools that the state is constitutionally obligated to fund.
According to the state’s 2023-24 voucher report, if all 70,000 students receiving vouchers had attended public schools, the state would have added over $500 million in public education funding. But most voucher students receiving vouchers have never attended a public school.
“There are so many things you have to go through as a public school system to be transparent,” Fuentes-Rohwer said. “We are very concerned that funding leaves public schools that have the obligation to educate everyone.”
†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.
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