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(The final installment in a three-part series looking at the components of education, and what should be changed to achieve true reform.  Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.  -ed.)

In this final installment, we examine other aspects of teacher personnel practices, gender segregation and universal preschool to determine how these practices can impact student performance. 

-Teacher Tenure and Firing of Teachers:

   Pertinent Education Factor: Teacher Quality

No rules have been more destructive of teacher quality in public education over the past forty years than the rules that regulate teacher tenure and the related matter of the removal of teachers.  In California, teachers receive tenure after only two years of teaching.  Under the rules insisted upon by the teacher unions and agreed to by the state legislatures, the procedure which must be followed in order to remove a teacher on grounds of incompetency generally consists of an initial hearing, followed by two appeal hearings.  It is common for these three hearings to take place over a period of eighteen months (during which time the teacher must still be paid).  Some contracts require that a teacher ultimately found to be incompetent be given an opportunity to demonstrate the necessary degree of improvement, which has the effect of making the process practically interminable.  All such contracts afford the teacher the full gamut of due process rights, including the rights to be represented by an attorney and to have his or her attorney conduct all aspects of litigation ‘discovery.’  This litigation discovery commonly consists of written interrogatories, requests for production of documents, subpoenaing of documents, and the taking of oral depositions, under oath, of any person deemed to be relevant to the charge of incompetency or to the defense to the charge.  Even when the school district ultimately prevails, the expense to the school district can exceed $600,000.00.  If the school district does not prevail, the additional financial expense can be catastrophic.  Under the rules in most states, an unsuccessful school district must pay the teacher his or her litigation costs, including attorneys fees. 

With all of this in mind, school districts have decided to initiate incompetency removal hearings only in handful of the most extreme cases.  As a result, teacher tenure has, as a practical matter, become the equivalent of job security until retirement (at which point the 25-year teacher will continue to receive full medical benefits, plus an annual pension totaling at least 80% of his or her highest annual salary.)

Approximately a third of the teachers in the public school system would be considered either ‘good’ or even ‘excellent’ under any objective criteria.  Virtually all of these teachers graduate in the upper half of their college classes and in the upper half among their fellow high school students taking the SAT (scholastic aptitude test).  However, many of the teachers in the public school system do not have the sufficient aptitude or knowledge to be effective teachers (regardless of their receipt of an undergraduate college degree and a masters degree in education.)  Research has shown that 36% of public school teachers now rank in the lowest quartile grouping for scholastic aptitude among their college-graduating peers, whereas in 1960 only 16% of public school teachers came from the lowest aptitude quartile.  (See Hoxby & Leigh, (2003); Corcoran, et al (2002); and Wayne, (2002).) 

The average scholastic aptitude among public elementary teachers is particularly alarming.  Over 76% of the nation’s public elementary school teachers either majored or minored in elementary education when earning their bachelor’s degrees. (SASS, (1999-2001).  The average SAT scores of college students majoring in elementary education have been found to be below those of college students majoring in every other field of study except physical education and special education.  (Gitomer, Latham & Ziomek, (1999). 

With the teacher certification exam in most states requiring a mere 60% correct answer score, or even lower, on subject matter geared to 8th and 9th grade (and occasionally 10th grade) proficiency in math and language skills, virtually any college graduate can surmount the state exam ‘hurdle’ of the teacher certification process.  And with post college schools of education accepting virtually any applicant, and providing virtually every fees-paying student a masters degree in education, almost any college graduate can also complete the teacher certification process.  (Many applicants take the state exam after receiving the master’s degree in education.)  The result is that many persons who have neither the aptitude nor the substantive knowledge to be effective in teaching nevertheless become teachers.  Because of the rules of tenure, the situation cannot, as a practical matter, be remedied.  School districts and principals cannot simply fire an obviously unqualified and ineffective teacher.  The consequences of this collective bargaining-imposed impotence have been disastrous, as the public schools have become increasingly pervaded, both quantitatively and politically, by persons who are not particularly well-educated or knowledgeable and who, not surprisingly, are not effective as teachers.

Conclusion: Teacher tenure rules should be abolished.  School districts should have the ability to hire and fire exclusively on the basis of manifest or demon- strated ability.  Teacher tenure has been a disaster with respect to the most important component of the educational ‘conversation,’ i.e., teacher quality and effectiveness.

-Uniform Rates of Pay for Teachers:

   Pertinent Education Factor: Teacher Quality

Uniform rates of pay for teachers based exclusively on years of teaching or possession of masters or other postgraduate degrees in education operate as a disincentive for qualified teachers or qualified would-be teachers, and operate as an incentive for unqualified teachers or unqualified would-be teachers.  It is human nature to want to earn as much as possible in one’s chosen profession.  It is also reasonable to expect to be compensated according to one’s actual abilities.  Both the number of years of teaching and the number of education-related degrees have been shown to have no correlation to teacher quality, e.g. Sullivan (2001).  Hence, it is common in the public schools for highly effective teachers to be earning the same, or even less, than teachers who are manifestly incompetent.  This reality operates as a major disincentive to highly qualified would-be teachers, and it also accounts, at least significantly, for the disproportionately high number of highly effective teachers who leave the teaching profession within five years.  Unqualified teachers, or unqualified prospective teachers, on the other hand, are induced by such a policy to become teachers and to remain teaching, as they realize they are being compensated beyond what they would merit on the basis of ability.

Conclusion: Uniform pay policies should be abolished.  School districts should have the latitude to compensate according to their perception of a teacher’s manifest or demonstrated ability and effectiveness, and according to the district’s need for a particular subject matter to be taught by a highly qualified person. 

-Gender- or Aptitude-Segregated Classes:

   Pertinent Education Factor: Student Receptivity

The research has generally found that both female and male students in middle school and high school learn more when they are in classes segregated by gender (with the exception of high-aptitude students).  The research also leaves little doubt that high aptitude students tend to learn more when their classroom is comprised of other high aptitude students.  (Many school districts nevertheless foreclose the possibility of classroom segregation on the assumption that the students’ socialization would be impaired by segregated classes.)

Conclusion: School districts should be free to have classrooms segregated by either gender or student aptitude.

-Universal Preschool

   Pertinent Education Factors: Student Receptivity, Teacher Quality

Universal preschool is a fascinating issue, because the debate centers not so much on the issue of whether it would be beneficial, as on how it should come about.  Although some studies find that preschool actually tends to be detrimental to child development (e.g., Olson (1999), most conclude that a universal preschool system would, on balance, have at least a slightly positive effect on the child.  But that conclusion is highly dependent on how such a system would come about.  The existing parental choice system of preschool in California enrolls approximately 70% of four year-olds state-wide.  These preschools tend to have positive effects on children because of the ability of the parent to carefully match the child’s emotional needs with a particular preschool and its particular teachers. 

However, there is very little, if any, evidence to indicate that this effectiveness would continue under a system run by the state in accordance with regulations driven by the legislature, Proposition 82 (the recent universal preschool voter initiative in California–ed.), and the teacher unions.  ‘Curriculum content’ would become standardized.  Moreover, the same marked decline in teacher quality that has plagued the public K-12 schools since the teacher unions’ ascent to dominance in education on the wings of collective bargaining is likely to pervade the preschools.  The existing private preschools would likely be displaced by the monolithic, state-run system.  The consequent displacement of parental involvement is likely to have the same detrimental effect on student receptivity in the classroom and teacher quality as has occurred in the K-12 system.

Conclusion: Universal preschool would be a fine idea if it occurred through a voucher system.  Otherwise, it should be rejected.

Final Remarks

The  ‘classroom conversation’ analytic model does not necessarily ensure that the analysis of any proposal for education will be simple.   As the last-cited example above indicates, with some proposals the issue is not so much a ‘what’ as it is a ‘how.’  But even in the face of that kind of complexity, the analytic emphasis on the essential three components of education remains valid.  With that analytic focus, one cannot be thoroughly confused or misled.  With that focus any interested person will be able to perceive the existing system, or any proposed remedy or alternative, for what it is.

The problem with American public education can be summarized as the impairment of the educational ‘conversation,’ or ‘dialogue.’  Similarly, the remedy can be summarized as the recognition and creation of the highest quality educational dialogue.  By ‘highest quality dialogue’ is meant a thirteen-year interaction between the most intelligent, perceptive, and inspired persons in our society, as teachers, and attentive, reflective, and imaginative students.  With an accurate perception of both the problem and the remedy, the challenge will then be to transform the existing system into a landscape that actually serves the educational needs of students and the aspirations of their parents, rather than the presumptuous reach of the education bureaucracy and the self-protecting, monopolistic teachers unions.  With the analytic model of the ‘missing conversation’ between teacher and student, let us see education clearly, for its positive aspects as well as for its systemic problems, and in the light of what is attainable.  And then, with that clear vision, let us reinstate the dynamic ‘dialogue’ of learning and cognitive development that has been missing from the K-12 classrooms of this country far too long.

William Loughman is a California attorney, an adjunct professor of law at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California, a senior fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, and a member of the Board of Directors of California Parents for Educational Choice.