Asian Like Me: Paper Tigers: What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?

Wow, this is the third time in the past week that I've read an article-of-the-year candidate (the first was Chris Christie's speech at Harvard's ed school – by the way, I found the video link at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHhj2hoimk4– and the second was Joel Klein's Atlantic article this week).  This one, the cover story in this week's New York Magazine, is entitled Asian Like Me, and it's simply extraordinary – I couldn't put it down.  Here's the excerpt that appears on the cover:

Here is what I sometimes suspect my face signifies to other Americans: an invisible person, barely distinguishable from a mass of faces that resemble it. A conspicuous person standing apart from the crowd and yet devoid of any individuality. An icon of so much that the culture pretends to honor but that it in fact patronizes and exploits. Not just people "who are good at math" and play the violin, but a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots who simply do not matter, socially or culturally.

Based on the title and this excerpt, I was expecting an article similar to many I've read before about how Asians in the U.S. are very successful are in terms of academic achievement and having good jobs, yet face discrimination and stereotypes – topics the article does indeed cover – but it's so much more thoughtful (and thought-provoking), diving deep into the traditional Asian culture and how it both helps, but also holds back, so many young Asians. 

 

While it's about Asians, the lessons in this article apply to everyone.  Culture is an issue I think a lot about, but struggle to put my finger on (and struggle even more to write about because it's really easy to perpetuate stereotypes and/or get branded a racist).  Culture is MASSIVELY important, yet incredibly difficult to define, much less teach/convey to kids – both as a parent, and even tougher as an educator.  Yet the best schools all have strong cultures and transmit certain values to their students (most of them anyway).

 

The author, Wesley Yang, highlights how successful Asians in the U.S. are in terms of academic achievement and average income, yet they are massively UNDERrepresented in the highest echelons of American life.  These statistics blew me away:

The researcher was talking about what some refer to as the "Bamboo Ceiling"—an invisible barrier that maintains a pyramidal racial structure throughout corporate America, with lots of Asians at junior levels, quite a few in middle management, and virtually none in the higher reaches of leadership.

The failure of Asian-Americans to become leaders in the white-collar workplace does not qualify as one of the burning social issues of our time. But it is a part of the bitter undercurrent of Asian-American life that so many Asian graduates of elite universities find that meritocracy as they have understood it comes to an abrupt end after graduation. If between 15 and 20 percent of every Ivy League class is Asian, and if the Ivy Leagues are incubators for the country's leaders, it would stand to reason that Asians would make up some corresponding portion of the leadership class.

And yet the numbers tell a different story. According to a recent study, Asian-­Americans represent roughly 5 percent of the population but only 0.3 percent of corporate officers, less than 1 percent of corporate board members, and around 2 percent of college presidents. There are nine Asian-American CEOs in the Fortune 500. In specific fields where Asian-Americans are heavily represented, there is a similar asymmetry. A third of all software engineers in Silicon Valley are Asian, and yet they make up only 6 percent of board members and about 10 percent of corporate officers of the Bay Area's 25 largest companies. At the National Institutes of Health, where 21.5 percent of tenure-track scientists are Asians, only 4.7 percent of the lab or branch directors are, according to a study conducted in 2005. One succinct evocation of the situation appeared in the comments section of a website called Yellowworld: "If you're East Asian, you need to attend a top-tier university to land a good high-paying gig. Even if you land that good high-paying gig, the white guy with the pedigree from a mediocre state university will somehow move ahead of you in the ranks simply because he's white."

Yet Yang doesn't take the bait that the underrepresentation is due solely (or even mainly) due to racism, and instead really dives deeply into cultural factors:

Maybe it is simply the case that a traditionally Asian upbringing is the problem. As Allyn points out, in order to be a leader, you must have followers. Associates at Pricewaterhouse­Coopers are initially judged on how well they do the work they are assigned. "You have to be a doer," as she puts it. They are expected to distinguish themselves with their diligence, at which point they become "super-doers." But being a leader requires different skill sets. "The traits that got you to where you are won't necessarily take you to the next level," says the diversity consultant Jane Hyun, who wrote a book called Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling. To become a leader requires taking personal initiative and thinking about how an organization can work differently. It also requires networking, self-promotion, and self-assertion. It's racist to think that any given Asian individual is unlikely to be creative or risk-taking. It's simple cultural observation to say that a group whose education has historically focused on rote memorization and "pumping the iron of math" is, on aggregate, unlikely to yield many people inclined to challenge authority or break with inherited ways of doing things.

Finally, in the conclusion, Yang provides a fascinating perspective on Amy Chu, the famous (and infamous) author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother:

Chua's Chinese education had gotten her through an elite schooling, but it left her unprepared for the real world. She does not hide any of this. She had set out, she explained, to write a memoir that was "defiantly self-incriminating"—and the result was a messy jumble of conflicting impulses, part provocation, part self-critique. Western readers rode roughshod over this paradox and made of Chua a kind of Asian minstrel figure. But more than anything else, Battle Hymn is a very American project—one no traditional Chinese person would think to undertake. "Even if you hate the book," Chua pointed out, "the one thing it is not is meek."

"The loudest duck gets shot" is a Chinese proverb. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down" is a Japanese one. Its Western correlative: "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." Chua had told her story and been hammered down. Yet here she was, fresh from her hammering, completely unbowed.

There is something salutary in that proud defiance. And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone's happiness, and to dare to be interesting.

----------------------

Paper Tigers

What happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?

• By Wesley Yang
• Published May 8, 2011
• http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5

When I was in LA earlier this month, I read this cover story in the LA Times about two families with very different parenting approaches, which really struck home because these are the same issues my wife and I are grappling with regarding our own kids.  My guess is that Derek Lee will do better academically and go to a more competitive college than Jade Larriva-Latt, due to all of the pressure, but that Jade is much more likely to end up happier in life and is even somewhat more likely to rise to a higher level professionally:

Summers for eighth grader Jade Larriva-Latt are filled with soccer and backpacking, art galleries and museums, library volunteer work and sleep-away camp. There is no summer school, no tutoring.

"They need their childhood," says Jade's father, Cesar Larriva, an associate professor of education at Cal Poly Pomona. "It's a huge concern of mine, the lack of balance from pushing them too hard."

For 10th-grader Derek Lee, summer is the time to sprint ahead in the ferocious race to the academic top. He polishes off geometry, algebra and calculus ahead of schedule and masters SAT content (he earned a perfect 800 on the math portion last fall). This year, he plans to take college-level courses, maybe at UCLA or Stanford.

"You give your kids pressure so they can learn to handle it," says Derek's mother, Meiling Lee, smacking her fist into her hand. "Because finally they have to go out into the real world, and the real world is tough."

Jade and Derek both live in San Marino, a graceful town of boutique businesses, tree-lined streets and a well-heeled populace. Three-fourths of the 13,000 residents, who are primarily Asian and white, boast college or graduate degrees; the median household income of $160,000 is three times the national average.

It is also home to California's highest-performing unified school district, drawing the Lees from Monterey Park in 1986 and the Larriva-Latts from South Pasadena three years ago. Immersed in an educational climate of high expectations — the district last year scored 951out of 1,000 on the state's Academic Performance Index, based on students' standardized test scores — both Derek and Jade have excelled.

But the two families — one Chinese, one Mexican/ Jewish — have made strikingly different decisions about how to pursue academic excellence. One relies on a parent-driven focus on tutoring, advanced classes and testing drills, while the other allows broader choices and a more relaxed approach. Which style produces superior results — and whether culture affects choices — are questions that have become part of a national debate, thanks to the book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Yale law professor Amy Chua.

In her best-selling memoir about raising two daughters, Chua advocates an authoritarian style that pushes kids through discipline, diligence and relentless drilling with little time for fun — no sleepovers, play dates or sports. Chua labels it Chinese parenting, though she acknowledges that other races and ethnicities employ the same approach. She argues that Western parenting does not push children hard enough and is overly concerned with their self-esteem.

The Lees and Larriva-Latts reflect the opposing philosophies. But despite the different paths, their children are succeeding.

-----------------

Families offer a contrast in studies

LA Times cover story, 5/4/11

In San Marino, two very different styles yield high-achieving students

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tiger-20110502%2C0%2C3390356.story

Klein Video

On Tuesday evening, I attended an event with Joel Klein, hosted by The Atlantic, in conjunction with his brilliant article in the latest edition (www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/06/the-failure-of-american-schools/8497; see my last email).  It was videotaped and excerpts are now posted on: http://bcove.me/xuan1aun.  Klein first comments on "constituent services" – here's what he wrote about this (and the political context of our schools) in his article:

 

Let's start with the politicians. From their point of view, the school system can be enormously helpful, providing patronage hires, school-placement opportunities for connected constituents, the means to get favored community and business programs adopted and funded, and politically advantageous ties to schools and parents in their communities.

 

During my maiden testimony before the State Assembly, I said that we would end patronage hires, which were notorious under the old system of 32 school districts, run by 32 school boards and 32 superintendents (a 2002 state bill granting Bloomberg mayoral control of the city's schools abolished the 32 boards). At my mention of patronage, the legislators, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, purported to be "shocked." Nevertheless, after the hearing, when I went to thank committee members, one took me aside and said: "Listen, they're trying to get rid of a principal in my district who runs a Democratic club for us. If you protect him, you'll never have a problem with me." This kind of encounter was not rare.

 

Similarly, I faced repeated requests for "constituent services," meaning good school placements for wired constituents. After we reorganized the system and minimized the power of the 32 local superintendents—the go-to people for politicians under the past regime—a local official called me and asked, "Whom do I call for constituent services after your reorg?" I replied, "What's that?" Impatiently, he asked, "How do I get a kid into a school when I need to?" I jokingly answered, "Oh, we must have left out that office in the reorg" (actually thinking, silly me, that the school system should use equitable rules for admission). He said, "Go fuck yourself," and hung up. Despite our constant efforts, or because of them, this kind of political pressure—and payback if we weren't responsive—happened at every level. Even more important, politicians can reap enormous political support from the unions representing school employees. The two national unions—the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—together have some 4.7 million members, who pay hundreds of millions of dollars in national, state, and local dues, much of which is funneled to political causes. Teachers unions consistently rank among the top spenders on politics.

 

Moreover, millions of union members turn out when summoned, going door-to-door, staffing phone banks, attending rallies, and the like. Teachers are extremely effective messengers to parents, community groups, faith-based groups, and elected officials, and the unions know how to deploy them well. And just as happy unions can give a politician massive clout, unhappy unions—well, just ask Eva Moskowitz, a Democrat who headed the City Council Education Committee when I became chancellor in 2002. Brilliant, savvy, ambitious, often a pain in my neck, and atypically fearless for an elected official, she was widely expected to be elected Manhattan borough president in 2005. Until, that is, she held hearings on the New York City teachers-union contract—an extraordinary document, running on for hundreds of pages, governing who can teach what and when, who can be assigned to hall-monitor or lunchroom duty and who can't, who has to be given time off to do union work during the school day, and so on. Truth is, the contract defied parody. So when Moskowitz exposed its ridiculousness, the UFT, then headed by Randi Weingarten, made sure that Moskowitz's run for borough president came up short. After that, other elected officials would say to me, "I agree with you, but I ain't gonna get Eva'd."

 

In short, politicians—especially Democratic politicians—generally do what the unions want. And the unions, in turn, are very clear about what that is. They want, first, happy members, so that those who run the unions get reelected; and, second, more members, so their power, money, and influence grow. As Albert Shanker, the late, iconic head of the UFT, once pointedly put it, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren." And what do the members want? Employees understandably want lifetime job security (tenure), better pay regardless of performance (seniority pay), less work (short days, long holidays, lots of sick days), and the opportunity to retire early (at, say, 55) with a good lifetime pension and full health benefits; for their part, the retirees want to make sure their benefits keep coming and grow through cost-of-living increases. The result: whether you work hard or don't, get good results with kids or don't, teach in a shortage area like math or special education or don't, or in a hard-to-staff school in a poor community or not, you get paid the same, unless you've been around for another year, in which case you get more. Not bad for the adults.

 

But it's just disastrous for the kids in our schools.

 

Then, Klein talks about how people in the (well heeled) audience would NEVER allow their own children to be randomly assigned to a NYC public school, yet we do nothing when other peoples' kids are:

 

"There's not a single person in this room – and I'm looking at Joe Williams because his kids go to my former schools – nobody in this room allows me to assign their kid randomly to a public school in New York – you would go nuts.  And yet you allow me to randomly assign other peoples' kids, indeed the neediest kids, the kids who grew up with the worst hand in our city, and they get assigned not randomly, they get assigned to a school that every single one of you would become a revolutionary if your kid was in.  And we tolerate that!  Why do we tolerate that?  It's either because we believe one of two things: we believe we can't do any better, or we believe these kids are irredeemable.  And we have empirical evidence on both: Eva [Moskowitz], who's here tonight, KIPP schools…go visit these schools and see the entirely different – and these are not small differences – the entirely different results that they're getting.  So if you know that, then how do we go to sleep at night saying, "Well, our kids are fine."?

When I saw this article, "New to Teaching, Idealistic, at Risk for Layoff", on the front page of yesterday's NYT, I looked for the author, sure that it would be yet another Michael Winerip hatchet job – but was pleasantly surprised to see it wasn't written by him, and even more pleasantly surprised to see that it correctly captured that absolute insanity of doing layoffs purely by seniority (LIFO) (and had a nice plug for E4E):

Ms. Sherwood, 25, joined up with Teach for America, the program that puts top college graduates into the nation's most poverty-stricken schools, deciding that the best way to make a difference would be, as she put it on Monday, "to be there, where the rubber meets the road."

…Now in her third year of teaching, earning about $45,000, Ms. Sherwood has come face to face with another place where rubber and road meet: she is most likely among the 4,100 New York City teachers scheduled to be laid off under the budget Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled on Friday.

…If Ms. Sherwood is typical of these teachers, she could also be a symbol for those, including Mr. Bloomberg, who are lobbying to repeal the state law, known as last in, first out. Bright, motivated, capable — 72 percent of her school's students have scored at the proficient level in state science exams since she was chosen to run its science department in 2009 — she said she had been hoping to get tenure at the end of June and make a career in the city schools, but now is unsure.

Most of all, she wants to be judged on performance, not time on the job.

"I've gotten nothing but satisfactory reviews, the school's administrators want me to work for them, I've demonstrated I'm effective in the classroom," Ms. Sherwood said. "The reality of it is," she added of more experienced teachers, "there are people out there who just got settled in and aren't doing their jobs."

The school where Ms. Sherwood works, Mott Hall V, on East 172nd Street in the Soundview section, is typical of those that would be hit hardest by the cuts. It is relatively new (it opened in 2005), and its staff is made up primarily of junior teachers; the principal, Peter Oroszlany, said 60 percent of them had spent five or fewer years in the classroom.

Virtually all of Mott Hall V's 378 students are black or Hispanic; 87 percent are poor enough to qualify for the free lunch program. Nearly 1 in 5 do not speak English at home, and about the same number require special education services. Still, the school ranks No. 1 in math scores among middle schools in its district, and it received an A on the city's progress report this year.

…Ms. Sherwood called layoffs "a Band-Aidfix" for the city's budget problems, but said that if they were necessary, performance should decide who got to stay and who had to go. Last year, she joined Educators 4 Excellence, a group of teachers who advocate for merit-based pay, an evaluation system that takes into account students' test scores, and the strengthening of tenure requirements.

-----------------

New to Teaching, Idealistic, at Risk for Layoff

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: May 10, 2011

www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/nyregion/new-idealistic-teachers-face-layoffs-in-bloomberg-budget.html

LIFO on PBS

Speaking of the insanity of LIFO, PBS Newshour did an excellent 8-min segment on the LIFO and bumping controversy in.  It's the first time I've seen the superintendent there, Steven Adamowski, and I was very impressed (I've heard great things about the strides Hartford has made under his leadership).  Here's the video (www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june11/teacherlayoffs_05-09.html) and the transcript is below.  Here's the excerpt – the head of the union has some real doozies here:

JOHN TULENKO: For more than two years, Hartford Superintendent Steven Adamowski has been pushing to change seniority in the teachers' contract.

STEVEN ADAMOWSKI: Every student has a right to the most qualified teacher available and not the most senior teacher. I think that there is a growing realization that this is the emerging civil rights issue of our time.

MAN: We talked about this before.

JOHN TULENKO: But seniority has defenders.

ANDREA JOHNSON, Hartford Federation of Teachers: Experience has to count for something.

JOHN TULENKO: Andrea Johnson heads the Hartford Federation of Teachers.

ANDREA JOHNSON: If you were going to have an operation, I'm sure you would want the doctor with the most experience and the most time in the surgery to be your doctor. That's the way we look at teachers.

And I need to ask you about your latest grievance.

JOHN TULENKO: Johnson's union has rejected appeals from the district to base staffing decisions in part on teacher performance.

ANDREA JOHNSON: Children come to us as they come to us. We're just part of an equation. You have teachers. You have children. You have families. You have poverty. You have very disruptive situations within our country. It all mixes together.

Here's Klein with an op ed in the Washington Post on "What the School Reform Debate Misses About Teachers":

Teaching is incredibly hard, especially when dealing with children in high-poverty communities who come to school with enormous challenges. Many teachers work long hours, staying at school past 6 p.m., and then working at home grading papers and preparing lessons. Some teachers get outstanding results, even with our most challenged students. These are America's heroes, and they should be recognized as such. Sadly, they aren't.

On the other hand, there are also many teachers who work by the clock - they show up a minute before 8:30 and leave a minute after 3; when in school, they do the barest minimum. They get dreadful results with students and, if you spend time in their classrooms, as I have over the past eight years, it's painfully obvious that they belong in another line of work.

The problem is that our discussion too often fails to distinguish between these very different types of teachers, treating them all the same. This "group-think" not only pollutes the current public debate - either you're for or against teachers - it is also killing our opportunity to fix our schools. Any reform worth its name must start by recognizing that teachers are our most important educational asset. That's why we need to treat teaching as a profession, by supporting excellence, striving for constant improvement and ridding the system of poor performers.

Alas, we do none of this. Whether you are good or bad, work hard or don't, teach in a shortage area (such as math) or work in a highly challenged school, you get treated precisely the same: You have life tenure and generous lifetime health and pension benefits, and you get paid more money next year simply because of seniority.

---------------------

What the school reform debate misses about teachers

By Joel Klein

Sunday, March 13, 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031105900.html

Great op ed about Cami Anderson

A great op ed about Cami Anderson:

Newark has a strong superintendent who will bring unique and admirable qualities to the challenge of reforming our city's schools.

"So what does this woman know about our children?" I was asked. "Shouldn't we have a superintendent who can serve as a role model? Why haven't we had a Hispanic superintendent?" These are understandable questions in a city where more than 90 percent of the school children are black or Hispanic.

But I would argue those questions are neither timely nor right, given the enormous hurdles we face in reconstructing a system that has tolerated too much failure for far too long.

…The imperative for Newark now is to have the best superintendent we can find. I wish there could have been more minority choices in the pool, but there were not. Anderson and one other candidate stood clearly at the head of the pack. Anderson captured my attention not because she lives in Harlem. I was impressed with her knowledge, experience working with disadvantaged populations and her spunk, particularly when she said, "One thousand parents are showing up for meetings? That's the kind of place I want to work." I feel confident the right candidate was selected.

Newark is poised for an important spurt of change. Making the most of this opportunity will require all parties to work together and look to the future.

Discussion now needs to turn to how do we best provide a system that truly works for all the children of Newark

----------------------

Cami Anderson is the white girl from Harlem

Published: Sunday, May 08, 2011, 5:44 AM

by Star-Ledger Guest Columnist The Star-Ledger

http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2011/05/cami_anderson_is_the_white_gir.html

Diane Ravitch wants Commissioner Gist to apologize

Speaking of doozies, this is AWESOME!  Ravitch was up to her usual tricks last week – but this time, ran into a buzz saw named Deb Gist, the ed commissioner of RI and a true reform warrior, who is very familiar with Ravitch's constant lies and distortions, and Ravitch is now whining and demanding an apology (which she'll never get).  Here's the story: the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, apparently at the urging of Gov. Lincoln Chafee (a gutless weasel who's selling out RI kids because the union helped elect him), invited Ravitch to visit Rhode Island on May 3.  Here's what happened, according to Ravitch's blog post (below):

Before my arrival, I was invited by Gov. Lincoln Chafee to meet privately with him. Thirty minutes before my hour with Gov. Chafee, I learned that state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Deborah Gist would join our meeting. As it turned out, I had 10 minutes of private time with the governor, then 50 minutes with Gist and leaders of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers.

I mention all this because of what happened during the 50 minutes. Gist is clearly a very smart, articulate woman. But she dominated the conversation, interrupted me whenever I spoke, and filibustered to use up the limited time. Whenever I raised an issue, she would interrupt to say, "That isn't happening here." She came to talk, not to listen. It became so difficult for me to complete a sentence that at one point, I said, "Hey, guys, you live here all the time, I'm only here for a few hours. Please let me speak." But Gist continued to cut me off. In many years of meeting with public officials, I have never encountered such rudeness and incivility. I am waiting for an apology.

Now, if Deb Gist really wouldn't allow Ravitch to speak at all, then that would be wrong.  But I know Deb Gist and am certain that she wouldn't deny Ravitch (or anyone else) the right to speak.  What really happened, I have no doubt, was that, as Ravitch began to spew her usual litany of lies and distortions, Gist spoke up and challenged her.  Ravitch isn't used to being challenged – certainly not forcefully, and certainly not by someone who knows far more than she does about what's really going on in RI's schools (recall, for example, my recent email with the letter from KIPP TEAM teacher Ali Nagle to Ravitch, which Ravitch ignored, and my email a month or two ago about the Princeton student, a member of Students for Education Reform, who Ravitch blocked on Twitter after he challenged her). 

Ravitch is an empress without any clothes, who travels around the country speaking only to fawning audiences, who tell her how beautiful her clothes are – and when she encounters someone who tells her she's really naked, she freaks out, starts whining and complaining, and saying ridiculous things like this (from an article in the Providence Journal):

"Over the past half-century, I have met with many governors, state superintendents, Congressmen, Senators, Cabinet members, and every President since Lyndon B. Johnson (I met John F. Kennedy in 1958, when he was Senator from Massachusetts)," Ravitch wrote in an e-mail to The Journal Tuesday afternoon. "I have never encountered such behavior."

I especially love the second comment below the Prov. Journal article:

 

mangeek said:

"As it turned out, I had 10 minutes of private time with the governor, then 50 minutes with Gist"

Here's my guess as to how that ten minutes between Chafee and Ravitch went:

LC: "Hey, this is great. I want to get rid of Gist, but she has massive support from my constituency, far more support than even I have."
DR: "How horrible! Corporate blahblahblah, feel-good mumbo-jumbo, everyoneelseiswrong. How can I help?"
LC: "Well, if you say some stuff about bad compensation and destroying unions, neither of which are true here, she'll get testy, then you can feign disgust publicly which will give me pretext to can her."
DR: "Sounds great!"LC: "Here she comes..."

--------------------

Diane Ravitch wants Commissioner Gist to apologize 5:06 PM Tue, May 10, 2011 | Permalink Jennifer D. Jordan    Email

http://newsblog.projo.com/2011/05/diane-ravitch-wants-commission.html

------------------

Why Won't 'Reformers' Listen?

By Diane Ravitch on May 10, 2011 9:03 AM | 20 Comments | Recommend

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2011/05/why_wont_reformers_listen.html#comments

Recording Statistics: An Invasion Of Players' Privacy?

This cover and headline in The Onion made me laugh (there's no story – just the cover/headline): Recording Statistics: An Invasion Of Players' Privacy?

Along similar lines, Bob Bowden, who directed the fabulous documentary, The Cartel, about NJ's bloated and corrupt public education system, wrote this hilarious, tongue-in-cheek article, mocking the unions' resistance to teachers being evaluated, comparing it to students refusing to be graded:

It can hardly be denied that there are factors outside a student's control that might affect his grades. How smart he is, how much his parents support education, how nutritious the food in his home is, and how much his older brother distracts him with PlayStation II.

Some parents might put on SportsCenter at 11pm Eastern time. Others don't. It's hardly a level playing field.

Since a student has no control over these kinds of things, and since some students face a lot more of these obstacles than others, grading them simply isn't fair. Why should I get a better grade than you just because my home life makes it easier for me to perform? And as we've learned from teachers' unions, it's better to have no evaluation system than one that could be unfair.

There's another reason too. It's an ugly one: favoritism. We all know the teacher's pet is likely to get a good grade, while the charmless face a much tougher slog. That's not fair either.

It brings the inevitable conclusion: Until someone devises a grading system that can equalize all these disparate factors, and compensate for which students have advantages and which don't, the only fair course is to avoid grading completely.

This mirrors every other industry in American life. Fairness, after all, is acknowledged by educational leaders to be more important than accountability.

-------------------

Classroom grading is an attack on students

Published: 10:47 AM 05/12/2011 | Updated: 11:33 AM 05/12/2011

 

By Bob Bowdon

http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/12/classroom-grading-is-an-attack-on-students

Times updates and expands value-added ratings for Los Angeles elementary school teachers

Big news from LA, which is the only city for which teacher value-added scores are released publicly:

 

The Los Angeles Times on Sunday is releasing a major update to its elementary school teacher ratings, underscoring the large disparities throughout the nation's second-largest school district in instructors' abilities to raise student test scores.

The posting — the only publication of such teacher performance data in the nation — contains value-added ratings for about 11,500 third- through fifth-grade teachers, nearly double the number released last August. It also reflects changes in the way the scores were calculated and displayed.

Overall ratings for about 470 schools also are included in the release, which is based on student standardized test scores from the academic years 2003-04 through 2009-10. To obtain the rating of a teacher or school, go to latimes.com/valueadded and enter the teacher's or the school's name.

The initial release of teacher ratings last summer generated intense controversy — and some praise — across the country, and this round has already met with some opposition.

--------------------

Times updates and expands value-added ratings for Los Angeles elementary school teachers

New data include ratings for about 11,500 teachers, nearly double the number covered last August. School and civic leaders had sought to halt release of the data.

By Jason Song and Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times

11:29 PM PDT, May 7, 2011

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-value-added-20110508,0,930050.story

Here's Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss, with her completely predictable take on the LA Times' decision to publish the teacher value-added data:

It's deja vu all over again with the Los Angeles Times and its value-added scores that supposedly tell us how effective are the teachers in the nation's second-largest school system.

The newspaper has printed its new ratings of elementary school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District based on how well students did on standardized tests. The idea is to use a formula that the newspaper had devised to assess the "value" a teacher added to a student's achievement.

The newspaper says its project takes into account the complexities of measuring teacher performance. But it essentially ignores some obvious points:

*Teachers aren't the only factor that go into how well a student does on a test;

*The tests aren't devised to evaluate teachers;

*There are lots of questions about how well the tests measure real student learning;

*Lots of experts say the whole value-added enterprise is not reliable and valid as a high-stakes fashion; and

*See this post by a prominent mathematician about why value-added is suspect for the purposes of evaluating teachers.

As I've said before, I'm glad that the LA Times is releasing this data, but I'm uncomfortable with it.  I don't think this is a black-or-white issue.  Contrary to Strauss's assertions, NOBODY thinks value-added systems are flawless (ditto for any test, even the best ones, like AP exams).  But after pointing out that something isn't flawless, defenders of the status quo then conclude that it shouldn't be used at all, which is obviously nuts.  This is, for example, their main line of attack against charter schools – and, come to think of it, pretty much any reform/innovation.  Test scores and value-added systems shouldn't be the SOLE mechanism for evaluating teachers, but what about 40-60%???  NOBODY claims that all charter schools are great, but some are, so why shouldn't we do everything we can to facilitate the rapid expansion of the proven ones – and, more importantly, adopt the techniques that make them successful across ALL schools?!

---------------------

Posted at 12:48 PM ET, 05/09/2011

L.A. Times rates teachers again, unfortunately

By Valerie Strauss

[Updated with details and link to Deasey letter to the Times.]

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/la-times-rates-teachers-again-unfortunately/2011/05/09/AFA2TNZG_blog.html 

Susan and I went to the Robin Hood gala/fundraiser/dinner last night, with 4,100 other people.  It was a lot of fun, with all sorts of famous people there (of course The Donald was there, though Seth Myers didn't roast him, as he did at the White House Correspondents' Dinner a week earlier – drat!).  And most importantly, Robin Hood raised $47.4 million to fight poverty in NYC, including $11.9 million for a new program that will assist veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and National Reservists.

Below is an article, some pictures I took, and three videos I posted of: 1) Lady Gaga's first two songs (www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP45F_U1Hm8); 2) Seth Myers, who was hilarious (www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNU9LFtBNtE); and 3) Kid Rock, who sang a song about veterans as current servicemen and women, as well as veterans, filed in and filled the stage – it was very moving (www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUnaNEl6GHI).

 ----------------------

Lady Gaga, Robin Hood Raise $47 Million to Help New York's Poor, Veterans

By Patrick Cole - May 9, 2011 11:48 PM ET

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-10/lady-gaga-robin-hood-raise-47-million-to-help-new-york-s-poor-veterans.html

Barbic to TN

HUGE news from Tennessee, courtesy of Bill DeLoache:

 

I think this is STOP THE PRESSES news!  As you doubtless know, YES Prep is among the very top CMO's in the country.  We hope the Achievement School District will become for Tennessee what the Recovery School District is to Louisiana, and more. 

 

As you know, Kevin Huffman is Tennessee's new Commissioner of Education.  Huffman and Chris Barbic were both in the 1992 Teach for America Corps in Houston (along with Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg).   Now Huffman and Barbic will be together again, ready to make Tennessee one of the very top destinations for dynamic education reformers.   Congrats to Governor Haslam and Commissioner Huffman for this recruiting coup.

 

Here are various versions of the announcement:

http://blog.chron.com/schoolzone/2011/05/yes-charter-school-founder-headed-to-tennessee/

http://www.tn.gov/firsttothetop/TNASDSuperintendentjobdescription.pdf

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/may/09/texas-education-reformer-named-head-low-performing/

 

When you send out this news, you might consider sending along this video of the YES Prep college signing ceremony, which I find very, very inspiring:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yp3DMAHh9s 

 

And this from Ryan Dolibois at YES Prep:

 

There's been some relatively big news out of Houston today. Chris Barbic has been tapped by the new Tennessee Education Commissioner (TFA's Huffman) to be the founding Superintendent of the Achievement School District for the state. I have attached a press release (and included below) that highlights what this means for YES Prep and for the general education reform movement. We have deliberately stayed focused in Houston as a way to show how the best practices of a school system can be readily replicable and transferable to another region. Chris's appointment and our continued growth is a great proof point for both the strength of the YES Prep model and how it is possible for great ideas in public education to keep spreading. Our new President, Jason Bernal, has been part of YES Prep since we first opened and the leadership team represents a deep bench of educational experience both in and outside of YES Prep. I'd be happy to answer any other questions about this. We are excited to move forward as an organization and there will be more coming out of the YES Prep camp in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can always find more on our blog atwww.yesprep.org/theanswer.

Run, don't walk, to read Joel Klein's magnum opus, just published in The Atlantic.  In it, he clearly and powerfully lays out the many horrifying flaws in our current K-12 system and proposes sensible solutions – and the enormously powerful opposition by "defenders of the status quo."  Here's an excerpt from the article, which appeared as on op ed in today's WSJ:

·         OPINION

·         MAY 10, 2011

·         http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576312880501768962.html

Scenes From the New York Education Wars

When I was chancellor, I was told confrontation was bad. Not so.

By JOEL KLEIN

Teachers are extremely effective messengers to parents, community groups, faith-based groups and elected officials—and their unions know how to deploy them well. Happy unions can give a politician massive clout, and unhappy unions—well, just ask Eva Moskowitz, a Democrat who headed the New York City Council Education Committee when I became schools chancellor in 2002.

Smart, savvy, ambitious, often a pain in my neck and atypically fearless for a politician, Ms. Moskowitz was widely expected to be elected Manhattan borough president in 2005. Until, that is, she held hearings on the city teachers-union contract, an extraordinary document, running for hundreds of pages, governing who can teach what and when, who can be assigned to hall-monitor or lunchroom duty and who can't, who has to be given time off to do union work during the school day, and so on.

The contract defied parody. So when Ms. Moskowitz exposed its ridiculousness, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), then headed by Randi Weingarten, made sure that Ms. Moskowitz's run for borough president came up short. After that, other elected officials would say to me, "I agree with you, but I ain't gonna get Eva'd."

Politicians—especially Democratic politicians—generally do what the unions want. The unions, in turn, are very clear about what that is: They want happy members, so that those who run the unions get re-elected, and they want more members, so their power, money and influence grow. The effect of all this? As Albert Shanker, the late, iconic head of the UFT, once pointedly said, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren."

Union power is why it's virtually impossible to fire a teacher for non-performance. In New York City, which has some 55,000 tenured teachers, we were able to fire only half a dozen or so for incompetence in a given year, even though we devoted significant resources to this effort.

Cato Institute analyst Neal McCluskey on Obama's push for uniform school standards.

The extent of the problem is difficult to overstate. Take "rubber rooms," where teachers were kept—while doing no work—pending resolution of disciplinary charges against them, mostly for malfeasance, like physical abuse or embezzlement, but also for incompetence. The teachers got paid regardless. Before we stopped this charade—by returning many of the teachers to the classroom, unfortunately—it cost the city about $35 million a year. (Still costing more than $100 million annually are the more than 1,000 teachers who get full pay to perform substitute or administrative duties because no principal wants to hire them full-time.)

Then there were the several teachers accused of sexual misconduct—at least one was found guilty—whom union-approved arbitrators refused to terminate. The city was required to put them back in the classroom, but we refused to do so. Of course, the union has never sued to have the teachers reinstated. It just makes sure these deadbeats stay on the payroll with full pay and a lifetime pension.

It's little surprise, then, that American kids don't get the education they deserve. When I demanded reform as chancellor, I was regularly told by friends and foes alike that impatience is immature, challenging the educational establishment is a losing strategy, collaboration is necessary, and controversy is bad. It was bad advice, typical of the status-quo thinking that dominates American education.

Consider the common refrain that "We'll never fix education until we fix poverty." This lets school systems off the hook. Of course money, a stable family and strong values typically make it easier to educate a child. But we now know that, keeping those things constant, certain schools can get dramatically different outcomes with the same kids.

Take Texas and California. The two states have very similar demographics, yet Texas outperforms California on all four national tests—across demographic groups—despite spending less money per pupil. The gap amounts to about a year's worth of learning. That's big.

At individual schools, differences can be breathtaking. One charter in New York City, Harlem Success Academy 1 (founded by Ms. Moskowitz after she left politics), has students who are demographically almost identical to those in nearby schools, yet it gets entirely different results.

Parents celebrate as they hear that their 4-year-old daughter was awarded a coveted slot at the Harlem Success Academy charter school.

Eighty-eight percent of Harlem Success students are proficient in reading and 95% are proficient in math. Six nearby schools have an average of 31% and 39% proficiency in those subjects, respectively. More than 90% of Harlem Success fourth-graders scored at the highest level on New York State's most recent science tests, while only 43% of fourth-graders citywide did so. Harlem Success's black students outperformed white students at more than 700 schools across the state. Overall, the charter now performs at the same level as the gifted-and-talented schools in New York City, all of which have demanding admissions requirements. Harlem Success, by contrast, selects its students, mostly poor and minority, by random lottery.

Critics try to discredit these differences. Writing last year in the New York Review of Books, the historian Diane Ravitch argued that schools like Harlem Success aren't the answer because, as a group, charter schools don't outperform traditional public schools. Yet even Ms. Ravitch had to acknowledge that some charter schools get "amazing results." If that's the case, shouldn't we be asking why they get much better results—and focusing on how to replicate them?

A full-scale transition from a government-run monopoly to a competitive marketplace won't happen quickly, but that's no reason not to begin introducing more competition. In the lower grades, we should make sure that every student has at least one alternative—and preferably several—to her neighborhood school.

We pursued that goal in New York City by opening more than 100 charter schools in high-poverty communities. Almost 80,000 families chose these new schools—though we had space for only 40,000; the rest are on waiting lists. Traditional schools and the unions have been screaming bloody murder, which is a good sign: It means that the monopolists are beginning to feel the effects of competition. And at the middle-school and high-school levels, where students are more mobile, we can create community-based choice systems or even citywide ones. New York City high school students now have citywide choice (with some geographic priority), and schools know they have to compete for students.

Despite the tough politics involved, change is possible. In New York City, it took a mayor willing to assume control over the system and risk significant political capital. It also took time: Mayor Bloomberg and I had more than eight years together, while most urban superintendents serve for about three and a half.

Most of all, it required building political support. Toward the end of my tenure, reformers were fighting to lift the state-imposed cap on the number of charter schools allowed to open. The teachers unions opposed our effort precisely because our expansion of charter schools had been so successful. In fact, six months earlier, they had helped defeat a similar effort.

But this time, families with kids in charter schools and their community allies were prepared to help us fight. Philanthropic and business interests raised millions to support the mobilization effort, run ads and hire lobbyists. We prevailed, and the state legislature raised the cap substantially.

As Shanker put it in a surprisingly candid speech in 1993: "We are at the point that the auto industry was at a few years ago. They could see they were losing market share every year and still not believe that it really had anything to do with the quality of the product. . . . I think we will get—and deserve—the end of public education through some sort of privatization scheme if we don't behave differently. Unfortunately, very few people really believe that yet. They talk about it, and they don't like it, but they're not ready to change and stop doing the things that brought us to this point."

Mr. Klein, the CEO of News Corporation's educational division, was chancellor of New York City public schools from 2002 through 2010. This article is adapted from the current issue of The Atlantic.

Here's Klein's full article.  You'd think after 22 years of involvement with this issue, I wouldn't be surprised/shocked so often, but it happens almost daily.  For example, while I'd seen this Shanker quote, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.", I'd never seen this one:

 

"We are at the point that the auto industry was at a few years ago. They could see they were losing market share every year and still not believe that it really had anything to do with the quality of the product. . . . I think we will get—and deserve—the end of public education through some sort of privatization scheme if we don't behave differently. Unfortunately, very few people really believe that yet. They talk about it, and they don't like it, but they're not ready to change and stop doing the things that brought us to this point."

 

I also had no idea that "after 10 years fewer than 1 percent of teachers leave the system, and after 15 years only about 0.1 percent leave."  Here's the excerpt about the insane system of teacher comp – it really makes clear that the real problem (contrary to assertions in the wrong-headed NYT op ed below) isn't the total amount we pay teachers, but HOW we pay teachers.  Some teachers are massively overpaid, while others are massively underpaid:

 

Next, consider the consequences of the ubiquitous practice of paying the same for math and physical-education teachers. Given the other job opportunities for talented mathematicians—but not for phys-ed teachers—the same salary will attract many more of the latter than the former. It's simple supply and demand. But when you're short of qualified math teachers—as virtually every major urban school district is—poor kids with the greatest needs invariably get cheated, because most teachers prefer to teach highly motivated kids who live in safe communities, and whose parents will contribute private money to the school. The result: too few effective math and science teachers in high-poverty schools.

 

Finally, coming on top of these other senseless policies is the remarkable way that benefits and seniority drive overall teacher compensation. It's possible for a teacher in New York City to retire at 55 and draw down an annual pension of more than $60,000, plus lifetime health benefits for herself and her family. The pension is not subject to New York State or local taxes and goes up with cost-of-living increases. The huge value of this lifetime stream of benefits is rarely mentioned when we talk about teachers' compensation, but the teachers are well aware of it and act rationally in response to it. What we end up with is both a form of lock-in for employees and an enormous long-term financial exposure for the taxpayers.

 

The impact of the lock-in shapes the entire compensation system, because the "big" money comes only after a certain number of years—in New York City, for example, many teachers get their full pension after working 25 years, and a far smaller pension if they work for only 24 years. As a result of backloaded policies like this, after 10 years fewer than 1 percent of teachers leave the system, and after 15 years only about 0.1 percent leave. Many have candidly told me they are burned out, but they can't afford to leave until their pension fully vests. So they go through the motions until they can retire with the total package.

 

Aggravating the perverse incentive of the benefit lock-in is the nature of almost all pay increases in public education, which are either automatic if you stay another year or so, or take 30 college credits; or across-the-board percentage raises—for example, 10 percent over three years, meaning that every veteran teacher making $80,000 gets an $8,000 increase, while every beginning teacher making $40,000 gets a $4,000 increase.

 

None of these pay increases makes sense. Why pay someone more for simply working another year or for taking a few courses? Starting last year, Mayor Bloomberg refused to give teachers in New York a raise, because he was facing budget cuts. But the overall pay for teachers still went up nearly 3.5 percent automatically, simply for longevity and college credits. (According to a Department of Education internal analysis, the average NYC teacher works fewer than seven hours a day for 185 days and costs the city $110,000—$71,000 in salary, $23,000 in pensions, and $16,000 in health and other benefits.) And why give all teachers making $80,000, or more, a 10 percent raise? They're not going to leave, since they're close to vesting their lifetime pensions. By contrast, increasing starting salaries by $8,000 (rather than $4,000) would help attract and retain better new teachers. But because of seniority, we can't do it that way.

---------------------

The Failure of American Schools

Who better to lead an educational revolution than Joel Klein, the prosecutor who took on the software giant Microsoft? But in his eight years as chancellor of New York City's school system, the nation's largest, Klein learned a few painful lessons of his own—about feckless politicians, recalcitrant unions, mediocre teachers, and other enduring obstacles to school reform.

By Joel Klein, The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/06/the-failure-of-american-schools/8497

This recent NYT op ed, "The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries", makes a few good points, but mostly has things all wrong.  Yes, we should pay some teachers more – but not ALL teachers in lockstep, as Klein convincingly argues in his article.  Nowhere do the authors of the NYT op ed acknowledge that there are differences among teachers (some are stars and underpaid, while others are lousy and therefore overpaid); or that math teachers should be paid more than gym teachers; or that there should be "hardship pay" for top teachers willing to teacher in the toughest schools.  Instead, the article is filled with slaps at reform, trite clichés, and misguided analogies.  For example, get a load of this comparison they authors make in the opening paragraphs:

WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers. We don't say, "It's these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That's why we haven't done better in Afghanistan!" No, if the results aren't there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

And yet in education we do just that. When we don't like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don't like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

Let me propose an alternative analogy, using a different military analogy: I view great teaching as a skill similar to a highly skilled profession like being a fighter pilot.  Imagine for a moment that we hired, trained, evaluated and promoted/fired pilots the way we do teachers – what would it look like?  Well, we'd start by recruiting most pilots from the bottom third of college graduates, then putting them through utterly useless training schools, then immediately upon graduation giving them in the toughest assignments, with little or no support or mentoring, then ranking 99% of them satisfactory every year, firing only 1 in a 1,000 for poor performance, and basing everything about assignments, pay, etc. purely on seniority. 

Such a system would of course be a disaster: some pilots would be great, but some would be dreadful – and they'd be the most likely ones to stick around – resulting in, say, 10% of all fighter jets needlessly crashing every year (not to mention jets bombing the wrong targets, etc.).  OF COURSE if this were happening, there would be a hue and cry, and everyone would rightly point fingers at the pilots who were doing terrible jobs.  However, in addition, we'd have to look beyond the people on the front line – the ENTIRE SYSTEM IS BROKEN, from start to finish!

I wrote about this topic, using doctors in my analogy, in my February Huffington Post article, Rebutting Seven Myths About Teach for America(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/whitney-tilson/rebutting-seven-myths-abo_b_825437.html):

In an ideal world, the teachers in this country would go through a rigorous development program, as doctors do, that would look something like this:

1.      Ed schools would be highly competitive (the nations with the highest achieving students like Finland and Singapore only take teachers from the top 10 percent of college graduates);

2.      Ed schools would be rigorous and provide students with real preparation;

3.      Graduates would have to pass a tough exam demonstrating that they'd mastered the content;

4.      New teachers would enter a carefully controlled and monitored environment, with seasoned mentors by their side to make sure they learned (and did no harm);

5.      Effective teachers would be rewarded and given more responsibility; and

6.      Ineffective ones would be given additional support and, if that didn't work, counseled out.

In our dysfunctional, Alice-in-Wonderland education world, not one of these six things happens with any regularity.

I also HIGHLY question the statistics about teacher pay that the authors present in the op ed, as it surely doesn't include the enormously valuable (and costly) benefits that teachers – and, increasingly, ONLY teachers – receive:

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we're serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.

At the moment, the average teacher's pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers' salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.

Here are the real statistics, from Klein's article:

 

Finally, coming on top of these other senseless policies is the remarkable way that benefits and seniority drive overall teacher compensation. It's possible for a teacher in New York City to retire at 55 and draw down an annual pension of more than $60,000, plus lifetime health benefits for herself and her family. The pension is not subject to New York State or local taxes and goes up with cost-of-living increases. The huge value of this lifetime stream of benefits is rarely mentioned when we talk about teachers' compensation, but the teachers are well aware of it and act rationally in response to it. What we end up with is both a form of lock-in for employees and an enormous long-term financial exposure for the taxpayers.

 

The impact of the lock-in shapes the entire compensation system, because the "big" money comes only after a certain number of years—in New York City, for example, many teachers get their full pension after working 25 years, and a far smaller pension if they work for only 24 years. As a result of backloaded policies like this, after 10 years fewer than 1 percent of teachers leave the system, and after 15 years only about 0.1 percent leave. Many have candidly told me they are burned out, but they can't afford to leave until their pension fully vests. So they go through the motions until they can retire with the total package.

 

Aggravating the perverse incentive of the benefit lock-in is the nature of almost all pay increases in public education, which are either automatic if you stay another year or so, or take 30 college credits; or across-the-board percentage raises—for example, 10 percent over three years, meaning that every veteran teacher making $80,000 gets an $8,000 increase, while every beginning teacher making $40,000 gets a $4,000 increase.

 

None of these pay increases makes sense. Why pay someone more for simply working another year or for taking a few courses? Starting last year, Mayor Bloomberg refused to give teachers in New York a raise, because he was facing budget cuts. But the overall pay for teachers still went up nearly 3.5 percent automatically, simply for longevity and college credits. (According to a Department of Education internal analysis, the average NYC teacher works fewer than seven hours a day for 185 days and costs the city $110,000—$71,000 in salary, $23,000 in pensions, and $16,000 in health and other benefits.)

-------------------------------------------

April 30, 2011

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

By DAVE EGGERS and NÍNIVE CLEMENTS CALEGARI

San Francisco

www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html