
How 'Waiting for “Superman”' Will Further Fuel the Education Debate - bhousel
http://nymag.com/news/features/67966/
======
teye
Just saw this last night in SF courtesy of the Commonwealth Club. Highly
recommended.

You're shown that getting results is straightforward: get rid of poor teachers
and reward good ones. One stat that was particularly interesting, from a
Stanford researcher whose name I forget, was that replacing the worst 6-10% of
teachers would put us on the same proficiency level as Finland.

Unfortunately, the system makes that very difficult. Many teachers are granted
tenure, making them impossible to fire, and educators' compensation isn't
designed to allow for performance incentives. Contracts demanded by unions are
partially to blame.

Also, our education system was built for previous generations' economies.
Professionals, scientists, technical workers, factory workers, and laborers
were needed in different proportions than they are today. Now we have more
highly skilled jobs without enough highly educated Americans to fill them. SV
and schools in Redwood City and Woodside are mentioned specifically.

It examines the costs of poor education, like the staggering number of
dropouts who end up in prison. Their incarceration cost could put them through
private school with money left over for college.

Saying the film demonizes Weingarten is exaggerating. She doesn't look great,
but there are clearly a lot of factors at work.

 _Waiting for Superman_ makes clear that the way forward is good teachers.

~~~
jbooth
The problems are dual, and nobody likes the solutions.

On the one hand, yes, you have unions, which theoretically are sticking up for
the workers but in practice spend a large % of their time and resources
sticking up for the lousy workers who deserve to be fired anyways.

On the other hand, you have about half of the country devoted to relentlessly
slashing education budgets in the name of "less government". In a small-l
labor dominated industry, that effectively means smaller paychecks and/or more
work for the same pay. So good teachers who are frustrated by the union
shenanigans don't have a lot of other alternatives - who else is gonna stick
up for them?

Real solutions would be a combination of big pay incentives for star teachers
(not that I'd necessarily be a star, but why on _earth_ would I teach at those
rates when I can be an engineer?), coupled with a much looser structure on
tenure, more dynamic general situation, etc. That would be the kind of
incentive to empower the good teachers and disempower the bad ones. But you
can't just blame the unions without addressing the other side of the coin.

~~~
enjo
I would much rather you be an engineer than a teacher. Why on earth would we
want to incentivize our creators and innovators to become teachers?

~~~
jbooth
Well, 2 comments and we're 1 for 2 so I guess my 50% figure was right on.

I'll respond with a couple more questions: Do you place a value on increasing
future "creation and innovation" by doing a good job of educating kids? If
they learn exclusively from mediocre, by-the-book personalities, do you think
that helps or hurts the "creation and innovation" parts of their brains?

~~~
timwiseman
Your question seems to be implicitly assuming that most great teachers could
also have been great engineers. At the risk of stereotyping, I do not think
that is true.

A great teacher must be dynamic, engaging, intelligent, able to connect with
children so that they can teach creation and innovation. But an engineer must
be intelligent, methodical, and able to master vast amounts of technical
knowledge.

I suspect most people who make great engineers would not make great teachers,
and vice versa. There will be some that could easily be great at either
though.

Those, I think would better serve society by going into engineering for a few
reasons. One is that the number capable of being a truly great engineer is
smaller than the number capable of being a truly great teacher.

Both are significant for society, but one is more rare than the other. Also,
it seems that the point of education is to be able to produce great makers
such as engineers who do the work that holds society together. If we always
direct our best minds to enhancing the best minds of the future, we will have
highly educated children but little or no actual progress for those children
to enjoy.

------
Estragon

      I was stunned because [An Inconvenient Truth] was so 
      powerful that my wife told me we couldn’t burn incandescent 
      bulbs anymore. She didn’t become a zealot; she just 
      realized that [climate change] was serious and we have to
      do something.
    

Well, that's _something_ , I guess. Not going to make much of a difference,
though. As David Mackay says in _Sustainable Energy - without the hot air_ ,
"If everybody only does a little, the impact will only be a little."

------
untamedmedley
Articles about education too often end with platitudes about how we need real
debate to make changes occur. I'd argue we need action... preferably from the
private sector.

Judging by the lack of comments on this article so far, not many people here
follow this issue. The DC public schools are a microcosm of the whole ed
reform movement, and an example of how difficult it can be to navigate the
politics of reforming a corrupt system.

Rhee has done a lot to improve the efficiency of the district (in terms of
getting books and supplies where needed, and using school resources wisely),
but at the end of the day, her approach to reform (command and control vs.
consensus building) is what will likely end her tenure early.

Right now, the mayor who backed her (Fenty) is in a tight race with a
candidate who is exploiting people's distrust in a government that, for better
or worse, acts based on what it believes is right for the people, not what the
people believe is right for them.

Or, in the tl;dr edition:

When working within the confines of politics, you can get short bursts of
successful but temporary reform, or you can be safe politically while
accomplishing very little. There's gotta be another way.

~~~
DanielN
Could you explain how action from the private sector might help to reform the
public education system. Unless you're referring to vouchers I'm not sure I
understand the connection you're trying to make.

Also, I'm not sure its accurate to claim that Rhee might lose her position if
Fenty isn't re-elected. His opponent seems to be on the same side of education
reform as him and most of his claims to "anti government" policies are more in
the realm of police and tax reform (at least as I understand it; I don't live
in DC)

~~~
untamedmedley
I apologize for the lack of clarity. Didn't want to get too far into the
weeds, but I think after school is a great place to start. My favorite example
of this are Japanese cram schools (Juku), which serve a much larger and varied
function than most people who have heard of them realize.

Japan has an extensive network of for-profit after school programs that act as
a check on the standards enacted in Japanese public schools. When the Ministry
of Education decided to change its standards (which affect curriculum across
the nation), the juku responded by offering tougher courses, balancing out any
perceived weakening of the public schools. Rosegaard's book is my favorite on
the subject of Juku: [http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Education-Cram-School-
Busines...](http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Education-Cram-School-
Business/dp/8791114918)

There is some inherent unfairness to that system, mainly having to do with
parents who can and can't pay for juku. But there are ways to mitigate the
issues caused by socioeconomic differences. Some of those issues have already
been somewhat addressed in America by the Supplementary Educational Services
(<http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/choice/help/ses/index.html>) portion of NCLB. The
program essentially forces failing schools to pay for after school tutoring.

I'd prefer a better designed SES program, but I think after school could be
more promising than charters or vouchers for several reasons:

1\. After school addresses the reality that children are as, if not more,
affected by experiences outside of the normal school day 2\. It would help
avoid many of the contentious issues surrounding teachers unions 3\. It would
allow for innovative approaches to curriculum and teaching without the burdens
of having to supply everything we expect from a school (music, art, gym
programs; extracurriculars, tricked out facilities) 4\. It might stimulate a
growth of small, education-oriented businesses in poor/minority communities
(there are several successful, minority-owned tutoring companies in my
hometown that rely on SES)

This isn't to say nothing should be done to reform schools from the inside. I
just think we could use a two-pronged approach.

~~~
potatolicious
As someone who went through the tortuous education system in Taiwan, where the
culture of cram schools also existed, and standardized testing was king, I
would not wish it upon anyone. In fact, I think cram schools are one of the
_worst_ ideas ever conceived in education.

All it does is created socially retarded (in the non-derogatory way) children
unable to deal with anything that doesn't come out of a textbook, with no
discernible life skills whatsoever.

I've spent _years_ unlearning things from that stage of my life, and I'm still
not done. Every day I'm learning social norms and life knowledge that I
honestly should have found out at age 12, not age 24. When you send kids to a
public school for 8 hours, then spend the next 6 hours not interacting with
people, and instead cramming for their next exam so they won't be hopelessly
left behind, you're creating a massive social problem for later. When your
children's only free time in a day is spent wolfing down packed dinner while
the taxicab speeds from one cram class to another, you are doing yourself and
your children a grave disservice.

There is a fundamental difference between _school_ and _education_ , one would
be wise not to confuse the two.

 _More schooling_ is an absolutely _ass backwards_ solution to our educational
problems. The solution is _better_ education, not slapping de facto mandatory
private schools on top and making our kids work more hours than an EA
employee.

~~~
untamedmedley
Given a choice between what we have now and a cram school culture, I would
prefer the latter. At least then the (predominantly poor, black, and latino)
students our public education system routinely fails would have a fighting
chance at a decent life.

That said, I don't want to give the impression that cram school culture should
accepted and imported wholesale to America. I used cram schools as an example
of outside forces based in capitalism acting as a self-correcting mechanism
for a public school system. Given the political difficulties of transforming
public schools, I think it would be helpful to have at least _one_ place
students can go to receive an education.

------
boredguy8
Single page: <http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67966/>

------
Symmetry
"Most astonishing to Rhee was how easily the contract was finally approved.
“The entire time the union was fighting us, they said, ‘Our members are never
gonna accept this’—then it passed by an 80 to 20 percent vote!” she exclaims."

Hah, never assume that the interests of the teachers and their union
representatives (or any other set of elected officials) always coincide.
Specifically, proposals to decrease the number of workers but raise their pay
(and/or give large amounts of money to those layed off) often bring workers
and unions into conflict.

~~~
ahi
I think that's just Rhee being dumb. You're in a negotiation. Of course
they're going to say they can't accept this, until they do. Union staff almost
never bargain contracts anyway. Typically it's done by a bargaining committee
consisting of members, some of whom are elected officers but mostly just
volunteers.

------
sachinag
_sigh_

Lookit, if teachers unions were the main culprit, then education outcomes in
right-to-work states (the South, mostly) would be significantly higher than
states where teachers unions exist. This is not the case. The problem is one
of attitudes (both familial and institutional) and one of teaching talent (the
students who enroll in Schools of Education are below the median for GPA and
SAT scores for universities that offer education degrees).

Attitudes are hard to explain; Friday Night Lights (the book) examines but
doesn't explain. The quality of teaching stock is explainable, but no one
likes the explanation - the opening of the workforce to women has taken a lot
of high-quality women out of the classroom and into the previously male-
dominated workforce. All those great women doctors, lawyers, managers,
engineers, architects, and so on would have been teachers 50 years ago.

I don't have a good answer, but _Waiting for Superman_ 's demonization of
Randi Weingarten and the unions is a terribly small portion of the problem.
Boogeymen are easy to hate; it's harder to point the finger at ourselves.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm confused. In spite of being a right to work state, Alabama, Arizona and
Arkansas [1] all have teachers unions.

<http://www.myaea.org/>

<http://www.arizonaea.org/>

<http://www.aeaonline.org/>

Why would you believe that right to work states would not have teachers
unions? It's true that a right to work state will probably not have unions the
workers don't want, but that isn't the same thing.

[1] I'm not cherry picking, just working down this list:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-
work_law#U.S._states_w...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-
work_law#U.S._states_with_right-to-work_laws)

~~~
sachinag
_Every_ state has public sector employee unions. The UAW is also in most
right-to-work states. But the vast majority of employees (public and private)
are not members of those unions and I'm positive that teacher contracts in RTW
states are not collectively bargained.

