Just prepping for a talk on education and wanted to share some thoughts.
Too often, economists and policy makers have one recommendation to fix everything: more education. And truth be told, I'm pretty much on board, but there are important nuances that tend to be left out of the discussion.
-Particularly when it comes to K-12, public policy often seems to be asking school teachers to fix all of society's ills, while beating up on them for a) not all being above average, b) being in unions, and c) resisting accountability. The fact is, kids increasingly arrive at school beset by a wide range of social problems generated by poverty and inequality. That's never an excuse for not having the best public system we can have, but don't expect it to solve problems beyond its scope-especially when instead of retaining and improving the quality of teachers' jobs, we're laying them off.
-Do unions protect lousy teachers? I'm sure some do some of the time, and I'm sure you see that same dynamic in the private sector. I can tell you for a fact that the leadership of today's teachers' unions stand firmly against tenure for undeserving teachers. But I can also assure you that some (not all) of the union bashing isn't about better education. It's about union bashing.
-Re higher education, the consensus among economists tends to be that there's a large skills mismatch between employers' demands and the skills of the workforce. I don't buy it. The data from the BLS on occupational skill demands now and in the future actually matches up pretty cleanly with the supply of skill, at least at the level of educational attainment. Yes, employers constantly say they can't find skilled workers, but that's kind of the point... they constantly say it. If it were true, you'd see it in a more quickly rising compensation premium to workers with higher levels of education. And you don't really see that type of acceleration. (Note: the emphasis on "acceleration" is important here--the fact that college workers are paid more than high school workers isn't the issue--unmet skill demands imply an increasingly rising premium, and the college premium has actually decelerated in recent years, as this slide from EPI reveals-it shows the regression-adjusted college premium as flat since the latter 90s for women and rising more slowly for men.)
-But here's the thing: I still think we'd have a better economy/society with higher levels of educational attainment... I'm quite certain, in fact. It's wrong to think that the jobs of the future all will demand wicked high skill sets--we're going to need lots of home health aides, cashiers, security guards, equipment technicians, child care workers, along with high-end engineers. But to have smarter, better educated people in all of those jobs makes all the sense in the world. We want our child care workers and home health aides to be highly trained--not as Ph.D.'s in robotics, but in their fields.
-The way to understand the nexus of education and the economy/jobs is thus not in the traditional skills mismatch framework. That's way too vague and disconnected from what's happening on the ground. Instead, think of an old-fashioned production function where better inputs generate better outputs. Human capital is one of those inputs. The way forward is thus not to just willy-nilly advocate for greater college attainment. It's to take a clear-eyed look at education and job/career training needs across the life-cycle. The future surely requires kids with STEM training; it also requires health technicians with AA's who can keep that MRI percolating the way it's supposed to. And child care workers who thoroughly understand how kids learn, and home health aides who know a lot about gerontology.
Much more to say about this so more to come. Next: college access isn't the whole story--it's also about completion.
This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.
I've been telling my kids that a plumber or electrician has a better salary level than a mid-level manager in any business and the satisfaction of knowing that what they did had a positive result (they can see it every day as they leave the job site).
Education yes, but the right education please.
We seemed to have lost that concept in the last decades.
Is the fact that our quality of learning dropped because we require our teachers to be special ed teachers and teacher to the main stream and gifted student?
While my last comment is mostly true, it doesn't have to be like that! With proper training, properly developed curriculum and proper utilization of technology, teachers wouldn't have to spend enormous amounts of time grading papers (they have CLICKERS and SMARTBOARDS that permit instant evaluation, but the time spent developing the lessons is ENORMOUS!), and planning lessons and tweaking them to fit different skill sets. (I forgot one REALLY IMPORTANT ONE...ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT that means that students who need substantial behavioral help GET IT, and it isn't the classroom teacher's responsibility to be a psychiatrist.)
For what they pay teachers, it should be a show up in the morning, give your all and go home to rest and be with your family!
SOME of the problems of funding would be solved if we went to an ALL YEAR PROGRAM...my own preference is for a FOUR DAY ACADEMIC WEEK, with the FIFTH DAY as an enrichment program...Two week vacation at WINTER HOLIDAY, lol, One week for Thanksgiving, One week for spring, Two-Three weeks for summer and the normal MONDAY HOLIDAYS.
The price one pays for his/her education should be commensurate with the ability that that education provides him/her to pay for it while at the same time affording the means of life. But the value of learning is not solely for the money it affords. That is to say, we shouldn’t educate people for the sole purpose of providing labor to feed the economic system we must educate to develop human beings—if we intend to have a humanly developed society.
Union bashing is likely a tactic in support of the desire to privatize the system, to enable profiteering. This will not ensure quality any more than it has ensured the quality of all the products and services we purchase from private corporations. Also blaming teachers (i.e. the worker) for poor quality will not result in improved quality. Yes teachers change student’s lives, but so too does everyone else and everything with which they interact.
The way to a value-added system of education is through an unwavering commitment to quality—period.
So of course the public K-12 system is a mess, but it's just half the story. When you look at how children in private schools do, you then realize "education" in the US is doing just fine. Virtually 100% of private school kids go on to college.
Also, my school district just spent $300,000 for MUSIC TEXTBOOKS and supplementary material for 16 schools. Fully 50% of the songs were PUBLIC DOMAIN, and the program was designed for a music class that met FIVE TIMES A WEEK. I saw children once every four days!
Our district got TEXTBOOKS when what we needed were SMARTBOARD presentations and activities that supported our program! The books for younger students are quite literally too big and heavy for little hands to hold.
Books are obsolete before they're in classrooms and too big/expensive to take home. We needed loose-leaf CHAPTERS in NOTEBOOKS that could be UPDATED ONLINE FOR FREE as needed.
My FAVORITE program (similar to a commercial program called READ NATURALLY) is FREE! Teachers can take any public domain/original material, run a program called OKAPI and it tells you how difficult the passage is, and NUMBERS THE WORDS (in the left margin) so students can practice reading the article over and over and chart improvement. ARTICLES can be about sports, biographies, insects, dinosaurs, plants, literature or whatever! The kids are reading and re-reading material that is teaching them something of value, and enjoying utilizing the MATH skills to compare their own accomplishments.
Only corporations and employers want us to have public funded education. To corporations it makes perfect sense for workers to spend their money on education which then benefits the rich. And of course the more skilled workers there are the more skills employers will demand and the lower the wages will be for the educated. Employers will just keep asking for more and more skills. You can never win at this game. It's foolish to think you can.
The only winners in a world in which it takes a masters in Mathematics to get an entry level job are the educators and corporations.
It was perplexing and annoying at the time, but now I see it was pretty good advice.
What many in the workforce and business community are asking of the schools is not "more education" but do the current job with some level of competence.
And as to unions? There's more here than just "union-bashing". There was a time when teaching was a true profession. Now it's just another 9-to-5 union-label gig. The results show.
You just proved the point of the author
She went into semi-retirement to become a full-time Momma, then as our son grew, began tutoring math out of our home, gradually working it up to a full-time gig, repairing the public schools' shortcomings, one-on-one, one kid (sometimes two or three) at a time. Today, she's back "retired", working as a full-time Grandma; and she has a HUGE following of "math alumni: through Facebook. There are others like her -- all too few -- but they're out there.
MY family members are teachers and many of my friend are teachers. They have their hands full with so many problems including teaching children who don't speak english yet, but once they do they are as intelligent as every other student in their class. I know we need to address our immigration problem but your comments ring of racism and you forget that most of our families were immigrants. BTW there isn't a family more fertile than my Irish side.
It is unfathumable that the worker does all the work to design, build, analyse and interact all business goods and services
But when there is cash to be had. The worker is never invited, but he is expected to do All the Work and Pay for it to boot.
Right after Stock Traders, I would probably list Education for a free ride off the backs worker
Who pays for education, The worker.
And the education result is worse if you hear the pleads for more and more cash. Education does not improve, but Administrative and Teacher salaries rise.
Yet, I never ever heard of teaching HOW TO: study, take tests, improve reading skill, and that math is a closed system that has to be memorised it is not found within nature.
These are all skill I Self Learned after K-12. You can accomplish most with effort of efficiency and effectiveness training should be a must. But then Football, Basketball and Baseball are never out of the scene. Which was my major in K-12.
Notice I have yet to even mention student Motivation, Career selection and planning, living life, relationships, or Self improvement.
It is all about Money and Education does not even teach what they ARE, it is about money.
So much Political Collateral for simply saying, I am for Education.
Not Jobs first and then let education follow the jobs. That is a normal course education and study that follows the money. Money never folows the education. Today we are backwards
Propping up Education and Government work that is perpetuating the recession rather than being part of the solutions. Why the worker should pay for education instead of the NFL or Coporations who use the education for Profit