--- Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here in California, we're eliminating the teacher > shortage. First, we made > money available to train new teachers in exchange > for a three-year > commitment. A lot of people took advantage of that > over the last few years, > so we had quite a few more teachers available. Now > we're closing the gap > *completely* (and then some) by cutting school > funding, which will eliminate > all of the unfilled positions *and* require schools > to lay off the vast > majority of those whom we just trained. Bingo, no > more teacher shortage. > In fact, now we have a teacher surplus! > Nick
But the largest component of the "teacher shortage" is created by the teacher's unions, not a lack of funding. An example. A few weeks ago I received an (unsolicited) offer to teach history at a very, very elite American private high school. I had to turn it down, unfortunately. This school, however, is so academically successful that it has an average SAT score in excess of 1500 - and admissions are need blind, with full financial aid for any admitted student. Their teachers are, obviously, very well qualified. Practically of them, however, could teach in a conventional public school. Why? Because teacher's unions have created a set of artificial hurdles that have no relevance for teaching skill - taking "education" courses for certification. Just about every education researcher of whom I am aware agrees that these courses teach nothing useful. What they do, however, is restrict the supply of available teachers, and by doing so, they create an artificial pressure to increase the salaries of members of the teacher's unions. This isn't malicious - it's what any "closed shop" union will do, just like guilds in Medeival Europe. It's the responsibility of the government to prevent this from happening, and if you really want to fix the teacher shortage, that would be a very good place to start. The single largest advantage that private schools have over public schools - and it is a testament to public school teachers that the very best American public schools, like Stuyvesant, Jefferson, or Blair (my alma mater) are academically as good as, if not better than, the most elite American private schools - is that they can freely select teachers from people with academic qualifications, not simply the artificial ones imposed by the unions. One other note - at the last Democratic National Convention, IIRC _40%_ of the delegates were members of the teacher's unions. I leave people to draw their own conclusions on how this affects the Democratic Party's position on educational issues... Gautam __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
