Elsewhere in Slate's Fixin' It series (and you already read my brilliant contribution on health care, right?), Jim Ryan takes on education, offering one of the clearest reform agendas I've seen in awhile. In particular, his plan for fixing NCLB -- nationalize the tests, give fewer of them, use them to rank schools rather than punish, and don't make them the only criteria for measurement -- is one of the better proposals I've read for the bill. He also talks a bit about making teaching a "prestige profession," which is important. Problem is, like lots of folks who broach this subject, Ryan focuses on Teach For America. But Teach For America is a prestige program -- it recruits among the Ivy Leagues, turns away most of its applicants, and doesn't promise a profession of teaching. The best way to think of TFA is as a highly competitive social justice fellowship. Conversely, the actual profession of teaching admits fairly poor applicants, recruits broadly, and does suggest a profession of teaching. Following the TFA model, then, will require more than a college loan forgiveness program. It will require a separate track, with separate responsibilities, that forces a different level of initial competition, and so attracts applicants from the pool of graduates looking for prestige jobs -- from the pool of graduates who want to brag to their friends that "I got into X." Imagine if you created a parallel teaching track called the Urban Teaching Corps. Teachers in this group would have much higher salaries, could be more easily fired, and would be placed in underserved, urban areas. It would recast teaching, in other words, as a higher wage, more competitive, social justice-oriented profession. It wouldn't supplant the existing track, which would retain the advantages of more geographic mobility, more job stability, and less variable pay -- it would just create a prestige track within the profession, leveraging its connection to social change and community development work. In 2004, John Kerry actually proposed something along these lines but, as we know, he shot himself in the heart to get out of Vietnam (where he never was in the first place), so he never got a chance to implement the program. But it's still a good idea.(Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Dean Terry.) CAN TEACHING BE A "PRESTIGE PROFESSION?"
Elsewhere in Slate's Fixin' It series (and you already read my brilliant contribution on health care, right?), Jim Ryan takes on education, offering one of the clearest reform agendas I've seen in awhile. In particular, his plan for fixing NCLB -- nationalize the tests, give fewer of them, use them to rank schools rather than punish, and don't make them the only criteria for measurement -- is one of the better proposals I've read for the bill. He also talks a bit about making teaching a "prestige profession," which is important. Problem is, like lots of folks who broach this subject, Ryan focuses on Teach For America. But Teach For America is a prestige program -- it recruits among the Ivy Leagues, turns away most of its applicants, and doesn't promise a profession of teaching. The best way to think of TFA is as a highly competitive social justice fellowship. Conversely, the actual profession of teaching admits fairly poor applicants, recruits broadly, and does suggest a profession of teaching. Following the TFA model, then, will require more than a college loan forgiveness program. It will require a separate track, with separate responsibilities, that forces a different level of initial competition, and so attracts applicants from the pool of graduates looking for prestige jobs -- from the pool of graduates who want to brag to their friends that "I got into X." Imagine if you created a parallel teaching track called the Urban Teaching Corps. Teachers in this group would have much higher salaries, could be more easily fired, and would be placed in underserved, urban areas. It would recast teaching, in other words, as a higher wage, more competitive, social justice-oriented profession. It wouldn't supplant the existing track, which would retain the advantages of more geographic mobility, more job stability, and less variable pay -- it would just create a prestige track within the profession, leveraging its connection to social change and community development work. In 2004, John Kerry actually proposed something along these lines but, as we know, he shot himself in the heart to get out of Vietnam (where he never was in the first place), so he never got a chance to implement the program. But it's still a good idea.(Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Dean Terry.) 
