Radio Silence from Teachers Unions

After near 24 hours, no response yet from my challenge to teachers union bloggers to defend the indefensible--spending billions of dollars of taxpayer's and teachers money on Master's degrees that don't improve teaching. (It's possible ,of course, that Leo Casey is simply in the middle of composing an 8,000-word response and has been held up because he misplaced his copy of "The Quotable Herodotus.")

Let me also officially extend the challenge to anyone from the teacher education community who wants to weigh in. The more the merrier. In the meantime, here are some selections from the Quick&Ed mailbag to tide you over. One former teacher wrote:

It's not only that Masters degrees add no value for high cost, they also are a real pain in the [butt] for teachers themselves, which is why I can't figure out why the unions defend this. As a young teacher, you have to spend money and significant time away from your family AND YOUR JOB to take those classes --- time you could be spending to grade papers, communicate better with parents, help individual kids after school, hone lesson plans, learn from or collaborate with colleagues ... NO ONE benefits from this.

And from a current graduate student:

I am so glad someone finally said this out loud.

I am currently a part-time M.Ed. student, and because my current class (History of American Education & Social Policy) is a requirement fulfillment for both students like me and those teachers who are getting their Masters in Curriculum & Instruction, Elementary Education or Administration & Supervision, I have begun to notice a dividing line between those who are there for the general advancement of personal knowledge (like me) and those who are there because it’s a next step (teachers).

I have the hardest time in the class, where I am so excited to be every Wednesday, understanding why these teachers would choose to spend $2,500 per class to get a degree that they don’t really want or feel that they need. They have said “My principal thought this was a good idea” – they know that it’s not truly going to help them on a day to day basis, but they’re doing it anyway. I don’t want to say that the teachers in my class are greedy or just in it for the pay bump, but there seems to be a disconnect between the passion for learning that they want to impart on their students and their own passion for educating themselves (and I’m certainly not saying that the non-teachers in our class are purely in it for knowledge’s sake – I’d be lying if I wasn’t expecting my degree to give me a pay increase down the line).

I know that I would never make a good teacher, so I am truly grateful for those men and women who are. But why would the union promote actions that aren’t furthering the purpose of providing a great education to those in their member’s classrooms? I just find that really incongruous.

This raises an important point, which is that schools of education do a lot more than train teachers. They also teach about education, and it's perfectly reasonable to think the an in-service teacher would want to learn more about their profession, and could get a great deal out that experience.

The problem is that the current system doesn't allow teachers to make that choice. Instead, it requires them to go back to school, whether they want to or not, in order to get the maximum possible salary. Since teachers aren't paid very well, a lot of them have no option but to slog through a master's degree program that often has little or no connection to either their personal interests or their professional effectiveness.

Again: why do unions, who represent the interests of teachers, not only put up with this, but actively promote it?