The Unions Come Clean

Over at EdWise, Leo Casey finally reveals the answer to the Master's degree mystery. It's well worth reading, because Leo describes exactly what's wrong with teacher policy today. But first, a few house-cleaning items:

Leo alleges that the Clotfelder, Ladd, and Vigdor (CLV) study cited in the previous post refutes the findings and recommendations in the Education Sector paper Frozen Assets. Nonsense. Frozen Assets said, "while salaries for teachers typically increase throughout their careers, research suggests that teacher effectiveness in the classroom does not increase on a similar trajectory."

That is precisely what the CLV study says:

Compared to a teacher with no experience, the benefits of experience rise monotonically to a peak in the range of 0.092 (from model 4) to 0.119 (from model 5) standard deviations after 21-27 years of experience, with more than half of the gain occurring during the first couple of years of teaching.

The study found that teachers gain more effectiveness in the first two years than in the entire rest of their career. Yet experience-based salary schedules increase pay on more or less a straight line from year 1 to year 30, i.e. not a "similiar trajectory."

Leo notes that in states like New York, Master's degrees are required for teachers to gain full certification, so it's reasonable for unions to want teachers to be paid for the credential. Sure--except last time I checked, which was when I worked on education policy for a state legislature, teachers unions wield a great deal of influence over education policy in state legislatures. Or is all that lobbying money being wasted? That's why I originally asked why unions don't go to the "bargaining table and/or state legislature" to fix the Master's degree problem.

But then Leo actually does give the answer, which is worth quoting in full:

There is, morever, an important educational reason for teacher unions to support the retention of the Masters degree requirement, beyond the concerns of fairness and reasonableness. Teacher unions are avid supporters of the full professionalization of teaching, and we understand that every profession needs a rigorous induction process, including a full foundational education. All of the significant and powerful professions in American life, such as law and medicine, require a graduate education as an entry gate-keeper into the profession. Our problem is that far too many undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation programs in schools of education fall far short of professional teaching standards, and do precious little to prepare novices for the challenges of teaching. If teaching is to advance as a profession, and if the quality of American education is to be improved significantly, the quality of teacher preparation programs must also be dramatically improved. Rather than eliminating the Masters degree requirement for teaching licensure, we must make it a more meaningful and useful part of an essential teacher education. That option may not be a prohibitive favorite at the races, but it certainly beats a bet on a dead horse.

If, in the future, you're ever trying puzzle through why a particular teacher policy issue is so irrational and hard to resolve, go back and read this paragraph. The "professionalism" agenda is so vital that it takes precedence over "concerns of fairness and reasonableness." Sure, the teacher preparation programs are doing a bad job (not just at providing in-service Master's degrees; Leo helpfully expands the indictment to preparation of novice teachers as well). Sure, the prospects for improving them seem grim. Sure, this sucks for teachers. But there are more important things to consider.

The professionalism agenda is an artifact of the iron triangle of teacher policy that exists in every state, with teachers unions, schools of education, and state certification boards sitting at the vertices. There's nothing wrong with professionalism as an idea, but in the case of education, research keeps showing that the tools of teacher professionalism--degrees, state certification, most professional development programs, etc.--have little or no impact on teacher effectiveness. That shouldn't be surprising, since the various processes and organizations in questions have been deliberately disconnected from any objective evidence of student learning.

Without being so grounded, they have inevitably become completely self-justifying. Therefore, the only defense against charges of ineffectiveness is to defend the idea, institutions, and processes of professionalism as ends unto themselves. Just as student interests in education are too often subordinated to adult interests, teacher interests are too often sacrificied to larger organizational interests.

Mystery solved.

Update: Sherman Dorn provides an interesting historical perspective on the meaning of professionalism and how it relates to teaching and public education.