Most of it is general arguments for mayoral control, bolstered by Bloomberg's claims at the beginning about rising test scores in New York City. Whatever you feel about the authenticity of those, I'm most struck by this passage that starts at the :16 mark:
When I came into office we had 12,000 teachers quit on a base of 80,000 every year. Today that's down to 5,000 teachers that quit or retire. In the old days, seven years ago, we couldn't recruit enough teachers to fill those slots. Today between 50 and 60,000 teachers apply for those 5,000 slots.If true, those teacher retention numbers are pretty striking. They say something about teacher satisfaction. And, since it costs a lot of money to recruit and train a new teacher, the district is experiencing some savings there. Not to mention the benefits to student learning of having less teacher turnover. Bloomberg doesn't cite the starting numbers of teacher applicants, but it's a good thing that the district now has a larger pool of applicants to choose from. Instead of evaluating a district leader solely on the basis of student test scores, it would be nice to know more information like this, on the quality of the work force.
8 comments:
Lessee: Klein and Weingarten work for several years on precisely this issue, and mayoral control gets the COMPLETE credit? Hmmn...
I think you just made the point stronger, Sherman. Before mayoral control, there were no obvious "x and y" people you could point to who were working together, or who had the power to do so.
Yeah - it's almost as though a recession had happened or something, forcing people to look for work and hang on to the jobs they had.
But that can't be it. They wouldn't overlook something as obvious as a recession in an effort to give credit to the mayor, would they?
Of course Downes is correct. Just like the last commenter at Eduwonk. Look for the big reasons first. And as with the new graduation stats released today, "Its the economy! Dah!"
NYC just went through an amazing boom, and spent money like crazy including on salaries. Don't draw conclusions until BloomKlein's schools go through the recession.
The recession is irrelevant. I don't have Bloomberg's source here, but the baseline data presumably come from 2002-03, when mayoral control began. We were ending a recession, and unemployment hit 5.8 and 6.0, respectively. The most recent data certainly don't come from 2009--it's still April, so we're talking 2008 unemployment numbers, which were, lo and behold, the same as 2002.
Klein and Weingarten sign, together, massive salary increases - made possible by a booming economy. Yet, only one side gets the credit.
Yet look at your response to Sherman, where you assume that top- down use of power has produced the good (but your buddies accuse Randi for the down side of other parts of the agreements, so again its BloomKlein does the good and Randi does the evil.)
So do you think that all of the new teachers from TFA are just from a spontaneous outburst of idealism, or have people who benefitted from the bogus affluence of Wall Street invested heavily in creating a huge and expensive infrastructure? Are the huge investments by Broad and Klein's and Rhee's patrons not related to the late, lamented boom?
And by the way, had all the billionaires big bucks gone directly to chidren, would we have been able to produce some gains?
All of this - as always - is inextricably related to the economy. All education is inextricably related to the economy, the culture, and other out-of-school factors.
Data-driven "reformers" have yet to prove a lot of things. Their theories/hypotheses on education practice are unproven. Their confidence that successes in some choice schools can be replicated is unproven. Above all, the relevance of "reformers'" ideas to inner city secondary schools remains unproven - and remain dubious. Survive this recession before your listen to the educational wisdom of Joel Klein, of all people.
Where to the 1500 ATR's pushed out of jobs and unplaced Teaching Fellows fit in?
Seems to me like someone should verify or source these numbers to determine whether this entire conversation is even worth having. If the numbers are bunk, then we can forget parceling out credit to anyone.
That said, I find it VERY difficult to believe that a structural reform like mayoral control BY ITSELF could be the reason for such an impact.
Likely a combination of pay, economic factors, working conditions -- probably difficult if not impossible to tease out.
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