Education Trifecta

Every day I receive emails about education issues from a variety of sources. But it’s not everyday that I receive links to three articles that spark the outrage and amazement I felt last Monday. It was an education trifecta.
The first article was on the latest reported failure to teach kids math. The other two articles were about the real focus of Big Ed – teacher pay and professional status. Students aren’t learning math and teachers don’t seem able to apply mathematics to real-world problems dear to them. I think there’s a connection.
Deroy Murdock authored the first article, “Mathgate: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio Caught in Massive Grade Fraud Scandal,” for the American Spectator. NYC public schools have been outed by a group that produced a School Grade Fraud Index, a simple division of the percentage of students who passed their school math classes by the percentage who passed the NY state exam. A “1.00” would be a perfect positive alignment; the higher the number the worse the alignment.
In one Bronx middle school, “93.5 percent of students passed their math classes, but only 2 percent passed the state math exam.” While this was the worst score in the city, nearly 30 schools scored above 10 (e.g., 70 percent passed their math class but only 7 percent passed the state exam).
Mr. Murdock identified many problems with math instruction in NYC. My favorite:
Bronx ninth graders try to learn math from Dan Fendel’s Interactive Mathematics Program Year 1. It contains only one equation and zero “solve for X” problems. But this textbook is stuffed with social-justice propaganda. One homework assignment involves graphing Native American Indian acreage versus how much time it took to break treaties and force these indigenous people from their land.
I bought a used copy of the Teacher’s Guide for IMP Year 1. It is aimed at 9th-graders. Plenty of group work, but no quadradic equations. In a review of IMP, a UC Berkeley mathematics professor observed that “There is a tendency in the text to touch on a new topic, talk around it profusely, but stop short of coming to the main point…” Critically, IMP doesn’t meet the needs of students “who plan to pursue the study of one of the exact sciences, engineering, economics or biology.” So much for our costly emphasis on “college-ready” and STEM.
Speaking of economics, the other two articles, both from Education Week, show either a lack of understanding of basic economic concepts or a complete disregard of them. I’m not sure which judgment is the more charitable.
In “Which States Have the Highest and Lowest Teacher Salaries?” we are presented with a list of average teacher salaries by state produced by the NEA – a teacher union. Who is surprised to learn that teachers on average make more in New York than in Mississippi?
The data is not adjusted for cost of living or purchasing power. In other words, it’s useless for anything but propaganda. (Perhaps to reinforce the point, the article included a helpful link to “How the Strikes and Protests Affected Teacher Salaries.”) In the last paragraph the author admitted that if taking cost of living into account, #1 NY dropped to #17.
The real take-away was supposed to be the chart listing average salaries highest to lowest, with the “national average” bar clearly delineating those states who are below average. It’s like the game we play at annual school district meetings where contract increases are justified in part because – horrors! – we are paying below the regional average. One wonders if teachers grade all their students as “above average.”
In economics, salaries are not based on comparing averages; they are based on supply and demand. But that final part of the trifecta, also in Education Week, ignores economic reality. “Teachers Are Paid Less Than Similar Professionals” is a lesson in misdirection.
The “analysis” (scare quotes) was produced by Economic Policy Institute, “a nonpartisan think tank supported partially by teachers’ unions” (direct quote). How nonpartisan can an assessment be when it’s partially funded by a group that gives 97% of its tens-of-millions in political donations to Democrats?
The author’s bottom line is that “Overall, adjusted for inflation, the average weekly wage of public school teachers has decreased $21 from 1996 to 2018, while the weekly wages of other college graduates rose by $323.” See the misdirection? Are we to believe that “all college graduates” can be considered “similar professionals” to teachers? Think of the number of high-salary professions that didn’t even exist in 1996.
Not only was supply and demand ignored, no attempt was made to define “similar.” Not all college degrees require similar effort; not all majors require similar SAT scores; not all professions compensate excellence similarly. (Most professions aren’t represented by unions and base salaries on degree-attained and time-served.) In most professions, employees are “at will” – what is the dollar value of a teacher’s job protection and defined-benefit pension, for instance?
I’ll leave you to work out the math. I just hope you weren’t taught in NYC using the Interactive Mathematics Program…or by teachers who pass students who clearly haven’t mastered the material.