I've finally had a chance to read the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future's latest report. It's garnered some media attention but in case you haven't read it, here is the apocalyptic gist (and nothing sells newspapers better, right?):
The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends. Beginners are being driven away by antiquated preparation practices, outdated school staffing policies, and inadequate career rewards. At the end of their careers, accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems. In five years, two-thirds of the teachers we entrust our children to in America's classrooms could be gone.
NCTAF's solution is rather straightforward: "cross-generational teaching teams." These teams would provide space for veteran teachers at the ends of their careers to stay in the classroom part-time as mentors while providing the support and advice needed by beginner teachers that would hopefully inspire them to stay in the classroom longer. This, they argue, solves the problem of losing the expertise and experience of older teachers, takes the immediate stress off pension systems, puts less pressure (human resource and financial) on schools to constantly be recruiting and training new teachers (an expensive endeavor), and would lower beginner teacher attrition rates by giving them better support. Sounds like we can all go home, right? Not so fast.
Their attention to teacher quality over quantity is notable and welcome. For too long, we've emphasized the latter over the former to disastrous results. And as NCTAF is right to point out, some of the highest performing schools use team teaching effectively (although the positive effects might not be as strong as NCTAF would like us to believe). But I'm not sure that team teaching can or should work the way NCTAF envisions it. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that NCTAF is trying to fit a square hole with a round peg--i.e. trying to find a place for retiring teachers when they're really not the problem and keeping them around might make things worse.
Here's the thing: mentor teachers don't have to be 20-30 year veterans. A mountain of research shows that the correlation between teacher effectiveness and experience levels off after about five years in the classroom. (See here for an overview of this conversation.) At the same time, newbie teachers are leaving the classroom right around that time--just when they're becoming their most effective. So why not kill two birds with one stone? Create these teaching teams out of newbie teachers (i.e., first and second year teachers) and 5-6 year "veterans." Not only will these younger veterans have sharper memories of what it was like to be a new teacher, but you might even get them to stay in the classroom longer with the new challenge of a leadership role. Add a monetary incentive to becoming a mentor, like many systems already do for hard to staff schools or subjects, and you'll get lots of volunteers.
And that gets me to the money part of this scenario. NCTAF rightly points out the impending stress on teacher pension systems if all the baby boomer teachers retire at the same time. But their solution--to keep those teachers in the classroom part time as mentors--doesn't solve it, since those teachers are still going to have to retire someday. Putting that day off for a few years doesn't fix the Ponzi scheme that is government "defined benefits." (Mike and Rick talked about this on last week's podcast.) The fact is that the pension system needs some serious reform and somebody is going to get socked by the solution. Either we punish current retirees by cutting their benefits or we take more money out of the pockets of current teachers to fulfill pension obligations. In either case, we'll have to cut benefits of future retirees. It's unlikely that any of these options will go anywhere since they're so politically unpopular but the problem still remains. We can only hope the solution includes turning "defined benefit" systems into 401(k)s. They might be subject to market forces but they're also mobile, which means that teachers who feel pressured to stick around waiting for their big payout can change careers and take their partial pensions with them. Not only does this spread out the pain of having a huge number of teachers retire all at the same time, but it also eases up the problem if older teacher burn out. Sounds like a win-win situation. ??
But pensions are only part of the problem. NCTAF claims that "pay is not the deciding factor on why so many new teachers are leaving." I wish they'd give us some data on this one because I'm simply not convinced. Sure, a starting salary of $47,000 and change (the rates in DC) for an entry level job is great (although you can ask any first year DC teacher how hard they worked for every penny!). The problem is that the system a) rewards the wrong things (like graduate degrees, which have virtually no relationship to teacher effectiveness and are an expensive 2 years out of the workforce) and b) plateaus off at the 10 year mark. I can't speak as a teacher but I can speak as a "young person." The 20-somethings are not enticed by promises of big payouts in 30 years (the exact promise that got so many baby boomers into the classroom in the 50s and 60s, explain NCTAF) and we're not enticed by pay scales that plateau just as we're starting families and buying houses.
I don't know what to tell states straining to pay current teacher retiree benefits but maybe you shouldn't have made promises you can't keep. I can tell you that there is some mobilization around this issue and there's already been some consideration of how changing pay structures might improve teacher quality. NCTAF does get one thing right: there is a huge opportunity for reform here...so what are we waiting for?
Image from Flickr user pic fix.
