In a visit Wednesday to Perry Hall High School in Baltimore County, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he supports pay raises for teachers because more money, he believes, will attract new teachers into the profession and keep veteran teachers in the classroom. The visit was reported in several news outlets, including the paywall-protected Baltimore Sun, but WBAL-TV (NBC affiliate) has video.
If you go to the WBAL-TV Web page, note that one quote was incorrectly attributed to Mr Duncan; it was spoken by a Baltimore County teacher interviewed in the story.
However, the education secretary did say this about where we might find the money to fund the extra pay: “I think one pool of money that I don’t think is well used is federal money—Title II money, professional development money. The same could be said at the state and local level. I think we need to have everything on the table. We shouldn’t have any sacred cows.”
Now, Mr Duncan was preaching to the choir here. Nothing will get more applause than telling the people you’re speaking to that they should earn more money just because of who they are and what they do. For example, Dr Lillian Lowery, Maryland’s state superintendent of schools, said she agreed.
“There are pools of money,” she told WBAL-TV. “We need to look at how we are using those pools of money. Are we still getting the most value from the way we are using it or can we use some of that money to do creative things, as looking at teacher pay?”
The nature of jobs in a new economy
By way of full disclosure, I have to say I work for the Maryland State Department of Education. I don’t work in Dr Lowery’s office, but she and I report to work in the same building when I’m not at a scoring facility in another state.
But even if I didn’t work for MSDE, I would still agree with what she said. Her questions are at the heart of this matter, and there’s an election coming up. If looking at teacher pay will provide real benefits for schools, then I think we can find ways to move some money around creatively.
Money is key. What people seem to care about most in the coming election is the economy, not the quality of public schools, and that’s probably as it should be. Where the economy and schools come together is at the intersection of teacher pay and “getting the most value,” as Dr Lowery put it, for our money in terms of developing creative solutions when budgets tighten.
I can recall late in 2011, we started to look for a replacement for one of my co-workers, who had retired. I got a stack of résumés from HR via my boss. I looked through the stack, and many of them were impressive: doctorates from Harvard, experience in running budget audits for public schools, and some high-end credentials.
But credentials are becoming less the point in the economy these days, and based on our search last year, I realized the field of education is eventually going to have to lose its appetite for general credentials or degrees and go for people who have proven their mastery level of increasingly narrow skill sets.
For example, there’s a law in Maryland concerning anyone who will be a superintendent of one of the state’s 24 districts—local education agencies (LEAs), as we call them: the person has to have three years of experience as a classroom teacher. However, when Baltimore County Public Schools found Dallas Dance and thought he could do the job as the new superintendent, the requirement got waived.
Exceptions are nothing new, as dozens of states are now exempt from certain provisions of the No Child Left Behind accountability law. These exceptions will eventually become the rule, I’m sure, and this will be even more widespread if people like Mr Dance do a good job. It would show those who do the hiring that credentials aren’t so important after all.
People who work at MSDE have also noticed changes at the department, and this is a positive sign that the education field is loosening its grip on the requirement of high-end credentials. We’ve hired a bunch of contractors, computer programmers really, who have very limited experience in the education field. But they have specific skills that we need for certain grants, and the pool of people with teaching experience who also have those skills is severely limited.
That brings me back to my résumé search. Even with a degree from Harvard, applicants couldn’t get an interview if they didn’t have specific skills relating to interpreting certain specialized reports we make heavy use of. And as much as I love my job, I have to point out that it is fairly unique to Maryland. That’s not to say Maryland is God’s gift to education or anything, but we have found some creative ways to make use of people’s skills and apply them to education, people from very diverse backgrounds and training but who have specific skills that are needed.
This is why a computer programmer might find a job in a field when he might not even think to look there—or when most people seeking jobs think state departments of education only hire people who work in the education field.
Well, no. We need people with certain skills, and we find ways to apply those skills to the work of education.
Nor is this saying that non-teachers should be put in front of a classroom; the nature of the economy and, especially, of job hunting is just changing right in front of us. Schools need to be flexible and adjust—or, to use Dr Lowery’s words, get creative.
Much of this is accelerated by technology, but if education holds out for credentials, rather than skills, the field will soon find itself outsourced to providers who neither care about kids nor have any vested interest in their future. The innovators are coming to your neighborhood schools, and they probably didn’t go to Harvard or study education in college. They studied math, science, the humanities, the arts, and the like.
“We have over two million high-wage, high-skills jobs that are unfilled,” WBAL-TV quoted Secretary Duncan as saying. “We, as educators, have to look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘What can do to close that skills gap?'”
The Wall Street Journal wrote in July:
About 31% of 811 small-business owners and chief executives said they had unfilled job openings in July because they couldn’t identify applicants with the right skills or experience, according to a survey by The Wall Street Journal and Vistage International …
About 41% of the 154 manufacturing firms that answered the survey said they couldn’t find applicants with the relevant experience or skills, compared with 30% of the 283 services businesses and 29% of the 56 retail businesses.
In other words, if you want kids to get those “high-wage, high-skills” jobs, get them the skills, and don’t worry so much about the brand of the degree. That’s what employers are saying left and right in today’s economy.
“I feel like even in the best of circumstances, in terms of their academics, there are still students that are more interested in approaching a different career that doesn’t require a college education,” Baltimore County teacher Julie Boyden told WBAL-TV.
Much less a degree from a prestigious institution, right? Especially as M.I.T.x offers free online classes from many of the nation’s best educators. You can’t get an M.I.T. degree for taking the free courses, but you’ll get the skills. And it won’t cost you any money.
Other institutions are following suit, and the trend will only get more extensive in the coming years, especially, as I said, if people who hold certificates from M.I.T.x and the like do a good job. Organizations that do the hiring will start to notice and will care less about the brand of the degree than about the specific and specialized skills people have. That’s the way it’s going where I work, and education is usually slow to adopt workforce innovations.
If we want our kids to be ready for careers as well as college—and we say we do (PARCC, the $160-million test-development behemoth, has “careers” as part of its name)—it’s time to ask ourselves, seriously, What do organizations that actually provide a path to those careers want? Then we should teach that.
