<HTML>I confess that I don't think like an economist. I have only passing familiarity with the theories Doug and Max were citing, and have studied 'public choice' theory only because I felt I had to respond to the arguments it makes about education. [BTW, welcome back Max; hope everything is working out.] From what I do know about the likes of Larry Summers, I have not rushed out and bought his collected works. But thinking like an union organizer and a political theorist, there are some interesting points to be made about teacher quality. Teacher quality is an important issue: the weight of contemporary educational research, contrary to the old determinist ethos of the Coleman reports that social class is the primary indicator of how well a student will do, is that the quality of the teacher is the primary indicator of academic success. Upper class students generally get the better teachers and the better education, of course, so there remains a class component. But if it is the quality of the teacher that is the primary determinant, and if a way is found to put highly qualified teachers in schools which serve poor and working class communities,  one could reasonably expect far more egalitarian results from the educational system. Teaching quality involves, in a general way, two elements: the individual teachers themselves, with their abilities and educational background, and the quality of the professional education they are given, both in preparation for and in ongoing development through their career.  As a general rule, it takes a good, smart individual  approximately three years of full-time teaching, under reasonable teaching conditions, to master teaching fundamentals. _Teacher Backgrounds_ Up until a generation ago, teaching at the K-12 levels, and especially at the K-8 level, was overdetermined by gender and racial ghettoization. Educated women with restricted opportunities in other fields ended up in education; Educated African-Americans with restricted opportunities ended up teaching in largely segregated, de facto as much as de jure, African-American schools. In the context of these social restrictions, and in an profession which attracts many individuals who do not place as a high a premium on maximizing income as one finds in law or medicine, it was possible to obtain a better educated, higher quality of teacher than the prevailing salary and conditions would have otherwise attracted. [A lot of this also holds true for a field such as nursing.] With the advances brought about by the civil rights and feminist movements, opportunities for educated women and educated African-Americans opened up. As a consequence, many of those who would have been a teacher in a previous generation now moved into other fields, and the median of the population of teachers began to shift toward less educated, lower quality teachers. There were some countervailing tendencies here: widespread teacher unionization in the 1960s and early 1970s raised teacher salaries, although by the mid-1970s and the rise of urban fiscal crises, this momentum was largely lost; the Vietnam War, and education deferments, sent many young men into education who would not have otherwise made that choice; and teaching continues to attract a number of highly qualified, well-educated individuals who see it as a vocation. But the long-term secular trend is clear: by almost every conceivable current standard [GPA, SAT scores, concentration in an academic field of study other than the notoroiously weak field of education, quality of academic institution, etc. -- not perfect indicators, to be sure, but they all point in the same direction, and there is no index indicating otherwise], college students going into teaching fall, as a group, into the lower quartiles of the college student population. If you factor out the numbers of teachers who enter the profession out of extra-economic motivation to be in a 'helping' profession, the situation is even more grave than it appears. And you don't need an econometric model to figure that one out. At the bottom of this problem lies the fact that, partly as a result of the devaluation of "women's work" and partly as a result of the devaluation of "nurturing," child-related work [two related problems], teaching in the US is the lowest paid profession among all professions with an equivalent educational background. Both teaching and nursing are now facing dramatic shortages of qualified, licensed personnel, shortages which will increase in the near future. This may provide some leverage to remedy, at least in part, this state of affairs. _Teacher Professional Development_ Now, if it all that mattered in making a good teacher were these background and ability issues, an outfit like Teach for America, with its noblesse oblige approach of recruiting Ivy League graduates to spend a couple of years in ghetto schools, would be making far more of a useful contribution that it actually is. But teaching is a very complex craft, which requires considerable time to learn and master. In this respect, it is important to note that an equally important element in teacher quality involves teacher professional development. Colleges and universities generally treat schools of education as 'cash cows,' using them to subsidize other academic programs. The type of money that is needed to produce a high quality program, along the lines of the professional development school model, is rarely invested. One reason why some of the better college students do not go into education is because they see it, rightly, as an inferior education. As well, school districts invest very little money in the ongoing professional development of teachers. As little as 1% to 3% -- far below that major corporations spend -- of annual operating budgets goes into professional development activities. As a consequence, it ends up being everything we know is poor education: under-resourced, one-shot, and taken out of the context of the actual work.   Clearly, major changes need to be made in teacher education and ongoing professional development to improve teacher quality. Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --</HTML>