[lbo-talk] Joanne Barkin: Poverty and US International School Rankings

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Mon Jan 31 10:26:42 PST 2011


On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:


> On Mon, 31 Jan 2011, Alan Rudy wrote:
>>
>> Without suggesting that there's not very much merit to this argument,
>> because there is a great deal of merit to it, the situation on this front
>> isn't as bad as it was before the Supreme Court determined that using local
>> property taxes to fund education was unconstitutional. Where things get
>> messed up is - as I understand it - that per student funding is done at the
>> state level in almost all states but that this applies only to instructional
>> costs. In terms of buildings, facilities and other infrastructures, whether
>> or not local millages pass dictates the physical and technical structure and
>> quality of schools and extracurriculars and this matters no little bit.
>>
>
> Fascinating. So are high school teachers in Tenafly, New Jersey paid the
> same as high school teachers in Englewood or Newark? With the same average
> class sizes? And the resulting differences in teacher credentials is simply
> because all working conditions outside salary are so much nicer and easier
> in a rich town? There aren't any bonus, pension, sabbatical etc. loopholes
> around this?
> Michael
>
> You ask a really interesting question. I'd imagine the situation is wildly
uneven. On the one hand, I'd be willing to bet that the teachers union makes efforts to limit the variability of teacher pay but only succeeds to a limited extent but that in general teacher pay is at least as much impacted by seniority as it is by community. On the other hand, in high end/high tech/oh-so-professional Berkeley Heights, the majority if the teachers were married women from Berkeley Heights, New Providence, Summit or Chatham, women who provided a second and secondary income to their families which could easily serve to keep wages down relatively independent of the quality of the instruction. The difference in credentials surely arises as much because Berkeley Heights, Tenafly, etc. can cherry pick young teachers with better credentials because they'd rather work with better students and with better facilities and then you get a really nice feedback loop where "better" schools in "better" communities with "better" students do "better" for their kids but not necessarily for higher pay. But, I don't have the numbers at my disposal. Alternatively, it used to be that California districts had to pay much higher wages to bilingual teachers working in lower income areas in order to get anyone to teach there and I knew teachers with a decade of teaching in Santa Cruz or San Lorenzo Valley who - despite the rewards of additional classes/MAs - were far from especailly financially set.

In any event, my point was more that the situation's been moderated since the era of local property tax-funded education, not that education's funded equally. Of course, a key factor is that lower income communities have really taken it on the chin since the Supreme Court decision so that even with equivalent per pupil expenditures these communities wouldn't be likely to generate similar results to that of more prosperous communities in any event.



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