[Vision2020] MSD Pay and Tenure--a reply

[Ted Moffett]

Dale and Others:

Parental involvement is a critical factor in a child's education.  I won't 
list facts and figures (this is not a research paper) but most people would 
consider this assertion obvious.  And given this assumption,  I think one of 
the best arguments for sending a child to a private school is that the 
parents pay for this education directly out of their pocket (unless there 
are vouchers or grants etc.), and therefore are motivated to be involved in 
the education of their child, to get their money's worth, as it were.  Or 
maybe this is backwards:  the fact that parents pay for a private school is 
evidence they were more involved with their child's education to begin with.

Either way, I believe if you take two groups of children of identical 
potential, and put each group in the same school, with all variables equal 
except one group has parents who basically ignore the child's education, and 
the other group has parents who read to and with their children every day, 
enthusiastically discuss ideas with them, and help them with their homework 
every night, you would see a major difference between the two groups in 
educational performance.  Of course I am assuming someone else is not giving 
the child of the neglectful parents a lot of educational attention outside 
of school.

Therefore one of main causes of the difference in performance as measured on 
students test scores between private and public schools is due to this one 
variable of parental involvement.  The actual quality of the education in 
private vs. public schools does not explain the whole difference between the 
measured performance of the students.  Might not some of the test score 
results of students in public schools in recent years be due to the 
increasing number of families with both parents working who have less time 
to be involved with their child's education?

If you took all the children from public schools and put them in private 
schools and vice versa, and measured their performance years from then, I 
believe you would see the public schools performance as measured on test 
scores go up, and the private schools performance go down.  And not solely 
due to the fact that the private schooled children might be better educated 
at the start of the experiment, or because the pool of students in private 
schools is skewed towards a congenitally brighter group, or from a wealthier 
background, which are all important variables to consider, but in large part 
because the group of children in private schools have parents who are much 
more involved in their child's education.

One of the other variables that influence the differences in makeup of 
private school children compared to public school children is the fact that 
private schools are not forced to educate every child that shows up at the 
door.  They can reject children that are disruptive or perform poorly, or 
are handicapped, children that the public schools must attempt to educate, 
with only the most extreme cases being expelled.  This variable clearly 
skews the performance of the public schools in a disadvantageous manner.  
Some of the disruptive students who perform poorly are probably influenced 
by a lack of nurturing parental involvement in their life, so this variable 
in part just leads us back to my main point.

I don't doubt many of the facts you present about MSD spending, Dale.  My 
experience in the MSD revealed some serious faults with the public 
educational system, including teachers of questionable skill with 
comfortable tenured jobs!   But I think you overlook other variables that 
weaken your case that the public schools are a bloated entrenched liberal 
bureaucracy that wastes money without putting education first.

There are reasons why the public schools might need to spend more money per 
child than a private school, valid reasons that address educational needs 
that the private schools do not address, such as attempting to educate 
neglected children whose parents look at school as state subsidized day 
care, or busing children to school from remote rural areas, or dealing with 
seriously disadvantaged or handicapped students, or funding a football team 
that travels all over Idaho, a football team I might think to be a waste of 
money, but that supports activities many parents and youth and the community 
wants as part of MSD.  Another factor to consider is that the public 
schools, being tax supported government institutions, need an added layer of 
bureaucracy to deal with all the reporting requirements and documentation, 
etc. imposed on them.  If you looked at all the expenses connected to all 
the programs and services and administrative costs that public schools 
incur, this partly explains why public education is more costly per child 
than private in some cases.

Doing an exacting item by item cost comparison between, say, Logos in Moscow 
and the MSD, would reveal, I believe, that there are programs that MSD 
offers that do drive up costs compared to Logos, such as the Moscow Bears 
Football team, but that this program and others are ones the community 
wants.

As far as salaries for public school teachers and administrators being too 
high, I believe the argument over this can cut both ways.  Of course you can 
point to schools where the teachers do a good job on a salary that is equal 
to or below the average salary at MSD.  So why increase teacher salaries?
Because the cases of some schools getting by with low paid teachers does not 
prove that paying higher salaries will not attract more qualified and 
motivated teachers to the teaching profession which could improve public or 
private schools.

You hear it often stated, at the U of I, in the corporate world, etc. that 
the justification for paying the U of I President, or the deans of certain 
colleges, or the CEOs of some corporations, the huge salaries or stock 
options or golden parachutes etc. is that it's the only way to get the best 
people for the job.  Odd how this argument seems to be abandoned by some 
when looking at the salaries of some other professions, teaching among them.

When the best and brightest can become a lawyer, a doctor, a statistician or 
a computer engineer, etc. and earn far more than ANY public school teacher 
in Idaho within a few years of entering their profession, do these people 
favor teaching in the public schools as a option?  When our capitalist 
economic system financially rewards the best and the brightest far more for 
other professions than teaching, what does this say about the priority given 
or the respect shown by our society for the profession of teaching?

I know you can quote average professional salaries and claim that teachers 
in Idaho are reasonably well paid in comparison.   But this ignores the fact 
that a lawyer or doctor or computer scientist who is among the best and 
brightest, and at the top of their profession, can earn way more than ANY 
public school teacher in the state of Idaho, no matter how long they teach.  
This fact is well known, so I need not give facts and figures.

The best and brightest in our universities, when looking at maximizing their 
future financial success, almost never consider going into teaching in a 
public school, unless they have some other side venture they might be 
working on to supplement their income.  "There's no money in it" they will 
say!!!!!!!!!!This well known fact weakens your thesis that public school 
teachers are overpaid, and raises serious questions regarding your thesis 
that raising public school teaching salaries will not result in attracting 
better qualified, brighter teachers who can improve public schools.

Ted


>.
>
>As they say in California: "yea, uh-huh, whatever".
>
>The argument just continues to fall apart from there:
>
> >Just like vouchers are way out for people not to work
> >with the community to better the local educational system.
> >With vouchers, they can relieve themselves of the responsibility
> >of working in the community by benefiting from the labor of others
> >who worked to make their community a better place with better
> >schools.
>
>This is also a *very* interesting argument. If there were vouchers, just
>*where* would those kids go to school? In the local community (as opposed 
>to
>Donovan's thinking, I guess, of bussing them out of state).
>
>It's absolutely *ridiculous* thinking that the only way you are going to 
>get
>community involvement is by having government schools. That's absolutely
>backwards from reality.
>
>As has been pointed out many times, competition in education drives prices
>down and quality up. Monopolies are always the worst possible option.
>
>What the liberals are *really* afraid of is that parent will have 
>educational
>choice -- and parents may not choose what the liberals are feeding.
>
>This would probably only *really* hit home if every MSD parent had to write 
>a check for $1,000 every month of the school year (since the cost at MSD is 
>over $8,000 per child). I think if parents knew what was being charged for 
>the education they are getting, there would be quite the little uproar.
>
>Best,
>Dale Courtney
>Moscow, Idaho

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