Or get a pm from the fridge a new foundation for the Humanities this is with good reason. From low pay and large classes of autonomy just injured more and more cuts so we're seeing a lack of resources and unprecedented levels and how high teacher turnover in low morale effects are kids you know what does it mean in a school if a fist to a quarter of the full time teachers leave every school year plus the consequences for the country have an equal education inequality is the Achilles heel. And that will not correct. This country for many decades to come. All this and more today on. First. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Jim Hawk Forecasters are warning that hurricane Harvey will be a major life threatening storm when it makes landfall late Friday or early Saturday the National Hurricane Center urging residents on the Texas Gulf Coast to complete emergency preparations N.P.R.'s Greg Allen reports several communities are ordering evacuations the mayor of Corpus Christie told residents in low lying areas to consider leaving but stopped short of ordering a mandatory evacuation officials in Iran's us Refugio and some pretty c.e.o. Counties have ordered residents to leave while companies have pulled workers from offshore rigs and begun shutting down some refineries the main concern with hurricane Harvey is flooding the storm is expected to bring a $6.00 to $12.00 foot storm surge to an area from Pottery Island to Sergeant Texas Forecasters say Harvey is likely to stall as it makes landfall dumping $15.00 to $25.00 inches of rain on the Texas coast and as much as 35 inches in some areas Greg Allen n.p.r. News the trumpet ministration is moving ahead with plans to reduce the size of certain national monuments that protect large amounts of public land from mining and other development N.P.R.'s Kirk Siegler reports the Interior Department has completed a sweeping review of the boundaries of 27 national monuments this review is partly spurred on by pressure from Utah Republicans including Congressman Rob bishop who has lobbied the Trump administration from day one for more state control of the u.s. Public land this is about people as well and the impact of an increasingly larger and restricted monument designations on the people who feel their voices and perspectives have been ignored in the process interior secretary Ryan Zinke has insisted this review isn't part of a broader g.o.p. Push to transfer u.s. Public land to state control after its review though the administration is not giving many specifics about which of the monuments may shrink Native American tribes and conservationists are already threatening to sue Kirk Siegler n.p.r. News the public for. Between President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shows no sign of abating the president again took to Twitter to criticize McConnell for failing to lead Republicans in the repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is playing down the notion of a growing rift we're disappointed that Obamacare they failed to get it repealed and replaced but at the same time President Trump has worked with Leader McConnell to reach out to other members and to work on those shared goals and we're going to continue to do that when the Senate comes back from recess Sanders also said the White House is committed to making sure Congress raises the nation's debt limit even as the president described the looming legislative process as a mess on Wall Street Thursday stock indexes tick lower the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 28 points the s. And p. 500 closed down 5 the Nasdaq composite fell 7 points this is and be our news. The State Department is offering a few more details about mysterious health attacks on diplomats in Cuba N.P.R.'s Michele Kelemen reports on how many Americans have been affected the incidents began last year when u.s. Officials based in Havana reportedly started experiencing headaches and hearing loss c.b.s. News reports that medical records show some Americans suffered mild traumatic brain injuries while State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert isn't confirming that she is offering a bit more insight we can confirm that at least 16 u.s. Government employees members of our embassy community have experienced some kind of symptoms now it says the incidents have stopped but the investigation is ongoing She says the u.s. Hasn't found a piece of equipment or anything that might have caused this Michele Kelemen n.p.r. News Washington Florida has put a man to death with an anesthetic never used before in a u.s. Lethal injection the state carried out its 1st execution in more than 18 months Thursday evening on an inmate convicted of 2 racially motivated murders 53 year old Mark assayed died following 3 drug and Jackson that began with the anesthetic the u.s. Navy has released the names of the one sailor who died and 9 others who remain missing after the u.s.s. John s. McCain collided with an oil tanker near Singapore divers recovered the remains of electronics technician 3rd Class Kenneth Aaron Smith The Navy says the missing soldiers are from Missouri Texas Maryland Ohio New York Connecticut and Illinois I'm Jim hock and p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Georgia gun Foundation working to make Cleveland and northeast Ohio more globally competitive livable sustainable and just more information available at gun Foundation dot org and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It had happened within a school year. So many. Changes that had taken so much out of teaching This is from a 1950 s. Documentary on classroom overcrowding it shows that 60 years later not too much has changed teachers today face even bigger classrooms and they do it with less less funding lost support and less control over their classroom perhaps it's no surprise that many teachers are deciding to leave the profession they don't. How does the teacher explain the reasons for resigning. I'm Sara McConnell And today on with good reason we bring you the 5th in our special series on education an inequality. Look at the formidable obstacles faced by classroom teachers every day from standardized testing to terrible pay to a loss of autonomy in the classroom and we'll hear the reasons teachers give for leaving the profession we begin with the story of Oklahoma teacher Shawn Sheehan Here's associate producer John last. John Sheehan was Oklahoma's state teacher of the year but as of this fall Sean hsien won't be a teacher in Oklahoma at all. Instead he's going to be 3 hours south in Fort Worth Texas. To understand why Oklahoma's former teacher of the year is leaving the state let's go back to when he 1st won the award. My role is Oklahoma's teacher of the year was to travel and speak around the state that Sean and there were 2 main audiences that I spoke with one was folks who were interested in becoming teachers and so my role there was moving them around encouraging them that they had made the right choice to teach and then the 2nd audience was current teachers it was easy to convey my enthusiasm for this profession that I love the harder part was talking financials the starting salary for teachers in Oklahoma is a little over $31000.00 a year that's about $20000.00 last than the average college grad starting salary Sean found himself in the awkward. Position of trying to pump up new graduates to enter a profession that made it hard to make ends meet and the terrible pay wasn't the only problem with being a teacher in Oklahoma in fact it wasn't even the main problem Shawn says that when he was traveling the state and speaking to teachers my perspective on what was going on in education in the state of Oklahoma grew immensely we're seeing a lack of resources and unprecedented levels we were having so many positions cut supports after being cut we're doing more with less and with more and more students in our classrooms Sean always thought he'd stay in Oklahoma and train change things for educators he even ran for state Senate on a platform of greater funding for schools but he lost to a candidate who ran on school choice then about 8 months ago Sean had a baby Sean's wife is an educator too and between their 2 salaries they were just scraping by and so I am making the decision that is best for me and my family I mean as soon as I cross the border I will immediately be making a salary that's higher than a number I could ever see after even 32 years of teaching in the state of Oklahoma and to be clear that's not a fortune more like a living wage. Shawn says when he made his decision public a lot of other teachers who quit or moved away came out of the woodwork to support him he says teachers tend to leave the state with their heads down there was a complicated decision for sure when it came with much heartache to be completely honest to go from representing the state as one of the kind of highest awarded teachers to almost a martyr of sorts. The hardest thing is there are there are faces of students that I can picture right now that I had just this last year who when I told them that I was leaving their eyes kind of droughts they. They they look down at their feet you now on they don't know what to think and yet one student had said Wow Sarah will be 12 teacher I now that's not coming back. Oklahoma's teacher shortage continues just last month the Board of Education approved $220.00 m. Urgency teaching certificates almost 3 times as many as this time last year. That was what could raise an associate producer John last speaking with Oklahoma State teacher of the Year for 2016 Shawn she and sadly she and story is not remarkable Every year thousands of teachers across the country make the decision to leave the profession but low salaries are only one part of the equation Richard Ingersoll is a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and an expert in the reasons teachers quit their jobs Richard America is facing its 1st major teacher shortage since the ninety's is the shortage of teachers because they're leaving the profession or because we're not generating enough new teachers in the schools it's both because of the recession the hiring of teachers dropped dramatically and there was even layoffs this is between away to another 12 and so enrollments in the teacher training teacher education programs dropped but as in the past the biggest factor behind the demand and the difficulty filling classrooms with qualified teachers is turnover is teachers. Departing teaching way before retirement is that mostly because wages are too loud No it's not the data clearly show that salaries and benefits are not the only nor the main reason why teachers depart from their schools there's a whole host of working conditions which bother teachers enough that they either leave teaching or they switch schools what's the worst What do they hate the mast Well one of the biggest issues there are several but one of the biggest issues is how much voice to teachers have and the key decisions in the building that affect their jobs and related to that the issue of how much discretion and leeway and autonomy are we going to give them within their classrooms Why do you teach your skill they don't have power and authority they are the solo rulers in the classroom right well yes and there is this all notion that the teacher can close the classroom door and do exactly what they want and ignore the directives from on high but particularly in an area of testing an accountability that is not true it never was true whatever you do in the classroom is very much shaped by these other constraints I mean the time you have the curriculum materials you have how much authority do you have to discipline your students with testing the idea is we're going to we're going to get in there where you know invade their classroom and find out just how much your students are learning and we're going to hold you accountable for it it was very one sided we increased the pressures the accountability the scrutiny of teachers but we did not for the most part increase the the tools the time the autonomy the resources the rewards the training except try to sort of help them and reward them for meeting the high bar you taught at one time and you left the profession after 6 years and it wasn't so much because you lacked autonomy. Well that was though that was a gripe of mine that was a complaint that I I was kind of shocked I 1st began my teaching career in Western Canada I was living out there after college and taught in the Canadian public schools for a while and then moved back to East I grew up near Philadelphia and I was shocked the job was very different there at least in the schools in which I taught you had a lot you were something of a professional one here you had her little and if you tried to voice things sometimes you were just told to shut up what's a small thing that was frustrating that you really didn't have autonomy with here but you did there well one issue as this thing we call out of field teaching that's where a teacher is assigned to teach subjects that they don't have any background and it doesn't fit their degree or their teaching license or both and I'd never encountered that in Canada when I came here it seemed to be the norm in both public and private schools 2 days before school started get a memo from the principal you know Mr Ingersoll where we're dropping your your senior elective in world problems and you know you'll be teaching 2 sections in algebra town you know that I've never taught before I didn't have a clue how to do it yeah I like to think I did an Ok job teaching algebra but frankly you know the kids. Algebra is tough to teach and those who are some back around and I'm sure did a much better job than I ultimately hurts the students in my case it was very frustrating it was one of the issues that drove me out what's the turnover rate in the teaching profession and who have you found in your research is most likely to leave the n you'll turn over rate is 16 a 17 percent or so and it's gone up slightly over the last couple decades some of those are about half of those are getting out of teaching together in about half are going to other schools. And those rates are relatively high compared to many other occupations and professions What about new teachers will has that rate new teachers are amongst the highest somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of those who come into teaching are gone within 5 years and we've done this research in the last couple years and we found that minority teachers quit it distinctly significantly higher rates than non-minority teachers this is a very important finding because there's been this big concern the last couple decades that we have a minority teacher shortage 2 thirds of the states have minority teacher recruitment initiatives and there's been a lot of success it turns out the numbers of minority teachers over the last couple of decades have more than doubled there's been sort of an unheralded success story but there's a huge bot. Minority teachers have been coming in at faster rates but they've also been leaving at faster rates are there any models that come to your mind of schools that have done a good job of retaining their minority teachers but there are small handful of these initiatives that do recruitment and retention there follow these candidates in they try to give them some support in the 1st few years those are where things need to go as far as improving the minority teacher shortage does the teacher shortage hurt poorer schools more than it hurts the wealthy ones yes back to where you asked me earlier where of the rates of turnover of teachers I kind of gave you the annual rate across the nation but what that overall rate masks is the huge differences between different types of schools and the rate at which they lose teachers and unfortunately the more disadvantaged the school the higher the poverty level the higher the teacher turnover levels it's not equally distributed all and fact we calculated this that almost half of the outflows of teachers every year teacher turnover across the whole nation occurs in only a quarter of the schools it's highly concentrated and that must be so disruptive to learning Yes What's interesting is when I 1st started doing this research a couple decades ago it was hard to find anyone who'd looked at the possible costs and consequences of the high levels of turnover in the teaching occupation you know what does it mean in a school if a 5th to a quarter of the full time teachers leave every school year at the most the at the end of the school year I mean what does that mean to sort of the the coherence of the place and running the place and having any kind of ongoing sense of community and besides money besides the cost of high levels of turnover there's all kinds of costs and. Consequences that we're only just now starting to understand and do research on so there's a wide gap in teacher salaries also rich schools pay high poor schools pay low that is correct so the United States is a little different compared to many other nations we have this thing called local control we have 13000 some school districts and a lot of the revenue for k. Through 12 education constant local property taxes to this day that's one of the factors behind the huge differences in the salaries one of the results is that there's a lots of flows of teachers each and every year between school districts the numbers moving from poorer to more affluent districts is 4 times than the reverse So stepping back and looking at the high turnover rates in the teaching force in general do you have some thoughts about what our best practices might be to help alleviate that when I was a schoolteacher it was what we call the old sink or swim model. You got the job the principal gave you a pattern the back gave you the key to your classroom and that was it you were on your own and some made it and some didn't and this is one of the factors behind those very high rates of attrition of quitting amongst beginning teachers that we mentioned earlier so there's been a lot of thought given into this and in the last couple decades has been a growth support initiatives support activities for beginning teachers having a match or having a veteran teacher given some time off and assigned to some beginning teachers or a beginning teacher to help them learn the ropes 1st survive and then succeed these beginners that get this kind of support does it make their classroom teaching better does it show up in improve students' scores does it help their int retention and we have now a number of studies that show that yes there's positive effects of these types of programs so that's one thing that we now have a solid research base showing that it helps beginning teachers helps their classroom teaching help student achievement their retention. Richard Ingersoll is a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. If classroom teachers want respect and autonomy more than anything else how can schools change to keep them happy it turns out we've had an answer to this question since the 1970 s. When one radical educator in East Harlem experimented with the school governed by its teachers Deborah Meier helped found the small schools movement with her school at Central Park East now she's an outspoken advocate for involving teachers and students in the decisions that affect their classrooms Deborah you are one of the most prominent thinkers on the subject of teacher governance but everyone starts somewhere and for you it was as a substitute teacher in Chicago in the 1960 s. What were your 1st impressions of the work of an educator it was the most humiliating job I had ever experienced not only with the children treated without much respect of the adults in the building work either and that was a shock to me. Help us understand what sort of experience children were getting in the public schools of the 1960 s. Well my children went to public schools in New York during a very difficult period in the late sixty's and when I went to see the principal there to complain to him about some modest violence on the staircases he's told me that well my child shouldn't be going to this school this school was not meant for people like you it was a little bit like a prison they were waiting for a riot. 3 children out numbered are several It was that kind of tension looking back on it do you think that it would have been possible as a substitute or a young new teacher to have made a difference in an environment like that yes I think under the worst of circumstances some people manage to do amazing things but we can't build a system for the few 1000000 children on the basis of adults who are miracle workers when you did have your own classroom you used it to develop what you called an open classroom model what do you mean when you say open classroom I guess it means open to the children's interests. I'm told that they are was a post World War 2 development in England in which the teachers having spent the war time in a relationship with children that was very different side of the children were interesting right and why not have an interesting place for adults and children to work together and uncover the world rather than cover it. When I took the job then as a morning kind of garden teacher that's what I did I just created a room that was as interesting to me as I hoped it would be to children and it turned out I was right the children were interested in sand and water and paints and clay and books and beautiful books were for a boy and left to their own devices so to speak with an teacher who carefully orchestrated things. Children had enormous attention spans and low income black children had strong and then trysting vocabularies and stories to tell them. And they were full of curiosity and they were butting intellectuals do you think of yourself as creating the small schools movement in New York City Well what I think is that I I saw that small schools was the norm and most startled by how large public schools tend to be how large are we talking about where the schools you encountered in New York among the big ones in New York poem and preschools are between 801500 high schools $3004.00 House and so the smallness is something that and it makes it easier to know each other and to exchange ideas together and for the staff to sit around a table together and talk about what's going on in their school. Besides which it was frequently the only way you could get more autonomy and it was in a way an accident New York some superintendent new young superintendent came to East Harlem. He came to see me and said Would you like to have your own school in a park of one of the existing school buildings and I jumped at the chance and started school which we called Central Park East in East Harlem which was largely entirely low income minority community most probably 6070 percent Latino give us a feeling for the kind of experiences students and teachers would have had and something that wasn't one of these small schools and by contrast what they experienced in the small school. Well enough in a large school you didn't spend much time professionally talking with your colleagues you never saw your colleagues classrooms. And you pretty much kept what you were doing. To yourself especially if you might possibly be doing something different them you were mandated to do and if there was discussion between teachers about professional man matters it was one that was organized by the principal and something the principal thought was important and was dominated by the principal. Another thing you've said about calving teachers more ownership of decision making and collaboration was that in the smaller schools a core of value is the teacher governance itself could be it could be the core value that's what I discovered didn't have to be but in the very large school it's very hard to create an environment where teachers are involved in decision making it's possible to run a direct democracy in a small school another thing you've written about the value of teacher governance is that then having this small school where a group of teachers can be more involved in self governance young people the students get to see what a democratic community looks like you've taken the words out of my mouth. Yes I know of no other institution we've set up that with the intention of teaching democracy and our public school system it seems to me it's at the heart of why we created public education and why we need to continue to new it in 2000 the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law what impact did you see that have on the public schools that were seeking self governance. Well it made it hard to focus on anything but test scores as a measure of whether something works and for other reasons I had become an expert on test scores and I knew that they were a measure of family wealth not a measure of student intelligence is that true I mean yes you mean that strongly not you know hinting at that no no I there are one of the best ways if you want to find out how wealthy families were give them a standardized test and there will be such as exceptions there's measurement error but on the whole it will track from S.A.T.'s down to 2nd grade tests it will track their family wealth but you know it was also observed because of the nature of the test you can't get better I mean one individual can but the point of the tests are to rank order and just as the children if I get the children who line up in the playground faster there will still be exactly the same number of children at the end of the line and the 1st beginning of the line there will always be a bottom 5 percent. It's an example of like disrespect for k. 12 education that we can measure whether it works in such a blatantly dishonest way when you think back on classes of kids you've had where under other circumstances they might have been consigned to a dull prison like school existence that so many children experience what's your best recollection of what kind of difference you can really make to kids who are otherwise consigned to really terrible school experiences one thing that comes to mind is we had a very good record of getting kids into colleges and at one point since since their scores were not unusually high I did some interviewing of the college people as to why they were so friendly to our kids and one of the reasons was that they knew how to talk with adults they felt comfortable sharing and discussing and having a direct personal relationship between themselves and and academic interviewer They seemed like interesting people and affect the notion that you have a right to find School interesting and life interesting. I think had an influence young man came back to see his 6th grade teacher and said to her I'm I'm doing fine financially was working as a contractor he said but you know I'm lost interest I'm bored with my work and I remember you said that we should have interesting lives so I won't talk to you about what else I might. That was a sign of success Yeah what advice would you give educators send it ministry of hers who would dearly love to create a robust public education system that supports teachers and students but they don't know where to start. Well 1st of all they have to decide what they're for and I would like them 1st do I wish 1st they would realize that they are the only institution in the world that young people live in that is that might teach them what democracy is and if they think democracy is of any importance to them or the rest of us that's what they should ask themselves with with this school look like unfortunately there are some roadblocks to that that are legal and institutional they don't have any power in a school teachers so that's what I would like to convince the union the next contract should be a one page contract and the 2nd page should say and the rest of this should be decided by teachers on the site. It would be great I don't know what what price we're afraid of paying I don't know why that would be so hard to do well Deborah Meier thank you for sharing your insights with me and with Katrice Thank you. Deborah Meyer has been working in public education as a teacher principal writer and advocate since the early 1960 s. She's the founder of several schools including the Central Park East public school in New York and the mission school in Boston. This is with good reason well the right path. * Welcome back to with good reason I'm Sarah McConnell. Controversy over teacher assessment has swirled in the last decade as more and more emphasis was put on test scores to judge teacher effectiveness last year a teacher in New York sued and won saying a system tying her evaluation to students course had misjudged her abilities. So what makes a good teacher is it good test scores and if not how can we tell if a teacher is good or bad my next guest is Linda Darling Hammond She's president and c.e.o. Of the learning Policy Institute and professor of education emeritus at Stanford Linda says overhauling teacher assessment is key to improving schools and it starts way before students are given standardized tests she says it starts with better entry exams for would be teachers. What's really important when you're building a strong profession to have good training and evaluation on the way into the profession because what you want to do is enable people to come in and be competent right away as we do in medicine in nursing in law in engineering in other fields so many countries around the world that are leading in student achievement have a very strong front end for professional preparation and entry into the profession and then they don't have to worry so much about evaluating teachers competence every year because they've made sure they were competent before they got there but we don't have a nationwide system of educating teachers for the profession really Dewey we don't really. We have a sort of rigorous set of law schools and generic schools and in this case teacher training schools Well we have a state by state licensing of teachers and in some states the preparation expectations are very high in other states it's variable teachers get in however they can get in sometimes they get training sometimes they don't sometimes they get good training sometimes they get poor training and the result in those states is a much less high quality teaching force overall even if there are some candidates who are very strong so Linda what would a better teacher entrance exam look like until recently most of the tests have been multiple choice tests which didn't actually have any real predictive value about how good a teacher someone would be Furthermore many of those tests had discriminatory outcomes a gap in pass rates between teachers of color and white teachers and served to reduce diversity in the teaching force so we've worked on assessment of teachers around how to evaluate whether teachers can plan a lesson and a Jap did in adjusted for the needs of their students can they teach it and we videotape them teaching can they analyze student learning and figure out what to do next to promote more learning from more students and those kinds of assessments of teachers really predict how well they're going to do in the classroom but they also help shape better teacher education and it turns out that they are not discriminatory by race in their outcomes we seem now to be in the throes as a nation of revamping how we evaluate that aren't teachers how we assess and reward. Right and retain the best Where are we with this well we're kind of in a inflection point there was. An effort over the last several years to get states to change their teacher evaluation systems in part in response to funding from the federal government they came through something called The Race to the top program in order to get those funds States needed to incorporate tests based evaluation into their system meaning that teachers would be evaluated in part based on student test scores that caused a lot of discomfort because it turned out that those measures were highly dependent on which students teachers had they were very unreliable from year to year and biased toward some teachers and against other teachers so most states are now trying to move beyond that to systems that really look at teaching practices they may collect evidence of student learning in a variety of ways but not driven only by standardized test scores at the end of the year some people have argued that to really raise our schools up to the level of countries like Finland which seems to be doing this very well we just need to fire the teachers who perform the lowest every year you have said we can't fire her way to Finland why not. Well we can't fire our way to Finland because the way Finland achieves its goals is by investing a tremendous amount of resource and energy into the preparation of teachers in the 1st place and they train them in master's degree programs with full support during that period in very high quality research universities it's almost like a medical training for teachers they have teaching schools that are attached to the universities just like teaching hospitals teachers come in highly competent and then they actually don't spend a lot of energy on evaluation after that they spend all of their time then on professional learning teachers learning from each other the school as a whole working to improve its practice if we were simply to fire teachers without investing in that training we would not have competent people to replace them you've argued that teacher assessment really should be seen more as professional development how would that where. Well in some places that really do a good job of teacher evaluation they have teachers engaged in setting goals along with their principals about where they want to grow and learn that's tied to professional learning opportunities that they get in the following year at the end of that period of time they can look back and say How well did I go in achieving my goals and what do I want to do next year and you get very strong effects on student learning from collaborative approach is to teacher learning how do we do this though if we know the best practices for teacher professional development in teacher assessment it costs money and how do we ask rules to step up to this level of assessment and development when there. Struggling financially well it costs money to invest in the kind of feedback and evaluation and professional development that helps teachers improve but it also saves money because it keeps teachers in the classroom longer which saves the very large costs of teacher attrition it helps students become more successful so it saves the cost of summer school and grade retention and other things that have to be done when children are not succeeding it saves the costs of putting Band-Aids on teachers practice later in their career because you've invested early in the career to help them become effective so part of the challenges helping school districts recognize how this is an investment rather than a cost and how it actually in the long run saves a lot of resources that are otherwise stent in much less successful ways you have lamented as others have that teaching is such a poorly paid profession and that the shortages are too often addressed not by paying better but just simply lowering the standards of entry that's short changes us right. Yes when we address teacher shortages by lowering standards rather the by then by increasing the incentives to teach it sure it changes children in a variety of ways as well as teachers themselves and it especially short changes the most vulnerable children in our society because the hiring of teachers who are unprepared and who often leave at a very high rate because of that under preparation happens especially for African-American students Latino students low income students in high need communities doing a better job generally for teachers when they step into the classroom if we modernized buildings lowered class sizes and help to give them more support to do what is a very tough job it is a very tough job some states have really made strong investments in teaching that are states that spend 3 times as much on education than other states and within states there are some just tricks that spend 3 or 4 times as much on their schools as other districts do so we have huge inequality but there are places that are making those investments and it turns out that they're the higher achieving states in our nation unfortunately however we're actually spending less on education in the United States today in general than we were in 2007 before the recession really hit and so we have lost ground in this last decade class sizes are larger salaries are generally smaller investments and schools are weaker and we're falling further and further behind other countries around the world. You've been critical in the past about programs like Teach for America do you still feel that way I think every teacher deserves the very best preparation we can give them and I think that. Programs like Teach for America that bring in very eager and enthusiastic and bright recruits do a service in the recruitment but we also need for those recruits to get strong preparation that will keep them in the profession as a career and many of them manage to do that others don't and it's interesting that among Teach for America. Alumni there's a large number that are trying to advocate for residency style preparation programs for young people coming in where they get a full year under the wing of an expert teacher in a high need community while they're getting their credential and then they start teaching on their own and I think that's the model we should be working for in the future what do you think we lose when we have abandoned some of the school districts to poverty and allow them simply to languish. Well you know inequality is the Achilles heel in American education. And we have both communities that have been abandoned by the deepening of poverty and concentrated poverty the growth of resegregation in those communities and the undermining of the resource base and that will if not corrected haunt this country for many decades to come at this moment a society that does not succeed in education for every person can not much longer survive and succeed in a knowledge based world and we ought to be. Figuring out how to both reduce the levels of poverty and increase the investments in education for children in those communities for our self interest as a nation as well as because it's the moral thing to do. Professor. She founded the Stanford. Coming up next teacher. For several years now from both sides of the aisle teacher unions have been taking hits and it's showing in decreased membership Richard Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and an expert in education policy and unions he argues that strong teacher unions are good for public schools. Rick it seems like teachers unions are almost universally demonized in education debates why and when did this start happening I would put the date primarily to the beginning of the Obama administration up until then Democrats in Washington were mostly supportive of teachers' unions but when Barack Obama ran for president he was asked which liberal constituency groups he'd be willing to cross and he said the teachers' unions unfortunately we've seen now somewhat bipartisan denigration of teacher union leaders education reform is very very difficult work and it is easy for people who get frustrated with the pace of change and improvement to seek out scapegoats so what is the case to be made for teacher unions could we do fine without them in the public schools Well we know what life was like before teachers' unions existed in their in their current form and they were poorly paid they were micromanaged by authoritarian principals and they became deeply frustrated with that state of affairs in the most idealistic sense teachers unions stand at the cross-section of the 2 great engines for equality in our democracy public education and collective bargaining. Both sets of institutions are are critical early on the complaint about teachers' unions was what that you can't fire the bad teachers. Well I think that really at the end of the day the worst criticism of some teachers unions is that they protect incompetent members. Partly everyone in education has seen a teacher who wasn't doing a good job I think that has been problematic for teacher unions and so there's been growing recognition that they they need to move beyond it many years ago teachers and in Toledo came up with an appropriate response which is peer assistance and review so this is a system in which expertise has come into a school and seek to work with struggling teachers to improve their craft and if at the end of the day this individual teacher just simply isn't right for teaching then the union is involved in counseling those teachers out of the out of the profession and ensuring that that they're not in fact in the classroom so what is parents us meant by teachers assessing one another helping get rid of the bad ones where possible is that widespread and universal or just happening in a few innovative high end places there right now I would say it's not widespread there's resistance in many cases for management who's you know principals are used to being in charge of who who's hired who's fired and so they become resistant to efforts to kind of democratize the work face and bring in more teacher voice so it's a small but growing number of school districts that have embraced this approach that you found that the districts that do have it actually fire more teachers than districts with the traditional systems that's right so some people initially worried. That you know if teachers unions had a role in deciding who was going to be fired no one would ever get fired and exactly the opposite happened it's in the self interest of teachers to ensure that their colleagues are preparing students well. If you are a 6th grade teacher who's constantly getting students who are unprepared because the 5th grade teacher really doesn't know what he or she is doing that's a huge source of frustration and so we found in Montgomery County Maryland until Ido in Cincinnati that the rate of terminations of incompetent teachers increased under peer assistance and review compared with when principals were in charge of decisions. Often times the debate sets this up as a 0 sum game between teachers on one side and students on the other that if the unions help teachers get what they want the students necessarily lives is that fair . Oh I think it has it exactly wrong you know the American Federation of Teachers used to have a slogan teachers want what students need and I think that's basically right the teachers unions are fighting for more funding for public education they're fighting for reductions in class size they're fighting for better teacher salaries which can attract you know on average a stronger candidate to the teaching profession these things are good for students as well I'm not saying that the interests of teachers and students are aligned 100 percent but the interests of teachers and you and students are more closely aligned then virtually any other group in an education certainly than the hedge fund managers who are so supportive of charter schools and and have an interest in reductions in taxes as opposed to teachers who are in the classroom every day and want to make sure that public education is supported. Is there any evidence that the presence of a strong teacher's union in a school causes worse student outcomes or better stick now comes the research just is tough to do well. Having said that there are about 17 studies that over the years have looked at this issue of does a teacher union increase or reduce academic achievement and in 12 of those cases the studies found increases in achievement 5 of those cases they found decreases in the chief meant but when Robert careening who valuated the studies looked at the more closely he found that the most rigorous studies were those that tended to find the most positive effects for students which intuitively make sense because teachers are fighting for better working conditions that are connected to the learning conditions of students and so on the whole teachers' unions do improve academic achievement for students and I think most people who look at the issue will will recognize why that when you improve those working conditions for teachers you've improved the learning conditions for students. If we look to some of the schools around the world that have very high student achievement Do we see a teacher unions there absolutely So if you know in the countries that are beating us academically places like Finland what you find is high levels of teacher unionisation and low levels of poverty among students and those 2 things can often go together teachers unions are part of a larger union movement that is fighting for social equality and reductions and poverty and a stronger safety net all of those things benefit children which increases academic achievement so if we want to draw lessons from abroad we should be looking to strengthen our teachers' unions rather than weakening them and really addressing the root causes of academic failure which are poverty and segregation. Well Rick thank you for sharing your insights with me and with good reason well thank you so much for having me. Richard Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation he's the author of 5 books including tough liberal Albert Shanker and the battles over schools unions race and democracy this program was funded by a grant to Dr Oliver Hill at Virginia State University for the National Science Foundation major support for with good reason as provided by the law firm of McGuire Woods and by the University of Virginia Health System a National Cancer Institute does equated Cancer Center researching and developing the treatments of tomorrow Uva health dot com with good reason is produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Eliot. And John last are associated producers Jeannie. Services and Victoria Joyner Peter. I'm sorry McConnell thanks for listening. With good reason will be rebroadcast tomorrow morning at 2 support for k.q.e.d. 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