Secondary education is, as Tim says, mostly about social reproduction; but even there it often fails in public schools. This is because so many schools are so disruptive of learning processes needed for individuals to do even as well as their parents once did. Conservatives, as so often they do, hold that kids are disrespectful, disruptive, and apathetic and they appear to believe that in some mysterious way that lets them, if not society, off the hook. As in so many Conservative mantras, therefore, students (often from so-called minority backgrounds) deserve the — what in Britain are called — bog-standard educations they receive. But kids are . . . well obviously . . . kids. It has to be the adults’ fault it we cannot organize schools that actually educate.

I work in a blue-collar community in a High School that has survived No Child Left behind (about 70% so-called ‘minority’), because Georgia came up with its own stick to beat its schools (compatible with ‘Race to the Top’). What has made a difference is a new principal who is strong on discipline. The kids come in and they want to do as little as possible. This applies to a minority of teachers too. The lazier students have to be forced to learn in ways that they will eventually realize benefit them. They are still under paternalistic guidance (or should be somewhere) so this is possible. In a large number of cases, however, this approach means winning over a student’s parent(s).

Where that isn’t possible, I feel relieved of a lot of responsibility. When one factors that reality into the picture, it is clear that we are at a stage where teachers have to be the social workers as well as instructors that some naive liberals always thought they could so easily be. That reality is tough, and accounts for a lot of the unimaginative book-work condemned so roundly by those who do not seem to realize education at this level is chiefly about human relationships and minimum competency tests, and not only about insights and excellence (parts of many elitist mantras).

But with a doctorate I am well-paid. About the equivalent of an associate Professor of history in a respectable state-institution. I wouldn’t want to do my job as a recent graduate from any of the often poor teacher preparation programs I have a passing acquaintance with, however. Now that’s where George Bernard Shaw’s rebuke really stings: ‘those who can’t teach, teach teachers’.

This is, of course, an interesting inversion of the debate on the effects of increasing marginal tax rates on the productivity of entrepeneurs, millionaires, etc. (E.g., I take the left to be more sympathetic to the financial incentives of pay for teachers than for millionaires, and that the right reverses those sympathies.) I would say, however, that reducing the parasitic rent of teachers’ unions is more analogous to eliminating crony-capitalism tax-loopholes for the politically well-connected–and favor reducing both.

Note that one could make the argument that pleasing the Powers that Be is the actual job requirement, in which case pundits fall under the heading of frauds and liars, in which case it’s still amazing to see them call for ‘accountability’.

Withywindle: “Teaching undergrads who wanted to be teachers, and realizing the cohort was neither very bright nor very prepared, distinctly lowered my estimation of the profession. I may not be the only one.”

So if we cut pay, cut benefits, make the jobs much more insecure, eliminate the very idea of an actual career, we will get a group which is:

a) Better.
b) Worse.

Just to contribute to the points already made – because education is widely expected to fix poverty, inequality and racism, and since structurally it just can’t, after decades of ‘failure’ there’s all kinds of cya built into the dynamics. So it has become dramatically more important to intercept disconfirmingly bad teaching/outcomes than to enable good ones, which are doomed to come up short of unrealistic expectations anyway. And this is what lockstep assessment systems do. They clean out the bottom at the expense of the top.

In any case, my friends and I think that it is not too hard to put things right. We weren’t too far off during the middle of the last century, so we can return to that approach. Things would be improved if we left a lot of the student’s education up to him, and if we arranged things so that students helped each other. These goals can be realized by giving students age 13 through 25 important and definite duties to perform that involve helping us govern.

In my working life I was a consumer of the school system product. It was just fine. The evaluation systems we use are the problem, not the kids.