In Response to “The Imaginary Teacher Shortage”

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Jay Greene, “The Imaginary Teacher Shortage,” which posits that while the United States has added a million teachers to the rolls since 1970, student performance has remained unchanged, proceeding to make an argument based on the kind of flawed, simplistic logic that is so damning to contemporary “reform” efforts.

“For decades we have tried to boost academic outcomes by hiring more teachers, and we have essentially nothing to show for it. In 1970, public schools employed 2.06 million teachers, or one for every 22.3 students, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Digest of Education Statistics. In 2012, we have 3.27 million teachers, one for every 15.2 students.”

Come on, teachers! We took 7.1 kids out of your classrooms – why haven’t the test scores budged? Firstly, I’m curious to know how Greene is measuring student stagnation. To date, our best measure of student achievement is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which did not begin testing in reading and math until 1983, at which time, special needs students were exempt from testing. The other standard indicators of national student achievement at this time were the SAT and ACT, whose scores only represented the averages of college-bound seniors, not the entire student population.

Metrics aside, Greene’s statement that the United States has “nothing to show for it” is patently false. It not only assumes that all other factors have remained consistent in the classroom (including the very purpose of schooling), but also completely fails to acknowledge educational progress by any measures other than test scores and class size, (which are nearly useless in the aggregate, anyway).

In 1970, just 12.5 percent of three and four-year-olds were in pre-school, which research has consistently shown to be crucial to later academic success. Thanks to federal funding for programs like Head Start, nearly half of three and four-year-olds receive a pre-school education today. What about the other end of the education pipeline? In 1970, just 6.7 percent of males and 3.8 percent of females over 25 completed four years of college and the median number of years of school completed was 12 – the equivalent of a high school degree. Between 2007-2009, 38.8 percent of 25-34 year olds had completed an associate’s degree or higher.

Comparing teachers in 1970 to teachers in 2012 is futile, because the nature and purpose of schooling has transformed so fundamentally during the past 40 years that the demands of the modern teaching profession bear little resemblance to those in 1970. If the goal of schooling is to prepare young people for careers and citizenship, then the turn of the 21st century has necessitated the most dynamic shift of desired educational outcomes in American history. Globalization and the digital age have had an unprecedented impact on our workforce. In 1970, the majority of the student population was preparing to enter the manufacturing workforce, which required basic reading and math skills, but almost no high level critical thinking skills. Digital literacy was hardly a concern, since computers were still the stuff of science fiction for the average Joe. So it was wholly acceptable for less than 10 percent of students to be on the college track. Fast forward 40 years and politicians proclaim: everybody should go to college! Today, teachers are expected to have 100 percent of students on the road to college (never mind that it defies the law of averages and basic principles of economics).

“The path to productivity increases in every industry comes through the substitution of capital for labor. We use better and cheaper technology so that we don’t need as many expensive people. But education has gone in the opposite direction, making little use of technology and hiring many more expensive people.”

There are legitimate parallels between business and education in terms of motivation, culture, financing, and leadership. However, let’s stop short of commoditizing children, please. We are not making iPods (if we were, those manufacturing stats might not be so dire), we are educating human beings, who have a helluva lot more moving parts. Technology offers some wonderful innovations for education, but education technology should be designed to assist teachers, not replace them. I would like to see a computer break up a fight or mediate a conflict between angry adolescents. I would like to see an iPad dry a child’s tears or help him blow his nose or zip her jacket when it snags. I would like to see a SmartBoard smile or tie a tiny pair of shoes.

“Hiring hundreds of thousands of additional teachers won’t improve student achievement.”

On this point, I actually agree. One of every five children in America lives in poverty, disproportionately facing the added challenges of poor nutrition, single-family homes, drug use, physical or sexual abuse, gang culture and neighborhood violence. These challenges are not insurmountable, but we cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence that they significantly affect classroom performance.

As a nation, if we decide that schools should be the place to address all societal ills, we must provide them with the necessary resources. School equity means giving students what they need to succeed, not treating all students the same. Some students may thrive in a classroom of 30, while others need a small group setting limited to five students, and still others will need one-on-one attention. Some students may naturally develop socio-emotional skills in a 20 minute recess, while others will need years of counseling to overcome Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or other mental health issues.

Simply adding more bodies to the classroom will not improve student achievement nor will it increase teacher satisfaction. If we want our teachers and students to be successful, we must provide them with adequate capital to provide resources at their discretion. Students will only be successful when we stop blaming teachers and start acknowledging that the true obstacles to education lie far beyond the classroom doors.