As state governments look at cutting $140 billion out of their budgets to cover shortfalls, education spending will be in the crosshairs. But it won’t simply be a matter of reducing appropriations. States and school districts will finally have to look at reforming traditional teacher compensation, which has proven to have no correlation with student achievement and if anything, protects laggard instructors at the expense of highly-talented young and veteran teachers. This will likely include the layoff of veteran teachers who no longer make the grade.

Certainly the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and their allies will argue that such reforms are too drastic. But, as this Dropout Nation commentary from last year points out, education will have to get used to the kind of harsh economic realities that have been a way of life in the private sector.(Sunday’s Dropout Nation Podcast will discuss the steps that must be taken when it comes to school finance.)

For the vast majority of us who work in sectors outside of education (and outside of the public sector), a few things are simple, brutal and clear. When businesses are going through periods of economic distress, positions are cut.  If your performance is below satisfactory, only charm and systemic apathy will keep you in the job. You won’t get a raise if the firm is losing money. Money from benefactors come with strings attached. No one gets excited about And your job isn’t likely to be protected because of your long tenure with an employer.

Education, unfortunately, is different. Teachers and school districts have gotten so used to decades of pay increases and expanding payrolls that the very thought of adjusting to economic reality.

When teachers such as Jane Jorgensen of the Elgin school district in Illinois complain that the world isn’t “freaking out” about the loss of as many as 300,000 education jobs this year, they fail to realize that 1) it is just the high end of the U.S. Department of Education’s estimate and 2) given that 6.2 million people are employed in education, a loss of 300,000 jobs pales in comparison to job losses in the private sector (and even some segment of the public sphere). As I have known in my own life, all job losses are a tragedy. But not every job is crucial to the life of a school. Considering that the quality of education — and the dropout crisis — hasn’t subsided despite a 50 percent increase in education payrolls in the past four decades, it is clear that there is some fat (and laggard, uncaring teachers) to trim.

When other educators such as Frank Orfei in Pelham, N.Y. , complain about the lack of pay raises and argue that they feel like they’ve been scapegoated, they seemingly forget that at least they have jobs. So many families — including the ones who attend the schools in which they work — have spent the past two years either adjusting to pay cuts, living on one income (because a parent lost a job) or subsisting on welfare and unemployment benefits. I have seen those families. In fact, I know some of those families. While some of them didn’t plan responsibly for these periods of financial adjustment, I know plenty who have — and still ended up struggling.

Most of the people I know who are in their jobs also didn’t get a raise; those of us who are fortunate to get one sit down, shut up, get to work and remain grateful for the income. The last thing any of us want to hear is complaints about having to make due without a raise when tough economic times demand that we all have to live within our means.

And you can only laugh when the Sherman Dorns of the world incessantly argue that requiring states to reform teacher layoff and dismissal policies in exchange for a $23 billion bailout — the second in two years — only guarantees that “thousands of new teacher careers die in the next year.” If  they can ignore the reality that such a string would actually force states and school systems to change the very reason why those careers will be ended — laws that force districts to lay off teachers based on reverse seniority (“or last hired-first fired”) rules instead of on quality of instruction — then there is little reasoning with them. They have been so used to taxpayers funding education to the tune of $528 billion without so much as requirements for engaging parents, measuring teacher quality, and improving curricula that they are intellectually obsolete.

Certainly education is important to the future of this country. We should invest as much as we can. But given that schools often spend as much as 50 percent of local property tax and state tax dollars, it cannot be insulated from recessionary periods. The fact that states and school districts are finally reckoning with the costs of decades of expensive compensation deals with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — which has resulted in teaching being the best-compensated profession in the public sector — means that teachers will have to adjust to a future in which performance pay, teacher evaluations and the end of tenure is a reality, not a nightmare.

This is the perfect time to restructure education spending so that the money being spent is efficiently used to improve the educational (and economic) destinies of our children and assure that they are all taught by the highest-quality teachers. It means ending reverse seniority layoffs. This means ending tenure. It must also include improving how teachers are compensated so that great instructors are rewarded for great work and the laggards leave the classroom in order to limit the damage on student learning. This means restructuring public school bureaucracies and procedures that have been far too wasteful for everyone involved and complicate the work teachers should do. We owe our children far more than delusions.

As you listen to this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast on five new questions every parent should ask, also watch this clip from the 2008 independent film Take. Although the film – about how a woman devastated by a murder figures out a way to forgive the death row inmate who caused her and her family so much pain — isn’t all about parent power, its most-poignant scenes feature the struggle she and her husband has with a local school over the placement of their son into special education classes. What they choose to do dramatizes the constant battles so many parents — especially those in our poor and minority communities — have with traditional school systems unwilling to educate what they consider to be their toughest cases. This is especially true for young boys, whose rambunctiousness and struggles with reading end up sending them off to our academic ghettos.

Watch this scene from Take and consider what you would do to assure that your child gets a high-quality education. Then consider how you can help every parent make this a reality for their own kids — including parent trigger laws and school choice options.

As you read about why black churches should start their own schools, listen to this Dropout Nation Podcast from February on why another group — old school civil rights groups — should change their approach to education reform. The only way educational equity will actually be achieved for every child is by addressing how public education is structured — including giving parents their proper place as kings at the education decision-making table, and improving the quality of curricula in every school. Not only does this commentary apply to these groups, but to fellow-travelers such as the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and New Jersey’s Education Law Center.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, Zune, MP3 player or smartphone.  Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also, add the podcast on Viigo, if you have a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phone.

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As you read, listen and consider what education as a civil right really means, listen to this rebroadcast of October’s Dropout Nation Podcast, in which I take a look at the myth perpetrated by defenders of American public education’s status quo that poverty is the root cause of the nation’s educational failure and dropout crisis. Contrary to such arguments, poverty isn’t a factor in low student achievement; it is the systemic problems in education (including low-quality teaching and curricula) that has caused so much damage to our poorest kids.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, Zune, MP3 player or smartphone. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. And the podcast on Viigo, if you have a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phone.

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Photo courtesy of GothamGazette.org

As you wind down from the Thanksgiving weekend, listen to this Dropout Nation Podcast, on the need to get poor-performing teachers out of classrooms. The damage wrecked by ineffective teaching — and the culture of mediocrity they foster — is promoted and sustained by schools of education, collective bargaining agreements, state laws and cultures within districts.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download your iPod, Zune, MP3 player or smartphone.  Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also, add the podcast on Viigo, if you have a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phone.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

With so much discussion about the selection of Cathleen Black to replace Joel Klein as New York City schools chancellor — and the whole discussion about whether education should choose its leaders from within traditional circles or without (my answer: since school chief executives aren’t actually involved in instructional leadership — and most administrators have no control over the curricula or even teacher performance management — it makes no sense to insist that they should only be chosen from inside education) — it is time to think over another issue: What to do about luring and retaining highly-talented teachers.

As you read this piece from July, think about what the emphasis on credentials really means for improving education for every child. Given that there is no evidence of connections between student achievement and the degree attainment and National Board certification of teachers, what should matter in bringing high-quality teachers into every classroom (and improving the quality of administration and management in our schools).

Based on the talk about (and derision from defenders of traditional public education over) the level of attrition of Teach For America graduates after entering classrooms, one would think that university schools of education were stellar in this regard. But as the eminent teaching guru Martin Haberman points out, half of all aspiring teachers coming out of ed schools never make it into the classroom in the first place. As Richard Ingersoll also notes, half of those teachers who enter the classroom leave within five years (and one third of them leave by their third year). All in all, no matter how you slice it, you have high levels of turnover in the teaching profession and this is a problem.

Or is it? As it may turn out, little of this attrition may be troubling at least in the main. If one looks at the research on teacher effectiveness and the talent arc of the average teacher, it may not make sense for many teachers to be in the classroom for longer than two decades at most. As Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hanson have pointed out in their 2009 study, a teacher with 25 years in the classroom is no more successful in improving student achievement than an instructor working for only four years. Just as importantly, the research is suggesting that in some cases, the best teacher may not be a tenured veteran of three decades, but a rookie teacher who will only get better still over time.

This isn’t to say that young teachers are naturally better than their more-senior counterparts. After all, there is just as much chance that the rookie is going to be a laggard instructor and will not improve over time, while the more-senior teacher is one who has always been really good at improving student performance and is a master at this craft. What it means is that the concern should not be so much about attrition, but about luring high-quality teachers into the classroom and getting as much out of their talent for the benefit of their students (our children) as possible while they are in the job.

Think about it: At its best, teaching is difficult work. Those who undertake it should be thrilled by the challenges and opportunities to improve the lives of every child with whom they work. They should be happy to be in classrooms and anticipate success every day, not be depressed about working with children who may need a lot of help. They must be competent in the subjects they teach and care for every child before them. Those who aren’t interested in such challenges or don’t care for children shouldn’t be teachers. It’s best that they move on to other pursuits.

As for the highly-talented good-to-great teachers? Just because someone is stellar at teaching, cares for children and enjoys the profession today doesn’t mean they just want to be a teacher for life. The kind of talented and gifted people who are best at teaching are also the very folks who are interested in other challenges. Some of them may involve some form of economic or social entrepreneurship. It may include the desire to be the next Steven Evangelista, Marva Collins, Michael Feinberg or Dave Levin. It could even mean rising in the education ranks to lead or shape charters, private schools or traditional districts (like Jason Kamras), become the next John Taylor Gattos or even lead path-breaking teacher training programs like Haberman. Or, they may just want to stay in the classroom and be what the Jaime Escalantes (or for me, Everett Brawner and Dave Gilbert) are for so many children: The men and women who go above and beyond to teach every child what he or she needs to achieve their economic and social destinies.

The real problem isn’t so much the turnover, but a system in which too few high-quality aspiring teachers are recruited; which trains aspiring teachers abysmally for teaching in the classroom (and whose training usually involves pedagogy over subject-matter competence and how to work with kids from backgrounds different than that of those who teach them); which instills teachers with a rather dispiriting vision of classroom teaching (especially in urban classrooms); and then compensates them in ways that are contrary to stirring high performance. As seen in the careers of Escalante and Gatto, great work is barely tolerated while mediocrity is the norm.

The union work rules that limit the amount of work teachers can do, along with the lack of performance management and rigorous evaluation, means that top performers get little feedback, support or recognition. Meanwhile mid-career professionals — who may have the stuff to work in the toughest urban classrooms — struggle to even get into the profession because of the emphasis on licensing instead of on quality of work and talent.

This isn’t just a problem within teaching. The school reform movement has shown the importance of fostering and coalescing entrepreneurship, system leadership and practical problem-solving. But it has only begun to crack traditional education circles. Far too many within traditional public education lack curiosity about how matters are solved in areas outside of education; if anything, they are hostile to anything that seems to smell of “hedge funds” or “Corporate America” or even Main Street, even though all three are the main generators of economic and social activity. There is no iPad or iPhone without Apple and Steve Jobs; no Windows without Bill Gates and Microsoft; and no Facebook, Warner Brothers or Hewlett-Packards without entrepreneurial activity. This anti-intellectualism results in an unwillingness to think outside of the traditional concept of unions, districts, and school boards.

The solution to these problems lies in recruiting and training high-quality teachers who can serve in the classroom and, if they so choose, foster new programs, nonprofits and ideas within education, Right now, however, it is afterthought, not the norm. Thanks to TFA, similar alternative training programs, and reformers within and outside of traditional public education, this is changing. But it is changing too slowly. We must reform smarter and faster.

Attracting great teachers must begin long before they enter the classrooms. As Arthur Levine has pointed out ad-nauseam, most ed schools do a terrible job of screening out teachers. Almost none use the Haberman method — put an aspiring teacher before a kid and watch how he or she interacts with them — or use PRAXIS I or the SAT to screen out the high-quality candidates from those who aren’t (although one state, Indiana, is making that a requirement for its ed schools this year). Nor do ed schools recruit in the same manner as Teach For America, seeking out black and Latino collegians for classroom careers. It is one reason — besides the dropout crisis — that we have so few minorities in the classroom.

Once the teachers get into the classroom, they must be rewarded early and often for great work. This means the traditional teacher compensation system — with its emphasis on near-lifetime employment and seniority- and degree-based pay and privileges — must go out the door. Performance pay is one way to reward teachers. Another is to provide them start-up money to start their own social entrepreneur programs — including schools, teaching fellowship programs or even the next Black Star Project. Spreading out the Chad Sansings of education into the wider world will help boost teacher quality — and the quality of education for every child.

At least these are my thoughts. What are yours? Feel free to respond.