Did you know that almost 19% of most school districts' budgets is spent on trivial things like salary increases based on years of experience, salary increases for master's degrees, paid professional development days, sick days, class size reduction policies, health insurance benefits, and retirement benefits???
So says Frozen Assets: Rethinking Teacher Contracts Could Free Billions for School Reform, a new report from Education Sector written by a high-ranking member of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. According to the report, the provisions listed above show a "weak or inconsistent relationship with student learning," and should thus be considered "valuable sources of funds" that could be "freed" to support education reform initiatives.
I could devote this post to documenting the strong, well-documented connections that exist between some of these provisions and student achievement. I could argue that these provisions are what make teaching a tolerable, stable profession even if teacher salaries remain lower than those for positions that require comparable levels of education. I could even question the logic of cutting paid sick days for people who interact daily with hundreds of children.
Instead, I will take a different route. There is something else that we waste billions in education spending on every year--something that, according to a recent study by the National Research Council, has almost no positive impact on student achievement. This costly expenditure has shown a strong and consistent relationship with the demoralization of many students and their families, the departure of many talented teachers from the profession, and a loss of national confidence in schools. Give up?
High stakes, standardized testing.
If reformers really want to unfreeze assets to support their reform initiatives (as if the $3.5 billion the Gates Foundation plans to spend on education reform over the next five years is not enough), why don't they ask state governments to stop throwing money at testing companies?
It's not like the reform initiatives that organizations like the Gates Foundation want to push through are one and the same as the cuts they're suggesting--things like reducing teacher salaries, slashing pensions and benefits, and eliminating job security. Right? Because that's what school reform in Honduras looks like.
