• Twitter
  • Facebook
News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

NFL vs. NEA

Leave it to a former NFL player to explain what's wrong with education. Fran Tarkington explores an alternate reality:

Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let's face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn't get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.

Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: "They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans." The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn't help.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the NFL in this alternate reality is the real -life American public education system. Teachers' salaries have no relation to whether teachers are actually good at their job—excellence isn't rewarded, and neither is extra effort. Pay is almost solely determined by how many years they've been teaching. That's it. After a teacher earns tenure, which is often essentially automatic, firing him or her becomes almost impossible, no matter how bad the performance might be. And if you criticize the system, you're demonized for hating teachers and not believing in our nation's children.

Never mind the football analogy, is there any other profession other than teaching in which tenure plays such a big part and competence such a little one? There is a bigger push for education reform today than I've seen in my lifetime, and it cuts across political lines -- just imagine, Arne Duncan and Tony Bennett are on the same page. But if it fails  -- and I wouldn't bet against failure -- it will be because the same old defenders of the status quo are putting up the same old roadblocks, and getting away with it.

Comments

john b. kalb
Mon, 10/03/2011 - 12:46pm

The "other profession" you ae asking about is some of those in politically elected or appointed positions in goverment.

littlejohn
Mon, 10/03/2011 - 1:32pm

I have no argumen with you, only a question: Who would determine who the best teachers are? How?
My wife is a first class teacher who goes to school two hours before dawn and gets home after sundown. She works all day Saturday and Sunday. She spends her own money on classroom supplies and regularly takes courses herself when she can find the time.
Thanks to the local NEA, her take-home pay just plummeted substantially.
Look at her students' test scores? She works at the area's worst, poorest school. Her kids come to school (when they feel like it) hungry and illiterate. The suggestion they might enjoy reading a book is met with laughter. The suggestion they might want to graduate gets the same response.
She is saint and clearly deserves a raise; many teachers do not. But how would you tell them apart?
Her kids would flunk any test. Her kids would describe her as a bad teacher because she encourages them to learn things. Her principal would vouch for her, but a lot of principals would simply award raises to their friends.
By the way, the local teachers union is nothing like what you described. My wife was a first-year teacher last year. A veteran do-nothing teacher was given an assignment he didn't want at another school to make room for my wife. A number of teachers with tenure were NOT rehired to make room for promising beginners like my wife.

Tim Zank
Tue, 10/04/2011 - 9:16am

Littlejohn, you ask:
"Who would determine who the best teachers are? How?"

The age old way my friend, test scores. Since the beginning of time.

Whether you are teaching 1st graders to tie their shoes, freshmen to conjugate verbs, or medical students to diagnose symptoms, the only way to be sure they have retained what they've been taught is to test them.

You may want to read your rant (out loud) to your wife as she may disagree with you. While it's an impassioned testimonial to your faith and admiration for her, the laundry list of excuses you provide actually points out she may very well be in the wrong line of work.

Quantcast