With me went the teacher, who found fun instead of me

Frances Wooley blames a decline in teacher quality on improved career opportunities for women. One problem I have with is evidence is that it is all in terms of inputs rather than outputs. Ezra Klein similarly blames the high career prospects of those natives fluent in English for the dearth of English teachers in China. We should expect this shortage to result in high wages & employment, but apparently education majors have among the dimmest career prospects. Conditions are still pretty good for law professors despite the low returns to most of their graduates (my sister is among those underemployed lawyers). Fat chance of landing one of those cushy tenured gigs though.

Without any coordination (or perhaps it’s just secret?) agnostic suggests that teachers rather than businessmen will carry out the “Atlas Shrugged” scenario. Rather than the normal economic issue, he centers the discussion around NAMs and our wrong-headed education policies regarding them. This anonymous teacher agrees that’s the big issue in eduwonk circles and that dissenters from orthodoxy are cast out. The classic nightmare scenario that would drive the most saintly teacher away is How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million. I think we overrate the extent to which education is about education rather than babysitting, so I don’t know how much effect a different grade of teacher will change things. Another perspective is that the only important matter when it comes to educational outcomes is the student input. John Derbyshire agrees with Robert Weissberg that there is really no demand among students (or their parents) for better education. Like Ilkka, I invite you to contrast that take with “The Lottery“. I agree with the latter that there is substantial revealed preference to the contrary of the Derb’s take, though again I don’t know to what extent that results in better education or just a more tolerable place to be stuck 7 hours a day.

If that’s not enough edutalk, Diane Ravitch has an EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts about here new book. Stuart Buck in turn has extensive criticism of her.

TANGENTIALLY RELATED UPDATE: Do colleges discriminate against Arab applicants? I hadn’t heard that before.

agnostic Says:

June 19, 2010 at 2:06 pm

I didn’t put it that strongly — that teachers *would* carry it out, just that they’re a more likely group than architects and inventors.

And teachers surely matter — if for nothing else than teaching reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. At the margin here and now, their efforts may not make a world of difference in where their students end up, but if they withdrew entirely, society would be screwed.

“Oh well then I’d just home-school my kids” — assuming you still remember elementary school math, algebra, geometry, etc. Some smart parents don’t, and forget about the mass of parents who aren’t smart enough to be teachers. Don’t laugh — that’s the real world.

melendwyr Says:

June 19, 2010 at 2:21 pm

As long as the teachers aren’t actively bad, I think it’s the students’ motivation (which in practice is frequently determined by parental influence and activity) that determines how well students do and what quality of education they get. With the right motivations, I see no reasons why teachers could not be abolished completely – granted in reality such a tack would be too costly to implement.

Families that care about their children’s educational achievement will tend to seek out non-bad teaching; I don’t think the resulting high achievement implies that the quality of the teaching was responsible.

Teachers’ primary job is to provide resources; they can hinder by doing a bad job, but once a minimum level of resources is reached I don’t think they can contribute more. Motivation generally isn’t something teachers can really influence, although I will acknowledge exceptions.