Speaking of Change…
No doubt about it. Ivy League schools have issues. But when 11 percent of Yale’s senior class, 10 percent of Georgetown’s and 9 percent of Harvard’s head off to teach at some of America’s most impoverished inner city schools for the next couple of years, something’s going on.
The Wall Street Journal reported that last month, 3,700 recent college graduates showed up at Teach for America’s five-week boot camp, the program that precedes their two-year teaching stints where salaries will average somewhere between $25,000 and $44,000, depending on location.
Teach for America’s mission is all about leadership, “eliminating educational inequity,” and sidestepping the roadblocks (aka teachers’ unions) that stand in the way of progress.
Critics who say that two-year teaching stints make true progress impossible would be well advised to keep an eye on careerists—like D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, for example. Naysayers are in shock.
This can’t be true. Is progress really being made to repair the broken Washington, D.C. school system?
The answer is yes, thanks to D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, appointed to the slot in 2007 by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty.
During her first year on the job, Rhee sent waves of fear through the crumbling bureaucracy by firing hundreds of non-certified teachers and aides. No sooner was that job completed when she embarked on a plan that could give the teachers’ union cardiac arrest.
According to Economics Professor Richard Vedder, “Rhee is preparing to offer the teachers a deal—you can continue on your current pay scale, making, say, $62,000 a year with all your cushy tenure and seniority rights. Alternatively, you can leave that highly secure world and go on a non-tenure track option—but have the opportunity to earn huge bonuses, perhaps making up to $100,000 a year. . . Your performance would determine your salary— and even your continued employment.”
Writing in the Center for College Affordability and Productivity blog, Dr. Vedder noted that his interest in Rhee’s idea stemmed from the fact that he had proposed the same plan on a college level in his book, Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs So Much.
“You can either go for job security or for higher income,” said Vedder, who assigned the terms “red track” and “green track” to the plans. Since “tenure breeds arrogance” and allows mediocrity, “why not consider tenure a fringe benefit, but put a limit on the amount of fringe benefits available to each faculty member?”
Although he doubts that what he calls the “Vedder-Rhee two color tracking system” would pass muster in D.C. with its powerful union presence, he says it could happen in higher education.
Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.
Deborah Lambert
