Dear Saint Nick

I've been running a bit behind all week (we're getting ready for a MAJOR report release tomorrow...stay tuned) but this weekend's New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof deserves a comment. It reminded me of that old story of a homeless man who sat all day, every day on a wooden box and begged strangers for money. One day someone asked him if he'd ever thought to open the box and look inside. "No, why would I do that?" he responded. But later he decided to take a peek. And sure enough, the box was filled with gold. He had everything he needed all along, but had never thought to look inside.

Now back to Kristof. He asks??in his piece, "For??those who oppose education spending in the stimulus, a question: Do you really believe that slashing half a million teaching jobs would be fine for the economy, for our children and for our future?"

But he could answer his own question in the affirmative, if he'd only look inside his own column. See here:

There's a real excitement at what we are learning about K-8 education.

First, good teachers matter more than anything; they are astonishingly important. It turns out that having a great teacher is far more important than being in a small class, or going to a good school with a mediocre teacher. A Los Angeles study suggested that four consecutive years of having a teacher from the top 25 percent of the pool would erase the black-white testing gap.

Second, our methods to screen potential teachers, or determine which ones are good, don't work. The latest Department of Education study, published this month, showed again that there is no correlation between teacher certification and teacher effectiveness. Particularly in lower grades, it also doesn't seem to matter if a teacher has a graduate degree or went to a better college or had higher SATs.

The implication is that throwing money at a broken system won't fix it, but that resources are necessary as part of a package that involves scrapping certification, measuring better through testing which teachers are effective, and then paying them significantly more ??? with special bonuses to those who teach in ???bad??? schools.

So Mr. Kristof, if I am reading you right, you are arguing that "being in a small class" isn't very important, and that we'd be better off paying effective teachers and those willing to teach in "bad" schools??"significantly more." I agree. So where all those resources going to come from? Even when our economy turns around, schools are going to face increasing competition for dollars from Baby Boomers and their retirement and health care costs. So, most likely, we need to find resources within the education system, by spending less on things that don't matter. Like...smaller class sizes!

So here's a dilemma: how could we find a way to raise class sizes modestly, reduce the number of teachers in the system, and, eventually, recoup the funds to be used for higher pay for our best instructors? Here's an idea: we could face a major recession and revenue shortfall and use the crisis to let a lot of the least effective teachers go. And then, when the economy turns around, we could use new dollars to pay teachers more. Sound familiar?

So yes, I think that slashing half a million teaching jobs could be fine for our children and our future. (The economy might be a different matter.) And, Saint Nick, so would you, if you'd just look inside.