Speaking to a presumably receptive audience at the American Enterprise Institute about how best to deploy dwindling education resources, Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggested that “master’s-degree bonuses [for teachers] are an example of something that doesn’t work.” More than a decade of research shows that money spent on these bonuses has little impact on student performance. But how can that be?
People outside the field of education might assume that teachers with advanced degrees must necessarily bring more to their classrooms — and if these degrees were in the teachers’ subject area, that might be true — but as noted in the Huffington Post,
Ninety percent of teachers’ masters degrees are in education, not subjects such as English or math, according to a study by Marguerite Roza and Raegen Miller for the Center on Reinventing Education at the University of Washington.
Their colleague, research professor Dan Goldhaber, explained that that research dating back to a study he did in 1997 has shown that students of teachers with master’s degrees show no better progress in student achievement than their peers taught by teachers without advanced degrees.
As academic rigor goes, education courses are notoriously lightweight, and some of the fallout from these dismal programs can never be measured. Untold numbers of aspiring teachers soon come to learn that courses in education are almost completely devoid of anything resembling legitimate scholastic inquiry. We will never know how many potentially inspiring teachers ran screaming into the night trying to make sense of the meaningless edu-babble, and endless graphs and pie charts. For college grads with degrees in history or science or math — lovers of knowledge, information, facts, logic — sitting through an education lecture is torture.
Bill Gates has taken up the cause to end the system of master’s bonus pay as well. He estimates his home state of Washington spends more than $300 million a year “that doesn’t help kids.”
(image by cornelia parker from 2005 exhibit ‘bye bye blackboard’)
The day we start listenning to Bill Gates on education is the day we start listening to Haliburton on the military and United Health Care on insurance.
profit before people? too too bad.
“they earned it fair and square.”
Funny, at every job I’ve worked in you ‘earn’ raises and bonuses by getting things done, not for the paper credentials you bring to the table.
If something’s not working, and it’s costing money, shouldn’t it be phased-out? Isn’t that ‘evidence-based policy’ that everyone agrees on?
That is not the issue. This proposal is not designed to address the problems in the education system, but to save money in state budgets. It seems clear that the bonus system is not yielding any positive results, so it seems foolish to continue with it.
The problems with U.S. education are not because of too high teacher salaries. This is a manufactured crisis. The neo-conservative profiteers came and took away all the decent paying jobs and decimated our unions. Now, they’re privatizing our public education system and looking to eke out a little bit more money by squeezing teachers who got credentialed per the standards of their profession. Some teachers with masters might not be better teachers. Some, though, the study says, are. Teachers who gets masters deserve the pay — that’s the system we set up, and they earned it fair and square.
Laying the blame for the failure of our public education on just teachers is bogus.
As one commentator on the HUFF POST said, “Wow, economists telling others that their advanced degrees don’t justify their salaries? Maybe they should look in the mirror first.
Economics, a worthless degree in the study of a false science. Unfortunately, this false science is used to justify cuts in public spending, world trade agreements and tax cuts for the rich. With all the free trade agreements and tax cuts passed in the past 15 years, this country should be swimming in jobs and prosperity.”