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The problems with the report claiming Boston teachers are overpaid

Charley on the MTA dissects the Boston Foundation report claiming our local teachers make too much and that their pay should be tied to student performance. Also, the Globe needs to stop acting as stenographer to the foundation.

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The folks who are on the test the students and link teacher pay bandwagon say:
"Incentives must be available to encourage high-performing teachers who have shown demonstrable results assume the most challenging posts and take additional responsibility. " But have they ever shown demonstrable results themselves? No.

"The first scientific study of performance pay ever conducted in the United States" shows that the performance pay gimmick is a failure.

I'd say that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and TBF chief Paul Grogan should be relieved from his challenging post and additional responsibility for his failure to show demonstrable results.

Why does anybody in the reality-based community still give a platform to clowns like this? There are bad teachers and there are good teachers, there are bad results and good results, but the one sure thing is that the billionaire boys club is a bunch of know-nothing dilettantes who are on balance making our public education system worse, not better.

First the flavor of the year was "small schools." So Gates doled out a pile of free money and big schools were busted up into small schools. Years down the pike, the money ran out, and the results?In 2008 Bill and Melinda announced that it was a failure and they were bagging on it. The schools disrupted? The kids harmed? Not their problem. It's on to the next fad. On to the Turnaround Challenge. Let's base the nation's program on what Arne Duncan did in Chicago! We can just "turn around" all those "small schools" now that the "small schools" money has dried up.

Of course, two years later the results for that trickled in... and it's a failure.

A Tribune analysis shows that in Renaissance 2010 elementary schools, an average of 66.7 percent of students passed the 2009 Illinois Standards Achievement Test, identical to the district rate. The Ren10 high school passing rate was slightly lower on state tests than the district as a whole -- 20.5 percent compared with 22.8 percent.

So now, after "small schools" and "turnaround schools," the latest untested, unproven gimmick pushed by overpaid, unprofessional bureaucrats (note - not the teachers themselves, but the "education reform" flacks) is "pay for performance."

For Paul Grogan not to appear like a hypocrite for claiming that the problem with our schools is the huge amount we pay our teachers, he should release his financial statements and demonstrate that he makes no more than the highest-paid BPS teacher with an MA. That is, the highest - paid BPS teacher with an MA who fails to provide demonstrable results.

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This is all part of the spin on the upcoming negotiations. Bottom line - the teachers will be getting very marginal raises or no raises - like it or not there's just no room in the budget. The schools are ALWAYS allocated about 34% of the budget even as the system has shrunk dramatically, plus external funds (annual or short term grants mostly), plus an amount for capital expenses as affordable. Teacher pensions are from an outside fund. Staff is paid from the general pension fund which is growing much faster than even healthcare (but they'll never tell you that). Add up the money, then you simply divvy up the pie across the 8000 employees of BPS - period.

Here's the problem. When the budget was going up 4-5% annually - you could afford to be very generous even with rising healthcare. Now they are expecting very little incremental revenue for the city. Increases in the broad "other revenue" category are always marginal and the preliminary budget expects these increases to be pretty much offset by decreases in state aid. That means the ONLY incremental revenue next year will be property taxes or about $75 million. The schools will get about $25 million of this - which doesn't go far after health care eats up $10-15 million and other overhead increases eat say another $5 million - that leaves $5-10 million to divide among 8000 employees - or you can reduce the number of employees - the usual choice. The catch, however, is that one thing the city will need to insist on in the next contract is longer school days - but there's no money to pay the teachers any more money and they will scream bloody murder - rightly or wrongly we've wrung the stone dry.

While the BMRB's research is generally pretty solid - they and the BF are mouthpieces for the administration when they need to be. They are basically justifying the city's back to the wall bargaining stance with this report that BPS teachers are going to have to spend an extra hour or two daily on premises teaching etc. and there's no room for raises. The only alternative is a prop 2 1/2 increase - and given what has happened to property taxes over the last several years - that won't fly.

If you are a BPS teacher you have three choices - work for the same money for several years to come, get hired by another district (not many faring better than Boston) or find a new line of work. I'm not commenting on the pay level one way or another - that's simply the reality - you are being paid as much as the city can afford.

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The schools are ALWAYS allocated about 34% of the budget even as the system has shrunk dramatically

How much has local aid dropped in this time? How many more children with special needs and how much more expensive is it to stay in compliance with the law that requires those needs be met?

Kind of a one-sided metric. Never use a single variable when you need multiple variables to fully explore the relationships in the data.

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Local aid is irrelevant - they get this percentage based on the total budget which has never shrunk under Menino - FY 2009 to FY 2010 was the most "dire" year - revenues and expenditures were about the same (fractionally higher in 2010). Revenue this year will be up 2-4% -again mostly on property taxes far more than offsetting cuts in local aid.

These are mostly from memory -but should be fairly accurate:

1) There are about 10% fewer students in BPS over the past 10 years
2) There would be fewer but we have expanded preschool seats by about 1600 students - I strongly support this - but relative to cost a preschooler is a fraction of what it costs to educate the primary through secondary grades - meaning savings in the range of $5-10 million have been allocated elsewhere in the system.
3) As you know there are a number of levels of special needs. About 20% of BPS falls in the special needs category - across a range of disability levels - only about 10-12% of these students are not in the mainstream schools - this proportion stays relatively consistent and may have even fallen slightly (I believe it used to be close to 25%.
4) We have one of the lowest percentages of populations in the school system - about 9%. The only system in the state that spends significantly more than BPS is Cambridge - which only has about 5% of the population in public schools.
5) If you add in a reasonable estimate for real estate costs - say $1500 per student(which are not "billed" in the budget other than maintenance), BPS spends about $22,500 per student annually - maybe more - that averages out to well over $500k per classroom assuming 24 kids per average class.

Even taking out the 20% for special ed (BPS numbers - not mine) - you are still at almost $450k per class - if it costs $100k to put a teacher with bennies in a classroom - where is the rest going?

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Why does a preschooler cost a fraction of what it costs older students? Those classrooms sometimes have more teachers so I would assume they would cost more. (If preschool teachers are paid the same as the other teachers)

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A typical preschool classroom has one teacher and an aide but at the older grades there's different teachers for different subjects, more textbooks, more gym equipment, more computers per pupil, etc. It would not surprise me if there's more grant money to supplement programming at the younger grades. Also, parents tend to be more involved at the younger grades so there's more fund-raising.

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I've seen preschool classes with 2 team teachers and anywhere from 4-8 aides depending on the classroom (special need inclusive ones). These types of classrooms seem to be more common at the preschool level.

Plus the whole grant/fundraising issue is kind of what this whole story is about.

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