Essay: Starving The Future - 5.19.10

The passage last week of the school retirement bill means that the state will save some badly needed money. But, Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry wonders if we’re thinking about what this will mean for the state’s students…

Hear Audio Story   

Michigan lawmakers are still congratulating themselves over having passed the school retirement bill. What’s telling, however, is that their pride doesn’t have anything to do with education policy.

All they are really thinking about is saving money. That’s not to say that the teacher retirement bill is all bad. The best thing about it is that it will create new jobs for tens of thousands of new teachers, who otherwise might have had to leave the state or the teaching profession, or both. Some will bring fresh new ideas.

The bad part, however, is that Michigan schools will lose thousands of highly skilled teachers, at a time when our state can scarcely afford to give our kids a diminished education.

Many of those now being forced into retirement are in their early fifties and right at the top of their professional careers. And the worst thing about the new law is that the schools are forbidden to bring these folks back as part-timers or consultants.

Last night I talked to the woman who has been recognized as the best Advanced Placement history teacher in Michigan. She doesn’t mind retiring, but would like to come back as a contract worker and teach a class or two. That would be fine with her district.

Her students consistently had the highest scores on placement tests, and get accepted to the best colleges in the country.

But the law forbids any school district from hiring anybody, even part-time, who is drawing a state pension. Plus, the teacher’s union to which she paid dues for forty years doesn’t want any part-timers on the job, because they fear they’ll lose union dues.

What nobody is thinking of is the kids, and making sure they get the best possible education. Not allowing retired teachers to come back on a part-time basis is going to be especially hard on districts in out-of-the-way places which may be losing, say, the only special education teachers around.

Yes, this saves money - in the short run. In the long run, anything that further weakens education will cost Michigan big time, far more than we know, and our children and grandchildren will pay for it. There’s a national, non-profit project called Kids Count, which measures the educational well-being of children.

They released a report this week that ought to give us nightmares. According to Kids Count, reading proficiency among Michigan fourth-graders is falling like a rock, in part because cutbacks have hit early childhood programs. Michigan is now below two-thirds of the other states when it comes to their ability to read.

That means that seventy percent - seventy percent - of fourth graders are not reading at an adequate level. That soars to ninety-one percent among black kids, tying us for worst in the nation.

Kids who cannot read have no future. Yet our lawmakers are afraid to ask us to sacrifice. I think the last time politicians really cared about education in this country was when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and seemed to be winning the space race.

We were terrified, and poured billions into education. Today, unless we improve the schools, our way of life will be doomed.

But without a clear external enemy, neither the public nor the politicians seem to understand this.

It’s enough to make you want to bring back the USSR.

Comments

[John Robertson]

Jack

I bet the majority of teachers retiring won't be replaced and therefore there won't be "tens of thousands" of jobs for new teachers.