Latest Federal Data Confirm: College NOT Road to Prosperity

College educated people do have higher incomes and lower unemployment rates, on average, than those who have not been to college. However, the goal of achieving prosperity by obtaining a college education is becoming less attainable and secure than ever before, primarily because of staggering levels of student debt and a stagnant labor market offering mostly low wage jobs in the service sector, but also because of growing competition for limited space on college campuses.

“A college diploma no longer guarantees a direct pathway to the middle class, making it harder to justify the expense of a degree,” National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Commissioner Jack Buckley told Diverse Education. Student loan debt is the only type of loan debt that has increased since the recession started. In 2012, total student loan debt reached $1 trillion, surpassing credit card debt, becoming the second largest source of personal debt after home mortgage debt. Consequently, even for those lucky enough to earn a college degree and find a job, high monthly loan payments can easily force them into the ranks of the working poor.  Considering that the average undergraduate owes more than $25,000, a repayment schedule of 10 years at 6.8% comes to $288 per month, which is a lot of money for someone earning only $30-40,000 per year.

Despite his dire assessment, Buckley went on to repeat the cliché that most of the “good” jobs are going to those with college degrees. Yet, he does not define “good,” which, today, generally means “a steady salary,” regardless of the amount of that salary or the working conditions. Today people are working longer hours than they did 30-40 years ago and earning less in constant dollars, even with college degrees, so a more precise statement would be that people with college degrees are more likely to have just plain jobs, not necessarily good ones. Furthermore, even those who have college degrees are finding it harder to get hired and to hold onto their jobs. What good is a “good” job if it barely pays ones living expenses and college loan debt and leaves one with no time or energy to spend with family or leisure?

College For All: A Pathway Toward Unemployment and Lower Wages

While the growing expense of college and the ensuing debt burden are certainly good reasons to question the assumption that college is a good investment, one must now consider the job prospects that are possible with a college degree, as well, since many of the jobs that require a college degree are expected to decline over the next decade. This could result in a labor surplus in those fields and drive down wages, while forcing many graduates into other fields or the ranks of the unemployed. For example, over 250,000 bachelor’s or master’s degrees in education have been awarded yearly since 2000, though there will only be 539,100 teaching jobs available through 2020, and nearly ten times more advanced degrees in psychology will be awarded than there will be jobs in this field. Ph.D. scientists are already feeling the pinch of job and grantshortages, forcing them to look for other sources of income. (Statistics from National Center for Policy Analysis) And college graduates, in general, are having a tough time finding work in their fields of expertise, with 50% of all recent college graduates currently unemployed or underemployed in low wage jobs unrelated to their training like bartending or retail, the San Jose Mercury News reported last year. Roughly 1.5 million, or 53.6%, of those under the age of 25 with bachelor's degrees were jobless or underemployed last year—the highest rate in more than a decade.

One might reasonably wonder why legislators and reformers have been pushing a school reform agenda of “college for all” when college graduates routinely cannot find work in their fields of expertise and must then accept low-wage, unskilled jobs to repay their $25,000 of student debt. College may no longer be such a good investment for young people, but it is a huge boon to the banks and lending agencies that profit from the $1 trillion in student debt (a debt that cannot be erased through bankruptcy) and to the institutions and businesses that will be able to increase their profit margins as wages decline because of the increasing competition for scarce STEM jobs and other fields requiring highly educated workers.

Get Good Grades and to College or You’ll Wind Up a Ditch Digger

It used to be (and perhaps still is?) common for teachers to chastise shirking students with the threat that they’ll wind up digging ditches if they don’t start doing their homework and paying attention in class, yet the median income for a heavy equipment operator (e.g., backhoes, tractors, bulldozers and other ditch digging machinery) is $60,483, according to salary.com. The fact is there are lots of jobs that pay relatively high wages that do not require a college education and many of these industries are projected to grow considerably over the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Jobs in masonry, for example, are expected to increase by 40%. Jobs in plumbing and pipefitting are expected to grow 26%. Jobs operating construction machinery are expected to increase by 23%. (Statistics from National Center for Policy Analysis)

Go To College (If You Can)

Another obvious problem with the College for All agenda is that it is impossible for everyone to go to college. Even before states started to slash contributions to their public universities there weren’t enough teachers and classrooms for every high school graduate. At the same time, large numbers of young people are either not graduating from high school, or graduating without the necessary skills to succeed in college. This problem has only been exacerbated by the recession and years of federal policies prior to the recession that favored the interests of older Americans at the expense of younger Americans. For example, the federal government now spends $480 billion on Medicare, but only $68 billion on education, according to Esquire. As a whole, the U.S. government spends 7 times as much on its seniors as it does on its children, per capita, according to a 2009 Brookings Institution study. Mike Males writes that younger workers are currently contributing 15% of their payroll income to pay for Social Security and Medicare payments for seniors, since Congress gutted the Social Security Trust Fund (originally designed to cover future generation’s benefits) to pay for current government needs.

As a result, the wealth gap between younger and older Americans is now the largest on record. In 1984 Americans who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under the age of thirty-five. By 2008, older Americans were earning nearly forty-seven times as much as the younger age group. Older Americans suffered far less under the current recession, with the median net worth of those under 35 falling 37% between 2005 and 2010, while falling only 13% for those over the age of 65. This wealth gap is not small, either. The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older has increased 42% since 1984, to a comfortable $170,494, while the median net worth for younger households has declined 68% to a desperate $3,662, according to the Pew Research Center. (For more, see the following articles in Esquire and Newsweek).

The road to prosperity for young people today, if there is one at all, may be taking care of their parents in their old age and hoping they inherit whatever wealth they may have had.

Brown’s Budget Shuffle: Something From Nothing is Still Nothing

"Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice"—Gov. Jerry Brown, California (quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle)

Gov. Brown is correct—funding poor schools the same as affluent schools is not only unjust, it is pedagogically irrational.  Poor children have greater educational needs, while their parents have far less to donate to school fundraisers. Funding them equally only guarantees unequal outcomes. Yet his solution—reallocating revenues from wealthier schools to poorer school—is neither just nor rational.

None of California’s schools currently receives adequate funding. The state has slashed over $20 billion from K-12 education over the past five years and none of this will be restored under the state’s new “millionaire’s” tax. Furthermore, basic aid school districts (the so-called affluent districts that receive only the “basic” aid from the state because they have higher than average property tax bases) have already lost 90% of the funding they once received from the state. Therefore, taking away scarce resources from these schools only serves to make them more like the state’s low income schools.

While it is true that affluent schools have fewer needs than lower income schools, they were not receiving sufficient funding from the state or local property taxes even before the economic meltdown and draconian budget cuts that followed. Consequently, they have relied on fundraising to make up some of the difference, something they can do with greater ease and success than lower income schools, since the parents tend to be wealthier and have more disposable income. Yet even this hasn’t prevented basic aid schools from losing counselors, librarians and nurses; increasing class sizes to 35 students per teacher (or higher); imposing out-of-pocket fees on teachers for health insurance; and freezing or cutting wages. Furthermore, even within basic aid districts there are often low income schools with student demographics similar to poor, inner city schools. Reducing their funding because they happen to be in an “affluent” basic aid district would end up harming the lower income students Brown’s plan is intended to help.

Of course it is important to provide low income schools with additional funding, over and above what the affluent ones receive, because of their greater needs. However, this must be accomplished through increased tax revenues, not by ripping off other schools. Yet increased school funding, alone, will not solve the myriad ways in which poverty impacts educational outcomes. To really close the achievement gap, poor kids in poor schools need relief from their poverty so they aren’t coming to school hungry and suffering from stress and untreated medical conditions. Their parents need relief from poverty before they even have children, since poverty increases the chances children will be born premature, with low birth weight, and suffer from stress, malnutrition and environmental toxins, each of which contribute to cognitive impairment and learning disabilities.

Short of this, low income schools need large infusions of cash—far more than they would receive under the Brown plan. They need enough revenue to lower class sizes and hire extra teachers and reading specialists. Low income schools need full-time nurses or on-site clinics to care for uninsured children and reduce the amount of class time lost to treatable and preventable illnesses. Low income schools need staff and resources to provide adult education and English language support for parents. They need extra funding for after school programs so that children aren’t watching television or getting into trouble or hurt when classes end. They need mental health specialists to help students suffering from stress, anxiety and other common mental health problems that often go undiagnosed or treated in poor children.

If the schools truly are public, then parents should not have to pay more out of pocket for fundraisers and benefits, in addition to what they contribute through their taxes. If they were adequately funded, there would be much less need for this.

This is another major problem with school finance. Affluent families are affluent, in part, because they can shelter much of their income from taxation (e.g., deductions and write-offs) and many do not want to pay a penny for the education of other people’s children. By maintaining tax rates at their current levels (which are far lower than they were during the Reagan era and earlier), the affluent can continue amass great quantities of wealth, while getting an excellent free education for their children at the exclusive public schools in their wealthy enclaves. They can then supplement their schools’ mediocre budgets with tax deductible donations that further lower their tax liabilities, while increasing the education quality gap to the benefit of their own children. Thus, they (and their legislators) are unlikely to accept Brown’s proposal (or the tax increases necessary to put a serious dent in the problem).

Giant CTA Sellout: Student Test Scores Could Be Used In Teacher Evaluations

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Assembly Bill 5, which will revamp how teacher evaluations are done in California, has been revived thanks to recent support by the California Teachers Association, according to John Fensterwald, writing for Ed Source. CTA lobbyist Patricia Rucker said that it “is a clear and good policy document” now that some of CTA’s preferences have been incorporated into the revised bill.

So what does the bill do to evaluations and how has it been amended to appease CTA?

Mostly it codifies the existing standards for the teaching profession and mandates that all districts use them when evaluating their teachers. These are very reasonable and appropriate expectations for teachers such as engaging and supporting all pupils in learning, setting high expectations, creating and maintaining effective learning environments, and knowledge of content standards.

However, the bill adds a new and potentially dangerous standard: “Contributing to pupil academic growth based upon multiple measures, which may include, but are not limited to, classroom work, local and state academic assessments, and pupil grades, classroom participation, presentations and performances, and projects and portfolios.”

The danger here is that these measures assess where students are, not how they got there. Thus, they do not actually measure teacher skill. Since students’ performance and growth in these assessments is significantly influenced by their socioeconomic backgrounds, English language proficiency and special education status, many teachers will be evaluated poorly due to their students’ backgrounds rather than their own teaching ability.

Furthermore, Value Added Measures (VAM) that rate teachers based on student progress on standardized exams, are notoriously unreliable. Studies show that even when used correctly they are only accurate for the very worst and the very best teachers, not for the vast majority of teachers who lie somewhere in the middle.

So why would the state’s largest teachers’ union concede so much?

Fensterwald argues that they might be responding to a recent court ruling. In June, Superior Court Judge James Chalfant’s ruled that Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was violating the Stull Act, which requires school districts to use student scores on state standardized tests when evaluating teacher effectiveness. Since AB 5 permits (but does not require) districts to use state test scores in teacher evaluations, CTA may believe that the law preempts the judge’s ruling and will buy them some breathing space.

This is a risky and stupid game for the union. Once student test scores become permissible as evidence of teacher quality, districts will try to impose it locally, while politicians and Ed Deformers will push to make it mandatory for all teachers under state law.

CTA ‘s Patricia Rucker has called the issue overblown, since the existing tests are slated to be replaced by new ones aligned to the Common Core Standards (CCS) and it remains to be seen whether those new tests will be “suitable for teacher evaluations.” However, her perspective shows an incredible naïveté. Considering who is profiting from the CCS and the new exams, it is incredibly unlikely that these tests will provide data that is any more reliable or meaningful than the current state tests. Furthermore, all student tests measure students’ performance, not teachers’. And since they are all influenced by students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, a good teacher can still end up with low student test scores.

Even with CTA’s support, AB 5 still faces an uphill battle. Those on the right are criticizing the revised bill because it does not require test scores be used in teacher evaluations. Still, if the bill passes, it could be years before it would be implemented (if ever). Because the Stull Act requires that the state reimburse local governments for mandated programs, AB 5 would cost the state millions that it currently does not have. Furthermore, the bill would be delayed by a minimum of seven years, until after the state has repaid school districts money it owes them due to budget cuts, a sum currently valued at more than $10 billion.

300,000 Teaching Jobs Lost Since 2008

Over 100,000 teaching jobs were lost in the past year, while more than 300,000 have been lost since 2008, according to a recent article in Fire Dog Lake. Most of these losses were due to state budget cuts. However, there has been very little federal relief since 2010.

One obvious repercussion has been increased class sizes and decreased course offerings. However, there are other less obvious implications, like the fact that the majority of teachers are women and that job losses in the education sector have had significant impact on the national unemployment rate for women. Another less obvious consequence has been teachers’ unions increasing willingness to voluntarily forgo raises and accept employer take-backs like furloughs, decreased contributions to health and pension plans, and increased workloads, in hopes that these concessions will stem the layoffs. Many of these concessions will likely become permanent, while going years without a raise can significantly reduce teachers’ retirement savings.

Big Surprise: Schools Hiring Fewer Nurses, Librarians

According to recent findings released last week by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), California is issuing fewer credentials for K-12 service positions like librarians, school nurses and administrators, and schools are hiring fewer service staff.

Between the 2006-07 and 2010-11 school years, CTC issued 11% fewer service credentials, while the number of people working in service positions dropped by 9%. The biggest decline was for nurse credentials—a 26.4% drop, while the number of nurses working in the public schools went down by 13.3%. The number of school social worker credentials fell by 18.9% and 10% for school psychologists.

There was an 8.3% increase in new teacher librarian credentials in 2010-11. However, the number of librarians working in the schools fell from 1,234 in 2006-7 to 895 in 2010-11, a 27% drop. There was also an increase in speech pathologist credentials and the number of speech pathologists working in schools declined.

(To read more, see the Bay Citizen)