How Will Your Money Be Wasted This Year?

How Will Your Money Be Wasted This Year?

 

EVERY year Maryland spends about 1 billion- yep, that’s billion with a B, on professional development and reimbursement to teachers for courses that they are required to take to sustain their initial certification.  Maryland continues to do this even though there is NO evidence that this expenditure impacts the quality of teaching in Maryland.

Mark Procopio, an educational research professor, says there are no data that show either the coursework or the professional development contribute to teacher growth or student outcomes.   Yet both are required in Maryland for teachers to maintain their certification.  In fact, Maryland also requires that teachers earn Masters degrees or 30 post-bachelor degree credits within a short time of the initial certification.  As a reward for meeting this requirement teachers get a nice bump-up in salary, an additional added cost to the taxpayers.   David Steiner, the executive director of the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University and former member of the Maryland State Board of Education has said “we have no quality assurance that this money is really well spent.”   Yet we keep on spending it.

The Maryland legislature recently approved a 10-year multi-billion-dollar (there’s that b again) educational reform package that will be throwing more money at folks who get the advanced education and certification.   There is absolutely no evidence that paying poor teachers more money makes them any better at their jobs or improves student outcomes.

The one thing that would improve teaching, the teacher unions would never accept.  Teaching is the only so-called profession in which people who are bad at their jobs can’t get fired.  The unions have assured us of that by creating so many multi-year hoops that principals and school districts must jump through to terminate a teacher that few teachers ever lose their jobs for incompetence.  Instead we get the dance of the lemons, where poor teachers are transferred and recycled to other schools where they will inflict their poor skillset on other innocent kids.  And by the way, ever a fan of getting teachers more money regardless of whether it is earned or not, Cheryl Bost, president of the Maryland State Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in Maryland, thinks the money spent on professional development and coursework was great for her.  But then she hasn’t been in a classroom for many years. She works fulltime for the union.   And there we go, more money wasted.