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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Adjuncts to the Rescue

This is an earnest question. I’m not trying to provoke advocates of the adjunct-faculty agenda. But I couldn’t help wondering today as I was reading an advance copy of tomorrow morning’s Washington Post Magazine: Education Review about an apparent contradiction.

The headline on the cover is “Outsourcing Our Schools.” The paper reports that the Prince George’s County public schools are desperate for qualified teachers and have begun to import hundreds of them from the Philippines. Reading the story, I was reminded of a piece I read in The New York Times sometime in the last year or two about New York City bringing faculty members to the public schools from Europe and Latin America. This teacher shortage is going on at the same time that several of the nation’s public school systems (New York and Washington are two) are putting in place radical reforms in an effort to improve the performance of their students. Many of these school districts also bemoan that not enough teachers qualify to instruct in specialty subjects and that the systems have too many teachers “out of their disciplines” in the classrooms.

Even with the energy crisis, an economy in downward flux, and a war underway, I believe there is no more important national obligation than to see to it that we graduate students from our public high schools with justified self esteem, solid reading skills, the ability to handle math and science, comprehend literature, understand history, and appreciate the arts. If we are to remain globally competitive in the 21st century, this has to be one of the highest items on our country’s public agenda.

Given these two things — the importance of improving public-school education and a shortage of highly qualified teachers — I can’t help but wonder why some of the people who are struggling to support themselves as adjunct university professors don’t step forward and take the openings in primary and secondary schools. This is valuable professional work, providing full-time salaries, benefits that cover health insurance, pensions, and reasonable vacations. And to be blunt, it is a noble calling that for far too long has been the subject of mild (and often unspoken) disdain by those in the higher-education arena. To many, teaching (even part-time) at a university comes with a certain amount of social cachet while teaching in a public high school is perceived too often as an onerous burden. It is time to remove the stigma.

I recall as a young boy that there were, dare I say it, “overqualified” teachers in my primary and secondary schools. These were the last of the people who entered those classrooms during the Great Depression, when work in many fields was hard to find. And they were superb, standouts that I remember by name and with gratitude even now. The same is true during the days of the draft and the Vietnam War, when deferments from military service were offered to young men willing to go into public-school classrooms in the inner cities, where the students were considered disadvantaged and the schools appeared to be failing. During both “crises” the students were the beneficiaries of having very smart, talented people doing something that at the time did not appear to be their first choice of employment but what turned out to be extremely satisfying for many and of enormous value to the young people they taught.

I understand that people with Ph.D.‘s have earned them through diligence and sacrifice and would like to put their education and training to work in a university setting. But surely we all make choices in our lives, and if after banging on the door of a university in search of a full-time employment for a period of time proves fruitless, doesn’t it make sense to seek an alternative opportunity to contribute an important service as an educator to one’s community?

Perhaps one of the ways that universities, particularly those with schools of education, can lend a hand to their adjunct faculty (those who have served the college for a certain number of years) and concurrently help their local communities is to provide, at little or no cost, an opportunity to take the courses required for a license to teach in the public schools. (Most Ph.D. programs don’t provide training in the pedagogy skills necessary to be a credentialed K-12 teacher.)

There are many institutions of higher education, my own included, which have joint ventures underway with school districts, where undergraduates in the thousands volunteer countless hours reading to, tutoring, and working with children in schools abutting the university campus. A great start. Does my notion to address another part of the agenda seem to have a potential to be constructive for all the parties engaged? Is someone already doing this?

Posted at 04:48:55 PM on August 2, 2008 | All postings by strachtenberg

Comments

  1. Perhaps full professors who have enjoyed the benefits of their positions for, say, 10 years should move on and take their many talents to public secondary school education as well. Why not?

    — JD · Aug 2, 05:42 PM · #

  2. Give me a break. Perhaps universities should stop exploiting adjunct faculty and pay them a decent salary.

    — Ph.D. · Aug 2, 05:53 PM · #

  3. You get the money together, and I’ll volunteer to be the 1st in line for a pilot program to become a high school teacher who has 1/ an advanced degree, and 2/ a degree in something other than education.

    Job security, benefits, and a union sound good after making what amounts to minimum wage teaching the same level of courses in college that I had when I was in high school.

    Maybe then a few more students will actually arrive in college with competencies in reading and writing.

    — anon · Aug 2, 07:31 PM · #

  4. This suggestion overlooks age discrimination in K-12 hiring. They want “enthusiastic” teachers; that’s usually code for young. Adjuncts with PhDs suffer enough humiliation already without putting themselves through the often kafkaesque K-12 hiring process.

    — SandyB · Aug 2, 08:31 PM · #

  5. Ah yes, why don’t we adjuncts step forward and take up those positions? Perhaps after teaching our 6 to 9 classes at three different institutions per semester just to make a living wage, we can also sit down for some instruction of our own. We have nothing but spare time, after all.

    I note that you also suggest that universities should help us out with the cost of those required courses. Maybe they’ll get around to that after they get around to paying us a living wage.

    — Carol · Aug 2, 09:05 PM · #

  6. Has anyone reading this piece (or the author) ever heard of the requirement for teaching credentials for elementary and high school teaching? A PhD is not a high school teaching credential. Not only that, the high school near me is now offering community college courses using their regular staff with masters degrees. Meanwhile, others of us who are more than qualified are apparently not welcome. I would be glad to try to be of some service in local schools—I even have elementary school teaching experience in addition to university and community college teaching experience.

    — Joe Erwin · Aug 2, 09:24 PM · #

  7. I have applied for a number of high school teaching jobs. Having a PhD makes you about as attractive to them as having smallpox.

    — unemployed PhD · Aug 2, 09:48 PM · #

  8. I have taught at every level from 4th grade on up. My middle school and high school experiences were not rewarding for either me or my students. While I am unhappy teaching squirmy ten-year-olds or teens who want to be anywhere but their high school classroom, I am at my best, and elicit the best from my students in a college classroom. So just because I am a successful teacher to adults does not imply that I belong in K-12. However, to repeat what others have said, several years ago, eager for a full-time position with benefits, I did apply to some local public schools. I was never even invited for an interview. When I called to ask why, the school secretary said that the school couldn’t afford to hire me at a salary commensurate with my education and years of experience and they wouldn’t insult me by offering me a beginning teacher’s salary. Mr. Trachtenberg may think public schools want to hire adjunct professors , but he’s wrong.

    — Betsy Smith, B.A., M.A, M.S., M.Phil., Ph.D. · Aug 2, 10:27 PM · #

  9. I strongly suggest some of you consider coming to South Carolina to teach! Go to cerra.org and find out what’s available. People with PhD’s must be paid by law at that level in every school district. Also, college teaching counts toward experience placement on the salary schedule. Our retirement system is excellent and you can be fully vested in 5 years. Yes, you might have to take courses in our PACE program for teachers coming into the system without full certification, but you would receive tremendous support toward achieving full certification without taking any hits on the salary schedule. Also, teachers in S.C. can, after three full years of K-12 experience, apply to become National Board certified. National Board certification results in a state stipend of an extra $7500 over your position on the salary schedule. In some districts, teachers get up to an extra $5500.

    True, K-12 teaching is never easy, but it is a truly rewarding field, and I would recommend it to you.

    — Rich Lussier · Aug 2, 11:11 PM · #

  10. Students in K-12 classrooms deserve no less than educators who truly desire to teach and interact at these levels. For the same reasons that a pediatrician might not want to work in gerontology—even facing a decline in client demand, specialists in their academic fields are often singularly inspired. One normally assumes that at least MOST of the students in a college classroom are there by choice, not by mandate as is the case with K-12. Capturing and holding the attention of a contrary student requires particular passion and insight and only some people are equipped to assume this role. Courses in pedagogy are only nominally helpful.

    In essence, Adjuncts are not “one-size-fits-all” commodities. We are more like Joel Trachtenberg as he is described in “About the Author,” but have had fewer, different, or less fortunate opportunities.

    — Rebecca · Aug 2, 11:38 PM · #

  11. Jeez, Trachtenberg, how can you be so clueless? Don’t you know about the credentialing process? You have to suffer through awful, awful mandatory courses in the education dept to get your credential. And it never ends. You have to keep going back throughout your career and sit through that utter shite until you retire. No one with a brain can stand being around Ed.D.s like that.

    If we really want to help the public shools in the US, the first thing we do is, we kill all the Ed.D.s.

    — fred · Aug 3, 12:16 AM · #

  12. While I agree that it is criminal what universities are doing with their adjunct faculty, and that tenured faculty and administration need to step up and help put an end to this despicable system, I also think Prof. Trachtenberg makes a legitimate point. If enough university presidents pushed to help PhDs get jobs in secondary school education, the American education system would surely benefit. They would have to lobby to have set aside these ridiculous education certification rules, which are in place for no other reason than to protect collegiate education programs. In other words, it’s a turf war, and colleges could resolve it by pushing for state or national legislation that would allow teaching in college to be credited as experience (and isn’t it?) toward a secondary school certification. It would surely shake up a system that sorely needs shaking up. On the other side, this would increase demand for Ph.D.s and would allow the market to solve the adjunct problem. Fewer Ph.D.s means that colleges will suddenly have to compete for teaching talent, and the adjunct system will most surely implode.

    Having laid it all out, I think I now know why university administrators are not trying to help solve the problem. They have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.

    — Walt · Aug 3, 07:52 AM · #

  13. When my college courses fell through one semester, I substituted in a public school system, taking on a long-term assignment for a teacher on a medical leave. My field is English and writing — I have an MFA, another terminal degree, with, at that point, some ten years of classroom experience as an adjunct in two- and four-year colleges and universities in the US and abroad. But this was an 11th-grade technology class, and the teacher had left detailed instructions for an ongoing hands-on project and films to show. When the lights came up after the first such film, I invited a discussion with some innocuous remark like “Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it? Let’s review what the film showed us about …[its topic].” The students, who were already engaged in conversations and poking and giggling activities of their own, looked up at me in bafflement, and a teacher’s aide for a non-hearing student signaled to me frantically to Stop, stop! Later the principal called me in. Apparently, parental and other social, cultural, and legal concerns have made discussion a dangerous thing in public education these days — much less nobility. I was advised just to let the students work on their project: toothpick bridges.

    — Steve Street · Aug 3, 08:43 AM · #

  14. Been there, done that.
    I actually agree — but the amount of physical energy it takes to teach Kg-8 is more than many academic types including myself- have. It also takes a personality which is actually slightly more devious than that of the ordinary adjunct, who tends to be earnest. Schools are intended to provide babysitting in the early grades— the situation has been know to create problems even for very experienced classroom teachers.
    As a country we still use education as a means of discrimination. When we truly want to educate all, we will publish standards, skills, on the WEB, along with lessons intended to have people achieve. Until then, it’s just noise and more of what we Americans are good at- SPIN.

    Are we talking about education or jobs? Maybe some people who make lots of trouble — e.g. the ones who created the current foreclosure mess and the members of Congress who voted for the War in Iraq really should not be employed at all! Think about it.

    — Anna Lee · Aug 3, 09:53 AM · #

  15. My first response to this suggestion was to want to say, well, why don’t you do it? But the truth is, this doesn’t make sense. The problem with contingent labor isn’t that there aren’t jobs in academia. Obviously there are. The problem isn’t that higher-ed teachers can’t get jobs; the problem is the nature of those jobs. Individual people might choose to work in a different field (such as K-12 ed) because the working conditions are not good in higher ed, but people will still be needed to teach college students and working conditions for those jobs will still need to be improved.

    — Judy Olson · Aug 3, 12:09 PM · #

  16. Dr. Trachtenberg seems to ignore 2-year colleges here. Here’s a radical idea: Since the public universities are all corporatized now (and no longer really public; cf. Neufield’s new book on this), they should receive a lot less public funding, and rely even more heavily on industry investment and donors. With the savings, states can then invest more heavily in high schools and community colleges. We could then require all students who want to go to universities to first go to 2-year colleges, where they can be fully prepared for university study (or the workforce). High schools can then worry less about college prep, and focus on basic skills and life skills. These institutional changes would open up lots of new jobs for community college teachers (jobs for which PhDs are already well-qualified), and would deal a hard blow to the corporate university’s exploitation of adjunct labor. Each learning institution could then focus on its core competency (hs=“3 Rs”, CC=univ./workforce prep, 4-yr’s=research and advanced study) But, it all depends on public universities admitting that they are not really public anymore, and should therefore eschew massive public funding (the payoff for them would be better students who could better contribute to research, and perhaps reduced teaching loads for faculty).

    — a dude in academe · Aug 3, 01:42 PM · #

  17. Mr. Dude, that is an inspired idea. As it makes such good practical sense, both as an educational and professional remedy, I am sure it will never, ever be implemented.

    — Walt · Aug 3, 02:13 PM · #

  18. #16 dude, you haven’t thought this through. Abuse of contingent labor is just as rife at CCs as it is at 4-years. And having taught at both the CC and 4-year level, I can say that the CC job is very much closer to high school than it is to university. The administrators are not scholars and usually know dick about good teaching. And yet they still abuse the faculty with the same corporate management fad nonsense.

    So in some ways it’s the worst of both worlds in that you’re exposed to both the Ed.D. nonsense and the coporatization nonsense. And many CCs don’t even have a tenure system.

    — fred · Aug 3, 03:42 PM · #

  19. Has SJT taught anything other than “the university presidency in America”? I didn’t know there was such a demand for these types of academic courses at GW..

    — cb · Aug 3, 06:54 PM · #

  20. My husband asked me the same thing on Friday. I have not spoken to him since. I have been adjuncting 2 semesters; when the semester ended I went on a mad job hunt. Teaching jobs are everywhere and everywhere requires certification.

    However, certification apps are not being accepted right now in my state. There is a time and date for that too.

    I’m pretty familiar with PG county, MD. Their subs get more per day than adjunct phD’s.

    I don’t have an excuse for not teaching k-12. I will try it when the application date rolls around. I do think the certification process is administrative BS that most people, who have done an incredible amount of research before leaving their universities, deplore. This is an area that all complaints about advanced degrees & entitlement are probably justified.

    — Drew · Aug 3, 07:03 PM · #

  21. I’ve done both…spent years as an adjunct while I was teaching elementary school full-time. The college-level teaching was a pleasure, the elementary school teaching was pure, exhausting, mostly unrewarding drudgery, and unless you are really motivated to teach young children (as most college adjuncts are not), you probably shouldn’t.

    And by the way, University President Emeritus Trachtenberg, the word you meant to write is “cachet”, not “cache”, when describing the supposed prestige of college-level adjuncting.

    — Steve · Aug 3, 08:12 PM · #

  22. I’m sad to see how angry so many of us are. I’m a “retired” adjunct— after 7 years of living below the poverty line, subsidizing the public education system on my credit card, I realized that this was the ultimate self insult. But I stayed so long because I loved the work!

    As the child of public school teachers, I have witnessed the exhaustion and intellectual drain that working in K-12 creates. Long days, you can’t even break to pee, children can be cruel. And your own development is never valued. I have worked in urban middle and high schools and was exhausted and miserable, even though I felt good about making a positive contribution. Teaching at the college level I felt intellectually and creatively alive! I loved my students, learned so much from them, and I feel like I’ve earned an advanced degree in the study of the college student.

    I don’t think the author’s premise is a bad one… except what would the higher ed system do if all the adjuncts went and found paying jobs?

    Or- what would higher ed do if all adjuncts just went on strike???? Now that would be something!

    This is all going to have to change. It will change. But is anyone planning for the change? Private college students won’t want to be putting themselves in debt to pay adjuncts a sliver of tuition. It isn’t fair to them or their parents.

    The increasing rage of adjuncts who comment on stories like this should be a sign of how fragile the system is. What are we doing to change it? Anything? Anyone? Anywhere?

    One day I’d love to be a professor again! I miss my students. I hope the full-timers can see past adjunct jealousy and learn to appreciate their own positions. I know lots of fantastic professors, but the few who neglect their students and don’t care about their job are the greatest insults to hard working adjuncts. Maybe universities can arrange to give deadbeat tenured professors jobs in the public school system?

    Maybe medicaid can be extended to adjunct professors? Maybe there is some kind of federal aid that can help? Maybe student loans can be forgiven for time as an adjunct?

    — "Retired" adjunct "professor" · Aug 4, 12:18 AM · #

  23. Re: #22

    Considering lots of adjuncts are defaulting on student loans, a little “loan forgiveness” for being an educator might be helpful.

    But no one values over-educated, unemployable adjuncts. Even less so if they are grad students working at the school where they’re enrolled.

    Well, they value them for $1500 a class. But no more than 2! We don’t anyone thinking they’re full-time.

    — anon · Aug 4, 02:53 AM · #

  24. I agree that adjuncts abuse themselves by choosing to work hard for low pay and no benefits. This would be a way to raise their wages.

    I made a proposal along these lines a while back, but of course got blank stares and casual dismissals from the administrators I talked with.

    My proposal was to prepare students for college by having them take classes with PhD’s taught at the same level/style as you get at a four-year college. I brought up the glut of PhD’s in certain fields. I said that I ended up with a lot of freshman who were not ready for college. A lot of the students I have taught require a year to understand how things work in college. The PhD’s would work for the state, get a reasonable salary with benefits, and would not need a degree in education.

    I’ll never put myself through the humiliation of that again.

    — me · Aug 4, 08:13 AM · #

  25. Are any of you full-time adjuncts like me? My status can be compared to the figurative two-edged sword. On one hand, I sometimes teach 5 courses per semester for a reduced rate of pay. Conversely, the university where I am employed compensates my overload at times (at least once per annum) which means that I make enough money to live without spending much time on campus. Another advantage to being a “full-time adjunct” is that I don’t have to travel from campus to campus in order to make a living wage. Is anyone else in the same boat?

    — Anaximander · Aug 4, 02:44 PM · #

  26. I am an adjunct at a local Community College and I earn a single subject teaching credential in math because at that time (2002/3) it was publicly advertised that california needed math teachers…well guess what? I am still waiting and applying to get a math teacher job. It is true that the LA area lacked teachers but in San Diego apparently we have too many applying for the jobs…so I am still just a part time adjunct..

    — valerie · Aug 4, 03:27 PM · #

  27. Just think, if you’re a MA in your subject you are already credentialized. However, the public school system doesn’t see it that way. Maybe that’s why those of us with master’s or PhD will not make the effort to teach in a public school setting. And I for one am not jumping through those hoops at my expense. Most of the pedagogy in public schools isn’t appropriate for the K-12 setting. No Child Left Behind left many. They can’t even do the basic 3Rs. I see this as a substitute teacher.

    — V. Iriarte · Aug 5, 04:50 AM · #

  28. I have to laugh as I read all this! Having taught K-grad school, I have noticed that the problem is not the level of education, the credentials needed, or even the sometimes-insane turf wars. The problem is that too few people really love to teach. I can think of only a hand full of my university profs who are really teachers. I can’t think of any of my elementary-high school teachers who weren’t teachers, except one football coach, and even he tried. The schools problems stem from the fact that we don’t make teaching an attractive profession and we don’t treat teachers as professionals—and I’m not even thinking about salaries here.
    Until the academy, which promotes the idea that teaching is “less than”, changes or until the culture truly values teaching and encourages our brightest youngsters to pursue it as a profession, there will always be a shortage of good teachers.
    P.S. Unfortunately, in our country today money and greed stand in the way of that ever happening.

    — Lynn · Aug 5, 07:03 AM · #

  29. I agree with Fred. The first thing needed for education reform is to eliminate the Ed.D. and indeed to eliminate “education” classes altogether. The next thing that’s needed is for all faculty to do a stint teaching in their local elementary, middle, and high schools so that they discover how their colleagues are mistreated, and I don’t mean by students, but by ridiculously long hours, large classrooms, and huge workload, compounded by the degradation of the system. Teachers must raise their hands to talk at faculty meetings; they are given awards for attendance, and they are shushed and scolded by principles as if they are children. As a consequence of poor education and mistreatment, along with loads of problems with undisciplined children, often malnourished or neglected, the best of the bunch drop out and the few who remain are mainly despots of one sort or another, along with a few saints.

    — Reality Principle · Aug 5, 07:10 AM · #

  30. Yes, and when approximately half the courses are taught by adjuncts at rates roughly equivalent to what one student pays for the course, we can call it “The George Washington University” – next the adjuncts will vote in the SEIU in an effort to get at least inflationary salary increases, and the Administration will refuse to recognize the union until ordered to do so by a court. Sorry SJT, we’ve already been down that road – come to think of it, you were the driver then too!

    — LocalCommentator · Aug 5, 07:31 AM · #

  31. When I saw the title of this article, I thought it referred to teaching as an adjunct in the K-12 setting—in other words, teaching just a class or two—while continuing to be an adjunct elsewhere. Though this was not what this article was about, that idea actually has some appeal to me.

    After eleven years as an adjunct, one of which was spent on a single campus as a sabbatical replacement, I have found that I like being more than one place much better than I like being on just one campus in an office of my own—well, mine for the year—which is rather like being a single fish in a fish bowl. I like seeing how things are done on different campuses. I like having access to IT on more than one campus. I like having an excuse to skip a faculty meeting or to resist sitting on a campus-wide committee. I think it would be interesting to breeze into a public school, teach a single course, meet with students for awhile, and then take off. In exchange for teaching one course, the government could provide health insurance. Under those circumstances, I would be happy to add a public school class to my schedule.

    Lots of possibilities exist both for improving K-12 education and for improving the lives of adjuncts—and other part-time workers. Yet the present system lumbers on, reminding me of the way in which we’re currently dealing with energy issues and the very real alternatives to the expensive and environmentally damaging system currently in place.

    — P-Timer · Aug 5, 08:24 AM · #

  32. I teach as an English adjunct at one university and two community colleges. I have secondary certification, but it will expire this year because I cannot get a high school teaching job. Why? No one wants to pay more for an MAT in English because the schools in Michigan are hurting. I have been number two several times, then the school hires someone who just received an undergraduate degree and has no experience. A word to the ones considering this: I would not spend a lot of money on secondary teaching education classes unless I knew I might actually get a job out of it.

    — Carol · Aug 5, 08:57 AM · #

  33. One start would be permitting political science PhD’s to teach government without requiring multi-disciplinary “social studies” credentials, don’t you think?

    — In limbo · Aug 5, 08:57 AM · #

  34. My state has something called “alternate track”, for people in other professions who want to bring their expertise into the PS system. I took a summer “stage one” (3 grad credits) class in the system 2 years ago. I have a terminal degree in my field, and ten years as a college adjunct, plus 2 years full time at a “for profit”. (I’m back to adjunct again). Everyone thought I’d be the first to get a job because of my teaching, as opposed to industry, experience.Yet even if I get past the hiring at the school stage; no Superintendent will sign off on me. “Sure, he’s taught ciollege, but how will he do in High School?” They want “certified” teachers (despite the fact that that’s what the state considers me). I’m at the same level as a 23 year-old w/ a BA in education looking for their first job; i get a provisional license upon hiring, need a year’s full-time teaching to get a permanent license. Yet unlike the 23 year old BA, I will still need to take teaching courses 2 nights a week ($$) and pay a mentor ($$) , both for the full school year, to gain that license. This with a terminal degree in my specialty. Even with me willing to do it, (and I am ) no one has even offered me a job.The state may have the program and promote it to potential teachers, but apparently no one in the schools supports it- too much paperwork on their end, I suppose.My wife says I’m the “token” interview- schools talk to me so they can tell the state they considered an alternate route candidate, but when it comes down to it, they’ll be damned if they hire one. You all talk about unionizing adjuncts, but you can’t tell me it isn’t the teacher’s union mentality that keeps alternate track people out of the system.So I’m in the same position as #26 above, and I’m in a state other than CA. # 32 popped up as I was writing this; be warned. I do think Mr. Trachtenberg is clueless.

    — In Purgatory · Aug 5, 09:18 AM · #

  35. After a few years of working as an adjunct (upon completing my Ph.D.), I thought I would investigate the possibility of teaching in K-12 schools. The education school at the local university told me that all I would have to do is get a four-year education degree.

    The idea that people who have earned Ph.D.s are suddenly transformed into bad teachers is one of the stupidest, most malicious, and self-defeating notions I have ever heard. But it is commonplace among K-12 teachers and administrators.

    I’m now a tenured professor at a research university, but it still makes me cringe to think of the treatment meted out to Ph.D.-holding applicants by the public schools. Until the U.S. abolishes ed. schools, we will continue to wallow in the lowest quality education of any industrialized nation. Much of the blame is due to other factors, but the K-12 education lobby (NEA etc.) is at fault to a great degree in my opinion.

    — nuevo mexicano · Aug 5, 09:45 AM · #

  36. Yes, Purgatory. Let me add to the list of things that need to be fixed in education: the teacher’s union. The facilities. The poverty. The apartheid in public education. The school boards and administration. The taxpayers who do not want to support education. A government that believes that a bunch of bogus tests inflicted on children and teachers will keep us distracted. Parents who are too busy, have to work long hours, or are too depressed or self-involved to pay attention to their kids. Colleges that now turn out teachers who cannot write basic sentences (no joke: I’ve worked with them and my son has had classes with them). We’re all implicated.

    As for economics: it’s a belief system, a set of values, a philosophy. Right now, we’ve all decided that our philosophy is to maximize profits. That hasn’t always been the philosophy in the US. There was actually a time when maintaining a certain profit margin (rather than continuous growth of the margin) was for most corporations the goal and ideal, and not so long ago: the 1960s. And until this new insatiable drive for profits, the ideal was to live a good life, to work as little as possible, and to have a nation where all were fed, clothed, educated and lived a decent life. An ideal, not a reality, but something against which we measured how short we fell. That worked pretty well, even environmentally, for maintaining is always easier on the environment than is a growth orientation.

    Now we continue with all of the problems we had before 1960, but have compounded them by losing any sense of ideals, as individuals, citizens, or employees of corporations. We have become hair-raisingly greedy, rapacious and selfish: a self-destructive culture. We are not ashamed to exploit our own graduate students, for example, and are capable of sneering at anyone who suggests it’s wrong to do so. We blame them for their desire to live a decent life and earn a living doing what they enjoy doing. We are not ashamed to allow children to suffer from malnutrition, in deteriorated housing, blocks from our urban universities. Very few faculty across the nation protested when the US bombarded a tiny country with an incredible arsenal of missiles and force. We do not say a word about the fact that the US now imprisons a greater percentage of its population than nearly any other nation in the world, even the most despotic. We do not care about mounting poverty and despair. We step over the homeless or complain at their presence on our campuses.

    We have been given the responsibility of educating our citizens and we have squandered that opportunity. We have sold our souls for a mess of pottage. We are deeply implicated in the current state of affairs: these politicians, journalists, lawyers, social workers, business people, police men and women: they are our students.

    — Reality Principle · Aug 5, 10:01 AM · #

  37. Teaching in public schools isn’t always that simple. A friend of mine with a PhD in history teaches in a community college. She would like to get her teaching certification. To do so, in her state, she would have to take the very same intro to US history course that she currently teaches. (She was not a history major in undergrad.) After 7 years of grad school and being underemployed for a while before getting this gig, how much more money and time should she have to put towards teaching at the high school level?

    — Anna · Aug 5, 10:58 AM · #

  38. Public schools wouldn’t let Jesus Christ teach the New Testament if he hadn’t had 30 hours of Ed. Psych.

    — PJ · Aug 5, 11:09 AM · #

  39. “Public schools wouldn’t let Jesus Christ teach the New Testament if he hadn’t had 30 hours of Ed. Psych.”
    That’s because most of the New Testament was written by St. Paul! (Point taken, though.)

    — CatherineR · Aug 5, 11:46 AM · #

  40. I am just such an adjunct trying to finish my PhD. I did not go to all this work for this long a time to teach high school. I don’t want to. I wanted and still want to teach in higher ed. I also remember high school, and (while I don’t wish to be too cynical) the stigma is deserved. I believe that the columnist here is speaking from the heart, but he is way too idealistic about any number of things. All of the adjuncts I know (and we actually outnumber the faculty where I am currently) like the college environment or like the hours as a part-timer raising a family. We do not see secondary education as an alternative for all the reasons already stated in the comments.

    — Rusty · Aug 5, 12:17 PM · #

  41. Easy, Fred! (#11) I have an Ed.D. I agree that it didn’t help me become a better teacher, but it got me a raise.

    By the way, I also have a Masters in Engineering, which is where my expertise comes from. My experience as an instructor in the Army is where I learned to teach. The Ed.D. was simply for job security. :-)

    — Don't Shoot! · Aug 5, 12:29 PM · #

  42. I like the ideas of adjuncting HS classes, I also like the idea of creating a “better AP” year for High school seniors that would prep them for college. Say the seniors that want that experience (or the ones with demanding parents) could enroll in an alternative track which is taught by PhDs and preps them for college, I think if it caught on we could sell it as a booster in the student’s college admissions packet.

    And finally, the idea of all the adjuncts going to secondary schools is ridiculous. Even in teacher drained Florida a MA can’t get a job teaching because they would have to pay them more. I have been the only canidate for many HS positions and did not recieve the job because I was “overqualified.” I had only adjuncted two classes in my whole career and had just got out of a BA straight to MA, while having no work experience. I could understand underqualified, not overqualified.

    — McDuffy · Aug 5, 12:51 PM · #

  43. Not my area of experience of expertise here, but I’m fascinated by the comments. Although they range wildly in their particulars, a common denominator seems to be:

    Schools of education have been and continue to be the ruination of K – 12 education in America. (Even the commentor who holds an Ed.D. says it has nothing to do with his quality as a teacher and that he got it only for job security.)

    I wonder if the usually diplomatic Mr. Trachtenberg, after having read the 40-odd comments to his post, would care to give his unvarnished opinion of schools of education.

    — Just Passing Through · Aug 5, 01:30 PM · #

  44. I don’t have problem with people who have their masters in education or an Ed.D. Many of them simply want to teach elementary school or whatever and are trying to work within the system to make that happen (like the gentleman above pointed out, it’s a form of job security). It doesn’t mean that they necessarily agree with the way the system is structured.

    I will also point out that while I agree with most of the posts here regarding the ridiculous additional (and meaningless) credentials required of prospective high school teachers who already have a Ph.D, there are many Ph.Ds out there who really WOULD need to some instruction or training before entering a K through 12 classroom.

    Just because you know how to do extended, advanced research in a given field doesn’t mean you are necessarily qualified to teach the most basic concepts in that field to rowdy, uninterested high school freshmen, or a group of kindergarten age special-needs students. That requires something different on the part of a teacher that not all Ph.Ds are going to have simply by virtue of their training.

    The problem is not that K through 12 schools require their teachers to have skills that fit with their educational mission. The problem is that pointless, meaningless credentials are held up as somehow indicating that a given candidate is in posession of those skills.

    While the focus of this thread is whether adjunct faculty are able to get jobs in the K-12 system, I would point out the following: there are probably many bright individuals in possession of a bachelor’s degree who would also be great teachers at the K-12 level but are just as turned off by the ridiculous credentialling process as an adjunct Ph.D holder.

    — crazy horse · Aug 5, 02:07 PM · #

  45. Can I register one more gripe? I have more graduate education than most principals working in the public schools and I am definitely more educated than the teachers. Yet, I have been offered jobs in the public schools as a teacher assistant for insulting pay or I have been told that in order to teach in the public sphere, I need another year or more of education courses. One high school interviewed me for a teaching position, but it was obvious that they wanted somebody else. The lingo that they threw at me along with the specialized questions that I could not answer satisfactorily based on my training as a researcher disqualified me for the position. The bottom line is that teaching in the public schools will require me to get in more debt or spend additional time in some classroom taking meaningless courses. I guess if my choices are starving, getting out of education altogether or taking a public school gig—I will take what seems to be the lesser of three evils.

    — Anaximander · Aug 5, 05:26 PM · #

  46. Part of me wants to agree with those who insist that this former college prez is clueless, and I do hope that he reads, word for word, many of these posts (28,9 are particularly cogent): life is considerably messier than he and his fellow administrators suppose, and his proposed “remedy,’ while well-intentioned, is all too revealing of where his life path his led him.

    For my part, I would only remind us that, despite claims to the contrary, pedagogical questions receive scant, if any attention when one is doing graduate work outside “education.” As a retired college English teacher I have always lamented the ghettoization of pedagogy into education departments, and while I’m aware of the justness of many peoples’ impatiernce with many “ed requirements” for certification, how nice would it be if those serious about college teaching had some sort of grounding in learning theory?

    — George T. Karnezis · Aug 5, 05:31 PM · #

  47. I will give Trachtenberg the benefit of the doubt concerning his intentions, but it is obvious that he does not get that teaching high school and teaching college involve visibly different skills and preparation, and a person who is qualified to teach one might in fact be ill-suited to teach the other (to be fair, at some institutions of higher education, teaching at the high school level is essentially what is required).

    I am sure that I am far from the only one who has tremendous respect for high school teachers precisely because he or she isn’t suited to that kind of teaching, and knows it!

    — Anonymous Adjunct · Aug 5, 05:47 PM · #

  48. Teaching high school doesn’t necessarily involve any teaching or learning. Of my 39 years in education, the last nine and a half were spent as a public school high school teacher- I needed the money. Most of that time I was punished and ridiculed for promoting learning in my classroom. In thise mid-Western school districts, teaching and learning did not matter, only keeping up the pretense that such activities were taking place. Hiding the fights, the guns, and the sexual abuse of students from the newspapers and from the nightly tv news, these things did matter. Adjuncts fantacizing of a stimulating learning enviornment in their high school classroom had best speak with the troops on the front lines before joining-up. Respect for teachers went down the toilet when they gave-up being professionals to become trade unionists. The game now is to keep-up the fraud so as to preserve one’s job. Public school administrators have but one goal and that is to get promoted to a $150,000 gig and to not let any idealistic teacher get in the way. Beware adjuncts, its not what is was when you were in school.

    — Gera Rosy · Aug 8, 04:11 PM · #

  49. Your idea sounds good but it would not work for me. I am first and foremost a teacher of adults and my two years teaching high school were very difficult. It might work for some college-level teachers. If I were asked to help with the situation my oreference would be to go to a local high school one evening a week and “teach the teachers” That way I could share my skills and perspective and still work with adults.

    — Karen Roothaan · Aug 28, 04:59 PM · #

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