Recruitment and Retention Rates in Public Education Incentives Needed to Improve Performance

Recruitment and Retention Rates in Public Education

Incentives Needed to Improve Performance 

Elyssa D. Durant, Ed.M.

The high rate of student mobility is compounded by the constant shifting of school personnel. Many schools may just lose the few experienced, dedicated teachers they still have left to surrounding districts, cities, and states.

The Tennessean released data on July 5, 2008 reporting disparities in teacher salaries for Metro employees. The article, "Poor kids' teachers earn less in Metro: Hiring bonuses, other incentives target inequities" raises questions about the hiring practices in Metro Nashville Public Schools, and reports that teachers earn less in schools that are not meeting the No Child Left Behind benchmarks. This article glossed over the magnitude of this desperate situation in Metro schools.

The basic fact that students are not making adequate progress is a reflection of the top-down policy failure by MNPS and the Board of Ed. Students are not making adequate progress, and teachers are being shuffled around in a desperate attempt to fix a problem that they do not fully understand. In order to fix our broken schools, we need to look at schools that work. There are, in fact, public schools in urban neighborhoods that are successfully educating the students despite limited budgets, supplies, and adequate funding. So what is it about these schools that allows them to successfully educate disadvantaged, at-risk students and how can we replicate their success?

Unfortunately, this article does not offer any new insights into the inner-workings of our neighborhood schools. MNPS does not have the answers, nor does our newly elected Mayor who recently launched an aggressive media campaign to recruit new teachers willing to work within the constraints our over-regulated, under-funded public schools. Teachers, administrators and the community are strangely unfamiliar with the political process, and teachers are expected to implement and carry out policies that were designed by academic professionals or educational consultants.

As an educator and a Metro employee, I earn $10.46 / hour (without benefits) teaching at-risk students, I am offended by the way teachers are treated in the schools, in the community, and by the press. The state Department of Education could not offer any realistic solution to the simple fact that I cannot afford to pay the fees associated with the application fees certification requirements. If the Mayor really needs applicants, perhaps the city should comp the application fees necessary to be considered for employment. I find it difficult to believe that a city so desperate for teachers is not willing to bend the rules just a little or waive the application fee for anyone who is willing to work in such a hostile environment.

My graduate degree in education is from the very same university that Mayor Dean attended in New York City. When I called HR and the "Certificated Office" to inquire about obtaining a provisional teaching license and alternative certification, I was simply told that I was not eligible for alternative certification and without additional coursework, and tuition and fees, I was not deemed qualified to teach in Metro.

I am not qualified to teach in Metro since, apparently, Metro "does not teach education." What a joke! To make matters worse- I had to pay them to find out that I was not even qualified to work with Head Start. I went to Head Start! Shouldn't that be enough? If MNPS truly wants a better-qualified staff, then the Mayor, the Board of Education, and school administrators need to take a closer look at the methods used to recruit, retain, and reward qualified individuals willing to sacrifice their financial stability for a career in public service. Now that I realize my education was a complete waste of time and money, is it any wonder that I am ready to give up on teaching and maybe even ready to leave Nashville for good. The local hardware store has more to offer including benefits!

The high rate of student mobility is compounded by the constant shifting of school personnel. Many schools may just lose the few experienced, dedicated teachers they still have left to surrounding districts, cities, and states. Such instability in the system may even prompt the younger set to leave the profession all together and discourage future teachers from applying for jobs in Metro.

Everything we know about the positive outcomes in neighborhood schools is their strong reliance upon community buy-in and parental involvement. One thing that makes magnet, lottery, charter schools, parochial, and private schools so good is the fact that parents, teachers, students, and administrators fight to get in, and fight to stay there. The act of choosing, in effect, leads to an enhanced sense of community and builds a supportive, consistent, and structured environment. Calling this project "Fresh Start" is ridiculous-- it would be more accurate to call it a very bad ending!

• Teacher salaries are only part of the problem.

• Teacher mobility contributes to the instability of urban schools.

• Metro is trying to fix a problem they do not fully understand.

Elyssa D. Durant © 1995-2013

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN NEWS Nashville News

Equity in Education Are Minorities to Blame for Failure to Meet No Child Left Behind Benchmarks?

Equity in Education: Are Minorities to Blame for Failure to Meet No Child Left Behind Benchmarks?  by Elyssa D. Durant, Ed.M.

The Nashville City Paper previously reported that African-American students were out-performed by their white counterparts on the ACT (Metro ACT scores drop; Tennessee reaches new high, 2007).

Given what is currently at stake in Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS), such casual reporting of racial discrepancy in test scores is irresponsible at best: Does this mean that white children are better students than their black and Hispanic classmates?

What's next for Nashville? Are minorities to blame for our failure to meet the benchmarks set forth in the No Child Left Behind legislation? High-stakes, standardized entrance exams are not only culturally biased, but also politically motivated in their agenda to help bring back a return to basics type of core-curriculum.

Studies in both the sociology and politics of educational evaluation have consistently shown that standardized entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT do not accurately predict academic performance at the college level.

Given the official release of performance data by MNPS officials, I am concerned that less curious readers may place too much attention to such details and misconstrue this information making voluntary, de-facto desegregation less attractive to schools that did not quite make the grade last academic term.

If, as stated in Wednesday's article, the ACT is a curriculum-based measure of readiness in English, mathematics, reading and science, then all these scores show us is that we have failed in our mission to provide an adequate education for all our citizens.

I am not sure exactly what readiness is, but I am certain that our schools are failing miserably at educating those children who need us the most. Let's level the playing field for a change and start talking about equity in education if we truly expect teachers to leave no child behind, we must first give them the tools they need to move forward.

Elyssa D. Durant © 1995-2013

PREVIOUSLY CROSS PUBLISHED Nashville News

Educrap From an Educrat: Elyssa Durant's "Harangue" 📚

Fan Mail for ELyssa D'Educrat 📰

EDUCRAP FROM AN EDUCRAT

After reading Elyssa Durant's antf-standardized testing harangue in the Nashville City Paper ("Equity in Education," Aug. 21), I was not at all surprised to learn that the author is a product of a graduate-level education program. Schools of education have long taught future teacher - and other members of the education establishment - to blame everyone but themselves for children not being able to read, write, and do simple math.

The assertion that the ACT and SAT are racially biased is pure poppycock. A student's score on the ACT or SAT is an excellent measure of his or her ability to do college-level math, science, and writing. If a student cannot solve a simple algebraic equation, or if the same student has but a rudimentary grasp of the rules of grammar, the test that points out the student's shortcoming should not be impugned. Instead, the parents, teachers, and educrats who allow students to march toward graduation without receiving a proper education are the ones who deserve derision.

Furthermore, Durant's contention that standardized tests "do not accurately predict academic performance at the college level" is in desperate need of qualification. Some 40 percent of college freshmen require remedial courses in reading, writing or mathematics. These courses, according to Harvard education professor Bridget Terry Long, intended to address acadennc deficiencies and to prepare students for subsequent college success." Thus, high school students who a generation ago would have been forced into the workforce are given a fifth year to complete their high school coursework. And let's be clear: remedial classes may be, well, remedial classes; but students enrolled in such classes are expected to learn the material or face the consequences, i.e., a quick and inglorious end to their college experience. For many - nay, most - remedial students, it is the first time in their academic careers that they are forced to learn.

Jottin' Django ®

📰 Woo hoo! Made you look!

This was my first public lashing in the news. Definitely not the last.

I stand by my the original article and think this guy has a clear agenda. Long live Harvard, you elitist snob.

^ed

EXPERTS: Where There's A Tax, There's a Way to Cheat || Philadelphia Inquirer

EXPERTS: WHERE THERE’S A TAX, THERE’S A WAY TO CHEAT

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)

April 17, 1995
Section: PHILADELPHIA BUSINESS
Edition: FINAL
Page: F01

IRS TRIES TO IMPROVE ITS RATE OF COLLECTION ACCORDING TO EXPERTS, WHERE THERE’S A TAX, THERE’S A WAY TO CHEAT.

Julie Stoiber, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Today is tax day. Listen to how easy it was for one man to rip off the Internal Revenue Service:

My Company filed a total of 9,000 returns in 1992, for tax year I 991, which netted my customers approximately $8 million in total refunds. Of that total, I would guess that roughly half of the returns contained false information about dependents, wages, or filing status. That year . . . I recognized how easy it was.”

Richard M. Hersch, a tax preparer from Ardmore, kept his scheme going for two years.

Testifying this month before a U.S. Senate committee, Hersch gave a glimpse of the opportunities for fraud just in the IRS’s electronic filing system: “In all modesty, it would take several hours for me to share with you the virtually endless possibilities.”

Hersch is a big fish in the murky pond of tax deception. He has plenty of company, and they come in all sizes.

Tax cheats inhabit every neighborhood and economic stratum, and they have endless ways of paying less than they owe. They are your doctor, your neighbor, your lawyer, your favorite waitress at the corner tap. Even your Aunt Betty is ripping off Uncle Sam.

“The number of criminal prosecutions is rising. The number of cases we are working is rising,” said Steven J. PeterseII, a Criminal Investigation Division chief in the IRS’s Philadelphia office. “One could assume there is pIenty of it.”

The tax gap - the difference between what the government collects and what it is owed - runs about $127 a year, according to IRS estimates. A 100 percent collection rate for just one year could make a big

The federal budget deficit, which stands at $200 billion.

Not to mention what it could do for the legions of honest taxpayers: If everyone woke up tomorrow and deckiec~ to play it straight with the IRS, Congress could cut tax rates across the board.

Peter R. Merrill, an economist in Price Waterhouse’s Washington office, concluded that rates could go down by as much as 10 percentage points. He came up with that number by dividing the tax gap by the amount the government would collect if everyone suddenly started paying his or her fair share. human nature being what it is, though, that is not likely to happen.

“I think most people are honest - and most people practice tax avoidance,” said Jeffrey M. Miller, the Center City lawyer who represents Hersch. “Most people try to pay as little tax as they can.”

Miller declined to discuss Hersch, who pleaded guilty and is to be sentenced later this month. But he was willing to share observations gleaned during seven years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and 17 as a criminal defense lawyer. Tax avoidance takes all forms, Miller said. “Some are legal, some are illegal, and some are questionable.”

* A man buys a house at the Shore with four bedrooms. In one of them, he puts a desk - and writes off one-quarter of the cost of the house as a business expense.

* A video shop owner makes a deal with her workers to pay half their salary in cash; nobody declares the full amount, and both employer and employees get a break on their taxes.

* A waitress, on her feet till 2 in the morning, earns $150 in tips. She has three kids at home with their noses pointed toward college. For income tax purposes, those tips become $15.

*A contractor withholds taxes from his workers’ pay, but puts the money back into his business instead of in the mail to the IRS. At tax time, his workers file for refunds - and get them - even though their boss never actually paid taxes on their behalf.

Mom and Pop at the deli down the block take in $7,000 cash a week, and tell the IRS it is $4,000.

“Next time you go into a store and buy something, see if it gets rung up,” said Martin Enterlin, another criminal investigation chief at the IRS. “If not, that’s a pretty good indication it’s not going to get reported.”

Penalties for those who get caught range from fines to jail time.

And the IRS, some say, is not bad at catching them.

Marc Durant, a Center City lawyer who represents white-collar criminals, said the IRS’s criminal investigators are competent and well-trained, with strong accounting backgrounds.

John B. Stine 2d, a tax partner at Price Waterhouse, said that the IRS’s computer programs are increasingly sophisticated, and that, as a result, the reporting of stock sales, real estate sales, on-the-side income and dividends and interest has improved.

But the tax gap suggests that there are plenty of evaders out there, particularly those in cash businesses.

Durant, like Miller, worked as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office before switching to criminal defense.

“Economic sociopaths” is what he calls the big tax cheats, the schemers. “They will steal from anybody at any time. The rest, he said, “are really basically just regular people.”

 And many of them don’t think of themselves as criminals.

In a country jaded by tales of government waste, fat-cat favoritism, and crooked congressmen, taxation based on the honor system is a tough sell.

“The system depends on taxpayers’ willingness to comply,” Durant said. “The whole sense of the public . . . That the government does not deserve their faithful compliance.

“I’m near certain that the incidence of tax evasion in World War II was a . . . fraction of what it is today,” he said. “I’m certain, intuitively, that there is more tax evasion today. During World War II, people felt the country needed the money.”

Today, they are more likely to feel that the government will throw it away on $600 toilet seats or some congressional perk, like the publicly subsidized hair salon for legislators that only recently was eliminated.

“People are struggling,” Durant said. “I think they feel that the money goes to better use to them than to the government.”

He remembers one case in which a business owner kept two sets of books - one with actual revenues, the other with what he reported to the government - for the sheer joy of knowing how much he was getting over on the IRS.

When he got caught, the evidence was overwhelming.

"I don’t want to sound like an apologist for these people,” Durant said. “I’m not an apologist. I’m just telling you the kinds of things I hear.”

Miller hears the same thing.

“Everybody who pays taxes thinks about the guy who is not paying taxes.”

And they come up with ways to keep more for themselves.

The IRS, in its efforts to stop them, devises new measures to detect cheaters. And just as quickly, the tax cheats come up with ways to circumvent them. “Fraud perpetrators . . . adapt continuously to new fraud controls,” IRS Commissioner Margaret Milner Richardson recently told Congress.

Hersch, the Ardmore tax preparer, rode to riches on electronic filing and the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refund for the working poor, which he dubbed “Easy Income for Tax Cheats.”

Big-time schemers like Hersch are often brought down when a relationship goes awry. Someone with an ax to grind - disgruntled employee, ex-spouse - goes to the IRS.

“Despite how straightforward my schemes were, I was caught only because several employees of my company became informants and went to the authorities,” Hersch told his Senate audience. “I am confident that if the employees had not turned me in, the IRS would never have caught on and that I would still be in business today.”

Illustration: PHOTO

PHOTO (2)

1. Martin Enterlin (left) and Steven J. Petersell, employees of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, at the Philadelphia office.

2. Marc Durant, a Center City lawyer, says IRS investigators are well-trained and have strong accounting backgrounds. He said big tax cheats are “economic sociopaths” who “will steal from anybody at any time.” The rest “are really basically just regular people,” he said.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer VICKI VALERIO)

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