There are a number of other subject areas deserving of a slightly different view. The three examined here all have the characteristic of being treated as a sub-category of public education policy, but their effect on the total education picture is enormous.

Special Education

In December 1997 the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank with labor connections, released a report by Richard Rothstein entitled "Where's the Money Going?" His aim was to debunk the notion that spending on education is spiraling out of control. Using statistics from nine representative districts, Rothstein found that per-pupil spending rose 2 percent a year (in constant dollars) from 1967 to 1991, but slowed to 0.14 percent a year since then. "Basically, what we can say is that real per-pupil spending has been stagnant over the last five years," said Rothstein. As to where the money is going, Rothstein revealed that the percentage of school budgets used for special education rose from 3.6 percent in 1967 to 17.8 percent between 1967 and 1991. "The possibility that regular education is being shortchanged is something that policymakers may want to consider," he said.

Critics attacked the report on numerous levels. They questioned the sample size, the years examined, the fact that Rothstein used a modified measure of inflation instead of the Consumer Price Index, and Rothstein's political leanings. Nevertheless, he shed some light on a rarely discussed fact: that special education is using a larger and larger share of education spending. His conclusion - that it has come at the expense of regular education - is arguable, but it certainly calls for closer examination. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was passed in its first form by Congress in 1975 and amended twice since then. IDEA defines "children with disabilities" for the purpose of determining who qualifies for special education and who does not. The disabilities are:

The first six categories are fairly self-explanatory. They include children who have measurable physical limitations to their abilities to hear, see, speak or move about. The next three categories affect a child's abilities to think and reason. "Serious emotional disturbance" is a well-articulated psychological condition. Multiple disabilities would include those children who have more than one disability, and "other health impairments" include heart conditions, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, asthma, epilepsy, diabetes and a host of other well recognized diseases and conditions.

If you add together the number of children whose disabilities place them in those categories in 1995-96, you get a total of 2,451,000 students. But another 2,579,000 children fall into the final category: specific learning disabilities. Since the passage of IDEA, the number of children classified in this category has more than tripled. So, what is a "specific learning disability?" The National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities provides this definition:

"A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage."

There are many motivations for schools and districts to classify students as disabled or not disabled. Most of them have very little to do with the students' medical or psychological condition. On the one hand, classifying a student as disabled gets that student more individual attention, more services, more federal money and has the added advantage of removing that student from regular standardized testing. Some schools have been accused of doing just that in order to inflate their test scores. On the other hand, some districts are using the disability identification system as a cost-cutting measure. If you have an overabundance of students with disabilities, it starts to eat into your normal operating budget. Districts have been accused of classifying students not on their conditions, but on their costs.

There are signs that some states are beginning to look "one yard below." In February, the Connecticut Department of Education released a report that questioned the motivations of the special education bureaucracy. "Special education is often considered the first, rather than last, option for students with learning and behavior problems, even though many of the students who are referred are clearly not disabled," the report stated. "The labels used to identify special education students are unclear and applied inconsistently. The labels are perceived as broad and open to wide interpretation. Once labeled, few children ever exit from special education." The report's recommendations are astonishing. Perhaps the most controversial of its proposals is a call for increased emphasis on teaching reading, including retraining in phonics and language fundamentals. The implication is clear: education bureaucracies have been making illiteracy a disease. Not surprisingly, the report, a year in the making, is under severe attack. Whatever its merits or faults, the report will prompt a necessary dialogue on special education. Unfortunately, the number of "disabled" children depends a great deal on - for lack of a better phrase - market forces. That should not be the case.

Teacher Mobility and Peer Review

Horror stories abound about how difficult it is to get rid of bad public school teachers. Strong unions and even stronger tenure laws lead to tales of six-year dismissal procedures, teachers paid a year's salary to resign and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in legal and administrative costs. The state of Colorado enacted reforms after managing to fire only five teachers in the last three years. In Florida last year, only 23 of 119,000 public school teachers were dismissed for incompetence. Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, has generated a great deal of controversy inside the 2.3 million-member union C and a great deal of positive press coverage outside it C for his championing of peer review. For the first time in its history, NEA dropped its adamant opposition to the concept of teachers assessing each's other work. Chase suggested in a landmark speech before the National Press Club in February 1997 that NEA take the lead in policing the teaching profession and, if necessary, help remove bad teachers. "I believe it is exactly the right course for the new NEA," he said.

Chase and his supporters regularly cite the Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program as their model. Established in 1986 by NEA's affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, the PAR program designates senior teachers to serve as full-time consultants in the classroom. They assist, monitor and evaluate every new teacher hired by the Columbus School District, as well as any veteran teachers who are referred to the program because of unsatisfactory performance.

There is no shortage of claims about the success of the PAR program. Interestingly, the emphasis (and sometimes the statistics) changes depending upon the audience being addressed. In front of the National Press Club, Chase said, "But in roughly 10 percent of cases, the consultants - members of our union - take the lead in counseling a problem teacher to leave the profession . . .  and, if necessary, they recommend dismissal." An article in NEA Today reads, "By the end of this school year, five to 7 percent of the 400 new teachers hired in Columbus, Ohio, won't be back. They'll get a non-renewal,based on the recommendation of a teacher who has spent more than 30 hours observing their work in the classroom." Another article in the same issue says, "About 20 percent of the experienced teachers who go through the program leave the school system." John Grossman, president of the Columbus Education Association and architect of the PAR program, told the New York Times, "We let go five to 7 percent annually, more than four times as many as the administration dismissed before this program."

Differing numbers and mixing of terms are generally bad signs when assessing education programs - particularly when the statistics are so easy to check. PAR program consultants review every new teacher who enters the district. The consultants then recommend renewal or nonrenewal for each new teacher. But new teachers are probationary anyway. In Ohio, teachers receive their professional certificate after three years of teaching. Until then, teachers do not have tenure protections. The PAR program provides the most peer review to the teachers who are easiest to dismiss.

The number of tenured teachers referred to the PAR program is extraordinarily small. In its first eight years, PAR consultants reviewed the performance of only 123 veteran Columbus teachers, or fewer than 16 per year. In a pool of about 4,500 veteran teachers, that comes to about 1/3 of 1 percent annually. Similar peer review programs established by the American Federation of Teachers exhibit similar numbers. In Rochester, New York, AFT's peer review program assessed only 2 of 1 percent of veteran teachers. Another AFT program in Toledo, Ohio, referred only 41 veteran teachers over a 12-year period - a 2/10 of 1 percent participation rate. 

The PAR program makes claims both for increased retention in the district and for the weeding out of unqualified teachers. During the 1996-97 school year, Columbus hired 221 new public school teachers, of whom 20 did not return this year. The immediate assumption is that the program identified those who would not succeed as teachers and counseled them out of the profession, or recommended non-renewal. Without anything with which to compare, 9 percent sounds like a reasonable number. But wait. Table 13 is a list of the national teacher mobility figures for 1994-95. 

It is difficult to see how Columbus' numbers are very different than what they would be if there were no program at all. Perhaps Columbus is keeping the best 91% and getting rid of the worst 9% C something which is unlikely to happen without a program in place. But how do we know? Veteran teachers are not evaluated. The Columbus Education Association breaks down PAR's nine-year results this way:

Modest results, but not bad considering the teacher dismissal horror stories from around the country. The problem with aggregate statistics like these is that teachers don't teach in the aggregate C that is, Johnny's teacher may have been good nine years ago, but may be very bad now. In fact, Johnny's teacher may be teaching an entirely different grade or subject now. More helpful to parents or administrators is to know what percentage of the total teaching workforce is referred for peer review each year and how many of them are removed.

We know that every new teacher is required to enroll in PAR. Last year, Columbus hired 221 new teachers. If the average number of veteran teachers was assigned to PAR, that would mean an additional 16 teachers, for a total of 237. Columbus has a total workforce of 4,800 teachers. Thus, only 5 percent of them were reviewed by PAR consultants last year. Of those 237, 24 left voluntarily or were non-renewed. That's 10 percent of those who were reviewed, but only 2 of 1 percent of the total teacher workforce. What Bob Chase, NEA and its Columbus affiliate are supporting is a system that keeps 99.5 percent of the same teachers in place for the next year. This can hardly be considered reform.

In fact, even these numbers are inflated because the PAR system takes credit for teachers who resign after enrollment in the program. This disguises the fact that school districts are still at the mercy of teachers who refuse to resign. In the first eight years of the PAR program, the Columbus School Board fired exactly two teachers. Again, attitudes may be changing. The Toledo School District is unhappy after 13 years of the nation=s very first peer review program, conducted by the Toledo Federation of Teachers. The district wants principals and administrators to conduct evaluations of veteran teachers. The union has refused and contract negotiations have been held up as a result.

Teacher Demographics

The gender, racial and ethnic make-up of the nation's public work force has become a political football. Efforts to end quotas, affirmative action, racial preferences, or whatever term one chooses to use, has become one of America's most contentious issues. There have been some attempts to discuss the make-up of the public school teacher force, but usually these are limited to exchanges about how to increase minority hiring.

"Classrooms everywhere are starved for good teachers of color, particularly black and Hispanic men," wrote NEA President Bob Chase in a January 1998 editorial. He discussed the importance of having role models for minority students and described the union's efforts to recruit minority teachers.

Chase's focus, like that of many people who address the issue, is prescriptive. What do we do about the lack of minority teachers? But it is difficult to find research that is descriptive. What effect is the make-up of the current work force having on education?

A great deal of soul-searching, social upheaval, protests and legislative action was required to integrate and diversify  the nation's student bodies. Monumental efforts were made to overcome resistance to integration. There are still political battles today over whether all-male colleges, all-black fraternities or all-female math classes constitute violations of the law. Diversity and integration have become such a standard to be reached in education that a backlash has been created, causing people to question diversity for diversity's sake.

Compare this struggle for student integration with the relative silence over the lack of diversity in the nation's teacher corps. Table 14 compares the racial and gender make-up of U.S. public school teachers in 1971 (the first year racial data was made available) and 1996.

These numbers are astounding - particularly the racial ones. A researcher would be hard-pressed to find another profession that is whiter today than 25 years ago. And the trend is continuing. There are legitimate fears that in 20 years the percentage of minority teachers will drop to 5%, while the percentage of minority students will grow to 41%.

But racial make-up is not the only issue. Teaching - a huge and critically important profession - is increasingly the jurisdiction of a small segment of our population. Senior white males as corporate CEOs incites constant comment. The overrepresentation of young, black males in our prison population is a common topic in newspaper editorials. How many people are wondering about what happens when your children can be taught for 12 consecutive years by middle-aged, white females? Does the presence of male teachers positively affect male students being raised by single mothers? Even more basic questions are: Do men and women teach differently? Do whites and blacks teach differently? We are often treated to research that claims girls and boys learn science, math or language differently. Is it so far-fetched to assume that they might then grow up to teach it differently?

This is not to insinuate that there is anything wrong with middle-aged, white females. But suppose our teaching force was overwhelmingly made up of elderly white men, or young Hispanic women, or middle-aged American Indians. We might then expect an examination of the subject.

The aging of the teaching force also has tremendous implications. With the number of new teachers down to 2.1% and the median in teaching experience reaching 15 years, America could be facing a serious experience problem in the next 5 to 10 years. As an increasing number of teachers retire, they will be replaced all at once by brand-new teachers. Will the coming retirements solve the ethnic and gender make-up problems or exacerbate them? Will such a large percentage of new teachers mean fresh ideas and reforms or a decline in student achievement? The students of today will be those new teachers. How will student performance of today affect teacher performance of tomorrow?

All sides of the education debate agree that a teacher is more than the sum of experiences, qualifications and training. The teacher is the one adult - other than a parent or guardian - that spends the most time with your child during his or her formative years. Who that person is, perhaps even more than how well he or she teaches, can have an enormous effect on your child's life.