A New Kind of Working Vacation

Long summer vacations--a cherished perk offsetting the lean paychecks of teachers--must be abolished by American public schools if students are to have a chance of meeting new, ambitious academic standards, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley said Tuesday.

Speaking at a high school in Durham, N.C., Riley used his seventh annual status report on American education to warn that nascent efforts by states to demand that students learn more and work harder in school are being stymied by a shortage of top-quality teachers.

Returning to a theme he often explores, Riley said states and school districts must do far more to recruit, prepare, retain and promote talented teachers. Nationwide, schools need to hire 2 million new teachers over the next decade, with about 250,000 of them needed in California.

Riley got more specific on Tuesday and urged states and school districts over the next five years to add at least two months to the nine months most teachers work.

Riley said he was not proposing that students attend school year-round. Instead, he said, the extra time could be devoted to professional development, creating new lessons or working with struggling students.

Perhaps most important, asking teachers to work more would justify significant pay raises. Teachers with masters’ degrees, Riley said, are paid on average about $32,000 less per year than their counterparts in other professions--$40,000 compared with about $72,000.

“This growing income disparity has become a fundamental roadblock to advancing American education,” he said.

Working more days each year wouldn’t please all teachers, said Day Higuchi, the president of the United Teachers Los Angeles union.

While some teachers must take summer jobs to supplement their pay, Higuchi said, others “enjoy teaching because they don’t have to work a full year. . . . They might object strenuously.”

California teachers average $45,000 annually in jobs that generally require five years of college. The pay ranges from $28,000 for beginners to $60,000 for longtime teachers with masters’ degrees.

In his assessment, Riley said Americans should be optimistic, even though little progress is being made in many areas.

A “report card” he released Tuesday noted that reading scores have hit a plateau for most students, the percentage of teachers who feel “very well prepared” to teach more demanding material has not increased, and the percentage of students using drugs is on the rise.

On the positive side, math scores are slowly rising, more high school students are passing college-level Advanced Placement tests, and SAT college preparedness scores are up slightly.

Given that mixed record, many Republicans--including presidential candidates George W. Bush and John McCain--have called for the government to provide parents with vouchers allowing them to enroll their children in private schools.

In a response to Riley’s speech, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) told about 200 students and parents at a Pasadena charter school that “it’s time to put parents back in the driver’s seat” by letting them send their children to public or private schools of their choosing and at government expense.

Armey said the education secretary “misses the point” that the federal government should be less involved in education, not more.

Indeed, during his speech on Tuesday, Riley specifically said vouchers drain resources from the public schools and “divert us from the real challenge of lifting up all our children.”

He also rejected another idea promoted by Republicans: giving federal money directly to school districts with no strings attached. Under such a system, Riley said, schools could not be held accountable for results.

Even as he defended current efforts to improve the public schools, Riley said far more must be done. He called on states to undertake a “mid-course review” of their efforts to raise academic standards to avert growing concerns about whether they are causing as much harm as good.

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Partly in response to federal pressure, 49 states now have developed standards for what students should learn in at least one subject; 41 administer tests based on those standards.

But some critics say such standards and tests are having an impact opposite to that intended, driving teachers to teach preparation for the tests and over-emphasize basic skills.

Riley acknowledged those views by saying: “If all of our efforts to raise standards get reduced to one test, we’ve gotten it wrong. If we force our best teachers to teach only to the test, we will lose their creativity and even lose some of them from the classroom.”

Riley also acknowledged a growing unease among parents, who are worried that teachers are sacrificing creative lessons and interesting discussions for boring math and English drills. He urged educators to listen to those concerns and to “go the extra mile to make sure that parents understand and support their efforts.”

Finally, he said, states and the federal government must invest more money in professional development for teachers, as well as in after-school, Saturday and summer school classes for students.

Union leaders reacted positively to Riley’s proposal that teachers work more in return for higher salaries, saying it would encourage top teachers to continue teaching. The American Federation of Teachers union local in Rochester, N.Y., already has a contract that gives senior teachers a chance to earn more money by helping their less-experienced or less-skilled colleagues.

“But we also know there are some very, very good teachers who aren’t interested in those things and who just want to teach students,” said Jamie Horwitz, AFT spokesman in Washington.

Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Assn., called Riley’s proposal “a natural progression” that would help make higher academic standards a reality in classrooms.”

But Higuchi said simply having teachers spend more time doing what they’re already doing wouldn’t produce gains in student achievement. “We would insist that this become an opportunity for teachers to be paid to think and work together on improving what they do,” he said.

Times correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this story.