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美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录——动荡年代：勇闯新世界-111:EDUCATION AND INCOME INEQUALITY-6

由于数学或科学专家在教学之外的经济机会巨大，而英语文学教师在教学之外的经济机会有限，因此数学教师的资质可能低于同等薪资等级的其他教学专业人员。

数学教学很可能会留给那些无法获得更有利可图的工作的人。

对于英国文学或历史教师来说，情况远非如此。

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One of the skills too many high school graduates lack is proficiency in math. 

It is that skill more than any other that is required to achieve skilled-job status. 

I do not pretend to be conversant with the details of U.S. education in the twenty-first century. 

Yet people whose scholarship I respect, and who are in a position to know, complain that the math teachers of my childhood have been replaced with teachers with degrees in education but much too often with no math or science degree or competence in the subject matter. 

In 2000, for example, nearly two-fifths of public secondary school math teachers did not have a major or minor in math, math education, or a related field. 

Lou Gerstner, former chairman of IBM and founder of the Teaching Commission, noted in an essay for the Christian Science Monitor (December 13, 2004): 

"The heart of the problem is the arcane way we recruit and prepare teachers, along with the lockstep single salary schedule" .

for all teachers, irrespective of their subject specialty, 

"no matter how desperately society may need a certain skill set and no matter how well a teacher performs in the classroom. That's senseless, yet it's still the norm in 

the teaching profession." 

Different pay scales for high school teachers in different disciplines may go against the ethos of teaching. 

Perhaps money should not be an incentive. 

But it is. There are doubtless math teachers in our high schools who are sufficiently dedicated to forgo the much higher incomes they could earn in other jobs. 

But they must be few, for as Gerstner also points out, 

"according to a 2000 study of the largest urban school districts, nearly 95 percent reported an immediate demand for math teachers—a quantity problem on top of the quality problem we clearly already have." 

It is becoming increasingly clear that a flat pay scale when demand is far from flat is a form of price fixing that undermines the ability to attract qualified math  teachers.

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EDUCATION AND INCOME INEQUALITY 

Since the financial opportunities for experts in math or science outside of teaching are vast, and for English literature teachers outside of teaching, limited, math teachers are likely to be a cut below the average teaching professional at the same pay grade. 

Teaching math is likely being left to those who are unable to claim the more lucrative jobs. 

That is far less true of English literature or history teachers. 

Moreover, retirees or well-educated parents of students who volunteer to teach, part-time, courses such as math in which they have some proficiency are turned down because they lack a degree in education. 

To the extent that such practices are widespread, they are bureaucratic impediments to the functioning of market forces in education. 

Fortunately, proposals to remedy this dysfunctional state of affairs are gaining traction. 

For example, James Simons, a distinguished mathematician who applied his skills to build one of Wall Street's most successful hedge funds, 

in 2004 turned his efforts toward enhancing the teaching of high school math. 

His Math for America has developed a high-stipend fellowship program to recruit and train high school math teachers. 

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York in 2006 embraced, and offered legislation to advance, this initiative. 

Enhancing elementary and secondary school sensitivity to market forces should help restore the balance between the demand for and supply of skilled workers in the United States. 

I do not know whether vouchers, 

which bring an element of competition to public schools, are the final answer. 

But I suspect that Rose and Milton Friedman, devoting the end of their distinguished careers to advancing the policy, were on the right track. 

(I do not recall either ever being off track.) 

Another step toward enhancing competition is an interesting paper written for the Hamilton Project (a Robert Rubin creation) at the Brookings Institution. 

The authors note that certification of teachers (which generally requires a degree in education) has little to do with whether a teacher is effective. 

They recommend opening up teaching to others who are qualified—including those who have a four-year undergraduate degree but not the formal requirements for certification. 

They estimate that removing the barrier of certification would encourage recent college graduates and older professionals to try a teaching career. 

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THE AGE OF TURBULENCE 

In addition, they recommend tracking teacher and student performance and making the achievement of tenure more difficult. 

They simulated these recommendations through a model based on the performance of 150,000 Los Angeles students from 2000 to 2003. 

The authors conclude that if the school system screened out the least qualified quarter of teachers, student test scores would be raised by as much as 14 percentile points by graduation. 

These are very large changes, and, even if only fractionally achievable, such improvement in academic performance could go a long way to remedying the international inferiority of young American students. 

A recognition of how poor our mathematics education had become and perhaps some reason for hope was the report in September 2006 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, reversing its ill-chosen advisory of 1989. 

The earlier report recommended a curriculum that dropped emphasis on basic math skills (multiplication, division, square roots, and so on) and pressed students to seek more free-flowing solutions and to study a range of special math topics. 

I always wondered how you can learn math unless you have a thorough grounding in the basics and concentrate on a very few subjects at a time. 

Asking children to use their imagination before they know what they are imagining about seemed vacuous to me. 

It was. 

Another education imperative goes beyond fostering market forces in schools. 

I recognize that left to their own devices, market incentives will not reach the education of those children "left behind" (to borrow a term from current U.S. education legislation). 

The cost of educational egalitarianism is doubtless high and may be difficult to justify in terms of economic efficiency and short-term productivity. 

Some students can achieve a given level of education far more easily, and therefore at far less cost, than others. 

Yet there is danger to a democratic society in leaving some children out of sync with its institutions. 

Such neglect contributes to exaggerated income concentration, and could conceivably be far more costly to the sustaining of capitalism and globalization in the long run. 

The value judgments involved in making such choices reach beyond the imperatives of the marketplace. 

Unless our resident population, with the assistance of our schools, can supply the level of skills we need, which to date they have not, as our skilled baby boomers retire we will require a significant increase in the number of skilled workers migrating to the United States. 

As Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, succinctly testified before Congress in March 2007, 

"America will find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete." 

He added that we are "driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most." 

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EDUCATION AND INCOME INEQUALITY 

(未完待续, To be contd)
 

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