Teacher Quality: Getting the Right People to Lead the Classroom

Teachers shoulder a great responsibility of molding the future citizens of society. Yet, only a few countries (Finland is one example) demonstrate a highly selective process for teacher education. Teaching schools, for example, are far below medical schools in terms of competitiveness in most places. Raising the quality of teachers will involve two important factors: attractiveness and selectivity. The teaching profession must attract young minds who have the talent and teaching colleges must select only those who qualify. This is the case with the medical profession. And yes, it is perhaps the reason why health care costs are a great deal to any society. To achieve the same with basic education, it will come with comparable costs and priorities. After all, education is as important as health.

Marc Tucker, downloaded from http://hechingerreport.org/content/qa-with-marc-tucker-why-we-need-a-new-reform-agenda-to-compete-internationally_5915/

Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (United States) recently wrote an article, "Teacher Quality: Who's on Which Side and Why", outlining what it takes to make the teaching profession both attractive and selective. Below is an excerpt:

...No one believes that high SAT scores or ACT scores, or high high school grade point averages by themselves guarantee that a candidate will be a good teacher. Everyone I know believes that a passion for teaching and an ability to relate well to young people are very important characteristics of good teachers. But these are not mutually exclusive qualities. The record shows that countries that recruit their teachers from a pool of people who score high on their college entrance exams, had high grade point averages and also show a passion for teaching and an ability to relate well to students produce higher student achievement across the board than countries that leave out one or more of these qualities when they are recruiting their students....

In addition to stating what seems to be obvious to many, the article also points out a dilemma faced by teaching colleges when becoming selective thereby connecting issues in higher education with those of basic education. Teaching colleges from the point of view of entrepreneurship do not favor the selectivity requirement to uplift teacher quality. Having less students hurts the bottom line of these institutions. Being highly selective and serving the needs of basic education do not make teachers' colleges profitable.

If I may use an analogy, research in the basic sciences can never be funded by the market. Yet, the United States and other developed nations fund research. It is one of the obligations only a government could provide. Thus, on similar grounds, teacher education falls into this category. A government must subsidize if not fully support teaching institutions so that these colleges can be more selective. This is only one of the factors. The other is making the teaching profession attractive. Again, with a public school system, the government is one of the employers of teachers. Salaries and working conditions can dampen without any doubt enthusiasm and dedication. All of these seem obvious but somehow there are some who still think that privatization and free enterprise can provide teacher quality. No, only a government representing the society as a whole that is genuinely committed to uplifting the teaching profession can.

Senior High School - Serious Questions to Ponder

The idea that additional years in high school could help better prepare students for higher education might look advantageous at first. Having the introductory courses in college covered in the senior years may reduce the number of courses a student must take in college. This can translate into savings since college is more costly than high school. In an ideal setting, this may be true. Under real circumstances, however, there are serious questions that need to be asked:

(1) Are there qualified teachers who could teach these advanced courses in high school?
(2) With a lack of uniformity across schools in the Philippines, would the two additional years further increase gaps and competitive disadvantages.

In the United States, high school students often take Advanced Placement courses during the final years of K-12. Several studies that evaluate these programs have been published. There is one book, for example, from Harvard Education press, that compiles the results of a conference held in 2007 attended by leading educators addressing the question on whether Advanced Placement courses are beneficial or not:

Image downloaded from Harvard Education Press
http://www.hepg.org/hep/book/120/AP

Commenting on this book, Scott Jaschik of Inside HigherEd writes the following:

Claims that the program helps students graduate on time or save money are found generally to have no validity. And research in the book suggests that many of the efforts to push the program into more schools -- a push that has been financed with many millions in state and federal funds -- may be paying for poorly-prepared students to fail courses they shouldn’t be taking in the first place. And the research suggests that not only is the money being misspent, but that the push may be skewing the decisions of low-income high schools that make adjustments to bring the program in -- while being unable to afford improvements in other programs.

John T. Tierney, a former college professor and high school teacher, recently wrote an article in The Atlantic ("AP Classes Are a Scam"). With the anticipated recruitment by the Philippines DepEd of college professors to teach in the proposed additional years in high school, Tierney's thoughts are worth our attention. In this article, he enumerated the reasons why he is not in favor of advanced placement courses:

• AP courses are not, in fact, remotely equivalent to the college-level courses they are said to approximate. 

• The traditional monetary argument for AP courses -- that they can enable an ambitious and hardworking student to avoid a semester or even a year of college tuition through the early accumulation of credits -- often no longer holds. 

• The scourge of AP courses has spread into more and more high schools across the country, and the number of students taking these courses is growing by leaps and bounds. Studies show that increasing numbers of the students who take them are marginal at best, resulting in growing failure rates on the exams. 

• Despite the rapidly growing enrollments in AP courses, large percentages of minority students are essentially left out of the AP game. 

• The AP program imposes "substantial opportunity costs" on non-AP students in the form of what a school gives up in order to offer AP courses, which often enjoy smaller class sizes and some of the better teachers. 

• To me, the most serious count against Advanced Placement courses is that the AP curriculum leads to rigid stultification -- a kind of mindless genuflection to a prescribed plan of study that squelches creativity and free inquiry. 

These are all insightful comments that warrant a pause among those who are currently planning what the additional years in high school in the Philippines ought to be. The "substantial opportunity costs" is one important example. With limited resources (in this case, not just classrooms, but more importantly, better teachers), is it really wiser to put these into the additional years instead of trying to improve the quality of the first ten years of elementary and high school education? The second question is the learning gap. With students unable to master the content of the first ten years, would not adding two more years simply waste their time and cause greater failure?

Thus, while we wait for the final two years of high school in the Philippines to be drawn, the following words of Tierney at the beginning of his article are worth our attention:

"Fraudulent schemes come in all shapes and sizes. To work, they typically wear a patina of respectability. That's the case with Advanced Placement courses, one of the great frauds currently perpetrated on American high-school students."

Youth solon links downgrade in Philippine schools’ ranking to poor gov’t policies on higher ed, inadequate spending

Source:http://kabataanpartylist.com/blog/youth-solon-links-downgrade-in-philippine-schools%E2%80%99-ranking-to-poor-gov%E2%80%99t-policies-on-higher-ed-inadequate-spending/

Kabataan Partylist Rep. Raymond Palatino credited the recent downgrade in the ranking of Philippine universities in the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world university ranking to poor government policies on higher education and inadequate funding for state schools.

“Budget cuts in the past years clearly have an effect on the performance of our state universities,” Palatino said.

While the University of the Philippines (UP), dubbed as the country’s national university, remains to be the top performing school in the country, it slid down to rank 338 this year from 332 in the previous year.

Also, UP is the only state-funded university in the four Philippine schools that made it in this year’s QS list.

“While UP does not reportedly participate in the QS survey, the downgrade in its ranking shows us that government policies and funding indeed have an effect on performance,” the youth solon said. “UP already receives the lion’s share of the budget of state universities and colleges (SUCs), but as we pointed out before, the allocation it receives is still not enough,” Palatino added.

For 2012, UP is set to receive P6.84 billion under the General Appropriations Act (GAA). In January, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) gave the university an additional P1.3 billion under the government’s Disbursement Acceleration Plan, bringing the total government allocation for UP this year to P8.14 billion.

“However, the P8-billion allocation for UP is still less than half of its original proposal,” Palatino pointed out. For 2012, UP originally proposed P17 billion to DBM.

“It is not surprising that other SUCs were not able to make it to the QS survey, as compared to UP, these state schools receive even less,” Palatino said. Around 50 SUCs received cuts in their budget for maintenance and other operating expenses this year.

In a statement, QS Head Researcher Ben Sowter explained that the 2012 findings reflect “government funding policies” of various countries around the world.

‘2013 budget will not impact next year’s rankings’

“While there is a 44-percent increase in the government allocation for SUCs next year, we doubt that it will have a significant impact on university rankings,” Palatino said.

The House of Representatives discussed yesterday the P37.1 billion budget for SUCs for 2013, which various student formations have described as still “grossly insufficient.”

The DBM-proposed budget for SUCs is only 67.98 percent of the total requirement of 110 SUCs (see table). DBM data also reveal that the P37.1 billion DBM-approved budget for SUCs next year is actually P17.5 billion less than the actual need of SUCs.

“Also note the low percentage approved for capital outlay (CO), which is only 22.5 percent or P3.37 billion of the P14.96 billion originally proposed, despite the fact that DBM has not been giving CO to SUCs in the past two years,” Palatino added.

Details of 2012 SUCs budget: Proposed vs. DBM-approved
	Proposed by SUCs	Recommended by DBM	Percent approved
PS*	₱31.149 B	₱27.333 B	87.75
MOOE	₱ 8.506 B	₱6.429 B	75.58
CO	₱14.958 B	₱3.365 B	22.5
TOTAL	₱54.613 B	₱37.127 B	67.98

*PS includes automatic appropriations for RLIP

“We foresee that this budget will not significantly improve university rankings, as it will not impact key areas that QS measures,” Palatino said.

For 2012, QS based the university rankings on an index that takes into account the following: academic reputation (40%), employer reputation (10%), faculty-to-student ratio (20%), citations per faculty (20%), international faculty (5%) and international students (5%).

“As was pointed out in the plenary debate in Congress yesterday, despite the reported budget increase for SUCs, it will not impact key growth areas, including faculty research,” Palatino said.

Excluding automatic appropriation for retirement and life insurance premiums (RLIP), the fund for salaries and benefits of teachers and employees of SUCs which falls under the personal services (PS) component, will have a P2.35 billion or an 11 percent increase to P22.97 billion from the current P20.62 billion budget.

However, in the plenary deliberation yesterday, it was revealed that the said increase is mainly due to the salary increased mandated by the Salary Standardization Law. “The government did not allot additional faculty items, which means next year, our state schools will still have the same faculty-student ratio, one of the factors considered in QS,” Palatino explained.

Another impact of the lack of additional teaching items is that current university professors need to “carry extra teaching loads,” thus hindering them from producing academic output, another factor considered in QS, Palatino explained.

“If we consider the 2013 proposed budget for SUCs, we don’t foresee any improvement in the rankings next year,” the youth solon said.

‘Higher tuition doesn’t translate to better performance’

Palatino also pointed out that despite the claim of private universities that tuition increases would improve performance, the QS ratings reveal otherwise.

Only three private universities in the country were included in this year’s QS list.

From rank 360 last year, Ateneo de Manila University dropped to the 451-500 bracket this year.

De La Salle University’s ranking also downgraded, falling under the 601+ bracket from the 551-600 bracket last year. La Salle is joined by the University of Santo Tomas in the said bracket.

“Tuition in private schools has been on an all-time high in the past years, but it clearly doesn’t translate to better performance,” Palatino said. For this year, the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) approved the tuition increase proposal of over 222 private universities nationwide.

CHED data reveals that the current national average tuition rate per unit is now pegged at P475.47, while the average tuition rate in Metro Manila has reached P985.05 per unit this year. The said data means that families need to spend at least P20,000-P40,000 on tuition alone per semester.

“CHED needs to review the policy on approving tuition increases in such a way that schools will be compelled to show how tuition hikes will affect their school’s performance. Otherwise, there would be no compelling reasons for school owners to adjust tuition rates,” Palatino said.

Lagging behind

“The example of our Asian neighbors show that ample government funding for higher education translates to better performance,” Palatino said.

Top universities in Asia, including those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and China all made it to the top 50 in the QS list, joining regular A-listers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which topped the current list for the first time this year, and UK’s Cambridge University, which ranked second.

According to the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department, the Philippines remains to be one of the countries with the smallest per capita spending for higher education. The said study revealed that the government spends only $625 per college student per year, less than the budget allotted by neighboring countries like China ($2,728), Malaysia ($11,790) and Indonesia ($666).

Also, the P37.1 billion proposed budget for SUCs is only 0.31 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) for 2013, a far cry from the 16.8 percent of GDP allotted for debt servicing, Palatino said. The P275.9 billion total budget allotted for the Department of Education and SUCs, meanwhile, is only 2.3 percent of the country’s GDP, far from the United Nation’s six-percent recommendation for education.

“It is clear that the nominal increase for SUCs does not change the government’s policy on higher education. Access remains a challenge, and funding remains inadequate,” Palatino said. “In this light, the youth will continue and even intensify the fight for sufficient government funding for an education sector that truly serves the nation,” Palatino ended.

University Outreach: Higher Education Supporting Basic Education

Teachers in both elementary and high schools barely have the time to innovate and explore. Teachers at these levels, however, especially the experienced ones, know a lot regarding classroom management. On the other hand, faculty in universities as well as graduate students are generally quicker in finding resources for learning in primary and secondary schools. Graduate students and faculty in the sciences are likewise expected to be more enthusiastic regarding their fields of study. Although scientists in universities are expected to have a greater and deeper mastery of their subjects, they are not expected to be as aware as the  teachers in basic education are of the basic education curriculum. Thus, a complementary relationship holds between higher education professors and basic education teachers. However, university outreach, even in the United States, where there are plentiful graduate programs in the sciences, still requires institutional support. Although it is obvious that higher education needs to support basic education, outreach activities supporting basic education need to be incorporated in tenure and promotion decisions in universities for these to become rewarding and not punishing especially to starting faculty members. In the United States, the National Science Foundation has been emphasizing for some time now broad impact in its funding decisions. This has led to a significant increase in outreach activities of scientists. Barbara M. Moskal and Catherine K. Skokan of the Colorado School of Mines have recently described an example of an outreach activity that is based on recommendations of experts in basic education. In this example, though the university brings its expertise into the classrooms, the respect and recognition towards elementary and high school teachers is evident. Providing 15 hours a week of direct classroom support throughout the academic year is not a token effort. The abstract of the paper is as follows:

The entire paper is available online at http://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/index.php/jheoe/article/view/506

State Universities and Colleges - Philippines

Kabataan reveals cover-ups, deceptions in P37.1-B proposed SUCs budget for 2013

Despite President Benigno Aquino III’s pronouncement that the country’s 110 state universities and colleges (SUCs) will receive a hefty increase in their budget next year, Kabataan Partylist Rep. Raymond Palatino pointed out “cover-ups” and “deceptions” in the P37.1-billion SUCs budget proposed by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) next year.

During the congressional budget deliberation for the proposed allocation for the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and SUCs today, Palatino said that the P37.1 billion budget is still “grossly insufficient” and is actually driving state schools to further commercialization schemes, including tuition increases and other income-generating activities.

In his 2013 budget message, Aquino said “Hindi po pinababayaan ng aking administrasyon ang ating mga pampublikong pamantasan, at higit sa lahat, ang mga iskolar ng bayan,” explaining that DBM increased the allocation for SUCs by almost 44 percent or P11.3 billion, to P37.1 billion from the current P25.8 billion.

“At first glance, it seems that the government is shifting its earlier pronouncement that it will gradually reduce state funding for SUCs to force them to utilize their internal income. Such move is a direct response to the clamor of students who have arduously fought for greater state subsidy in the past years. However, instead of being all praises for the Aquino administration, students remain unimpressed and dismayed, as the 2013 budget is a cover-up budget full of potholes and deceptions,” Palatino said.

Cover-up budget

Palatino said that not the whole P37.1 billion will go to SUCs. “If we remove the automatic appropriations for employees’ pension and the funds that are actually part of the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund (MPBF), we would see that SUCs will actually get only P32.7 billion,” the youth solon explained. (See Table 1)

Of the P37.1 billion proposed budget for SUCs, P2.1 billion is allotted for retirement and life insurance premiums (RLIP), the fund for pension and other benefits of retired employees. “This is an automatic obligation of the government and is actually not part of the operating budget for SUCs,” Palatino said.

Meanwhile, P2.2 billion is set aside and is part of the MPBF, which is the fund for unfilled positions in SUCs. DBM withholds this budget not unless SUCs request for its utilization given proper documentation. “As we pointed out before, this fund is like DBM’s own pork barrel, which it can dispense at its whim,” the youth solon explained.

Table 1. Details of the 2013 DBM-proposed budget for SUCs

Direct to SUCs	₱ 32,771,509,000
Miscellaneous Personnel Benefit Fund	₱ 2,203,235,000
Retirement and Life Insurance Premiums	₱ 2,153,221,000
TOTAL	₱ 37,127,965,000

Source: DBM

Sans RLIP and MPBF, SUCs will only receive P32.7 billion, up by only 37 percent from the current P23.8 billion budget.

“There might be a nominal increase, but if we consider how much SUCs actually need, it is still grossly insufficient,” Palatino said.

According to DBM, SUCs requested a total of P54.6 billion for 2013. However, only P37.1 billion, or almost 68 percent was approved by DBM for inclusion in the National Expenditure Program (NEP). (See Table 2)

Table 2. Proposed versus DBM-approved 2013 SUCs budget

	Proposed by SUCs	Recommended by DBM	Percent approved
PS*	₱31.149 B	₱27.333 B	87.75
MOOE	₱ 8.506 B	₱6.429 B	75.58
CO	₱14.958 B	₱3.365 B	22.5
TOTAL	₱54.613 B	₱37.127 B	67.98

*Includes funds for RLIP

Source: DBM 

Without the fund for RLIP, the fund for salaries and benefits of teachers and employees of SUCs which falls under the personal services (PS) component, there is a P2.35 billion or an 11 percent increase to P22.97 billion from the current P20.62 billion budget. “However, this increase only corresponds to the implementation of the fourth tranche of the Salary Standardization Law III next year,” Palatino said.

Meanwhile, the fund for maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) is set to increase by P3.42 billion or over 88 percent, to P6.43 billion from the current P3 billion budget. Bulk of the increase or P1.3 billion will go to the University of the Philippines, while the remaining P2.1 billion increase will be shared by over 100 SUCs.

However, Palatino revealed that three SUCs (see Table 3) are set to receive hefty cuts in the MOOE component, due to CHED’s Normative Funding Formula, which rationalizes the MOOE budget allocation for SUCs based on performance indicators, including enrollment and passing rates.

Table 3. SUCs with cuts in MOOE

	2012 MOOE	2013 MOOE	Percent change
Aurora State College of Technology	₱ 28.4 M	₱11.5 M	-59.50
Cebu Technological University  (Cebu State College of Science and Technology)	₱ 209.5 M	₱93.4 M	-55.40
Adiong Memorial Polytechnic State College	₱3.1 M	₱1.5 M	-52.41

Meanwhile, a large portion of the increase in the budget of SUCs is due to the allocation of funds for capital outlay (CO), the budget for building infrastructure, for all SUCs next year. This year, only UP received funding for CO worth P190 million. Next year, the budget for CO ballooned to P3.17 billion.

However, Palatino pointed out that the P3.17 billion DBM-proposed budget for CO is only 23 percent of the total P14.95 billion requested by SUCs. “If one considers the fact that the national government has not given any CO for the past two years, the P3.17 billion only attempts to cover up the cuts in the past in a very poor manner,” the youth representative said.

In fact, the Philippine General Hospital under UP, will not receive any CO for next year. “Clearly, this is a cover-up budget meant to appease the growing dissent of students and administrators,” Palatino added.

Tuition increases

According to DBM’s Budget of Expenditures and Sources of Financing, the budget agency expects an almost P1-billion increase in the internal income of SUCs, to P14 from the current P13.1 billion.

Part of the projected increase in income, or P500 million will come from tuition payments, which is expected to increase to P6.76 billion from the current P6.26 billion. Also, DBM projects that income from other fees would increase by P200 million, to P3.2 billion from the current P3 billion.

“This is a clear indication that behind the supposed increase in the budget of SUCs, spiralling tuition rates will remain and would even intensify. DBM’s projections are already telling,” Palatino said.

Continued misprioritization

The P37.1 billion proposed budget for SUCs is only 0.31 percent of the country’s gross domestic product  (GDP) for 2013, a far cry from the 16.8 billion budget allotted for debt servicing, Palatino said. The P275.9 billion total budget allotted for the Department of Education and SUCs, meanwhile, is only 2.3 percent of the country’s GDP, far from the United Nation’s six-percent recommendation for education.

According to the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department, the Philippines remains to be one of the countries with the smallest per capita spending for higher education. The said study revealed that the government spends only $625 per college student per year, less than the budget allotted by neighbouring countries like China ($2,728), Malaysia ($11,790) and Indonesia ($666).

“It is clear that the nominal increase for SUCs does not change the government’s policy on higher education. Access remains a challenge, and funding remains inadequate,” Palatino said. “In this light, the youth will continue and even intensify the fight for sufficient government funding for an education sector that truly serves the nation,” Palatino ended