Learning Curve: A matter of degree

The value of advanced degrees for teachers has long been debated. Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell contributed one of the most memorable critiques when he denigrated his own university’s graduate school of education in 1933 as a “kitten that ought to be drowned.”

The debate continues today, especially since many states award teachers automatic raises for obtaining higher degrees. Last year, Georgia spent $880 million compensating teachers for advanced degrees, according to Kelly Henson, who heads the state’s Professional Standards Commission, which oversees teacher credentials.

Only 10.4 percent of those Georgia teachers earned degrees in core subjects, such as math or science. Fourteen percent earned them in early childhood, and 22 percent got them in related areas, including teaching and learning or curriculum and instruction.

But 31 percent of Georgia teachers obtained advanced degrees in a program that a national study blasted as the weakest — educational leadership. “Educating School Leaders,” a four-year study of the nation’s 1,206 colleges and schools of education, found that the educational leadership programs ranged from inadequate to appalling.

“Your colleagues are taking the path of least resistance to get a pay raise,” Henson told an audience of teachers last week at the Capitol. “They are not getting degrees in the areas in which they teach. They are getting the easiest and most convenient degrees. They are getting degrees for the raise and not for how much it will impact their performance.”

“We are getting a small return on our investment, but we are not getting an $880 million return,” Henson said. “Too many of those degrees are out-of-field and don’t contribute to improved student performance.”

A RAND analysis of student performance in 44 states between 1990 and 1996 concluded that compensating teachers for master’s degrees “is arguably one of the least-efficient expenditures in education.”

In their study of high quality teachers, researchers Eric A. Hanushek and Steven G. Rivkin concluded: “Perhaps most remarkable is the finding that a master’s degree has no systematic relationship to teacher quality as measured by student outcomes. This immediately raises a number of issues for policy, because advanced degrees invariably lead to higher teacher salaries and because advanced degrees are required for full certification in a number of states. Indeed, more than half of current teachers in the U.S. have a master’s degree or more.”

So, why keep rewarding teachers for advanced degrees?

“When you only give educators who want to advance their careers two choices, advanced degrees or leave the classroom to become an administrator, it is unfair to criticize those who want to stay in the classroom teaching students and take the route of earning an advanced degree,” says Tim Callahan of Professional Association of Georgia Educators.

“The state would be well advised to find additional ways to provide career and salary incentives that keep outstanding teachers in the classroom and truly develop teacher leaders,” he said.

The Legislature controls teacher compensation and has changed the law so that educational leadership degrees only lead to a raise when the teacher moves into leadership.