By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 18, 2003; Page A25
As a public school student, I was the oblivious beneficiary of a double catastrophe -- the Great Depression and widespread employment discrimination against women. Together they so constricted career choices that many highly qualified and talented people became teachers. The upshot was a bonanza for me and my classmates. Although we came in on the tail end of the twin catastrophes, we had, I tell you, some marvelous teachers. If I were black and living in the South, I might say the same thing about Jim Crow. This too so limited employment opportunities that people who today might be lawyers or investment bankers went into teaching. Countless students benefited. The challenge now is to approximate those conditions to raise the quality of teachers. Countless studies show that it is not the best and the brightest of college graduates who go into teaching. Common sense tells you the same thing. A field where the average salary is around $41,000 a year -- and many are a lot lower -- is not going to recruit the "best" people. So I have come up with my Leave No Teacher Behind Act. In its roughest form, it means forgiving all teachers their federal income tax. For a married teacher with two kids under the age of 14, that would mean an additional $4,300 a year in disposable income. If states and localities joined in, the pot would be even richer. Would this by itself mean that we'd find only great teachers in the classroom? Of course not. Salaries would still not be great, and working conditions would not change at all. Schools might be dirty, dangerous places and parents inattentive, abusive and -- in too many cases -- not in the least supportive of their children. Still, it would be a start. No magic bullet exists for what ails our schools. The problem is complex, and it is further complicated by politics, ideology and in some cases the recalcitrance of teacher unions. Yet everything we know about education alerts us to the critical importance of good teachers and principals. Ask someone who turned his life around and he will often name a teacher. You may ask, why stop at teachers? Why not social workers, who are also severely underpaid and do work few people would even consider? Fine. It would be okay with me if they didn't have to pay taxes either. But we have to start somewhere, and the field of education is as good a place as any. I would, in short, treat education as Congress does some other American industries. Take agriculture. The government sets target prices for so-called row crops -- wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton and rice. If the market price doesn't match the target price, the government makes up the difference. The justification for these programs is totally social or, if you will, political. America wants farmers, and politicians want their votes. Why not make the same determination for teachers? What they do is no less important than, say, cotton farming, which not only can be done in other countries but can be done for less money. Teaching, though, can only be done here. It cannot be outsourced and it does not compete unfairly through having workers overseas. The ag programs cost taxpayers in excess of $15 billion a year. Throw in what we do for steel and other industries, and the Leave No Teacher Behind Act suddenly seems a very modest initiative, less than $13 billion annually. Everyone knows that some very good people leave teaching because it pays so poorly. Some experts estimate that there is one well-qualified teacher not teaching for every one now in the classroom. Under my Leave No Teacher Behind Act, some of these people would surely return and others stay. That would increase the pool of teachers, giving school districts greater choice in whom they hire and retain. I am open to amendment. Maybe the tax break should apply only to public school teachers or those who choose to work in really tough schools. Maybe it would kick in only after a set number of years. I'm reasonable. I'll take anything that works. But the point is for us -- the Bush administration and the country as a whole -- to put our money where our mouth is. If we care so much about education, if we truly believe that cliche -- our children are the future -- then let's pay teachers what they are really worth, not what the vaunted market says. In fact, if there is anything to the market, then making teachers a bit richer ought to make them a bit better. It's just a theory, but George Bush would understand. Call it faith-based.