No Mercy / No Malice: Head of the Class

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1:01Tell Washington to end middlemen markups and put American patients first. Visit phrma.org slash middlemen. This week on No Mercy, No Malice, we're featuring a guest post from Richard Reeves. Richard is a writer and a scholar whose work focuses on many of our most pressing issues and has become our Yoda when it comes to the conversation around failing young men. We had him on the Prof G podcast last fall, and it was one of our most listened to episodes ever. He's a blue flame thinker who combines data-driven insights with empathy and perspective. You can hear from him regularly via his substack, Of Boys and Men, and his 2022 book, Of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do About It, is a must read.

1:56Head of the Class by Richard Reeves

2:08My favorite high school teacher was Mr. Wyatt. He taught English, mostly poetry and Shakespeare. He was also a Korean War veteran, a part-time bus driver, and a curmudgeon. I loved him. And because of him, I also came to love reading and writing. It's no exaggeration to say that he changed my life. Mr. Wyatt was living proof that masculinity and literacy could go together. To a 15-year-old boy, that really mattered. Seems I'm not alone in this regard. In the UK where I grew up, one in two men say that a male teacher was an important role model. Ask the men in your lives about the educator who had the most impact on them.

2:57Most will name a man. But my own sons had fewer opportunities to connect with a male teacher for the simple reason that there are many fewer of them around. In 1980, men accounted for 33 % of K-12 teachers. Today, it's down to 23%. If the male share had remained at 1980 levels, we would have an extra 400 ,000 men teaching in our schools. That's more than the total number of teachers in California. The male share is set to drop even further unless something's done about it. In the 2019-2020 school year, only 18 % of education college majors were men. Each year, the National Center on Education Statistics publishes a report blandly titled Characteristics of Public School Teachers, showing the steadily falling share of male teachers.

4:04Each year, it fails to get any serious attention from either the media or policymakers. If the share of women was declining in a major profession, it would, quite rightly, generate headlines. There is lots of concern, for example, about the lack of women in the tech industry. Among the workers at the big five companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft, only 31 % are women. 31 % may well be too low a share of women in big tech, but it is a lot higher than the 23 % share of men in education. The lack of women in tech is often described in terms of an existential crisis, while the lack of men in schools merits barely a mention.

4:55Male teachers are especially scarce in the early years. Only 3 % of pre-K and kindergarten teachers are men. In fact, as a share of their professions, there are twice as many women flying U.S. military planes as there are men teaching kindergarten. Education professor George Brown notes, quote, it takes some degree either of social ignorance or of personal courage for a man to enter teaching at the elementary school level. Unquote. For a man to teach young children, he wrote, quote, is to spit in the face of a strong societal stereotype. Unquote. That was in 1960. Today, I'd wager the stigma is, if anything, even greater.

5:48My own son teaches at the elementary level and has faced stigma and suspicion. A man who wants to work with children is seen as, well, weird. This is a vicious cycle. The more scarce men become in teaching, the weirder a decision to enter the profession will seem. My fear is that we are close to a tipping point where almost by definition, non-weird men will think twice about choosing teaching as a career option. My son, for the record, is not weird. In one of the very few attempts to draw attention to this crisis, Richard Ingersoll and his colleagues wrote in a 2018 report from the University of Pennsylvania, quote, If this trend continues, we may see a day when 8 of 10 teachers will be female.

6:44Given the importance of teachers as role models and even as surrogate parents for some students, certainly some will see this trend as a problem and a policy concern. Unquote. I think it is a problem and a policy concern. The emptying out of the men from our schools is bad news for at least three reasons. First, having a male teacher improves educational outcomes, especially in certain subject areas like English, where boys are lagging furthest behind girls. One study suggests that if half the English teachers in middle schools were men, the achievement gap in reading between girls and boys would fall by approximately a third.

7:35A massive effect. Important note, the performance of girls in English seemed not to be affected by teacher gender. But it turns out that English, where male teachers might have the biggest classroom impact, is the subject men are least likely to be teaching. Men account for just one in ten middle school English teachers. Second, male teachers are much more likely to take on after-school activities, especially coaching sports teams. A recent Brookings study finds a gender pay gap among K through 12 teachers of about$2 ,200 a year in favor of men. But the difference in base pay is just$700 a year.

8:27Most of the gap, about$1 ,200 a year, is explained by the extra pay that men are getting from doing extracurricular work. The researchers write about this as a problem to be solved, which it is if the only thing we're worried about is the gender pay gap. But if male teachers are working extra hours to coach their students on the soccer field or debate stage and getting paid for it, I'm more inclined to clap than wring my hands. The role of coaches in the lives of many students is close to a sacred one in our culture. This is especially true for boys without dads, and there are more of them. Since 1980, the share of children being raised by a single mom has risen from 18 % to 24%.

9:22So, more homes without dads and more classrooms without misters? That's a bad combination. Third, the men in our schools are mentors to both male and female students. A recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that having an informal mentor in high school improved educational performance across a range of measures. Most impressive was a 9 % increase in college attendance. But one finding in the paper did not get much mention. Men are 59 % of high school mentors, even though they account for only 40 % of high school teachers. So male teachers are stepping up in a big way to act as mentors to both boys and girls.

10:20The term teacher doesn't get close to describing the impact of either the men or the women working in our school system, but it does a particular disservice to male teachers, who are even more likely than their female colleagues to provide coaching and mentoring to their students. In short, male teachers rock. So how do we get more of them? Here are five suggestions. Increase wages. K-12 teacher pay has been essentially flat in real terms for at least a decade. According to the National Education Association, in 2019, almost two-thirds, 63%, of school districts offered a starting salary below$40 ,000 a year.

11:14The low salaries are especially off-putting to men. Caveat, the teachers who should get the most money are the good ones and or those working with the poorest students. Double extra duty pay. Teachers who stay late to run clubs or coach sports should not just be rewarded, they should be doubly rewarded. Extracurricular activities are precious opportunities, especially for kids from poorer backgrounds, and there's a growing class gap in access to after-school sports. Scholarships Generous college scholarships ought to be available to men who want to pursue education as a career, especially in crucial subjects like English.

12:01This is not a radical idea. After all, there are thousands of college scholarships for women seeking to enter traditionally male fields, including STEM. Celebrate MISTERS School districts, counties, and states should support and fund the creation of male teacher learning networks, award Male Mentor of the Year prizes, and plaster the faces of successful male teachers across billboards. Remember the line that feminists taught us? You can't be it if you can't see it. Set a one-in-three target. Last but not least, some concrete goals should be set. How about we aim for the same share of male teachers as when Ronald Reagan was first elected?

12:53That means at least one in three teachers should be male. School districts, states, teaching training colleges, and the education department should set this one-in-three share as an explicit goal and publish annual progress reports. The Biden administration has a million women into construction initiative. California awards$25 million a year in grants toward the same end. Great! Where are the equivalent initiatives and investments for men into education? Unless we act quickly, there will be fewer and fewer men in our classrooms every passing year. If policymakers do not think that's a problem, they should explain why not.

13:45If they think it is a problem, they should do something about it.

13:53Life is so rich.