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Masters & Apprentices. Ahead lie major innovations, many of them seeded by the prodigious Ford Foundation. Already Ford and its Fund for the Advancement of Education have spent more than $10 million for some 50 educational TV projects. Most imposing: Washington County, Md., where 18,000 first-to twelfth-grade students in 49 schools get about 120 classroom lessons a week on a closed-circuit system. By all evidence, it improves the lessons. The best teachers can reach the most students, and given several days to rehearse, the best extend themselves.
To attack the teacher shortage, the Ford Foundation has spent another $15.6 million on two vibrant experiments: "Intern" college-student teachers and "teaching teams." By practicing in nearby schools, interns get enough credit to skip a tedious year of postgraduate study. And often they join teaching teams (being tried in Baltimore this year) that could solve a big problem: the discouraging salary ceiling that a teacher reaches after 15 years. Some teams have equally ranked specialists. Most have a "master" teacher who gives the main presentation, then turns over the class to several journeymen, apprentices and clerical aides. The master (salary: up to $15,000) is free for another class or study in his field. Result: a true hierarchy of ability, a chance for able teachers to get paid more.
Strong Medicine. Yet all the big innovations—images of the future—depend on local control and local money. Few states really control curriculums except New York, with its 175-year-old Board of Regents (patterned on French education). And few states provide enough money. All the states together carry 40% of the total U.S. school budget, compared to 57% by local governments.
Local governments are not so vexed this year about an old debate: federal aid for school construction. Eighty percent of school bonds requested this year were voted in, compared to 73% last year. But the quality of a school depends most upon the quality of its teachers, and such is the character even of devoted pedagogues that money attracts them. Last year the average classroom teacher's salary in Mississippi was $3,070; in only 13 states was it above $5,000. One out of every ten teachers quits yearly. There is no problem in wealthy Scarsdale, N.Y., which can spend $865 a year per student. But Georgia ($208) is another matter. And who will pay for a master teacher in Ekalaka, Mont. (pop. 904)?
What the National Education Association calls for is a "significant" inoculation of federal money. The Government is already spending $2 billion yearly on education. A full dose would be strong medicine. If the "educational deficit" is really $9 billion, it is equal to more than 10% of the entire federal budget. No Congress would dream of spending that amount without peering into curriculums, and the prospects are not cheery.