When the next education debate comes up

L

Larry T. Spider

1,000+ Posts
When the next education debate comes up about funding, test scores, vouchers, teacher evaluations or whatever else, please keep in mind that pretty much every teacher out there would take a bullet for their students. This is not a call for any political action, only a call for civility when the next round of debates starts. In previous debates, this lady would have been thrown in with the group of overpaid, lazy union teachers that don't care about the kids. Certainly not now. The conservative politicians crying at funerals today would have been labeled as an enemy of the children. Both sides need to take a step back and think about toning down the rhetoric.

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Well said, Larry.

I am a member of the school board in my town. I frequently have to remind parents and taxpayers (and occasionally other board members) that teachers are NOT an enemy -- they are partners in a joint venture. This doesn't mean we shuold give the farm away, but we must treat them with admiiration and respect if we expect them to continue working as hard as they do, and caring as much as they do.
 
Nice post Larry. I believe most parents get the fact that teachers are given less resources and asked to produce the highest quality product for the least amount of pay. We are blamed, sued, chastised by the media and politicians, forced to follow guidelines that they would not accept themselves, then told if you don't like it find another job. Many people don't realize it is not about the money. We teach because we do want to make a difference. I tell my students every year that although I am not their father, I will defend them against anyone who tries to come through my door to harm them to my last breath. I want to make an impact on their lives. It's not just about teaching content, it is teaching manners, morals, hard work, and working through failures to find success. I want them to have goals and know how to achieve them. All of my colleagues believe in the same things. It would be nice to get some recognition for what we do accomplish with kids instead of verbal bashings for what we have no control over.
 
Nice post. I would like to think most adults would do whatever they could to protect children if in the same situation. I think the larger question at the next debate will add more effective and costly security measures to schools. What a sick society it has become...
 
"What a sick society it has become...

So give me a date and time when society was better? It's kind of a pet peeve of mine that I keep hearing for people nostalgic for a more morally responsible period in our history ... and I keep readin history books and never come across the marvelous time somewhere in our history.... Been a lot of strife, a lot of violence, a lot of injustice in all the stuff I study.
 
Gosh, do not know how to answer and I guess my age has much to do with it. However, when I was a kid I do not remember anybody shooting up a school, movie theatre or any other thing except the tower shootings.

As a young child, I left the house early in the morning and came back at dark. My parents were not worried about anyone attacking me or kidnapping me. At school, discipline was provided by the principal and it was done via a butt whipping if you broke the rules. There was no police presence ever at school.

Today, I fear every day for my kid. Even a walk to the mailbox is time and measured internally for me. Times have changed in my opinion, but I guess it is all perspective.
 
I think you missed my entire point. My point was that when these debates heat up, sides get taken, and hateful terms get thrown around that are far from the truth. I obviously know nothing of this teacher or her political leanings, but I am sure that her and other teachers like her have been grouped as "union fill in the blanks". Just as many conservative politicians and voters have been unfairly grouped as people that don't care about our children. My main point was that when things get nasty again, and they will, both sides need to take a step back and remember that the other side might just be willing to take a bullet for a child.
 
LTS/FNL,
I think you both make great points. The vast majority of teachers deserve praise and admiration for what they do and the vitriole thrown about does not help improve our education system.

I think we could say the same thing about most entities (corporations, etc). The majority are decent, honest people.

The one thing that gives me the most frustration about teachers/union/system is the way they close ranks and continue to insist on policies that make it difficult to impossible to get rid of the few that really are bad at their job.

They aren't all great educators/mentors/caregivers. Even if they might have started out that way, if they are no longer good at their jobs, there needs to be an easier path to move them out so they don't keep spoiling the product.

What is your suggestion for accountability? We can't just assume that every teacher is doing their best and even if we did assume the best intentions, we can't assume that every teacher has the skills/aptitude to be a teacher.

While I personally believe that the difference between C's and A's has more to do with the parents and the home, you have to address the quality of instruction in the classroom as well.
 
The solution is simple. Teachers are year to year employees. If they aren't doing their job, don't give them a contract for the next year. This is how it happens in Texas and it works just fine. Just don't expect massive improvements from this alone. It is very easy to "not renew" teachers in Texas. Is our education system better than others? Nope. You are not going to fire your way to better student outcomes. In fact, some of the states where it is hardest to fire teachers have the best student test scores. As a teacher, I wish this wasn't the case, but about 80% of how well students will do can be predicted by their SES. Teacher quality is important because it's one of the few things in education that we can control, but it's top even a top five challenge facing education.
 
The administrators seem to perpetuate bad teachers because they don't want to "ruin their career" when in fact they need a new career. The same thing happens with administrators. The education industry is a bunch of wimps when it comes to making personnel decisions. Larry is right, it is easy to non renew, but it does not happen often enough. So what will help education? We need to get rid of the "college readiness" attitude and allow schools to offer two different tracks of study, academic and industrial arts. When a student turns 16 they are given a choice between continuing with academic courses, math, science, history, english, or take industrial arts courses, building trades, manufacturing, etc. I see it at my school everyday where kids are not going to college but are forced to take an academic track that really won't be of much use to them when, or if, they graduate. The state legislators have taken us so far off course.
 
I agree that the legislators have taken us waaaaay off course. Most of the debates we have had in Texas over the past few years have had very little to do with academic outcomes. We have argued about:

1. Testing. No discussion on how to get the kids to higher levels, just how to test.

2. Funding. No discussion of real changes of how the money will be used to improve student learning, just more or less money.

3. Teacher evaluation systems. Basically new ways to get rid of bad teachers. No talk of how to attract quality teacher to replace them. No talk of why kids are really doing poorly in school. It's the same kids from the same families from the same neighborhoods that do poorly year after year but we are going to talk about teacher evaluations.

4. Safety. Serious concern but doesn't really change student outcomes.

When are our legislators going to sit down and have a real talk about improving education? Probably never. That's why I'm just asking for some civility in all of this. Almost everything we argue over isn't that important.
 
I'm not advocating that the proponents of vouchers, testing, etc necessarily have an anti-teacher position. In fact, my point was more that those people probably care deeply about children even if their political views are different from the people that demonize them. I personally know a republican politician that is a strong voucher supporter that would take a bullet for any public school child. It's not about vouchers or any other policy for me, its about treating each other with a level of respect that has been missing in the past few rounds of public debates. The willingness of that union teacher to defend her students with her life means nothing to any education policy. It just means that people should take a step back from the ledge on these issues and stop the name calling.
 
Larry, I understand where you're coming from, but people shouldn't be name calling anyway. They should stick to substance when discussing education or anything else.
 
Larry,

While you could mean well, a post like this politicizes, polarizes, alienates, and labels/names calls. You're presupposing the thoughts of good people who may disagree with you on a separate political issue. And then you're using a tragedy that has nothing to do with politics to call-out those folks...stuffing lies and insensitivities in their mouths.

It's disgustingly passive aggressive. Shame on you.
 
**** off. There was nothing political about my post. If you read that into what I wrote and then interpreted my post as passive agressive, thats on you. While I have many opinions on education, they do no fit into a conservative or liberal political agenda for me to advance.
 
SN,

Excellent comments. I think the reason why public education is geared almost entirely toward college prep is the "no child left behind" mentality and the belief that all kids are equal - in mental capacity, potential, etc. Accordingly, the school system doesn't want to pigeonhole a kid into not being "college material." That's politically incorrect.

What's sad is that they're doing kids a disservice. You can make very respectable money as a plumber, auto mechanic, electrician, etc., especially if you can go into one of those trades without a mountain of student loan debt.

Furthermore, a track doesn't have to mean a permanent banishment from college. You can create something similar to the GED program in which a kid could learn a trade in HS, work his trade for a few years, and then if he decides he wants to go to college later on (after he's made a few bucks), take a few college prep courses and then go to school.

And you're right that home economics is ********. Basically because of scheduling technicalities, I was able to hustle taking HomeEc three times, even though I never failed the course. I basically did it to get to eat free food at school and to be around hot, dumb chicks.
 
So how do we get rid of the "college readiness" attitude that our legislators have? How do we return to a "polytechnic" type of education that will help a great majority of our students? They need to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, divide and know how to figure percentages. They need to know how to balance a check book, know how to budget, and they need to know what insurance is all about. What can we do to change?
 
It has to be done legislatively, I'm sad to say. We have allowed our politicians to legislate us into this mess, and their bureaucrat armies to regulate us further into it, and so we have given them the only means of power to undo it.
 
Legislators are the drivers of public education policy. Of course they are lobbied by education groups wanting maximum benefits for their constituency. I don't think money is the problem. Choice is the problem. Four years of math, science, social studies and English cut down on the opportunities students have to take other classes that would be much more beneficial to them once they graduate. Would there be a majority of low income, minority groups in those programs? Most likely, but that's only a guess. What would people rather have, skilled or unskilled labor in the workforce. Competition is good. Split the educational track into two parts. The part we are currently using is not working very well and we need to change to meet demand in the market place. There are too many people involved in making educational decisions who don't have a clue as to what they are doing. They just do it because it sounds good at the time. Most of these people are administrators who haven't been in the classroom in years and are looking to implement the next great program so they can put another feather in their cap. They are usually gone to a new job by the time the program crashes and burns. We don't seem to have much of a vision in Texas in regard to education, maybe that's why we are ranked so low nationally.
 
FNL, I agree with everything you're saying. Not only is money not the answer, there's too much of it. One of the reasons why bad teachers and administrators aren't gotten rid of is that their superiors don't have to get rid of them. The funding is there for the incompetent people's jobs and their superior isn't evaluated by objective criteria anyway, so why go to the hassle, discord, and potential litigation associated with firing someone?

You're also right that many people within education are so far removed from the real world that they've lost touch with reality. Since marrying a teacher, I've gotten to know several teachers and administrators. They're not bad people. However, when I talk to them about their work or work in general, I'm always astounded at how little they know about what a "normal" (meaning private sector) job is actually like.

We need a lot more people with real world experience involved in public education. It's pretty hard to prepare students for the private workforce when the people preparing them have never been part of the private workforce themselves.
 
Deez, I appreciate the comments. You are correct in stating that many people in the education industry have no experience other than education. I have been fortunate to have worked in public and private sectors and find that some, not all, have a very narrow scope of what is truly available to students. They will defend their courses of study and the necessity for each year that a student spends on it. I am all for a well rounded education, but not to the detriment of students graduating with no use for the classes they were forced to take. I hope that there is meaningful change in Texas, but I am not holding my breath.
 
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