This may sound like heresy coming from a liberal, but I believe it's time to reform public education. I still believe strongly in public education, but for it to survive and thrive, things need changing.
Little background info.... I have a B.S. in Instrumental Music Education. I was a band director in public schools for five years, 1990-1995. Those five years were enough to totally disillusion a man who never wanted to do anything other than be a teacher for the rest of his life. After my fifth year, I was so frustrated and stressed out by my job that I resigned. I won't bore you all with the gory details of my experiences, but they will creep into my arguments about what is wrong with our public school system as it stands now. So, speaking from a teacher's perspective......
Better Teachers: It's too easy to become a teacher. Any mediocrity with half a brain can get a teaching degree. There should be a tough, "bar exam" like test that prospective teachers would have to pass to get their teaching license. This test, of course, should be tailored to the whatever field of education that teacher will teach. In other words, a music educator's test would be different from a science educator's test. The current basic skills test that teachers must pass is a joke.
Pay Teachers as Professionals: Teacher salaries, especially for beginning teachers, is very low compared to other professions. When I started teaching in 1990, my first contract was for $21,000/year. When I left the biz in 1995, I was making almost $28,000. Within a year of quitting teaching and working in the computer industry, I was making over $50,000 with half the responsibilty, and a tenth of the stress. This leads me to my next topic...
Get rid of the Teacher's Unions: As a good little liberal, I am pro-union. But it's my opinion that teachers are actually hurt more by being in a union, than they are helped by them. Teachers should be treated like any professionals, being hired and fired because of their expertise and accomplishment. Currently, it's too difficult to get rid of worthless teachers, and there's no structure in place to reward excellent teachers. No matter how dedicated and hard-working I was, I knew that my salary was only to going go up a small percentage each year, as negotiated for me by my union and the school district. Where is the incentive to perform with this rigid formula in place? There isn't, and that's why so many burned-out teachers are doing a half-assed job of educating our kids. Teachers should make a lot of money, just as any professional would, depending on their education level and experience and ability.
Year Round Learning: The old school schedule of Sept-May is outdated and bad for everyone involved. Teachers and Students should be educating and learning year round, with small breaks in between. In this scenario, nobody can ever say to me again "Yeah, but the reason we pay you teachers like toejam is because you get the summer off". My attitude as a teacher was "Work me like a professional, pay me like a professional".
Let Teachers Teach: Currently, teachers are asked to not only teach, they are asked to coach, be surrogate parents, and be discipline police. Teachers should teach, and let others do the other work. Speaking of discipline....
Restore Discipline: Kids know that teachers can't touch them, and can't discipline them without legal repercussions. Now, I'm not a violent person, and I would never think of throwing unruly kids up against the locker as I saw my teacher do when I was in high school. OTOH, trying to maintain discipline in the classroom sometimes takes more time than actually teaching the subject at hand. What schools need is the ability to remove unruly students that are preventing the educational process from continuing. And teachers need to be able to enforce discipline without legal repercussion, as long as it's within the law.
Parental involvement: Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, promotes a positive educational experience more than an interested, involved parent. Without fail, my students who did well and were not discipline problems were the kids whose parents came to conferences, and were in direct communication with me.
If you've read this far, thanks.
Sorry if I rambled on, but I've been meaning to get this off my chest for years.
Most teachers are self-sacrificing people who simply want to help other people. There are indeed some dead weight in the teaching profession, and they need to be weeded out.
With all the talk about how rotten our public education system is, you never hear much from the teachers' perspective. I hope my ideas reach out to Liberals and Conservatives alike. Education should not be about politics. Education should be about learning, and enabling learning. I purposely left out topics like testing and funding, to focus more on what the fundamental problems are as I see it as a teacher.
Kieren, I know you're still in the biz, I'd be interested in hearing your opinions.
