I’m not sure if anyone’s has been watching the latest in education coverage in the recent weeks. If not, here’s Education in America: The Latest 101. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times Magazine, and the current administration, have all been in a heated debate about education and how to reform the whole institution. The overwhelming and mind blowing solution is to fire bad teachers.
Yes, get rid of the bad teachers. The ill equipped teachers that teach because they don’t know what else to do with their degree. Get rid of the non-team players that don’t follow simple school procedures which in turn negatively affects their students. The teachers that have no idea what they’re in for and get in the classroom and either turn it into a zoo or a daycare. Dismiss the teachers who don’t really care about their students and attempt to make no connection with their audience. Yes, there are bad teachers, just like there are bad lawyers, bad accountants, and bad waiters. So what is normally done when someone is a bad employee? Fire them.
What can be done to ensure that there are competent people working in the teaching field? For starters, raise the pay. School districts would attract more people who have a genuine interest in teaching but don’t go into the field because they have a family and can’t swing getting paid in Cheerio’s and good feelings. Raising the pay would make the field more competitive and districts would be able to hire from a more select group. Step two: get rid of standardized tests. The pressures teachers face for their students to pass the End of Course tests, the writing test, and benchmarks is daunting. Then, add in the fact that you have to give one of these tests every two weeks. When is the teaching supposed to happen? When is the learning supposed to happen? Most of the time teachers are too time constrained to go in depth with the material and the students are presented with so much information at once that they don’t comprehend everything. The money it takes to print these tests can be used to raise teacher pay.
But are teachers 100% at fault? No. I can offer extra tutoring sessions, supplemental materials and a myriad of activities to help students prep for quizzes and tests, but I can’t go home with these kids. I can’t look over their shoulder and make sure they are studying for their vocabulary quizzes. I can’t make sure that Little Johnny is reading chapter four in The Great Gatsby. I can’t do it. But parents have the ability to do so. Parents should enforce and regulate homework time, even when their kid is in high school.
So why isn’t this happening? Why is there a systematic breakdown once the bell rings every day? Because parents can’t be the heavy all the time. All parents work. The majority of parents of students that I see everyday are parents that work two or three jobs. How can they be at home when Little Sally gets of the bus to make sure she studies when they are working second shift at a hospital, restaurant, or hotel? Sometimes a parent is so concerned with putting food on the table and making sure there is a roof over their children’s heads’ that they can’t be there to reinforce that their child has a test in U.S. History the following day.
Students control so much of their own fate in the classroom. If a student doesn’t want to get suspended, then the student will not get in a fight. If a student doesn’t want to go to lunch detention, then the student won’t be late to class. If a student doesn’t want to get a “D” in a class, then they will take every offering presented to them to succeed in the class. A student that comes into class everyday and sleeps still has to take the E.O.C. at the end of the semester. And that grade the student earns counts. Just like the “A” the boy sitting next to him earned on that very same test. In a district wide meeting when the school board members analyze the progress of each school, which grade do you think stands out more?
So who is to blame? The student? The teacher? The parent? The politicians? Society? I think a combination of all of these have led to the downward spiral that is education in America. The student for not taking initiative and not being the master of his or her fate. The lackadaisical teachers who are burned out, unqualified to teach, and ignorant about their students lives. The parents who are unaware of what their child should be doing in school and who are busy providing for their family. The politicians who don’t pay teachers enough and are too busy with implementing new programs without taking the time to fully understand just what they are proposing. Society for not knowing just how much of a negative influence it is having on education today. So really, no one specific is to blame. We all shoulder the blame. The solution: keep fighting for what is right and hopefully, education can be a number one priority again. But I can’t do it alone.
