Don't Get Me Started!

As I was reading through education news on several of the news sites I regularly visit, I came across an article on a report by GEMS Education about the release of of their Efficiency Index for 30 nations worldwide. Looking at costs for teachers and then at educational outcomes, the report places the USA 19th. Taking top honors was Finland with Brazil coming in at the bottom.

According tho the report, to increase efficiency the USA could increase class sizes and reduce teacher salaries. One of the authors of the report says these are things that could be done, not necessarily what should be done.

I was talking with a former colleague the other day and asked her if she had any news about any of the people we had taught with. She told me a few things and then mentioned that two long-time teachers had left teaching behind, not out of choice, but because they were told their contracts were not being renewed. However, their leaving is not about tenure, it is about another practice - retire/rehire.

In Ohio, where we taught, an educator could retire after 30 years of service, at any age, with a full pension (now it is 35 years and you have to be 60 years of age). After three months, educators could return to teaching, administration, etc. while still collecting their retirement pension. There was a series of articles in one of the state's newspapers about this practice, which was termed "double-dipping." The gist of the articles was that this was an abuse of a public pension and should not be allowed. Some states do not allow public employees to collect both a public pension and a paycheck by returning to their previous position, Ohio did.

In my experience, I've found it beneficial to students to have a great teacher retire and then return to the classroom for a few extra years. The alternative might well be retirement and the loss of this teacher's impact on any future students. I know of several instances of very good administrators who were allowed to retire, then return to their jobs. What about substitute teachers? Some of the best substitutes I have known were great teachers who retired and came back to sub. One sub was so well loved I had a class give him a gift when they graduated.

So, should educators be allowed to retire, then return to their previous position full time? Should teachers be allowed to collect a pension and then become substitute teachers? Is so-called double-dipping ethical?

I was talking with a neighbor who has young children and he told me his financial planner said he would need approximately $300,000 in a college fund for his kids. I was shocked at the number and it led me to think about what I had been reading about higher education over the past several years.

I was a student in the early 1970s, at a state university, and tuition was around $1000 per year (not counting room and board). My parents paid the tuition and I graduated debt free. Fast forward to my oldest daughter attending a state university in the early 2000s. Her tuition came to about $12,000 per year, also not counting room and board. From what I've read, the average student graduates with nearly $30,000 worth of debt. We hired a young lady into our department about ten years ago and she had a $60,000 debt. What a crippling start to adulthood!

Is this going to continue? The cost of going to school is rising much faster that the rise in wages for an average person. The dream for many was to get an education and improve upon the life of your parents. Is this dream gone? What can be done.

A couple of thoughts come to mind as I think about what is going on with higher education. Perhaps we should re-examine what level of education is necessary in today's world. States are currently rethinking Pre-K education in order to get students ready for school. What if states mandated K-16 education? After all, we keep hearing about need for an "educated workforce" for tomorrow's jobs. Of course, requiring an extra four years of school with also mean increased taxes to pay for this universal requirement. So, good luck getting new taxes in today's political climate. Another thought might be to place more reliance on blended education and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). These courses should cost less for students to take due to the reduced need for brick and mortar spaces. This could also mean the end for many smaller colleges for whom the cost of maintaining a campus would become financially untenable. Another question I have is whether the current system of degrees is really adequate, but some of the proposed solutions, such as badges, or certificates, don't really seem to be the solution.

I recently read an article Shortchanging Teachers in the blog eduwonk, which was a synopsis of Shortchanged, a report from TNTP (formerly known as The New Teacher Project), which criticized the current practice of teacher salary schedules and their reliance on years taught and degrees earned. Of course the recommended solution is a change to a system which rewards actual teacher performance. Sounds rational, and yet...

Back in the 1980s there was a push to eliminate salary schedules and move toward rewarding teachers with "merit pay." As with the current recommendation to reward teacher performance the problem remains - how do you measure teacher performance in an unbiased way. Is a high-performing teacher one that students like? Is it the teacher who teaches the AP course and his/her students perform better than the national average? What about the next year when the students don't score quite so high? Is it the teacher's fault or just the mix of students in each class? What about using value-added measures to evaluate teachers? Oops, that really doesn't work to well either.

Another item mentioned in the article which rubbed me the wrong way was the criticism of compensation for advanced degrees - what? It seems we all want our sons and daughters to attend colleges where they will be exposed to the musings of scholars who possess advanced degrees. Wouldn't it make sense that parents would want the same for their K-12 sons and daughters. I felt my subject-area knowledge and teaching ability increased as I took my graduate courses. If a teacher is more knowledgeable and has added skills, doesn't that deserve compensation?

There is another part to the article which concerned me. Supposedly, research shows that 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years experience are not as effective as a brand new teacher. My experience, both personally and mentoring teachers for a number of years is that this statement is garbage. Lifelong learners, which many teachers are, do not remain the same or regress in what they do. A first-year teacher may excel in enthusiasm, but I have seen very few who had the educational knowledge of a veteran.

Every now and then I read something posted by an educator noting that education is a profession and asking why educators are not allowed to police themselves. Doctors police themselves, lawyers police themselves, why not educators?

Educators aren’t allowed to police themselves because education, and especially curriculum, is too important and too valuable to allow it. Valuable to whom, you may ask. Well, how about politicians? Control what is taught and you control how a generation is shaped. For example, in 1957 the Soviet Union launches Sputnik into orbit. Our government responds by telling the nation there is a shortage of engineers and educators are not doing their jobs. In 1983 “A Nation At Risk” is published, based on inconclusive data, and Americans are told their educational system is failing. No Child Left Behind begat a new wave of high-stakes testing to the detriment of schoolchildren everywhere, and Race To The Top sought to use students’ standardized test scores to evaluate teachers.

What is interesting about all of these supposed reforms is that they employ few, if any, practicing educators when drawing their conclusions and making policy recommendations.

Unlike doctors or lawyers, educators, teachers in particular, are trivialized and deemed unimportant when it comes to making educational policy. The only organizations with political clout, The National Education Association and The American Federation of Teachers, have been systematically attacked as backward-thinking anachronisms. The recent attacks on tenure only adds to the reduction of influence wielded by educators. 

I had an interesting chat today with several people on Twitter over the need for tenure for public school teachers. One of the participants stated it was hard to fire bad teachers. Another participant felt unions protect bad teachers to the detriment of everyone. Someone wondered whether there should be tenure with a limit - perhaps five years.

I participated and responded to each of these statements. My point of view stems from my position as a classroom teacher of thirty-five years who also served as president of our local teachers union.

Yes, it is hard to fire bad teachers - who have tenure. Without tenure a teacher serves at the whim of the school board, whose will is carried by the administration. One of today’s participants stated it took four years to fire a bad teacher. In my experience it very well may take several years to fire an incompetent teacher, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Tenure grants a teacher due process, NOT job security for life. If the board wants to fire a teacher they must prove incompetence. This usually takes more than one year. Consider this, a teacher represents an investment by a school board. The person is hired, trained in the ways of the district, and given specific professional development. If a teacher is not living up to expectations, it is prudent for a district to attempt to provide help to bring the teacher up to snuff. If that does not work, and the contract is followed with proper documentation, the teacher can be terminated. We had a teacher in my department who was terminated in this manner while I was union president. I monitored the process and, as everything was followed to the letter of the contract, I had no problem with the termination. By-the-way, certain types of behavior, including felony violations of the law, can lead to immediate termination.

A college student, majoring in language arts education, wondered whether there should be a limit to tenure - perhaps five years. This one bothered me, because there has been a concerted effort by conservative elements to discredit teacher unions and tenure as protecting bad teachers. Of course the elimination of tenure would mean the end, or at least the loss of much power, of teacher unions, which tend to support liberal causes and candidates. I remembered a young teacher in our department who told me that tenure was bad and only protected incompetent teachers. I had a long discussion with her and shared several cases where I had seen tenure prevent teachers from being fired because of personality clashes with administrators as well as irate parents who disliked a teacher over some perceived slight to their child, and pressured the administration to discipline the teacher. I hope that participation in our Twitter chat helped the education student who proposed the time limit to tenure to better understand the issues of tenure and unions in education.

In Florida the attacks on public schools continue. House Speaker Will Weatherford wants to expand the tax-credit scholarship program which provides private-school scholarships. Corporate donors would be able to earn sales tax credits for their contributions to the scholarship program. <Tampa Bay Times>

The program is really an insidious move to reduce the need for public schools under the cover of helping poor students. Conservatives have long disagreed that poverty is the root of inequality and that some groups are impoverished due to social/political conditions. They tend to feel some people are impoverished because they do not have the drive to succeed and their access to a good education (which will lead to developing a drive to succeed) is limited by weak public schools. The solution is obvious to these people: eliminate public schools and replace them with private schools (many tied to for-profit corporations), give students vouchers from public revenues which they can use at these private schools, and exempt private schools from the high-stakes testing that is required of public schools.

Allowing all of this to happen will allow conservatives to cripple, or eliminate, public schools which helps the conservative move toward smaller government. It would also push the agenda of having schools corporatized by private businesses, the effect of which would be to give students a biased view of some subjects (e.g. evolution, climate change, size and responsibilities of government, etc.). Exempting private schools from high-stakes testing is the carrot which is dangled in front of parents to get them to accept vouchers and enroll their children in private schooling.

Sometimes educators do the dumbest things, and their actions hurt the image of educators everywhere. How about the Mesa, AZ kindergarten teacher who made a female  kindergarten student remove her shirt in class because she hid her face in her shirt while he was admonishing his entire class? What was he thinking? Then there is the administration of a private school for girls in Concord, CA which allowed a menu featuring fried chicken, cornbread, and watermelon to be served in “honor” of Black History Month. It’s the 21st Century, who in our connected educational environment would let this happen? Just over a week ago news came out that the Salt Lake City, UT school district threw out school lunches for 40 children because their parents were behind on their payments. Nothing like taking out the neglect of parents on their children. There are also accounts of children not being allowed to bring asthma inhalers to school, even though this is a violation of the law in all 50 states. 

We (as a nation) really have no idea what we want out of our schools. Naturally, professional educators are confused, and tend to throw up their hands in disbelief or utter words that should not be used near their students.

Reading various commentaries about what should be taught in our schools in order to provide the best opportunity for student success in the 21st Century has got me thinking. It seems there are at least three primary areas that education should address: National/State/Local Needs, Economic Needs, and Personal Growth. Of course there could be other needs, perhaps many others, but properly addressing these three should give students a boost toward success.

By national/state/local needs I am referring to concepts such as “citizenship” which is already a core part of school curricula. The Common Core is promising as far as a national goal of what should be necessary of all students on a national level, but it is constrained by the numbing effects of politicians wanting it endlessly evaluated through the use of high-stakes tests, certainly not the way most educators would like to measure progress. State and local needs are similarly important in addressing the concerns of both polities, but there needs to be some sort of watchdog that will keep purely partisan requirements under control, especially those that do little good for students and their education long term.

Our country is undergoing a transformation from an industrial to a post-industrial society and this has created stress on our educational institutions. What sorts of jobs are we preparing workers for? What skills will be necessary in 2020 or 2030? This stress can be seen in recent controversies such as whether cursive writing should continued to be taught or should all students be taught to code. Educators, and especially politicians need to step back and think about the impact of their decisions years down the road.

Personal growth is an area which often gets forgotten when discussions of what is best to teach in preparing students for life in the 21st century. We must help students develop their creative sides, for this is where the “next great idea” will be developed. Educators are starting to let students have more choice in what they will study and how they will study it. Educational technology will allow teachers to do these things in ways that could not have been imagined twenty years ago.

Digital Literacy

I was reading my Twitter list of “Key Educators” and came across a question, “what does it take for a teacher to be digitally literate?” I thought about this for a bit and came up with a list of competencies which would make a teacher digitally literate in my opinion. This list is not intended to be complete, merely a start for teachers interested in enhancing their digital literacy.

Being literate in SEARCH skills is something in which all teachers need to be accomplished. Searching involves not only knowing a few of the major search engines, but being able to use their advanced features and understanding their limitations. Being able to effectively evaluate the various sources which are found is also a necessary part of a competent search.

Having a SOCIAL MEDIA presence is something which digitally literate teachers need to develop. This presence could include various social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Flickr, blogs and web pages. While these are given only as representatives of the many social media resources available, they are meant to show some areas which a social media presence can take.

DISTANCE EDUCATION is becoming a requisite for the digitally literate teacher. This term covers not only being able to facilitate a connection with another classroom, but knowing how to find and attend relevant webinars and group meetings with other educators anywhere in the world. Distance education is a subset of the term “collaboration” with which educators are constantly being bombarded.

All teachers need to be familiar with, and competent in, the use of PRESENTATION TOOLS which could include the ubiquitous PowerPoint, Prezi, Smart Boards, and the use of appropriate video and audio tools.

More and more teachers are making use of PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORKS (PLNs) and these teachers are tapping into the greatest of all educational resources - each other. All aspects of Social Media can be put together according to the needs and interests of an individual teacher to create a comprehensive gateway to constant learning and self-improvement.

As teachers mine information with their digital tools they find they need a way to CURATE the relevant data they uncover. Placing important links to this data and sharing those links is an important part of being a digitally literate teacher. Tools such as Diigo, Tumblr, and simple web pages can give other educators and students access to this information.