I have not written a blog in quite a while. Life has been busy and I always say to myself..."I should blog about that..." and then life gets in the way.
But here I am with some down time and I haven't wanted to blog about teaching in this country for a while so here goes...
I read an article today about the legislative changes that have taken place in many of the States in our country. From losing collective bargaining rights, to changes in tenure teachers are being punished and hurt all over our country. Some of the states that are making changes are not known for their quality school districts as it is, and being a teacher, I can tell you, by making changes that hurt the teaching profession they will lost quality teachers.
The States that are going to do well in this day are the States that say "Yes we value what good quality teachers bring to our schools." The States that recognize teaching as a difficult, challenging and deserving profession. In the present day more and more States are requiring teachers to obtain higher level degrees (Master's, CAGS, and PHDs) and yet teachers often do not receive much in return. I read a statistic (and I'm not quoting so my wording and exact data may be wrong but...) that said something like, "15 years ago, an entry level teacher and an entry level associate at a law firm (read law degree passed the bar...) made the same amount of money. Now teachers make something like 75% of what the associate makes."
We are constantly being devalued by society and we are constantly being asked to provded more and more services for our students. This must stop if the state of education and the teaching profession want to find the same page in the book and help our students succeed. We must acknowledge that teachers are where our students find their inspiration, education, courage and drive. And we must realize that a standardized test is a horrible way to tell if a teacher is doing a good job or not.
Many students come from borken homes, homes with addiction, abuse, violence, busy parents, parents that don't care, and parents that aren't there. Couple that with increasing loosening of morals, higher unemployment and poverty, more gang violence, more chances for kids to be exposed to drugs, alcohol and sex at an early age, less money in the school systems, less afterschool programs to serve more kids and many other problems we are facing in this modern age.....and we wonder why our state of education is in such disarray....and we blame the teachers.
If we want to compare ourselves to other countries, we must not only look at student achievement (or lack thereof) but also look at poverty, crime, unemployment, social services, marriage rates, etc.... If these are equal with ours, then yes, we need to fix the educational system...if they aren't....then we can't blame the educational system for society's flaws...it isn't right. Public schools worked for MILLIONS of Americans. We all turned out better than fine. We can't blame the public school system when things haven't changed within it when we all received a quality education. Has technology improved? Yes, and public schools have added technology. Has history changed? Yes, and public schools have updated their text books and curriculums. Do students learn differently? Well they always did and now we are recognizing that more and more and making the changes we need to make.
So why is public education and subsequently, it's educators being blamed for all of the problems we face today? Well we need a scapegoat....why not blame the group that some say has the most influence over our students today? Because that group, that is made up of dedicated, hardworking, well-educated people will walk away. Not because they want to, because trust me, I will never be happy if I'm not teaching, but because government forced their hand. People will move to States who support educators, they will move to countries who will pay them well to teach in their American and Private Schools, they will retired instead of teaching an extra 5-10 years, they will find some other profession. It will happen if we do not recognize how important our teachers are. We must--or the state of our educational system will falter and fall apart.
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