Issue 75 Education: correcting some errors May 13, 2013

 We have all heard the quote “The foundation of every State is the education of its youth.”  Well duh, a dumb nation cannot progress.  A dumb nation means we cannot compete intellectually with other nations because jobs are created by smart people who invest their income wisely.  International businesses not only look at how cheep it is for it to establish itself and produce its products, but also the education of workers because smart labor equals skilled labor equals profits.  We are in a race for the most highly skilled workers on the planet, an education arms race if you will.  Problem, our education system has some major malfunctions inhibiting our, your, Americas future, from getting the best quality education.

The first problem is when school elections are held:  Have you noticed that school elections are not held on the same day as a general election, the very same general election where we as citizens cast our vote for our President, and federal, State and local representatives?  The reason is because the school boards want a lower voter turnout.  Some are thinking why the heck would they want a lower turnout?  Simple, with less people voting, officials are more likely to be elected or re-elected.  Budgets are almost guaranteed to pass even if that budget is flawed, or clearly does nothing to enhance the education of the students and line the pockets of the education bureaucracy.  In other words, the members of the education bureaucracy only have to be responsible to the segment of the community who actually gets out and votes and not the entire community. 

 Next is the problem with the Lemons:  No, not the fruit or the cars, I mean bad teachers.  Usually, these bad teachers can’t be fired due to tenure or contract, so schools have an alternative solution.  They trade off bad teachers with other schools hoping the newer one was better than the last.  This of course means that the new teacher can be as bad as or worse than the one traded away.  Other teachers go into what the people of New York State call rubber rooms.  This is where bad teachers go while they wait for there hearings to take place, all the while getting paid to do nothing.  Some might say remove tenure, which is something I am in favor of, but here I will discuss alternatives.  In the case of the rubber rooms, a teacher who is not in the classroom teaching should not be paid.  That’s right, if your not working you should not be paid and the fear of being placed into one of these rubber rooms will put the fear of God into that select minority of bad teachers.  This also eliminates the need to trade off bad teachers because they can simply threaten to send poor performing teachers, and those who commit worse acts than failing their students, into a rubber room.  Thus, the number of bad teachers should drop.

Another Approach:  An alternative that can be combined with the first is to make tenure renewable.  In other words it will expire after a certain period of time and teachers’ records will be used to justify its renewal.  This is a very simple solution, because their application for renewal may be denied and that bad teacher will then be let go.  I suggest every five to eight years for a renewal of tenure.  I chose these numbers because it’s long enough to evaluate a teachers performance under “safe” circumstances and at the same time give the teacher the ability to enjoy the original intention of tenure, the freedom to discuss points of view in the classroom.

But, what happens to the bad teachers who do manage to be fired.  Why they can simply get another teaching job.  Your saying how does that work aren’t you?  Well, it’s because unlike the majority of professions, teacher’s records are sealed.  The new employer can’t look into the reason why the teacher no longer has their original teaching job, or even the fact that they were fired.  So why is it that a teacher has their records sealed and not other professions?  Why inhibit employers in schools from insuring that America’s children are getting the best of the best?

This leads me to another question: Why are we only giving special attention to the best students?  This is due to the track system which was developed during the industrialization of America.  The original intent was to give the top performers in schools the most attention because they were perceived as the next generation of politicians and lawyers.  The next group was expected to be accountants, and secretaries who aid the top group while the final group (the majority) was to be factory workers and farmers.  This system has always worked by giving attention to students based on performance.  However, performance is based on test scores that are factored in with other factors which inflate grades like behavior.  So good students academically are given less attention because of poor behavior such as obedience or the number of times they raise their hand while others are given higher grades because they might behave better than the rest of the class.  This is not fair and nor is it equal treatment.  This is biased education from a bygone era.  The track system must end for all students who must all be held to the same standards.  They must be given the exact attention they need to succeed and above all treated like the next Albert Einstein. 

 We are still left with inflated grades based on behavior though.  So make academic performance and behavior two separate grades.  Academic performance and behavior do not correlate which is why grades get inflated or even deflated, so there is no reason to not make this change for teachers are already accounting for a student’s behavior.  This will make grading fair and equitable and allow both parents and teachers to identify what areas a student is week in whether it is academically, respecting others, group work, attention to detail, all of which is important in the working world   

 Conclusion: These are some simple fixes, though some are harder to achieve than others i.e. elections and tenure.  We can make America’s system of education the best in the world and a model for all to follow.  Our 50 States, each with their own separate and independent education systems, are competing to be the best.  Each State is in an education arms race with each other and the rest of the world, each a powerful force in education reform.