Fault lies in ourselves I had the opportunity to talk with two young people during breakfast on the Empire Builder. One of them was a volunteer with the Northwest Youth Corps. She had just finished a year of assignment as a teacher through a program that places young up and coming recent education graduates in various schools throughout the country. She was also participating in a summer program in Seattle that provides intensive studies to high school students who need additional credits to get back on track for graduation. It was interesting to talk with a young woman who was at the start of her career after talking last weekend during my high school reunion with a classmate who is close to the end of her teaching career. Both conversations struck me with the parallels I heard in both of their stories. This young womans enthusiasm for teaching students seemed tempered, maybe even somewhat dulled by the realities of the teaching profession. It disheartened me to hear talk of the numbers games many school districts engage. When she was teaching, she taught several science classes throughout the day each with about 35 students. Or about 150 students each day, every day. Rather than give her students multiple-choice tests, she chose to give her students 50-question tests requiring two to three sentence responses. Students often complained. But she insisted on doing it this way. You dont learn from memorizing the right answers. You have to be able to explain why its the right answer. You have to demonstrate that you know the material. That was her philosophy. I thought to myself: this is exactly the teacher I would want for my child. Children must learn how to articulate themselves. Employers expect that. So, educating them any other way does a disservice. But grading 150 tests with 50 essay questions...wow. Now thats a dedicated teacher. When state auditors came into the school, administrators instructed her to send away four or five of her students in each class. Not sure where they went, but the point was to hide the fact that each of her classes had four or five more students than the school district was reporting. She said this is common practice among many school districts. As the son of a retired teacher and as a former education reporter I am deeply troubled by what this means. To me this encapsulates many of the problems of our school system. Schools are being administered not for the welfare of students, but rather for the careers of school administrators or for the re-election campaigns of school board trustees and state legislators. Meanwhile, taxpayers are left with the impression that teachers are being paid to teach XXX number of students when they are really teaching YYY number of students. And when they dont succeed, especially after taxpayers voted to provide them more financial resources, they look at the official state numbers and ask, quite rightly, why arent you able to do your jobs? What taxpayers dont know, apparently, is that these teachers are expected to teach a great many more students than are being reported. And then we wonder why our best and brightest teachers are ready to hang it up after 30 years of teaching? Why is this happening? Its like Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, the fault dear Brutus lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. In my estimation, we are not holding the right people responsible if this numbers game is as widespread of a problem as I am told. Expecting one teacher to teach 150 students, with various degrees of learning capabilities competently, is not only untenable, but also its a complete disservice to those students and to our society. Get ready fellow taxpayers for the day of reckoning. This little numbers game will cost us dearly.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 16:57:19 +0000
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