Should We Fire Our Teachers?
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America’s education system is almost as bad as its health care system. It costs a fortune to maintain yet it is still sick. If you don’t believe that ask your neighbor’s 12 year old kid to multiply 7×7 and come up with the right answer.
I asked my neighbor’s kid and got a blank look in return. When I asked him if he could tell me which ocean lay off the east coast of Florida he gave me that same blank look and he is from Florida!
Jay Leno, NBC’s late night talk show host, offers a long running segment called Jay Walk. In it Jay wanders around Hollywood asking folks, at random, simple questions. For example, he asked a college student to name the vice president of the United States. Her answer: Jimmy Carter. A young, well dressed businessman was asked if he knew where Israel was. His answer: next to Germany and that is why the Second World War was fought because the Germans didn’t like the Jews living right next to them.
The Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development places the United States 18th among the 36 nations examined. The lack of learning spreads across all disciplines and the topical deficit can threaten the very stability of the nation. Among the casualties: science.
Science education in the United States is broken. So says Congressman Bart Gordon , chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology in a scathing criticism argues that China and India will crush the United States unless there are substantial improvements to American science education.
While we debate the outcome of the next election millions of people are “home schooling” their children. The vast majority of parents have little more than a high school education, if that. The motivation for “teaching” the kids at home range from “the local schools are inferior,” perhaps a fair assessment, to “there are too many niggers and spics in the public schools,” to “they don’t teach the bible.”
American schools are no longer oriented toward moral absolutes or a biblical worldview. Certainly, there are godly and gifted teachers serving in the public school systems. But Christian parents must exercise discernment, recognizing the influence of the teacher’s worldview and teaching their children to do the same…Focus on the Family.
These excuses are not speculative. They were told to me by my neighbors, and overheard while waiting for a haircut. Home schooling in the Deep South is commonplace for all of the reasons articulated above, and more.
There is little we can do about Red State ignorance. It has become the norm south of the Mason-Dixon line, but not the exception, as evidenced by Leno’s Jay Walk, and the national trends toward an education system that retains teachers that are both incompetent and uninspired.
Once firmly ensconced behind the protective walls of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a union that makes the Teamsters look like characters from Pee Wee’s Playhouse, the teachers and administrators find themselves under siege from progressive school boards and forward thinking superintendents. The shot that was heard in classrooms across the nation was fired from a school district in, of all places, the Northeast:
In a move that was bold but also justified, District Superintendent Frances Gallo fired 77 teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, along with the school’s principal, three assistant principals and other administrators. In all, the district said, 93 people were let go in the purge. The school board later stood by Gallo and approved the action.
The mass firings, which take effect at the end of this school year, came after the district failed to reach an agreement with the local teachers’ union on a plan that would have required teachers to spend more time with students to improve test scores — with only a small increase in pay.
Consistent with federal guidelines designed to improve the educational system, Gallo asked teachers to work a longer school day of seven hours and tutor students weekly for one hour outside school time. She proposed teachers have lunch with students often, meet for 90 minutes every week to discuss education and set aside two weeks during summer break for paid professional development.
The arrogance of these teachers boggles the mind. Because the school’s academic record was so poor, they were being asked to do something foreign to them. They were being asked to teach. Think of it as asking teachers to go back and fix what they didn’t do right the first time. Forget that poor-kids-can’t-learn nonsense. It wasn’t true 100 years ago, and it’s not true now.
Central Falls High School is one of the lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island. It operates in a community where the median income is $22,000, according to census statistics. Of the school’s 800 students, 65 percent are Latino and most of them consider English a second language. Half the student body is failing every subject, with 55 percent meeting requirements in reading and only 7 percent in math.
“No thanks,” said the teachers. “You’re fired,” said Gallo.
Apologists for the public schools and other defenders of the status quo will hear those statistics, and say: “Well, how do you expect educators to reach and teach a population like that?”
Easy. I expect teachers to do it by putting aside the excuses, stopping their constant complaining, setting higher expectations, adhering to better standards, giving into common sense reforms and doing their jobs in a school that serves a vulnerable population that is especially in need of a quality education — but also, and here’s the good news, in many cases, extra motivated to get one.
And now, thanks to the Obama administration, whose approach to education reform is, interestingly enough, an exact replica of that of the Bush administration, teachers and teachers’ unions have even more to complain about.
The American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, even complained about President Obama after the chief executive referenced the Rhode Island firings and praised the school district for taking the action.
“Our kids get only one chance at an education and we need to get it right,” Obama said in a speech this week to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
This, AFT president Randi Weingarten insisted, was nothing more than an attempt by Obama to “score political points by scapegoating teachers.”
So, teachers’ unions, how’s that hope and change working out for you? It seems to be working pretty well for the country, since Obama is obviously serious about education reform.
Those of us who care about what our kids are learning, or if they are learning at all, can only hope that the Central Falls High School purge sends a clear message to the nation’s public schools and their teachers, because what they do, or don’t do, will have a long lasting influence on their lives well beyond their careers:
The teaching mission is complex and difficult, and yet oh so vital. Teachers can never put up a “Mission Accomplished” banner, because they are a bridge, not an endpoint, for all the boys and girls — and the young men and women — who come into their lives. That’s why the best teachers empathize and care deeply about the individual, but never lower standards or expectations….MM
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NO!!!because if you fired the teachers the EDUCATION will going down like the FINANCE.An if you if you fired the teachers the classes will be larger, the teachers will get harder to teach.
And me and my teachers have some problems to solve this is sell some land and equipments OR AUCTION of students art , some students they draw really good and we can AUCTION .
AND PLEASE THINK ABOUT FIRED TEACHERS
WE DONT WANT ANY TEACHERS TO GO AWAY FROM US BECAUSE THEY ARE GOOD TEACHER…
THE END.
Holte and Lazer…It has been my experience that kids who are good at math are usually lousy in English and vice versa. As to the free thinking that crazy Jesus Jumping tends to dampen and restrict that.
There is truly enough blame to go around. Teachers, parents, administration, the government. They have all in their own sweet way been part of dumbing down America. As a high school drop out of the 50’s things weren’t so magical then either. It seems that somewhere along the way America lost its ability to generate inventors and creators of new ideas and how to encourage them. Instead we have looked to other countries and how they performed on standardized tests compared to us.
It would seem to me, just thinking off the top of my head, that much of the creative juices of the modern world have tended to flow through Western Europe and the New World (America). It is not so much that teachers have not taught, it is that students have not learned. We have come to focus on some kind of magical key of “if you present information in a particular way students will memorize it and then regurgitate it on a test.” The real trick is getting children to want to learn things. That is the job of not only teachers but society as a whole. The job of teachers is simply to guide and inspire and understand that every child learns different things at different times of their lives. This is not Huxley’s “Brave New World” and humans are not clones and everyone is not right brained or left brained.
I go back to Mike’s comment about the 12 year old and math. I too am math challenged in terms of complex math applications. However, I am sophisticated enough to have managed the statistical analysis on my master’s thesis and my doctoral dissertation. Since completing those I have little need of either. However, I have a nephew who is a mathematical genius but simply cannot grasp the logic (or lack of) of most criminological theories. When he was twelve he was still struggling with basic math. We need to simply encourage, inspire, and allow children to develop.
If we can’t cajole and coach children to be free thinking, eager learners in the early years, by the time they get to high school it’s too late.
P.S. You are right by the way. The schools in America, and their complex paradigm, are part of the culture. That will doom us…
LOL! Good though….
I don’t know about good enough – certainly long enough, heeee.
Bee…Why don’t you turn this into a post? It is good enough, beyond good enough….
I don’t see the educational system improving anytime soon. It has become almost an ingrained cultural ideology in this country (and it stems from republicans and libertarians, for the most part) of a form of social darwinism – “screw you, I got mine, and my kid is all that matters, and I’ve got the money, so whattya gonna do about it?” Why else would we hear all this talk the past few years of Charter Schools, and vouchers and the dreaded homeschooling? Basically it boils down to: The 98% white high school up the road from me has every amenity known to humans, the best technology, the best teachers, surrounded by some of the area’s nicest and most expensive neighborhoods, and hence surrounded by a solid and well-to-do tax base. The freaking place is like a private school. Then you come into my neighborhood, same county, where the parking lot of the middle school really needs to be repaved because it’s literally going to seed, where there are 20 trailers out back because there are more middle class/poor kids than wealthy kids and not enough space inside the 45 year old building with window unit air conditioners that don’t work half the time, and guess what? Most of those kids are minority. The entire deck is stacked, from the teachers to the administrators to the parents to the tax base and the way taxes are raised and educational dollars are handed out, and every single aspect of it is stacked against children who deserve a bit better if only because they are the future of this country, not the 50 year old white guy who’s planning on retiring early on a nice 401K and a portfolio of stocks/bonds and investment properties. It’s disgusting, and damned shameful that we should be so far behind the rest of the industrialized world in educational standards. And yes, I blame the republicans. This new republican governor we have in Virginia came in 2 months ago facing a budget shortfall – a big one. Instead of pushing the state legislature to raise taxes like he should have, he took a bloody hatchet to education funding, and guess who gets hurt the most? Not the 98% white high school with all the amenities – nope, the City of Richmond schools, where 1/4 of their school buildings are a breath away from being condemned and the poorer localities, both urban and rural, that are operating on a shoe string already.
It’s no surprise that everytime we get a new republican in any office in this land, the first thing they try to go after is education – from teacher pay, to hot lunches and breakfast for kids that might be able to count that as their only hot meal of the day, and on the weekends get nothing. How did their parents end up so poor that they can’t break out of the cycle no matter what they do? Lack of education. Between supply-side-jesus and republican/libertarian desires to kill off the public school system entirely, we’re all fucked 20 years down the road. They got theirs, their kids go to one of the best public high schools on the east coast, and screw everyone else.
Oh, I went on and on…sorry, I’m a bit passionate about this subject.
Then, on top of all the structural problems in education, we get a bunch of wackadoo talibangelicals pushing “creationism” in the public schools to the point where textbook publishers, because they have to pander to TExas, which orders the most textbooks, think they have to add “disclaimers” and “play down” biological science in a damned biology textbook. And, they’re not just happy with putting a big dent in who learns a thing about biology, now they’re going after global warming, “teaching the (non-existant) controversy.”
Take all these factors, mush them all together in the blender, and you get a country that is absolutely doomed, because there won’t be enough people who have 2 brain cells to rub together to run the place.
BEE – Agree with Mike, beyond good enough.
Holte…Didn’t you find that a little unnerving?
MIKE – More shocked than unnerved. He really was a nice guy, worth a post just to talk about him.
Steven I agree! We do need to raise taxes. We must pay for what we want and need. The free ride is over. We must raise taxes and I think I am going to make that the war cry of MMA. That should make us real popular but I don’t care I believe in it. Thanks man!
I volunteered in a Library program to help adults who couldn’t read. My first student was a 28 year-old construction worker who had a 2 year-old daughter, she wanted daddy to read to her, so he thought he had better learn how. He had a high-school diploma?
In a perfect world, teachers and administrators would play nice with each other. They don’t, hence the need for a union. Are unions perfect? Yes, just as perfect as school districts are. Enough of that…I wrote earlier that parents have abandoned their responsibilities and I maintain they have; just count the parents at board meeting, that tells the tale. Taxes need to be raised to pay for schools & equipment. The USA is an undertaxed nation when compared to the rest of the world. Yet we demand more cuts. How about taxing corporations? Over 70% don’t pay taxes at all. The corporation I worked for didn’t pay over $6 million in taxes EACH year. Didn’t pay because we exploited a loophole.
Speaking of school equipment and instruction…our corporation (450 employees) spent over $2 million EACH year for computers and software and we were a construction company. How does a school prepare a child for the real world when it has to beg and borrow old computer equipment. All because we have our priorities in the wrong places.
Rocky…Hmmmmm…..Interesting thought. Darwin would love you 🙂
Perhaps it is just that our medical procedures have improved to such a degree that natural selection has been stunted… just a thought.
I still have a lot of family in England 4D, and I can tell you that my nephew (16) can run circles around me in math, of course that is no great shakes. My aunts and uncles tell me that the education system has deteriorated right along with the economy.
I watched a TV programme a few years ago. No idea what it was called. It was all about the American education system.
I think around a hundred students aged between 10 and 18 took part.
Some of their answers to questions had me holding my sides. I remember one or two.
“Amsterdam is somewhere in France I think”
“The capital of Great Britain is England”
“Rejoice is spelt REJOYS”
“Australia is at the end of the world” – I could sort of see where he was coming from…;-)
These I recall came from the older students too.
…and I don’t think it’s a lot better over in England these days!
You make some good points Demeur and I don’t disagree but I think firing teachers who are less than competent, those who have been hiding behind the union wall for years, is a good first step. The schools can then say to the parents: we have done our part now make sure you do yours.
Gad where to begin. I saw the downward spiral back in the late 60s but it started even before that. The problems are with teachers students and parents. Most teachers even back then could not afford to live in the districts where they taught. With budget cuts they are having to pay for class materials out of their own pocket. With cutbacks requirements were dropped. Language, PE and about half the math requirements are gone. There was a time when Latin and another language was a high school graduation requirement. There was talk here of making a D grade passing for graduation (great thinking – if they can’t make grade lower it). There’s the drugs and violence that are prevalent that don’t help matters.
Then there’s the issue of parents calling the teacher and demanding that the teacher change a test score so Susie gets an A on her last test. And if you think that’s bad mom is doing this to Susie’s employer when she gets a job.
So as you can see this problem isn’t just teachers it’s with all of us. Not willing to take the time to set examples and the fact that teachers now are a product of our failing system, the spiral continues until changes are made but responsibility lies with all of us.
Mycue…I think we are talking apples and oranges when we are talking about the responsibility of the teacher and the parent. The parent needs to provide a supportive and loving atmosphere at home, one that encourages learning. The school, on the other hand, needs to provide an atmosphere that is conducive to learning. This piece speaks to the responsibility of the teachers and the school administrators to do just that. In the case of Central Falls this wasn’t happening.
BTW: When are you going to join the team? 🙂
Steven while I accept that the responsibility should be shared I don’t accept that it is all the fault of the parents. I know good teachers, and I know bad teachers, and at the K-12 levels I know far too many bad ones who whine constantly about how much work they have to do, as they come back from their 3 month long summer vacation.
C.J. I also teach college and have to be there when class is scheduled to meet. Recording grades, performing outreach and etc. is all part of the job and you don’t cancel one aspect so that you can fulfill another.
I’d rather stick a plastic fork in my eye than homeschool.
I am not familiar with that case, but perhaps these teachers were already vastly underpaid? I’m not saying these particular teachers should not have been fired, but working in constant fear of being canned b/c you don’t jump when a superintendent (who may have never even been in a classroom since his own youth) barks at you doesn’t sound like the best solution either.
My daughters’ teachers have all been FABULOUS. They are not paid nor appreciated nearly enough for all that they do. I think the biggest problem we have is all of the OFF days, for this that and the other, and this long summer vacation where students forget a lot of what they learned, unless they are actively worked with. Every time we have one of these off days for “teacher grade recording” or whatever, the grump says “No wonder Japan kicks our asses”. I teach college and I don’t ever cancel classes so I can record my grades!!
I can’t really comment on the situation at that school because I don’t have all the facts, but I do know that parents have just as much responsibility as teachers do for the education of their children. Parents cannot turn our kids over to the school system, without taking any responsibility themselves, and then complain when they fail. Are the school teachers supposed to make sure that the kids do their homework? Are the teachers supposed to make sure that the kids aren’t watching TV or playing video games or web surfing all evening? Teachers have the kids for a 1/4 of the day, who has control over the rest of their time? I have no doubt that there are bad teachers, unmotivated teachers, etc., but I do not think that describes the majority of them. But you have to ask yourself how you would react if you forced to work in substandard conditions with little or no support? Would you eventually become disillusioned? Would you eventually become unmotivated? To blame the failure of students on teachers alone is misguided. Yes, the education system needs to be fixed so that all of our public schools have access to same resources, but without significant support from parents, nothing will change.
I have been preaching for years that the teachers should quit…en masse. Until the community decides to take on THEIR responsibility. You can fire and hire all you want. Union or no union. The parent’s abdicated a long time ago and until they assume responsibility for the schools and their mission, you are simply wasting time and money.