posted February 3, 2008
Teacher pay increases would be really nice, believe me. Actually providing funding to support educational programs is essential, of course. But you know what I never hear anyone talk about in all the debates over the problems in our schools? It is class size.
Although I am a public school teacher, I work with several teachers who are products of private schools. One went to GPS, one to Chattanooga Christian, one to Notre Dame, one to Franklin Road Academy in Nashville, and the eldest of the crew — me, Baylor School, Class of 1990. Our lunchtime discussions have brought us to an interesting revelation: we all agree that the biggest difference in our education as "private school kids" was 'not' access to new materials, quality of degrees held by our teachers, the wealth of our parents (most of whom struggled financially to send us), the beauty of our buildings, or the crisp appearance of our uniforms.
The fact is that we had small classes. We were all typical teenagers - lazy, sloppy, rebellious, but our teachers knew us well and held us accountable. We were unable to "fly under the radar" as so many students do in our classes every day.
I am an English teacher with 12 years of teaching under my belt. I’ve had many school years with “standard” 11th and 12th grade English classes of 30+ students per class at Red Bank High School. No matter how hard I try (calling parents, allowing makeup work, extra help, etc.), I generally have about a 10-15% failure rate each semester. So when I learned I would have a 9th grade English class for repeaters, in other words "at-risk" kids who had already failed, my hopes were not high. Then I found out there were only 17 kids assigned in the class, and my hopes changed. Maybe I would have a fighting chance after all!
Well, guess what? They are all making A's and B's in my class. They are excited about their assignments, and though I am consciously creating engaging, relevant, standards-based lessons, their enthusiasm and success is blowing my mind. Although they would never admit this publicly, they desperately want to learn, and they are thrilled with the individualized attention my inclusion teacher and I are able to give them as they tackle some pretty tough concepts and skills.
Most teachers want to make a difference in the lives of kids, and they want them to succeed often far more than the kids do themselves. But we are set up for failure when we are given classes full of 35+ kids of vastly different skill levels, abilities, and special needs.
So many people say that we’ve got to stop throwing money at the education problem while others say we’ve got to spend more. I think both sides are correct. If you throw money aimlessly, it falls and blows away. But if you spend money responsibly and invest in something that is proven and true, your money begins to work for you. Well, I know what is proven and true…smaller classes.
While there are some real perks some of the experimentation happening in schools today such as academies, flexible scheduling, differentiated learning, etc., none of it matters if teachers don’t have time to connect and interact with their students. I truly believe that the swiftest and most concrete solution to the education problem in America today is to lower class size and teacher/student ratios so that teachers can effectively do their jobs. In a perfect world, we would have more parent involvement, plentiful resources, and an end to the “test till they drop” mentality. But that is not the world we live in. Will it cost us money for more teachers? Of course. Is it a complicated solution? Absolutely not.
So in the coming year as you look at budgets for education reform and funding, please keep this simple solution in mind. No one I know chose teaching for the money...for most of us it was a calling because we genuinely care about kids. If we foster an environment that allows teachers to succeed, our children will succeed.
Tara Tharp
Chattanooga
* * *
Stop spending my money.
According to our Hamilton County Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Jim Scales, Ph.D., hired from outside of Tennessee and whose job had been eliminated by his former system with no intent to replace the position, whose former school system was also being investigated by the feds for improprieties, as reported in the Chattanoogan.com on 29 January 2008, we seem to have plenty of teachers. "School officials said the average teacher salary is over $43,000 and the student-teacher ratio is 15-1."
In case Ms. Tharp is a wee bit mathematically challenged, that's one teacher for every 15 students...and an average daily pay rate of $215.00, plus benefits, for 200 days per year, of which only 180 of those days are with studii. Oh yeah, and after three years, when they have tenure, it takes an act of congress to fire them with six men and a small boy to carry them to the edge of the property...unless, of course, it's a man and he's being accused of making untoward comments by a young female student who is a behavior problem in the first place, or a man who is making an effort to maintain discipline in the school he's charged to assist the administration of.
Ms. Tharp states that our schools need more money but that "(i)f you throw money aimlessly, it falls and blows away." It most certainly does. We pay men and women an average of $215.00 per day plus benefits, benefits which are significant in and of themselves, to teach our children and yet many of them still cannot read when they "graduate" from High School.
Durn...that's just about $14.33333333 per student per day on average, sans free meals and expenses or benefits, so that some of them can't read.
This is not to say that all teachers are bad. Quite the contrary. I personally know teachers who are quite competent and diligent in their efforts to teach the children in their charge, but they have the backing of their school administrators. I also know some who have left the education field because the inmates were running the asylum and they could not maintain discipline in their classrooms without being accused of either; a) not being competent to manage their charges, or b) not being competent to manage their charges, or c) not being competent to manage their charges or their classrooms.
Ms. Tharp states that we need to implement new systems and programs to better teach our children, but that these cost money. You bet your sweet bippy they cost money, lots of money...as in tocsan jingwa, mucho dinero, or "yahoo, let me have some of that." What's wrong with the old 3-Rs...reading, writing, and arithmetic? Or is that an R, a W, and an A.
As a product of the public school system back in the 50s and 60s, we didn't have all that spiff...not even in California. Yet, those who learned to read, write, and cipher the old ways are the very same people who developed the transistor, the integrated circuit, built the space shuttle (60s technology that's still flying today), invented television, radio, the jet engine, who invented computers, designed airplanes capable of traveling at multiples of the speed of sound, designed and built submarines capable of staying under water for weeks at a time, and built space vehicles capable of traveling past the bounds of our solar system. Some even came from here in the Sunny South, where our schools are purported to be so terrible.
They didn't have any el spiffo computer games to learn with. Why are these necessary now? Many of them barely had a slip stick while going to college back in the day, much less a hand held calculator or a notebook computer, let alone while in kindergarten and 1st grade.
And we had class sizes of 25 to 35 children per teacher, with no aides and assistants...and teachers earned much lower salaries.
How about if we spend less money on frivolity, less money in general, and pay attention to the basics before we try to go for the spiff? Teach children to read, then to write so they can express a thought clearly and concisely, then teach them to cipher so they can go on to their sciences if they're going to do so. If they don't, at least they can communicate an idea more coherently than "farm out, man." It's that simple.
If a kid doesn't want to be there lay responsibility on his parents until he's of age, where it belongs...rather than paying that parent to have more children, which in turn will not be cared for or tended to. But that's another issue.
Stop trying to spend my money. Stop reaching into my pocket to grab what you think is going to be best when it hasn't been shown to be anything more than another expense. One day, you might just draw back a nub.
I need ice cream. Too much cayenne pepper in the burritos this afternoon.
Royce E. Burrage Jr.
Royce@OfficiallyChapped.org
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