Today, amid Chicago’s budding teacher’s strike my thoughts are with the education system. It’s broken there’s no doubt, and it’s not we the people who suffer, it’s our children and their children. Education has been publicly funded for generations and YES it has helped propel our nation to the top of the class for a long time. Our grip on that accomplishment has slipped and our education system hardly reaches the top tenth percentile these days. Schools are failing and we face crushing deficits across the nation that threatens to topple our school districts.
Charter schools have been thrust into the spotlight as the wave of the future and school choice has been on the tip of everyone’s tongue. The issue isn’t school choice in my opinion, nor (in many people’s mind)is it teacher fault. The desire to learn comes not from a teacher, or a faculty member, it comes from the home. Children are taught to value knowledge and those that aren’t spend their career at the bottom or back of the class. There are those children who place a higher value on their education then even their own parents and will attend Parent-Teacher night or Back-to-School night alone without a parent to either escape the home, or because they have a genuine passion for learning; these are a very small minority. There are those parents who, no matter WHAT you do, will NOT attend a single PTA meeting, or even set foot on school grounds unless the child is being reprimanded. How do you get these people to care? You can’t do it.
Teachers don’t pick this profession to make six figures, nor do they pick this vocation for the long summers (some do), they choose it like many of us, out of love. A love for what they do; imparting knowledge. Unions have given us a standardized workweek, a livable wage, and a basic understanding of worker’s rights. Aside from that, in my opinion, they’ve really outlived their usefulness. They strong arm districts into paying more for services they can’t afford. Many of Chicago’s teachers make over $50,000 before retirement and continue to receive increases in pay yearly after retirement and some can make over $80,000 a year post retirement plus benefits. It’s no wonder that it pays to work union. I’m not saying they don’t deserve their retirement because they do, they’ve worked hard for it, but I take MAJOR issue with an outside entity controlling YOUR employment conditions, retirement, and raises. What is to stop this entity from giving a raise where a raise is NOT due or reward a poor performer? Nothing.
Educators are offended and appalled at the idea of standardized testing, but they do it all throughout their own career. They’re tested on material they learn before receiving a degree and go on to teach others. Many careers have accreditation that accompanies them, and teachers are NO exception. While we pay for recertification and accreditation yearly, no one tests the retention of this knowledge belonging to those whom we entrust to pass the information to our children. We assume they take the knowledge back to the classroom but how much is reaching our children? My next idea may sound completely ridiculous, but it has a point. Why NOT test the teachers yearly on the subject they intend on teaching. A history/math/science teacher would take a standardized test that would be given to their students so that they would know what material was expected to be covered. Every educator would be required to take these tests and the educators with the highest scores get to choose their school placement. Those educators with lower scores would wait and get placed in the schools of their choosing after those with the higher scores were placed in their preferences.
School placement of educators is done for a variety of reasons. Some educators like to live near their home, others feel their skills would be better suited for a particular sect of young minds. Whatever the reason for choosing a particular school, those educators who show competence in their area of expertise SHOULD be rewarded for their knowledgebase. Furthermore, those educators who receive below passing (lower than 60%) on their aptitude test should be immediately suspended from teaching and will have their classrooms reassigned to a substitute who DID pass the test. How can we entrust an educator will properly teach our child when they themselves can’t pass a similar test given to the students? Contentment has NO PLACE in our education system and unions have long protected poor teachers with the promise of tenure. No one, except for union members have “work security”. Young teachers filled with the vigor of youth and excitements of changing lives are routinely denied positions because they either don’t have tenure yet, or a position hasn’t yet opened up. This “race for top educator” would allow these younger teachers to compete with their associates and if one of them fails to meet the expectations, these younger (potentially well scoring) instructors would have an opportunity to fill the much needed position. If a lecturer scored poorly and was suspended for the semester, they would have an opportunity to retake their classroom/position when they retake the test midway through the year before the beginning of the new semester. If the educator can’t pass the test a second time, then that individual would have to reapply as an instructor in the school district after proving they can pass the standardized test. Complacency will not be tolerated or rewarded any longer, we want to be the best, and we need the best to teach our children.
Having been assigned at the school of choice in the subject of choice, one knows what’s expected and yearly bonuses/raises should be a reflection of the positive change imparted in the classroom. Assignment to a poor performing school wherein over the course of the year, students show improvement on test scores, results in collecting a bigger paycheck. Pick a well performing school and slightly improve scores in the classroom, the bonus won’t be as significant but the improvement should be rewarded. I would advise against penalizing non-improvement or stability, but the reward to excel should be enough to drive positive change.
While I’m sure there are other ideas out there on how positions and bonuses should be assigned, this could be push is in the proper direction. These overpaid teachers in Chicago are a blight on underpaid or unemployed educators as I’m sure they will happily fill the vacancies left by the striking union. These teachers didn’t get a yearly raise as per their union negotiations, not because they deserved it and now they’re on strike. The union bosses and their supporters should be ashamed of themselves for demanding higher pay, job security, and added benefits when the rest of the country is cutting back. All we’re asking from YOU is accountability; something I routinely ask of myself.
