I
RETIRED FROM TEACHING three years ago. So I finally have time to do a little
writing. If you follow education news these days you have to know public school
teachers are being fed a steady diet of abuse by critics. When U. S. students
are compared and ranked, internationally, based on test scores the results are
depressing.
It
has to be teachers, right? Not long ago, Glenn Beck lumped teachers’
unions in with Islamic terrorists. Seriously. The movie Waiting for
Superman made it look like teachers were a bunch of slugs. Here in
Ohio Governor Kasich acts like we’re Vikings intent on ransacking the State
Treasury.
I
talk to teachers these days and find them more discouraged than at any
time since I first became interested in a career in education. So my blog will
always be a defense of good teachers—but never bad ones.
There’s
a difference, which most of our leaders and almost all of the critics seem to
forget. Take Arne Duncan. He says education reform is “all about the talent.”
He
means it’s all about teachers.
Trust
me: I’m a liberal. I voted for President Obama and always knew he
had a valid birth certificate. But I’d like to sock Mr. Duncan, his Secretary
of Education in the jaw. (Same goes for Davis Guggenheim, producer of Waiting
for Superman, by the way.)
If
you listen to critics this is what you hear: We have a “school crisis” on our hands. How do
we know? We know because our students finished 25th in math in 2006,
when students from thirty nations were tested. Worse, we spend more on
education than almost all the countries that beat us. See: America’s teachers are lazy and overpaid.
Here
were the bleak math results in 2006:
- Finland
- South Korea
- Netherlands
- Switzerland
- Canada
- Japan
- New Zealand
- Belgium
- Australia
- Denmark
- Czech Republic
- Iceland
- Austria
- Germany
- Sweden
- Ireland
- France
- United Kingdom
- Poland
- Slovak Republic
- Hungary
- Luxembourg
- Norway
- Spain
- UNITED STATES
- Portugal
- Italy
- Greece
- Turkey
- Mexico
Study that list a bit and it can
seem depressing. Our poor students were just baffled when it came to
multiplying decimals and transforming common fractions into percentages. Who
else could you blame? It had to be teachers.
In my case, I looked at that list
for a long time and wondered. Was America going to math hell in a hand basket?
WHAT OTHER PROBLEMS WERE CRITICS
MISSING? Was it just America’s teachers who were failing? Or was there a
broader cultural failure to concern us?
What
about doctors?
Time magazine
provided the first hint of danger in a brief comparison (December 12, 2008) of
health care systems round the world. After that, I was on the story like
Woodward and Bernstein, or maybe just Woodward, since it’s just me.
Health care costs in the United
States ate up 16% of GDP, the highest figure in the world, a per capita cost of
$7,026. Life expectancy was 77.8 years.
Japan
spent 7.9% of GDP, or $2,690 per capita. Yet the Japanese lived an average
of 83 years.
Numbers don’t lie and the more
numbers you study the more lying you don’t see. School reformers like Secretary
Duncan assure us that if we collect enough data and tie test results to teacher
pay we can save American education. Maybe we can collect enough data to save
hospitals, too. In southern Minnesota people live into their 80’s. People in
eastern Kentucky live a mere 72.6 years.
What’s needed, clearly, is a system
to rate doctors and nurses in Minnesota “excellent” and medical people in
Kentucky “failing” or under “academic watch” or some category of that nature.
Or we could fire all the Kentucky medical people and get some real
professionals in there to clean up the mess.
In fact, to get a picture of how our
oncologists and proctologists are doing, let’s gather some data. Compare life
expectancy in the same countries that
beat out our brains in math.
Here
were the dismal “health care” rankings for 2009:
1. Japan
2. Australia
3. Canada
4. France
5. Sweden
6. Switzerland
7. Iceland
8.
Israel
9.
New
Zealand
10.
Italy
11.
Norway
12.
Spain
13.
Austria
14.
Greece
15.
Netherlands
16.
Luxembourg
17.
Germany
18.
Belgium
19.
Finland
20.
United Kingdom
21.
Denmark
22.
Ireland
23.
Portugal
24.
UNITED STATES
25.
Czech Republic
26.
Mexico
27.
South
Korea
28.
Poland
29.
Slovakia
30.
Turkey
So, what do simple lists prove? If
America’s teachers are failing, a truth the media universally accept, then this
chart proves that U. S. doctors are lazy and overpaid idiots—and they aren’t
even unionized.
(Thank
god they don't have tenure!!!)
So, Mr. Duncan, if you
ever do get punched in the nose by an angry, retired teacher, head for Canada
if you want good affordable health care.
And don’t mention our
terrible doctors to Glenn Beck.
He’ll only start crying.
(For even MORE chilling
statistical evidence go to: “America's Teachers Stink Up the Place Again.”
My personal opinion on our education system is that there absolutely needs to be reform. The classes need to be harder, and the standards for passing need to be stricter. In my opinion, there have been a few factors that have been eating at the quality of our educational system: the waning attention spans of our youth, growing class sizes, and destructive parents.
ReplyDeleteObviously with the tough economy and the war on Iraq, the public school system is at the mercy of all the state tax cuts. When you teach a class of 40 kids, I'd say it's a success if 35 of them actually grasp the concept you're teaching. In order to bring those last 5 up to speed, you would have to either have another paid employee do it, or sit down one-on-one at the expense of the other 35. So in the sake of getting the maximum efficiency for that situation, you have to just accept getting 35 out of 40.
Then you have destructive parents. They act in two ways: complete apathy on one hand, and complete irrationality on the other. After being involved in both sides of the education system (student and teacher) it's pretty evident that an involved parent that holds a child accountable is a HUGE predictor of academic success for a student. The kids that are on IEP (Individual Education Plans) are usually the ones with bad home lives.So in order for kids' scores to improve, the parents needs to step up. On the other hand, we have the irrational parents. These parents are the ones that when their kid fails a test, gets caught cheating, or does poorly in class will threaten the teacher or school with a lawsuit claiming malpractice. Schools are notorious for folding to parents threatening lawsuits. This in turn hurts the masses as the curriculum has been dumbed down so everyone can easily pass.
Finally, we have our children's attention spans. With the growing prevalence of social media and the ensuing technology, kids have the tools to be in 100% contact with their peers. Their attention spans have adapted to this convenience which then in turn kills their ability to pay attention in class. This has turned into an uphill battle for teachers as the amount of kids that actually want to learn is pretty low on a day to day basis. However, I believe an enthusiastic, creative teacher (much like the writer of this blog) can get kids to stay engaged and beat the small attention spans of the American youth.
Maybe I should attach a conclusion :) . I don't think cutting the benefits of the teachers is the proper course of action for our system. I think it's the easy way out for politicians who don't want to get involved in such a complicated/broken system. All they care about is appeasing the masses so they can get votes for their next election and if teachers have to suffer then who cares. Ultimately the students will suffer for this policy change. UPenn did a study that found that patients report happier and more satisfying hospital visits when nurses have better work environments or with lower patient-to-nurse ratios. This directly applies to schools (and fits in well with the original doctors point made above). It's been well documented that positive reinforcement works better than negative, but yet the politicians are making all the incorrect moves!
ReplyDeleteTeachers are failing so much as this article suggests. This has led to the demand for home tutoring, and of course this is unregulated. Do we see a problem here?
ReplyDeleteI think you missed the point; it could be my ineffective writing. I don't believe simple lists like these ever give a true picture. Some teachers are failing, of course. Not all.
ReplyDelete