Once, when I was teaching seventh grade English, the school principal told me I was the kind of teacher they made movies about. I took this as high praise, since it was a movie about a teacher that made me want to teach in the first place. When Robin Williams portrayed the unorthodox John Keating, I could really see myself teaching. I wished I had a teacher like Keating, and having always been one to question everything his questioning, rebellious style appealed to me. What does it say, then, that after just one year teaching English, a subject in which I have both a Bachelors and a Masters degree, I decided I’d had enough of that?
It wasn’t the kids, though the low income school in which I taught that year certainly was full of students who had a lot more going on than reading Rudyard Kipling or writing activities centered around standardized testing. Kids are kids, and kids get excited when they have a dynamic, knowledgeable teacher even if they aren’t especially drawn to the subject matter. It wasn’t my cast of co-workers, either, as we were all doing the best we could in an extremely challenging environment. Rather, and you’ve no doubt heard this before if you have teacher friends, it was the curriculum and the system that made me head for the exit at the end of that school year.
The entire public school system has been overrun by standardized testing. It’s the subject of most planning sessions, it’s the basis upon which the foundation of public education is built and it is the measure by which schools are judges and funded on the federal level. If teachers had a dollar for every time the word “alignment” is used in meetings there would no longer be a teacher crisis in America. People would flock to the industry to take advantage of the high pay scale.
It’s also total bullshit.
Each year we spend the lion’s share of our time and resources preparing students for the dreaded standardized test, which too often involves a process referred to as “teaching to the test.” The year I taught seventh grade English the district actually gave us a template and required us to follow it. They literally walked through our classrooms several times a week to make sure we were! At one point I mentioned that I had a Master’s degree in literature, had spent much of my adult life as a professional writer, and actually taught college English, too. They were riding us like we were all 24-year-old kids fresh out of college who couldn’t possibly do our jobs without their “help.” Not only was it insulting, it was also frustrating because I knew all too well that their methods – repetition, repetition, repetition – would not yield their desired results. The real kicker came when I found out exactly how the grading process worked for the standardized test (I bugged them until they finally told me).
For the big writing test that comes at the end of seventh grade English, a warehouse is used to house people who come in and match tests to templates. No, they don’t read the essays and grade them based on quality or effectiveness, they grade them based on which of five templates they most closely resemble. When the head of our district’s English department told me that I decided I was in the wrong place. When a principal friend of mine shared how the rest of the tests are graded I was even more convinced.
When a teacher gives a test, the first thing to establish is a grading scale. What does it take to get an A? Something like 90-100% or maybe 93-100% are the norms, with similar norms set for B, C, D, and F. Imagine what would happen if the teacher gave the test first and then established the grading scale based on a preconceived notion of how many students should receive each grade. It’s a ridiculous notion, yet that’s exactly how the Texas Education Agency (TEA) grades the annual STAAR Test. They decide which percentage of students should pass and set the passing rate to match.
This is the kind of thing that drives parents to private schools, charter schools and even homeschools, where the rubrics for success are less random and there is no such reliance on random standardized testing. This has also led to the discussion of school vouchers, which would allow parents to receive a credit from the public school system to help them pay for some other schooling option. Let’s be clear. This is not the answer.
The school vouchers systems I have seen proposed amount to nothing more than class warfare and corporate giveaways. Companies that run their own schools would like nothing better than to get their hands on government funding, and they funnel millions of dollars in dark money to politicians who will aid them in their quest to undermine America’s free public education system. They aren’t putting students first and they certainly won’t do the extra work required for public schools to serve the diverse communities they serve. When you make something for-profit, the money becomes the focus, as evidenced by the disastrous American healthcare system.
Former Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone often said, “When we all do better, we all do better,” a line Al Franken often quotes in his books and on his podcast. Nowhere is this clearer than in public education, which is the front line in helping people do better. Where education is lacking, poverty increases, crime rates skyrocket and society decays rapidly. Poor people, for the most part, have only one option when it comes to education: the neighborhood school. They can’t afford to take their kids to some other part of town, so if better off parents have the ability to pull money out of those schools and give it to a for-profit school, the neighborhood schools will suffer. When schools suffer, students suffer, and when students suffer it brings us all down.
Public education has its issues, there is absolutely no denying that. Show me a table of teachers drinking margaritas and I’ll show you a marketplace of ideas about how to improve education immediately. Those ideas that go largely unheeded by those who make the big decisions, which is why many leave the field. Schools are underfunded, administration is often out of touch and public perception of schools has become a target for misinformation campaigns run by networks calling themselves “news” that don’t actually take the responsibility of the label seriously. Teachers are not trying to indoctrinate students into some alternative lifestyle, teachers are not having students read challenging books on a whim, and teachers are not intentionally failing to teach students how to think critically about the world around them.
Are some of those things out there? Sure. Is it the norm? Absolutely not.
Public schools are being asked to do things they’ve never been asked to do before. They are the frontline in helping kids who are malnourished, bullied, abused, in need of counseling, in need of mentors, and yes, those who are simply trying to find their way on the path to success. Meeting this array of needs is not easy, but public school teachers show up every day to meet that challenge head on. Do they fall short sometimes? Yes. But they show up. That’s half the battle.
Stealing money from that effort to enrich millionaires and billionaires is simply not a logical alternative.
What can you do? Get involved. Show up to school board meetings, call your representatives, and vote for people who have proactive solutions and who care about education. Support your local schools by volunteering in one of the many capacities in which schools invite parents to serve. Remember that teachers are your partners in education, not your opponents. Be an advocate for them, as school districts care a great deal more about what parents say than they do about the feedback from their teachers. Invest your time and energy in your local schools, just as you do with your church or other organizations.
Kids are the best, most important investment we will ever make, and it extends beyond your own to all kids. As Wellstone said, we all do better when we all do better. We all do better when public schools flourish. I chose to be a special education teacher because it is the area of greatest need and it allows me to be my daughter’s primary role model, as we are in the same district.
What can you do to help public education be the best it can be? I assure you the forces behind the school voucher movement aren’t asking themselves that question.
-B
Ishmael's Legacy 