We politicize our teachers and education. That is one of the first things I was taught in graduate school. And boy was the Professor right. For some reason we long ago decided to make education not a profession but an area of political disagreement. So we continue to kick it around like a football, depending on what political philosophy wins at the ballot box.
The conservative revolution of Reagan and others brought us accountability and a "crackdown" on education. What it really meant was an underfunding of public education and efforts to use private sector analysis to "fix" the system. Prop 13 was passed because of the inflation post Vietnam and gutted public education. It also thrust it upon the state to support. And the state legislature took over without a clue how to run school districts.
And the teachers organized a union to finally attempt to protect themselves from this madness. Right now the Supreme Court stands poised to strike a blow at unions, not allowing agency fees to be charged for reasonable costs of negotiating for non-union teachers. If they rule as expected, this will strike a blow to the power of teacher unions to function and weaken protections for teachers.
Oh, I just spoke the phrase that this article is all about. Tenure has been depicted by conservatives and minority groups as the REASON for education's failures. It is the teacher's fault is a common refrain.
And the state has a drastic teacher shortage. Young teachers are dwindling in number. People don't want to go into teaching because it is too hard work for too little pay.
And we continue to politicize it, leave it to local school boards, and buy every snake oil politician's "solution", never listening to the professional educators who actually know.
A simple template to begin to fix this:
1. Depoliticize it. Eliminate ALL local school boards. Regionalize school administration and localize the running of schools as much as possible to local SCHOOLS and districts. Consolidate schools into larger districts, 10,000 students maximum. Continue the Superintendent on down administration, but add at EACH school an administrator of instruction, using master teachers who become administrators to supervise instructional improvement. These administrators would have the power to recommend permanency, or fire as need be. Streamline the due process for teacher removal, but the instructional administrator would be an integral part of it.
2. Pay teachers a beginning salary nationwide of $100,000 going up to $150,000 in steps over 35 years. Allow bonus still for advanced degrees, of at least $20,000. In short, pay teachers for what they do.
3. Site based management with parent site councils would be the rule. The federal government would run the whole thing, with an expansion of the Education Department to allow regional school administration in all areas. The federal authority would be supreme in all areas under the 14th Amendment.
Ending school segregation and instructional improvement in poverty areas would be top priority. Abolish county departments of education. Consolidate the fiscal administration of school regionally using an economy of scale model. Modern data collection and communication make local control of finances obsolete and opens the door for segregation and racial discrimination.
4. Why centralize you probably ask? Well, site based instructional leadership has been proven to be the most effective way to improve instruction. Sound contradictory? Actually it is not. Federal authority with regional fiscal management, leaving the day to day operation of the school to the site.
Note, INSTRUCTION is the point, not a new "fix it" play every few years. A common core of curriculum can only be done by federal authority. And local school board and state control only leads to more segregation and unequal opportunities. And finally, abolish Charter Schools...put magnet schools into all districts to afford the school choice that will drive instructional improvement. Call them Charter Schools if you like, but they would be administered by the District they were in. Too often Charter Schools have been a haven for the unscrupulous.
Sounds like a typical liberal solution.. Not really, it just approximates the approach most every other governmental system in the world has long since adopted. Our local, provincial approach, heavily politicized on all levels, is the problem.....NOT the solution...
No comments:
Post a Comment