Contributors

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Laughably Wrong

Nikto has been doing a great job covering all the Trump stuff this week so I thought I would focus on something else: education. Being that this is my area of expertise, I had a pretty strong reaction to this recent story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune regarding the loosening of regulation in obtaining a teacher's license. Here's the part that cracked me up the most.

"If this bill passes, there will be a teacher shortage," Cwodzinski said. He predicted that community experts would be unprepared for the multifaceted demands of the job: "When ... they find out that we have papers to grade 'til midnight and curriculum meetings that go 'til five on Fridays and classroom management issues, and safety and discipline ... and Lord help them when they're told you can't go potty until the bell rings," he said.

Let's take this crap one piece at a time. Only English teachers grade papers until midnight. If any other teacher is doing so, it's because they assigned them. Most instructors give multiple choice assessments or assign other forms of work. Curriculum meetings are never on Fridays and invariably are professional days off or are on staff development days. If an instructor has classroom management issues, they should adjust how they deal with the issue. There are a myriad of methods (ENVOY, PBIS) that are effective with any sort of student. This would include discipline. I'm not sure what he means by "safety" but there are only a few drills a year, usually done in the fall and spring, that don't take up much time. Finally, teachers go to the bathroom all the time during class. Tenured teachers leave their rooms unattended all the time. I'm not a big fan of it but if you have to go, you go. Further, you can always get a paraprofessional to come to your home if it's an emergency. So, all of his protestations are nonsense and he is laughably wrong.

As to the larger issue of easing the path to being a teacher, I think it's going to have to happen. We have a teacher shortage in this state, in particular with math, science, and special ed. Who will fill these roles once even more baby boomers retire? Besides, administrators aren't going to hire someone who is underqualified. There doesn't need to be a state law saying who is or isn't qualified. A principal will simply not hire someone who doesn't have the degree they desire.

I had to jump through a lot of unnecessary hoops to get my license. People are turned off by this and that's why there is a teacher shortage. The real issue is tenure. It needs to change. Yesterday. Seniority should be taken into account but only in terms of not allowing districts to cut people simply because they make too much money. Unions need to get tougher on teachers who are just phoning it in and teachers evaluations should be done by outside, private entities.

Administrators should be given greater leeway to hire and fire based on performance. If that happens, the quality of both teaching and candidates coming into teaching will improve.


1 comment:

Nikto said...

Arizona is having even worse problems finding teachers than Minnesota, and they've already loosened standards for becoming a teacher. The governor there just signed a bill that lets basically any bozo become a teacher.

The problem there has been getting worse for years, as indicated by the above article from two years ago.

Many states have made being a teacher a really unpleasant job. You're always under fire for teaching real science and real history, instead of parroting the talking points of conservative politicians and religious activists.

Teachers are constantly saddled by stupid testing requirements. Teachers are blamed by parents for the bad performance of kids who've never been disciplined in their lives. Teachers get stuck teaching a curriculum that some government bureaucrat or school board member with a hidden agenda thought up. Teachers have to use text books that were forced on the rest of the country by religious whack jobs in Texas.

Finally, teachers get paid a hell of lot less than other professionals who have lesser levels of college education: a professional programmer with a four-year degree makes an average of more than $80,000 a year, $30,000 more than the average teacher with a master's degree and annual continuing education requirements.

Relatively low pay compared to other professions means that lowered standards won't attract high-quality teachers: it'll just attract people who are currently stuck in even lower-paying jobs. Art history majors stuck working at Starbucks will be able to get jobs teaching social studies and biology, but they'll only be one chapter ahead of the students they're teaching.

And just because someone is a professional programmer or carpenter doesn't mean that they're competent to teach kids how to code or how to teach wood shop. An important part of teaching is understanding why kids don't understand something, and motivating them to study. That requires empathy, patience, a certain type of personality, training and professional development.

Minnesota might have too many hoops for new teachers to jump through; from the outside it's impossible for me to say. But teaching is a profession where there should be a lot of hoops to jump through. You don't want pedophiles in the classroom, or people who don't have the temperament to put up with the crap that kids constantly give teachers.

Every week there's another story in the news about some teacher banging a student, or some idiot having the cops arrest a kid who's burping in class: a bad teacher is now wasting the Supreme Court's time.

Something needs to be done about the teacher shortage, but lowering professional standards won't give the desired results.

Sadly, the problem is almost certainly not going to be solved because the real problem is money. As Mark mentioned, baby boomer retirees are a big factor in the teacher shortage.

Education is one of the biggest line items in the state budget. Lots of people other than teachers are retiring, and they don't think their taxes should go up to pay for other people's kids' education.

So legislators will be hard pressed to justify increased teacher salaries.