When
she began her teaching career in the early 1980s there
were no levies
being passed in her district. In the previous
decade a strike by the
local teachers union had turned bitter
for the bedroom community.
Consequently, the property
owners of the district voted over and over
again for more
than ten years to deny the district of funds it said
were
necessary to provide a quality education for students.
Knowing
no difference, she began her career applying the
skills she'd learned
from her college courses on how to
provide instruction for her
students. In the early 1980s there
was no Internet and home computers
were only in their
infancy.
The
principal set the school's expectations with teachers,
using a
curriculum adopted by the school board in the district,
and the
teacher marked a single sheet of grades for her/his
students with a
pen. The majority of parents appeared at
their child's scheduled
conference to find out how their child
was doing and usually were
willing team players in receiving
advice from their child's teacher
on what they could do at
home to assist in the learning process.
Most
students in the typical public education classroom were
in what could
be considered the "average" level of ability
when it came
to learning. There were both special education
classrooms for those
with learning disabilities, as well as
those who excelled in the
"Gifted" classrooms where the
students were allowed to
progress through their various
subject materials at their own pace.
In
the middle of her career, the state's legislature decided to
get
involved in the issue of teacher's salaries across the
state because
of the disparity between the state's western
side districts had
salaries much higher than its eastern side
where salaries were much
lower. This was due to the simple
fact that the cost of living was
much higher on its western
side than its eastern side, but the
state's teachers union was
ignoring that fact because it had pushed
for equal pay across
the state for the sake of equality and, they
claimed, would
produce a higher quality of student outcomes because
higher salaries would attract better and more qualified
teachers.
34
years later, this teacher comes home every night tired,
dispirited,
and frustrated. Tired because she leaves at 8
o'clock in the morning
and doesn't return home until 10
o'clock at night. Consequently,
within ten minutes of sitting
down on the couch to watch a little
television, she's out cold
from exhaustion. Dispirited because she
consistently has
more demands to add to an already full agenda for
each
day, but doesn't have any more hours to add to that day.
Frustrated because, on a regular basis, a variety of
disruptions,
demands from the district's upper administration
are imposed on her,
and decreasing involvement by her
student's parents makes it feel as
though she's losing the
battle against being able to do a decent job
for her students.
So,what
has changed in three decades? Well, she has more
pay, but that only
helps keep up with the increases in the
cost of living.
Thanks
to the state's legislature, class size has been
lowered from 28 -30
in a class in the intermediate grades of
elementary; there are
usually only around 22 -24. When it
comes to accountability, the
adoption of Common Core for
curriculum in the district has done a
great job of feeding the
"beast" of assessing, or testing,
while at the same time
heaping bureaucratic expectations and demands
on her to
keep data on a report card program that requires so many
entries for every little skill for each subject that she spends
more
time keeping up with data entry than she spends each
day actually
teaching students every day. As a result, the
report card now has at
minimum six pages of information on
each student; all to show just
how much better students are
learning today.
The
only problem is... test scores aren't improving! Is it poor
instruction on her part?
A
regular disruption is school assemblies; one week
students learn how
they'll save the whales, another week
they'll have a guest speaker
explain to them how they can
contribute to reducing global warming,
and the next week,
they'll spend another hour or two learning about
how to be
politically correct, so as to not offend anyone and be
respectful of the diversity which makes up their increasing
student
body of immigrants who don't speak English enough
to understand
what's being taught.
Then
there's her principal who consistently sends out emails
to the
school's staff informing them about a staff meeting
which must be
attended to discuss how to implement a new
addition to their already
full repertoire of requirements
regarding the application of an
instructional approach that
will change everything, but promises to
improve the
student's learning.
The
email is sent out the night before the scheduled morning
meeting the
next day. And the teacher is expected to
implement this change by
the following week, requiring
hours of modification to all subjects
being taught, on top of
the already overflowing plate of demands to
keep data
entries current and for all same grade classes to all be
synchronized on the same lesson.
No,
the number of days comprising a school year have not
changed, it's
still 180 days for students. However, the
number of days for early
release, or late starts, from the
school schedule has definitely
increased so staff can attend
yet another training on new
instructional strategies.
When
this happens parents have to scramble to arrange
daycare for their
children while they're at work. Some
parents just let their children
stay home, alone and without
supervision for half the day, or all
day, in some cases.
Then
too, today's student-led conferences are attended by
fewer parents
for a variety of reasons: work conflicts,
indifference, or the
difficulty of being able to contact the
parent by the teacher to
inquire when would work best for
them to come learn how their child
is doing, or discuss why
they're not doing their assignments.
Now,
the state's teachers union has managed to get the
state Supreme
Court to rule on what's known as the
McCleary decision. In essence,
the court is telling the
legislature it is not funding public
education adequately;
which is language regarding the legislature's
primary
obligation.
So,
a few years after that decision, the legislature hammers
out a
budgetary increase of historical state standards, yet
the teacher's
union asserts that the increased funding is not
enough! Also, let's
not overlook the fact that the state's
voters passed a referendum to
allow for charter schools to
provide parents with a limited
alternative, but the same state
Supreme Court turned around only
weeks before these new
charter schools were to open their doors to
pass a ruling that
it was "unconstitutional.”
As
a former educator in the state of Washington, I'm
ashamed and very
concerned at what has taken place in our
public schools. Too many take for granted the miracle that is
performed by such dedicated people who see themselves in
such a thankless job today.
And
how do I know all of this? The person mentioned above
is my wife,
and I also taught in the same district for 30 years
myself. So, I
know first hand of what I speak! This will be her
last year teaching. No doubt, a young, naive' person full of
youthful energy, will fill her spot on the staff next fall. But, if
circumstances for teachers continue as they have, I wonder
just how long that person will last. Then again, this district
had over 100 positions go unfilled when the school year
began.
