School’s Out
May 4, 2011 
8 Comments
How do we solve the dropout dilemma without teachers?
The Spokesman reported an unprecedented 238 layoffs were sent today, Elementary school teachers hit the hardest where a Gonzaga study identified early intervention as the highest priority. As of last year, Spokane Schools experienced a 38 percent dropout rate, this year the rate has dropped to 30 percent. This is due to a few adjustments like the On-Track Academy and a tweak in the numbers of what it means to be a dropout by extending the graduation date for some students.
Recently, the New York Times published an op-ed called “The High Cost of Low Teachers Salaries” and the opening really spoke to me:
When we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.
And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.
Of course, balancing the budget doesn’t extend to the military industrial complex or tax the wealthiest. It seems the only alternative is to spend less on education.
How do we expect to attract the best and the brightest teachers, if our schools are constantly facing budget cuts? Budget cuts that cut from the newest teachers up.
How do we make the needed switch to an efficient teacher-appreciative system that makes it possible for all students to be successful?
We need to make education a priority for our community. This “Don’t tread on me”, “Not with my tax dollars” attitude has to stop. It’s time for Washington State and the city of Spokane to invest in what’s most important.
When we invest in proven education programs, students are more likely to graduate, more likely to go to college, more likely to get a higher paying job and therefore going to dump their excess earnings in the economy.
Jensen Becker, a Lewis and Clark sophomore said “I feel bad. These [teachers] have to put up with me all day.”
Audrey Connor, a Lewis and Clark junior and Running Start student made some suggestions for how her high school education would be better: “Maybe more experimentation on behalf of the teachers in regards to curriculum. I know Havermale has a really cool program right now where a student picks a project and works almost exclusively on that for a couple of weeks. That would be a radical change for a traditional school like LC–but I like the overall message. I guess, simply put, giving students more control over their education, and guiding them to make good decisions.”
When we have good teachers with great incentives we’ll see creative teaching approaches with solid results.
About the Author
I agree completely. Times are changing and traditional teachings styles are becoming outdated. With all of the technological advances and different ways of learning, I think our educational system needs to grow to meet these changes in times .
The unfortunate thing about “creative teaching” is that we’re currently not allowed to do it. The district administration in these larger districts like Spokane and Seattle dictate to the minute what we should be teaching in our classes. There isn’t room anymore for discussion, inventive projects, taking a spontaneous walk outside…teachers WANT to do those things as much as students do. It’s awfully boring and frustrating to stand in front of a classroom of 25 disgruntled teenagers and talk about sentence structure.
For a lot of people in this country teachers are the scapegoats for everything that is wrong in education, which results in a lack of respect for our position, which is reflected in the amount of money we are paid and the amount of money sent down the pike from the state and federal governments. What we need in this country is a serious attitude adjustment.
Apostate wrote,
“When we have good teachers with great incentives we’ll see creative teaching approaches with solid results.”
No.
You’ll see creative teaching approaches with solid results when you privatize schools — when schools are run by different educators with different skills, training, backgrounds, and educational philosophies, whose schools cater to kids with different interests and different talents, and who are all competing with one another for the patronage of parents. You will get it when headmasters are able to hire whom they please, without regard for State-mandated credentials, and may fire whom they please, when they please. You will not get it in a monolithic socialized system in which all schools conform to a State-dictated formula based on Deweyesque dogmas and run by bureaucrats.
The American school system resembles the old Soviet restaurant system. If you live in Gorky Park you dine at Restaurant #24. If it’s Tuesday, you’ll eat borscht, boiled potatoes, and mystery meat, prepared by cooks all trained at the State Culinary Institute. Don’t like it? Well, you can attend the next meeting of the Moscow Restaurant Board and complain.
If you expect State-run schools to perform any better than State-run restaurants or collective farms, you need a refresher course in economic theory and history.
Full of false choices. This is also the 7th person (or so) who has mentioned the “military-industrial complex” when talking about school cuts. The military is the federal budget, education is the state budget. We’ve also seen a 100%+ increase in education spending at the federal level with no demonstrable difference in school performance.
Nowhere does The Apostate talk about the 5% pay increase principals received last year or the dozens of admins making 100K plus per year.
Her solution: “tax the wealthy”. Well Apostate, we had this discussion last year and the voters rejected that economic model 2-1. even in the 3rd district did the income tax initiative fail. Why don’t you bring this up with Lisa Brown, Mariah’s boss. She is in control of the legislature. The state government is spending money of a government printing office and a wholesale and retail liquor business. Surely we could let the private sector handle these activities and use some of the money saved for education.
What are the solutions offered by the author? One step we could take is competition among schools, which would lead to a school voucher program.
Cathy Dahlquist, a State Rep from the 31st district and former school board president in Emunclaw, sponsored a bill, HB 1415, that would have forced the State to pass a stand alone education budget before anything else. That sounds like a pretty good way to ensure that education is properly funded. But the bill did not even receive a hearing this year. Again I would like to ask Lisa Brown why not?
We need to at least try some type of reform. But I’m afraid that as long as the current leadership remains in Olympia, we will see nothing.
My suggested solution (good luck with putting it into effect):
Stop the march to federalized schools (everything the same in every school across the nation) and stop funding/fellating the testing industrial complex. Standardized tests are not a good measure of the strength of teaching or learning–at a school or individual level.
Use the money now being siphoned into testing/measuring/categorizing to fund more teachers and more school buildings, reducing both class and school size. (Most peer-reviewed educational research in the last two decades has shown small class sizes and small schools to be the most consistent predictor of improved student learning.)
What I find interesting (if not particularly surprising) is that most area private K-12 schools–in fact all but one of them–charge less in tuition than the per-student funding in District 81. And all of those private schools have smaller class sizes than District 81 (I have my daughter at Discovery School, and there are ~ 15 students in her class).
One other advantage of smaller class sizes is that it reduces the need for (expensive) specialists, interventions, work-arounds, etc. for non normative kids, because teachers have the time to spend with students and work with them. (My daughter has Aspergers, and the difference between being in a public school classroom of 25 versus a Discovery School classroom of 15 is *huge*. In public school, she was a ‘problem’, and the administration was trying to figure out how best to get rid of her. At her private school, she is not a problem, she is a student.)
I firmly support the ideal of publicly funded education (I have a son in a public high school in Spokane). I think public schools are currently doing a poor job of it, and I lay the blame on district administration, on mandated testing directives, and on a funding model that dumps money into central administration rather than into schools.
“Her solution: “tax the wealthy”. Well Apostate, we had this discussion last year and the voters rejected that economic model 2-1. even in the 3rd district did the income tax initiative fail.”
Hits the nail on the head. VOTERS, not the people. Abysmal voter turnout = minority rule.
MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD AT THE POLLS!
There are some other educational opportunities in Spokane, that do provide “creative teaching” and small class size. Independent schools are great alternative to over crowded public schools. Where teachers really know your students and their learning style.
Rachel Y wrote,
“What I find interesting (if not particularly surprising) is that most area private K-12 schools–in fact all but one of them–charge less in tuition than the per-student funding in District 81. And all of those private schools have smaller class sizes than District 81 (I have my daughter at Discovery School, and there are ~ 15 students in her class).”
Yes indeed. Cost per pupil in New Jersey public schools is now $25,000/year. Yet you say,
“I firmly support the ideal of publicly funded education . . .”
If that means publicly *run* education, then you support grossly overpriced, unimaginative, ineffective education mired in bureaucracy and featherbedding. That is the outcome you always get in any endeavor that is politically driven and exempt from competition, whether it is steel making in the Soviet Union, collective farms in China, or public schools in the US.