Many teachers say they are not teachers, just testers. They spend no time teaching, instead, every minute is focused on accountability tests. All the students are learning are test questions, if you can call that learning.
Even worse is that many teachers wonder why they got a teaching certificate because no one listens to them. Obviously there is no need to address the curriculum at teaching colleges when teachers have no voice.
What would happen if we started listening to teachers instead of administrators? Administrators are far removed from classrooms. Many went into administration for the pay. They can double their retirement. Teach twenty years and administer five years then retire with pay like they were in administration twenty-five years.
Most of what I find objectionable is the reform fads. When I started teaching in public school Gerald Ford was the president. The then fad, among others, was quarter-hour lesson plans. For every class period I needed four pieces of paper filled out explaining how I was going to change what was happening in the classroom four times an hour with methods, objectives, materials and measurement routines.
This requirement was before computers so it was done by hand, my hand. Each week, with a sore writing hand, I handed in a stack of 120 lesson plans which I am sure no one had time to read. The next year I took a job at the University of New Mexico in educational media because my writing hand could not take any more.
In the last thirty years our nation has been through quite a number of major education reforms including A Nation At Risk, Outcome-Based Education, Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind and now the Common Core. Those are the major ones and there have been many more minor fads as well.
There is one educational research project I would like to see done in New Mexico. In Albuquerque take the five best and the five most challenged elementary schools. Trade the entire adult contingent of workers for two years. Then if the schools remain where they were the former year, you know what you are measuring is the community of that school. If the teachers from the best schools get the same best results while at the fragile schools then it is the teachers that matter.
We already know the results. The top performing schools will still be the top performing schools and the fragile schools will be still fragile. It is not the teachers that are the primary change agents school-wide. But no one will do the research because then all of this accountability goes in the flusher. Who has the guts to realize that good teachers teach at fragile schools, sometimes the best teachers are in the most challenged schools.
Do not get me wrong, I love good teaching. I know good teaching when I see it and I understand how diversified it is within the professional teacher staff. No two teachers teach alike despite the desire of the administrators to have every teacher teach exactly the same way since it make management easier.
The pressure to account for the teachers is relentless and misplaced. Frankly, I do not think most leaders can recognize good teaching when they see it. They are stuck on accountability tests which are fatally flawed by social issues. The teachers in the perennially best schools are always the best teachers while the teachers in the fragile schools are always under the gun, so to speak.
There is one more flaw: what we want are citizens who come out of school with knowledge, skills and abilities. We are forced to think about year by year tests when the big test is not even graduation; it is the personal development in each citizen that comes from good teaching.
More than anything else, to improve public school education return the classrooms to the teachers.
Dr. Michael Swickard hosts the syndicated radio talk show News New Mexico six to nine a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
