Good Teachers, Students In Need, Bad Administrations

The Washington Dispatch ^ | September 18, 2003 | Frank Salvato

[The Rant]

Everyone agrees the educational system in this country is in crisis. Teachers are generally under-paid and faced with performing in overcrowded classrooms where they have no recourse for discipline problems. They are expected to succeed in their efforts despite these facts. And they are literally forced to join the most liberal unions in the country, unions that do very little to help on the front lines of teaching other than pontificate their liberal agendas, which routinely remove the power in the classroom from the teacher and place it with the students and their parents who are largely disconnected from the process in total. That said, it should come as no surprise that local school administrations across the United States are mired in incompetent bureaucracy, and are most often devoid of understanding what is needed in the classroom.

Now comes a study that teachers, both new and experienced, are finding it difficult to get hired in a profession that needs so many additional members. One would think that this problem would be related to funding but that isn’t necessarily the case. The New Teacher Project has come out with a report stating that local school administrations are so disorganized and have their priorities so askew that employment opportunities for teachers are literally falling by the wayside due to the ineffectiveness, lethargic attitudes and bureaucracy of local school administration officials.

So, it should come as no surprise that there are problems within our schools that can be attributed directly to the management of the schools themselves. Ask any teacher in virtually any school throughout the country and you will find that cooperation from the administration regarding curriculum, resources and discipline are lacking and in many cases non-existent. In fact, with regard to discipline, it is normally the modus operandi to place the burden on the teacher to “cater to the needs” of the disruptive student. They call this canard differentiation of instruction. It is a catch all phrase for, “I don’t want to deal with it…you do it!”

Whether the problem is discipline in the classroom or hiring practices at any given school district, local school administrations have become a behemoth worthy of publicly mandated change. Our educational system is not a member of the private sector where employees have to be managed, these people, these educators, these teachers, do what they do because they believe in what they are doing. They work fifteen-hour days on average and this trickles over into their holidays and weekends. Obviously they don’t do it for the money, they do it for the children. For school administrators to play authoritarian with educators, whether it is in their classrooms or in the hiring process is a crime, or at least it should be. The school administrators should be there to support the teachers in every way possible, especially where classroom discipline is concerned.

It is time for those who consider themselves school administrators to re-invent themselves. They need to become a resource for the teacher not a management overseer and potential stumbling block. They need to get involved with making the school a place where education happens once again not just a place where kids survive their tenure by graduating without getting shot. They need to stop managing the teachers and start managing the students. It should be unacceptable for students to disrespect the teachers. It should be unacceptable for students to challenge the authority of the teachers in the classroom. It is unacceptable that teachers should have to take 20 minutes out of a 50-minute period to discipline a student thereby eliminating the education of the other students in the classroom. And it is unacceptable that a teacher should every have to worry about his or her own safety within the sanctity of the classroom. These situations require the involvement of the school administration. We are seeing many of these issues receiving only lip service and many, many schools across America not addressing these issues at all.

It is time to give the teachers their classrooms back. Give them the tools they need to teach once again and that means disciplinary recourse and an ability to garner respect from their students. This should be the tenet of the local school administration…although you could hardly expect it of them, they can’t even figure out how to hire people they need when there are a plethora of them right in front of their faces! And believe me, the unions couldn’t care less!

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Frank Salvato is a political media consultant, a freelance writer from the Midwest and the Managing Editor for www.TheRant.us. He is a contributing writer to The Washington Dispatch, OpinionEditorials.com and AmericanDaily.com. He has appeared as a guest panelist on The O’Reilly Factor and his pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com and occasionally featured in The Washington Time sand The London Morning Paper as well as other national and international publications.

[The Rant]

As always, comments on the content of this piece are welcome. Thank you fellow FReepers.

[cosine]

More myths. Teachers are not underpaid. In 1999-2000 the average salary for a US worker with at least a bachelor's degree was $42,225. The average salary for instructional staff in public elementary schools was $43,768. Now, let's talk vacation and pension arrangements...

Average class size has fallen over the last two decades. Real expenditures have risen.

It isn't the money.

[Thor_Hammar]

Teachers are generally under-paid and faced with performing in overcrowded classrooms where they have no recourse for discipline problems.

Teachers and their unions want taxpayers to believe they are underpaid when the average teacher is paid as well as the average engineer on an hourly basis. If you doubt this and have some time on your hands, park near a school and notice when the teachers arrive, when the students arrive, when the students leave and when the teachers leave. Ask the school system how many days a teacher works and the average salary for teachers in the school. You might have to remind them that the average is total teacher payroll divided by the number of full time teacher-equivalents on the payroll. Most people would be shocked to divide that number by the number of hours teachers are in the school to determine the average hourly wage for teachers.

People should check the student-teacher ratio at their schools. There are two ratios that should interest taxpayers. The first ration is the student-teacher ratio in the school. Count up the number of students and the number of teachers and divide the latter into the former. The second ratio is the in-class ratio of students to teachers. In many districts the former number maybe 16 to 1 while the latter may be 24 to 1. When such differences exist, taxpayers need to demand to know why they exist because such ratios about one-third of the teachers are not teaching.

Whenever I hear someone complain that teachers have no recourse for addressing discipline problems, I respond that teachers have elected not to address such problems. There is a national troops to teachers program seeking to induced retired military to enter teaching for a few years because former military simply will not tolerate disciplinary problems in their classrooms. The real question is why “professional” teachers apparently do. I think the answer is two-fold. First, teachers have had their heads filled with a bunch of pop-psychobabble about how to “reach” students. Most of what they have been taught in that arena is bunk. Second, most “professional” teachers are either lazy or cowardly or both. They simply elect to look the other way when a student is a problem.

And they are literally forced to join the most liberal unions in the country, unions that do very little to help on the front lines of teaching other than pontificate their liberal agendas, which routinely remove the power in the classroom from the teacher and place it with the students and their parents who are largely disconnected from the process in total.

Perhaps teachers in most states have no right not to join the teachers’ union, but that fact does not explain why teachers who do not agree with the union’s agenda do not simply take control of their local. My conclusion is that teachers believe in the agenda of their unions.

That said, it should come as no surprise that local school administrations across the United States are mired in incompetent bureaucracy, and are most often devoid of understanding what is needed in the classroom.

Many local school administrations are mired in incompetent bureaucracy, but whose fault is that? Every place I have lived in this great nation of ours has had an elected school board that oversees -- or at least is supposed to oversee -- the administration of the schools. I have seen numerous incompetent school administrators skate because the members of the school board were political hacks interested in controlling how the millions of dollars in spending for everything from school supplies to school books to new construction was spent, that is, into whose pockets the money went. But I have lived in a few places where concerned citizens ran against the entrenched school board members and won. In one locality five upstarts were elected to the school board in one election. Within a month they fired the superintendent and deputy superintendent for gross incompetence -- both left with no severance package. Both sued and lost. Within six months 12 of the 18 principals either retired of quit because they were incompetent. About 40 percent of the teachers also quit and were easily replaced. Student performance over the next five years in that district went from the 25th percentile to the 90th percentile. So what’s my point? The problem is that the taxpayers groan and moan but do not take action to fix the problem in most localities. As a result, the problem only gets worse and teachers moan and groan about how all the problems with the school are someone else’s fault. To paraphrase Laura Ingraham, “Shut up and teach!”

The New Teacher Project has come out with a report stating that local school administrations are so disorganized and have their priorities so askew that employment opportunities for teachers are literally falling by the wayside due to the ineffectiveness, lethargic attitudes and bureaucracy of local school administration officials.

I do not doubt that new teachers are having trouble being hired. I also do not doubt that part of the problem is that the bureaucracies within local school administrations is part of the problem. But my instincts -- and quite a lot of contact with education majors who have trouble passing the mathematics portion of the teacher licensing examination here in Massachusetts which, by the way only requires teachers to demonstrate proficiency at the 7th grade level -- tell me another part of the problem is that many teacher wannabes are simply unqualified. I also know another part of the problem is that there are many principals, and superintendents who do not want to hire the brightest teachers they can. Many will tell people they do not want to hire those individuals because they believe they will leave after a few years. That’s a stupid and irrational position -- but many principals and superintendents are lazy as well as stupid and irrational.

They (teachers) work fifteen-hour days on average and this trickles over into their holidays and weekends.

My sister was a teacher for 33 years. She used to tell me she worked 15-hour days. But whenever I visited during the school year, she never worked a minute beyond the earliest time she could leave the school, and she did not spend hours every night on lesson plans and correcting homework. I am tired of hearing this myth that teachers work 75-hour weeks. If you believe teachers work those hours and you know a teacher, visit and see what they are doing. I can make money betting you at 12 to 1 odds that you won’t find many teachers actually working at home when you visit.

It is time for those who consider themselves school administrators to re-invent themselves. They need to become a resource for the teacher not a management overseer and potential stumbling block.

Administrators need to take a leadership role in establishing discipline within the schools, but the concept that teachers ought to simply pass disciplinary problems off to some “administrator-resource” and the concept that the administrators divest themselves of their management and oversight responsibilities shows how out of touch Mr. Salvato is with the real world. But I guess he is a political consultant so reality is not part of his normal scope of perception.

It should be unacceptable for students to disrespect the teachers.

Yes, it should be. Anyone who thinks takes disrespect from a student and then thinks she or he can regain the respect of the rest of the class after not dealing with the problem immediately and forcefully in the classroom is an idiot who has no business being a teacher. Such a person simply lacks the abilities and skills required to be in any leadership position.

It is unacceptable that teachers should have to take 20 minutes out of a 50-minute period to discipline a student thereby eliminating the education of the other students in the classroom. And it is unacceptable that a teacher should every have to worry about his or her own safety within the sanctity of the classroom.

Years ago I did some substitute teaching because a flu epidemic reduced the number of teachers in the school system by about one-third. The superintendent requested the military base where I was stationed provided subject matter experts to keep the school system running for about two weeks. About 40 people volunteered and the wing adjusted duty schedules to allow those individuals to teach. Within the first five minutes some punk challenged my authority. It took me about 3 minutes to establish who was in charge. Any teacher who takes 20 minutes of a 50 minute period to deal with a disciplinary problem elects to do so -- or at least elects claiming that’s how long it takes. I posit that any “teacher” who does so -- or claims that’s how long it takes -- ought to find a different line of work.