Mar 14 2009
Presdiedent Obama says public education is failing
President Barack Obama strongly condemned the state of public education Tuesday, calling for more charter schools, higher salaries for effective teachers and the faster firing of bad ones. “It’s time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones,” Obama told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington. “From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it’s the person standing at the front of the classroom.”
This is so true. It is why charters have higher success rates with lower income students - and explains why they can succeed in California with less money than the public schools.
Teaching shouldn’t be a guaranteed job. There are very few teachers at the elementary or high school level that need tenure. Tenure was created to prevent a teacher from being fired because they published a paper, a research paper, on something controversial. This is something that happens at colleges and community colleges - not for teachers at high school and elementary schools. Tenure isn’t needed at that level.
Job success should be based on competence. Even civil service jobs have trainingand evaluations that if you do not pass, you do not get to keep your job. Teachers need an evaluation system. It can be hard. There will be no evaluation system that will fit every teacher’s situation. Some teachers get kids whose parents are more involved - which means they do better in school. Other teachers get kids who might not know how to read in 4th grade. This disparity in situations calls for an evaluation system that takes the disparities into account.
It doesn’t call for a tenure situation. The techniques of teachers from 20 years ago are no longer suited to today’s workforce.
For examples, the emphasis placed on handwriting is absurd. Most important work is done by comupter. If the child can write legibly, what does it matter if their cursive is good or if they use block printing? I am not saying to not expose the children to both styles, but drop the emphasis. The hour a day spent on penmanship could be spent on math or reading skills - which would translate into better educated students.
Memorizing things by rote instead of having to analyze them leads children to be unable to think when they enter the workplace. Instead of having standardized tests focus on rote memorization, why not have the students write an essay about what they think of American History. No one, anywhere, needs to know the dates each Amendment to the Constitution was signed. If you need that level of detail, you visit the web.
Education needs to be overhauled to meet the new economy - and overhauling teachers is one part of this.
