The Education Narrative

There is an education narrative being rammed down the people’s throats by the powers-that-be. Prominent citizens like Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush and their proxies are telling it. Like most snake oil salesmen they weave a smooth tale using cherry picked facts and figures and enticing sound bites blurbs and promises to get their way message across and in doing so have made teachers and their unions the boogey men of the story. Watch out parents, they shout, teachers and their dirty unions are robbing your children of a proper education and destroying America to boot

The truth however is a bit different. They are using these self serving stats and figures to try and convince, make that to try and scare Joe and Judy public into believing their story. If we could just get rid of five percent of the bad teachers we could have dramatic improvements but we can’t because the teachers unions sole reason for being is to protect bad teachers.

They whisper seductively into the publics ears, we want to give vouchers to all parents so they can have school choice but the teachers unions are against them too, that means teachers and their dirty unions are against parents having parents have the abi;ity to make decisons for their children's future and the money to help out too. We want to reward the top teachers with merit pay, it’s unbelievable that the unions are against more money for their best members but they are. Our education ranking in the world has also steadily dropped over the last quarter century, it must be because we have bad teachers. Why can’t we be more like Finland? On and on they go. Well friends not since a snake convinced a naive young girl to take a bite of an apple has their been such a masterful con job been perpetrated.

Until the recent recession you couldn’t give a teaching job away as there were always openings. Does anybody remember how they were advertising in Canada and India to find teachers, does anybody remember the push to get people from the business world to enter the classroom? I do. Of course we want our best and our brightest in the classroom but you know what else we want, we want the willing to be there too. Are there teachers that should be replaced, yes of course there are just like there are people in every profession that would serve them best by not being in them. Where is the call to get rid of the worse five percent of police officers firemen and doctors?

Unions however are not protecting bad teachers they are just making sure that all teachers get due process and in my home town that only kicks in after teachers have proved themselves for three years. That’s right at any time during a teachers first three years at the end of one they can be let go. But say we did somehow identify and get rid of the worse five percent, not the five percent the admin doesn’t like because they more often than the worse are the ones targeted for removal, they are the ones who suffer the consequences of speaking up or being innovative, who would we replace them with? Teaching is no longer a career for so many as less than half of all first year teachers make it to year five and the reasons they give for leaving the profession are rarely, the children or the money.

Another stat the ant-teacher mongers like to throw out is that education draws just under a quarter of our top graduates, which I guess means they are saying that the most of our kids are being taught by someone other than a teacher with a high college grade point average. First I am not sure if straight G.P.A. should be a factor but why is this a bad thing? Are 23 percent of the nations top grads entering law enforcement, or medicine or business or any other field? I don’t think so and if the stat is right that means over a fifth or our supposed best and brightest are choosing education over the thousands and thousands of other careers out there. But instead of celebrating that, it’s used as an indictment against the entire teachering profession. Teachers can’t win at the top, not enough of the best grads enter education and they can’t win at the bottom because the unions are protecting bad teachers.

Then the weavers of the story compare America’s education system to industrialized countries like Finland that have zoomed past us in the international education rankings. This to must be the teachers and their union’s fault they scream because they are protecting all those bad teachers and resisting reforms. They don’t tell you that if we factor out kids that live in poverty our ranking zooms all the way to second or about the countries they are comparing us to. Finland may have the best education system in the world and does draw the vast amount of its staff from the top third of college graduates but the ed deformers fail to mention that teachers in Finland are paid substantially more than their American counterparts, there classes are very small, they play a role in policy and curriculum and are one of the most highly unionized groups around. They fail to mention that Finland as a country decided to make a huge commitment to education where here we have decided to blame the teachers for the problems. Comparing teachers in both countries is not like comparing apples and oranges it’s like comparing apples to a five-course meal, with America being the apple.

What about vouchers the ed deformers ask? How can people who really care about children and education be against them after all they give parents the choice to do what they feel is best for their children. Sounds pretty seductive right, especially in Florida where they are promising parents five thousand five hundred dollars in education accounts. The problem is charter schools and their private school counter parts despite the fact that they can pick and choose who they allow in or keep and who don’t have to play by the same rules as their public school counter parts (having to have certifyed teachers, take standardized tests etc.) but haven’t been found to do any better. In fact study after study has said the vast majority do the same or worse. Furthermore the proposed universal voucher system in Florida will really be a welfare for the well off program costing the state 1.7 billion dollars as the five hundred thousand kids already in private school will now get this free money.

Then what about the consequences of siphoning much needed money and resources away from already cash starved public schools, where most of the children already attending them will still be attending them because the money in the education acounts won't cover the cost for most private schools. Now the children who remain in the public schools and their teachers will have even fewer resources. Furthermore we don’t get to pick our police, our fire department, our military. our meat inspectors and so many other things but for some reason the powers-that-be will have you believe it is better to abandon public schools. Isn’t a better answer to improve our public schools rather than dismantle them?

You want proof unions are against education reform those spinning the anti-teacher narrative ask. Well look at merit pay, how can they be against merit pay for the nations best teachers. The thing with merit pay is like school choice it sounds very enticing but like school choice often becomes no choice merit pay can be very misleading. The one-year I received merit pay I knew there were a dozen teachers better than me that didn’t. The one-year I didn’t receive merit pay I knew there were a dozen teachers worse than me that did. So often it comes down to whom the principal likes or whatever perception he or she has but worse than that it there is no relationship between those who receive merit pay and their children doing better. That’s right friends studies show kids whose teachers don’t receive merit pay do just as well as kids with teachers that do. Extra money is great but you know what would be better? Counselors and social workers to get to the root of the problems some of our children have and to provide wrap around services. So often why kids act up at school has nothing to do with schools. Legitimate after school and summer school programs, and busses, at my school we don't have after school detention and one of the reasons I was given was because there was no way for the kids to get home.

The anti-teacher narrative has more holes in it than a colander and the arguements seem self serving desighned to fill the pockets of some of thse making them but despite this somehow it is gaining traction and teachers have gone from valued members of society to borderline pariahs holding the country back. Teachers who I remind you, the vast majority of work many hundreds of un paid extra hours, donate their time and resources to other peoples children as often theirs wait in extended day or in front of the television why they take home papers to grade or lesson plans to write. Teachers who give so much and frankly throughout time have received so little have become the bad guys of the narrative while the policy makers, politicians, Joe and Judy public who want a caviar education system on a spam budget, absentee parents and children raised without a sense of respect or a willingness to work get a pass.

Furthermore it’s even worse than all that. Do you know where Mayor Bloomberg and Jeb Bush and many of those selling the anti teacher story sent their children? They sent them to private schools, which tout teachers experience and smaller class sizes as selling points, two things the ed deformers have recently been minimizing, a first year teacher can be as good (and cheaper) than a tenth year teacher and class size doesn't matter if the teacher is good enough, they say.

Jeb Bushes family and Bill Gates have made millions and stand to make millions more on the education reforms they are selling (standardized tests and virtual, computer based, schools). Also do you know how many of the people selling the teachers union bad, teachers substandard story have never been teachers or actually in classrooms? Of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s education team only one is a teacher and he works at a virtual school. Of the leaders mentioned in the opening only Michelle Rhee was a teacher and she came up through Teach for America which some have renamed Teach for a while because of the staggeringly high amount of participants who serve their two years and then leave. This is who is writing the education narrative, those that have had nothing to do with teaching and those that would seek to profit off of it.

Teachers are not against reform. Teachers unions are not in the business to protect bad teachers and there is not an epidemic of bad teachers destroying America. Get the story straight.