Teacher looking for another career... many to follow

By Karen Daniels

Maybe the Florida Legislator along with other states should reform how school districts spend their budgets, which is taxpayer money instead of damaging the morale of teachers who are over-worked and under-paid. Here in Jacksonville, Florida more than a hundred million dollars of reserve money was held by the Duval County Public Schools while teachers and other employees were let go due to budget cuts. It appears to be long overdue for school administrators to have more accountability. The results of the actions of the Florida legislator’s and other states around the country along with school administrators have done far more damage than any group of educators could ever do to education. They broke promises to students that their educational needs would be the first consideration. They broke promises to teachers that their experience, continued education and hard work would be rewarded by step raises. Their retirement system here in Florida would be paid into by their employers. All these promises were made in writing at the beginning of each school employee’s date of hire. These benefits were in return for the acceptance of a smaller salary than other educated professionals make. Here are some examples of broken promises and education reform:

1. Blame teachers for every child who may not be a good test-taker or have special needs students in their classrooms taking a yearly assessment. What about the child who may not feel well during testing?

2. Place an unbelievable amount of pressure on children to pass a yearly test filled with distractors. Distractors are the use of wording within questions and answers on yearly assessments such as the FCAT 2.0 meant to lead the students in a different direction when answering questions. I my opinion it is the use of tricky. Assessments such as the FCAT 2.0 may also use vocabulary two grade levels above the students’ current grade level. This is done in Florida on the FCAT 2.0 fifth grade science assessment. How unfair to young children! When will parents stand up for their children and say enough is enough!

3. Placing nearly all learning disabled students in regular education classrooms and expect them to perform as the other student’s do. They are expected to learn at the same pace and pass a yearly assessment just as other student’s do. If they are not successful then the teacher is to blame. My heart sinks when I think of all the pressure we are putting on these young children. Where is our compassion? Teachers are expected to stay within two weeks of a school district’s curriculum pacing guide. Often, it leaves little to no time to do re-teaching or to differentiate instruction for our special needs student’s. The choice teachers’ must make is to get behind on their learning schedules to meet the needs of the few students with learning challenges or move on the meet the needs of the majority of students in the classroom. Each day is a challenge for students and teachers.

4. Due to the passage of SB 736 in Florida teachers can no longer get paid more as they gain more and more experience. The merit pay part of this bill that would allow teachers to get paid more if their student’s score well on a yearly assessment was un-funded by the state, thus once stimulus money runs out there will be no incentives for teachers to work harder. So realistically, teachers can only have the small amount they make reduced once stimulus money runs out.

5. Most school systems in Florida are the first or second largest employers in each county. Only God knows how much damage education reform has done to Florida’s economy. Every business in Florida is now pulling in less revenue, because there is less cash flow in our economy.

6. The best teachers are findings jobs in other states or in other fields. What will happen to our students who need us? On the other hand, why would a college educated professional who spent thousands of dollars to become educated stay in a dead-end profession. A position with no chance to earn more money even when you do well and have no job security. At least many fast-food restaurants offer a chance for advancement and pay with more experience. Last week as a teacher, I worked 73 hours at school and I will receive the same salary as if I had worked half those hours.

Education Reform is continuing the move toward treating all students as if they all could go to college, while it sounds nice it is not reality. The trend over the past decade or so has been to let go of vocational programs. Sadly, businesses and industries have to go overseas to find skilled laborers. As a country we are not preparing young people to be carpenters, welders, plumbers, or to do masonry work. In fact, all the vocational, skilled labor programs around the country are drying up. Certainly, as our country’s infrastructure continues to fall apart we could put thousands of people to work if they had the skills needed to do the job.

The bottom line is we are moving toward so-called privatization of education. Unfortunately, it is impossible to run a school system and make a profit. Thus these KIPP schools and/ or Charter Schools will depend on government funds to be sustained. Just wait until we see how much this is going to cost the taxpayers! In the past, many of these so-called private schools have far less teacher accountability than public schools. Some have teachers who aren’t even certified to teach. Many don’t have to follow a state’s learning standards. They have the discretion to teach what they want. This is not to say there are not some good private schools in this country, because there are. Olney Friends Boarding School in Barnesville, Ohio is one of the top rated schools in the country. However, these schools are few and difficult to find and only those with “money” can afford them.

Do you have a yearly tuition of $13,900.00 to shell out for each one of your children to attend school?

I am very concerned that we will end up with a system of only the “rich” being educated and the poor, which is now 99 percent of our population, will be left behind along with our learning disabled children. How dangerous is this? We need to ask ourselves what it is we want for our children and grandchildren. What will the future of this country look like when we no longer have young people who are educated enough to meet the demands of a damaged environment, a lack of cost efficient alternative fuel resources, depreciated infrastructure, and competing in a global economy? Is this the kind of reform you want for your children and family members? Across this country people were never given the opportunity to vote on any of these changes to our education system. Where is our democracy when we need it so badly? Why are our representatives passing education reform without “We the people” voting on them? It appears it is just more of the rich getting richer and the poor being treated badly. We need people to stand up to save our children and our country from greed that has run amuck for far too long.