A lack of or an impressive commitment to education, you be the judge

The Times Union says, when talking about the recently completed United Way study on teacher improvement and empowerment, it shows and impressive commitment to education.

There is some things you should know and then you can be the judge whether it is impressive or not.

First, only 2 of the 45 people on the United Way improve education committee are current classroom teachers. Could you imagine having a medical conference where only two doctors went? Would people take their results and findings seriously? Most likely not but for some reason we continue to treat teachers like they have no clue about what they are doing in their classrooms, how to do what we pay them to do or how to teach, when the truth is they have the best ideas about what works and what doesn’t work.

I talked to Julie Delagal one of the members of the United Way committee, a writer and homemaker by the way not a teacher and she said another 11 were former teachers, wow now we are up to 13 out of 45, and 11 of them quit being teachers. Why wasn't it 32 teachers and 13 community members, which would have made sense? The bottom line is we need to engage teachers and stop marginalizing them if we want things to improve.