In anticipation of National Teacher Appreciation Week, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote a column for yesterday’s paper thanking his mother for teaching him about teaching. Thanks to Ms. Blow, here’s what Charles gets about one of the most demanding, yet disrespected, professions.
She showed me what a great teacher looked like: proud, exhausted, underpaid and overjoyed. For great teachers, the job is less a career than a calling. You don’t become a teacher to make a world of money. You become a teacher to make a world of difference. But hard work deserves a fair wage.
That’s why I have a hard time tolerating people who disproportionately blame teachers for our poor educational outcomes. I understand that not every teacher is a great one. But neither is every plumber, or every banker or every soldier. Why then should teachers be demonized so much?
I won’t pretend to have all the policy prescriptions to address our country’s educational crisis, but beating up teachers isn’t the solution. We must be honest brokers in our efforts to fix a broken system…
But is it just as important to address the poverty, stress and hopelessness that some children bring into the classroom, before the bell rings and the chalk screeches across a blackboard? Yes…
Do we need to lift them up a bit more than we tear them down? A thousand times, yes!
As Gov. Malloy and state lawmakers debate teacher reform (let’s call it what is is), I hope our friends up in Hartford found some time on their busy Saturday to read that column.
Let’s keep in mind what else he wrote that you left out:
“We must be honest brokers in our efforts to fix a broken system.
“Do we need teacher accountability? Yes.
“Must unions be flexible? Yes.
“Must new approaches be tried? Yes…
“Do we need to take a closer look at pay and incentives for teachers? Yes.”
He also pointed out the quality issue:
“A 2010 McKinsey & Company report entitled ‘Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching’ found that top-performing nations like Singapore, Finland and South Korea recruit all of their teachers from the top third of graduates and then even screen from that group for ‘other important qualities.’ By contrast, in the United States, ’23 percent of new teachers come from the top third, and just 14 percent in high poverty schools, which find it especially difficult to attract and retain talented teachers. It is a remarkably large difference in approach, and in results.’”
So we have to raise salaries for teachers overall, and in the process recruit better quality individuals to the profession, which, as Blow points out, South Korea and other countries do. And we need to vastly improve the quality of teacher colleges, as well as the entry requirements. And we need to implement higher salaries and pay scales for teachers in the sciences and technology. Connecticut and Greenwich suffer from a major shortage of well qualified science and math teachers, and paying them at the same level as everyone else will do nothing to reduce that shortage. That is something that the teacher unions need to back.
Doing so will also help raise the view of the profession, and help improve student results. That is the part of Blow’s argument you left out.