BestEssayHelp.com | Problem with education is not ‘bad’ teachers

If only educating children was as simple as most Americans and nearly all state and federal lawmakers believed it to be.

Results from an Associated Press-Stanford University Poll released Tuesday revealed that almost 80 percent of Americans think that it’s too hard for schools to get rid of bad teachers.

That, by itself, yields little more than a “no kidding.” But it’s what lies beneath that complaint that’s so revealing. Clearly, many Americans think that bad teachers are why student achievement test scores are so worrisome. That’s a problem.

Most of all, it’s troublesome because it oversimplifies a complex and serious problem: Too many American children aren’t learning what they need to so that they can reach their full potential after high school; and if more American schools only had better teachers, all of that would change.

It would not. First off, “bad” teachers is a misnomer. Some teachers are amazing in how they can engage even the most reticent student enrolled in what are often considered some of the most wearisome classes, such as geometry or economics. These teachers are few and far between. For the most part, most teachers in most school districts are dedicated, enthusiastic instructors who have enough basic knowledge of their core material to effectively pass it onto children. So much is known about how humans learn, that teaching has become a skill of presentation, not teaching theory.

There’s no doubt, however, that there are some teachers out there who are burned out from the exhausting rigors of being an effective teacher. They’re not so bad to warrant a quick dismissal, which is certainly possible under current education systems. They’re marginal, and the system gives those teachers the benefit of the doubt in hopes that they might turn their classrooms around.

But the reality is, if the country were to find a way to excuse every poor and questionable teacher from the classroom, the nation would still have a serious problem with student achievement.

None of this is new, yet the country, and more importantly, state and federal lawmakers, continue to focus on “cleaning house.” It’s clearly time to change teacher tenure and other teacher employment traditions to better accommodate the removal of what the community can agree upon is a “bad” teacher.

Only then will the country be able to focus on the real problems here, which is the expectation that learning should be as fast-moving and entertaining as an X-Box game, or that parents shouldn’t have to take any active part in a child’s education, or that a serious truancy program isn’t an important investment.

Congress and the Colorado Legislature need to do what they can to empower schools to rid themselves of whatever slovenly instructors they can find, which will be few, and then get down to the real business of improving public education.

Source: Aurora Sentinel