fixing education the easy way

i come from a family of teachers...my mother was a special education teacher for almost 30 years, two of my brothers went into education and now teach high school in illinois (one in the suburbs one in central illinois)...i myself wanted to teach until i realized i didnt have the patience to put up with all the crap...although someday i want to go back.

anyhow...i've been saying it for years and i will keep on saying it...you want to fix education in this country, one easy step will go a long, long way. pay teachers what they are worth. imagine you have one of the most important jobs in the country, one that will have serious lasting effects on the country and its people for generations...and they dont pay you enough to survive and support a family on to do it. now imagine you are really, really good at that job, and it means a lot to you, but if you left it you could make 5 times the money for 1/2 the work and a fraction of the heartache and stress. what would you do? for some reason that will never be known to me (although i suspect it has something to do with gender and the traditional old-time classroom teacher being a woman and the failure of this country to move out of the stone age in its collective thinking) this country has never embraced teachers as professionals and paid them according to the crucial role they play in society.

there is our problem. the best teachers leave. the best ones that stay, head to the schools full of the students that need them the least, while the poor neighborhoods, the inner cities, the poor states...they have to find teachers overseas.

some states are trying to combat this by going to a merit based pay system for teachers...sounds great at the most basic level. from my own experience in school, i know the worst teachers i had (a spanish teacher who could not connect with students and left students less with less understanding of the language then before they had him and a physics teacher stuck in a rut and unable to think out of the box and really challenge kids to think and push them) happened to be the highest paid in my school. see, they had been there awhile, and they had a phd (one in latin american studies...which i can respect...the other in education, which if you have ever studied "education" you know is useless). meanwhile, the very best teacher i had...a young history teacher that made history of all subjects exciting and interesting for the most out of tune students...well, she left the profession before i graduated.

problem is...when they move to merit based pay...how will they measure merit? two factors will come in...(1) standardized tests (the absolute worst measure of a teacher's ability and impact, not to mention a student's progress and capabilities) and (2) administrators at the school (who tend to have never spent a day in the classroom in their life). so still...we will get the best at the bottom leaving, and those that cant do will teach.

in case you havent figured it out...education is one of my things/issues/ whatever you want to call it...so yes, i do get repetitive with it, but maybe thats because it seems so easy, yet so impossibly hard for us to ever make work. maybe someday we will be able to turn the tide...but i doubt it. in the meantime...here comes china.

and the truth is....