I'm watching something happen to public education that give me chills - the bad kind of chills.
When I was in high school a good number of my classmates took jobs at MBNA. The pay was mediocre - but they worked their butts off for the bonuses with bosses hounding them daily to make their quota. High schoolers who had ulcers because they worried more about getting the bonus than making the grade. And today, MBNA is gone.
In the 80s, it was cars. The quintessential sleazy car salesman stereotype came to life. By the late 90s, the car salesmen had fled to the fast-talking cell phone kiosk industry. And in 2001, with the housing boom, came the migration of cell phone salesman into mortgage origination and sub-prime lending.
What do car salesmen, cell phone hawkers, and mortgage sharks have in common? Short-term Get Rich Schemes. Hell, we lived the demise of the car market right here in New Castle's own vehicle manufacturing plants. Chrysler became a toxic asset and is being redeveloped by UD. The former GM plant sits idle under Fiskar's failed management - after having sucked up a ton of Levin's and Markell's tax-payer funded financial incentives.
What do these three "fields" have in common with education? Bonuses. Make Quota, Get Extra Pay. Pay for Performance. Yes, there are still car salesmen and cell phone vendors and even mortgage originators - but not like yesteryear or even yesterday. The markets became saturated with employees seeking the big dollar payouts which led to fraud, cheating, lying, over-inflation. Then the client base dried-up, the economy recessed, and many of these businesses folded like the fly-by-nights that they really were. As each industry wound down, the "retailers" moved on to the next big money-making scheme.
Our department of education will likely disagree with my assessment. But, I think this comparison holds true- ed reform is turning our teachers into used car salesmen - devaluing the profession and insulting good educators. Because, honestly, if you are teacher and you last, you're not there b/c you want money. You're there b/c you love making a impact to benefit your students' futures.
Highly Effective Teachers (and effective teachers) do need certain things that they don't universally have:
1. Collaborative and respectful work environments
2. Tools and resources to delivery state-of-the-educational lessons
3. Manageable class sizes that allows teachers to make the deeper impact needed to mitigate failure
4. A higher starting wage to attract the best applicants into teacher education programs
5. Involved parents
And until our Governor can deliver a plan that addresses and funds each of these needs, all I see from his office is a bully boss driving a quota in a pay-for-performance get-rich scheme.
Why is it so hard to get DOE to move away from the NCLB mindset of punishing children? Why won't they listen?
No comments: