My ratio of good teachers to "failures"-- Public--47:2 Private:--5-1

[TygrBright]

I've been reading way too many stories about how the decline and fall of the public education system can be attributed to "failing" teachers or teachers who are "failures."

So I sat down to calculate the ratio of good teachers to "failures" that I encountered in the school systems that had the dubious privilege of educating me.

I went to public school kindergarten.

I went to parochial school grades 1-5.

I went to public schools grades 6 through High School graduation.

My kindergarten teacher taught me colors, letters, how to play "duck-duck, gray duck," how to identify shapes and their names, how to use finger paints to portray my world, and probably some other things I forgot. She wasn't mean when I giggled and fidgeted on my "nap mat"--the green towel with my name stitched on it by my mom. She was a pretty good teacher.

In parochial school I had two teachers I loved dearly who were, quite simply, outstanding educators. I had three good teachers who did a fine job of educating me despite my best efforts to disrupt class, show off how smart I was, doodle on my books while slower kids sounded out words, and other creative responses to the educational process. Sister Disciplina I didn't like very much because she wouldn't give me "A"s just for getting all the answers right--she told me she expected more from me: Not just the right answer, but WHY the answer was right. But she was a good teacher.

I had one teacher who called me a "problem" and sent me to the principal's office and told me it didn't matter if I was good at reading, history, and arithmetic if I couldn't "learn to sit quietly and pay attention." Interestingly, I remember liking her because she was pretty and young and dressed well, and feeling just crushed because I thought she didn't like me. But she had problems controlling the class, she let bullies run rampant, and she quit teaching the next year. I guess she's what they mean by a "failure."

Grade six I had Mr. E______, whom I liked a lot (he was the first male teacher I'd ever had, and he was funny and kind of cute) but who told me I was "hopeless" at math. He never bothered to find out that I'd moved from an "old math" school system to a "new math" school system, and never made any attempt to remediate the difference and bring me up to speed. He encouraged a sort of "survival of the fittest" social environment, including appointing the most popular kids to choose their own teams for kickball (ensuring that the least popular or coordinated or athletic kids would ALWAYS be chosen last,) and winking at a lot of verbal bullying and pecking-order nonsense, but he cracked down on the worst stuff and he did a decent job otherwise. Everyone learned the material, mostly.

Grades seven through nine I went to a public middle school (they were called "Junior High" Schools then,) where you had five or six different teachers a day, and two or three of them shifted from semester to semester. (Your "core curriculum" teachers stayed the same all year.) I honestly don't remember all of my teachers but I definitely remember the other "failure," an evil zombie of a math teacher who insulted kids who didn't give the right answers, listed everybody's test scores on the blackboard with "Yay" or "Boo" next to them, and told parents that their kids were "either stupid or lazy." I learned nothing in her class and she was eventually fired, after enough parents complained.

I remember two outstandingly GOOD teachers and one librarian I will think fondly of for the rest of my life from Junior High. Other than that, I'm pretty sure most of my teachers were good or better than good. I reached High School well enough prepared (in spite of math deficiencies) to graduate in two years rather than three, with a little summer school. And while I was a smart kid, I was not a problem-free kid and I had motivation problems in spades. I spent a fair amount of time in the Guidance office. So it wasn't all "me." I could easily have gone off the rails spectacularly if the teachers and staff hadn't been good at their jobs.

High School was the usual social nightmare but I had many, many, good teachers. The geometry teacher who flunked me TWICE, and patiently worked with me after school, assigned me extra exercises and finally opened up a crack in the wall of my math phobia had a wickedly ironic sense of humor and an assumed cynicism that masked a genuine devotion to kids and a passion for math. I still cry a little when I think of his death from a heart attack the year after I graduated.

The social studies teacher who encouraged me to sign up for the Close Up program that brought me to Washington DC during the Watergate era, and suggested that I sign up for the debate squad, and argue the positions that I DIDN'T naturally support, just to learn about evidence and logic and creating reasoned arguments. The English teacher who laughed hysterically at my short stories and told me I could be a writer someday, if I wanted to. The Choir teacher who coached me from Chorus to Concert Choir level and fanned the flame of my love for music.

I could go on and on. More than a dozen, easily, come to mind as caring, skilled, dedicated educators. They weren't well paid, they worked crappy hours, they worked in a conservative suburban nightmare of a school system and they STILL managed to educate kids-- nearly four hundred of them in my graduating class.

I'm willing to postulate that things have changed since I was in school. Shrinking budgets, ballooning expectations and a vast maze of requirements, teach-to-test curricula, and administrative bullshit have doubtless taken their toll. Shrinking salaries, worsening working conditions, and ever-more-challenging environments producing ever-higher ratios of kids who need more than just books and lectures to succeed have undoubtedly discouraged some otherwise excellent prospects from becoming teachers, and allowed some mediocre rule-followers to fly under the radar and thrive in the damp dark obscurity of regulation reports.

But, damn, people!

Out of FORTY-SEVEN public school teachers, only two were duds.

Teachers did damn' well by me.

I refuse to believe that the teachers of today are, as a group, substantially less motivated, caring, skilled individuals throughout the educational system. I just refuse to believe that.

I believe some schools are funded totally inadequately to address the extreme levels of challenge they face from pupils with severe social, physical, and emotional deficits. They need MORE money than cushy suburban schools, not less, to put salary premiums in place that will let them hire in the top twenty percent of teachers. I believe that many teachers are discouraged, demotivated, disillusioned, and disinclined to take risks or go outside an ever-narrowing maze of regulations, and consequently miss many opportunities to be as good as they CAN be.

And NONE of that can be solved by blaming teachers.

I'm sorry, teachers of America. I wasn't paying attention while this groundswell was building, and now it seems like my tiny voice is a whisper against the fury of the storm.

But I'll keep whispering at the loudest shout I can manage.

You did well by me.

I'll try to do well by you.

I'm a small and frail shield against what's gunning for you, but I'll stand at your back anyway.

Thank you for my education.

broken-heartedly,
Bright

[DrDan]

1. thanks (for my wife the teacher) - I feel the same way

[JDPriestly]

2. K&R and, that teacher who told you that you could be a writer

if you wanted to was right. Just thought I would let you know. Amid all the backbiting and personal insults that can be found on DU, sometimes a little praise, a big slap on the back is earned.

Excellent post. And, by the way the junior high or middle school experience was probably due to the overactive hormones of your classmates (and maybe you) at that age. Jr. High age is just tough. 12-13-14 years old. Some day, the doctor will just put us all under at the age of 12 and bring us up at 15. There are about three years in there that a lot of us wish we could have missed. But, face it, we still manage to survive those years.

[TygrBright]

6. Thank you for the kind words.

Yeh, middle school years are the hardest. They're the years when we're sorting out whether we want to be human or let our reptile brains win.

Without wanting to over-generalize, I think it's fair to say that a high percentage of GOPpies and baggers never even put up a fight.

appreciatively,
Bright

[Overseas]

3. K&R! //nt

[theaocp]

4. Very well-written

and thorough. You are correct in your assessment that suburban schools do NOT need more funding. If there was ever a need for social justice in this country, equalizing what schools get for funding would take the cake. The very notion that schools are funded by their local property taxes makes me ill. Let me spell it out for the dense: lower socioeconomic area equals continued lower opportunities because it all starts with your educational opportunities. Unfuckingbelievable.

[Tippy]

5. Way back when I was in school.....

We went to learn, today things are so different we know our education system is broken but what to do about it is beyond me. I home schooled 3 of my 7...not an easy task to be sure. No two teachers are the same, no two studets are the same. But when we alowed Corporations to begin supplying learning materials to our schools I noticed a big difference. I can't blame the teachers, because I know we have many very commited inteligent teachers.

Republicans views on Education....

Promote school choice and home-schooling. (Sep 2004) Support voluntary student-initiated prayer in school. (Sep 2004) Limit role of federal government in education. (Aug 2000) Increase access to higher education with savings accounts. (Aug 2000) Strongly support voluntary student-initiated prayer. (Aug 2000) Achievement is basis for access to college. (Aug 2000)

The plans of the "Republican Tea Party," along with repealing the health care bill, privatizing Social Security, ending Medicare in its current form, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and abolishing the Departments of Education and Energy. They call it the 10-point platform the "Republican Tea Party Contract on America."

Tennessee Senate Speaker and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, the top Republican elected official in state government, says academic credentials are overrated.

Many in the academic world, he said, "step off campus and they're lost." "They like to get up in the morning, comb their beard, put on their wire-rim glasses, throw their little tweed vest on and go to school for three hours... and hate Republicans," he said.

This is what we are up against.

And with the poverty rate going up I see it getting much worse.

"Child poverty rates in the United States are quite high relative to adults and those observed for children in other industrial countries. This is true even in the best otimes. What’s more, children who grow up poor in America end up worse off as adults than those who do not grow up poor along a variety of dimensions, including poorer health, lower education, and lower earnings. A previous Center for American Progress report shows that these outcomes impose serious costs on the individuals themselves, their families, and their communities. But they also hurt
the U.S. economy as a whole."


http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/09/hit_child_poverty.html

[exboyfil]

7. 3 1/2 for my daughters so far out of

probably 25 or so. The 1/2 is a 6th grade teacher who did a wonderful job in everything except math. My oldest daughter had a dud for an English teacher in both 7th and 8th (I am counting him twice). My daughters' orchestra teacher is too inexperienced to do an effective job. My younger daughter's 4th grade teacher - I am still trying to figure out what happened. Jury is still out on the Biology teacher this year, but I am not happy to this point.

On the flip side, my oldest had marvelous teachers for 4th and 5th grade. My oldest has had two great math teachers (7th and 8th grade). My oldest also had an excellent Physical Science teacher (8th grade).

[cjbgreen]

8. Thanks!

For taking the time!

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Thank you

[sweetloukillbot]

10. I had probably 7 bad teachers throughout my school years...

2 band teachers who thought they were football coaches and treated the less athletic students like they were subhuman - 1 was also a religious fanatic and made sure to impose his beliefs on the class (he also married a flag girl the year after she graduated and was rumored to be sleeping with several other girls in band shortly before retiring to become an insurance salesman).
1 Social Studies teacher who had absolutely no idea what he was teaching - my family trips around Arizona taught me more about our state's history than he did.
1 Science teacher who would show up drunk on a regular basis. Before the final exam he would simply read off the answers to his multiple choice tests (A, B, D, A, C, B, etc.) I also had him for driver's education - he almost caused an accident the first day out because he wouldn't believe me that the accelerator was acting up. Count him twice.
1 Gifted program teacher who was woefully unsuited for the job - in 3rd grade I recognized mistakes she was making in teaching us, and she would then use the excuse "I was just testing you."
1 5th grade art teacher who told me I had no ability whatsoever.

There are many I didn't like, but I can't fault their teaching abilities, there are some I don't remember at all, and probably 7 or so I remember having a positive impact. But then I am in the state with the worst educational system in the country - I'm constantly marveling at the things I never studied in school (To Kill a Mockingbird being the biggest one!)

[donquijoterocket]

11. couple questions here

First where do the ratios you cite come from, and second who decided on the definitions of "good"or failure"used to calculate those ratios?And do they tell us anything about the degree of selectivity used in forming the student population? This has the smack of propaganda about it to me.

[nunyabidness]

12. It`s so very propaganda

I remember five good teachers thru my entire public school run K-12,most being monolithic,unpleasant people going through the motions waiting for retirement. I felt most like a bother to them. I learned nothing from them. And things I did retain from them mostly turned out to be wrong (I found out in college)

[bertman]

13. Thanks for the memories, Bright. And thanks for making me think back on

all of those teachers I had through grades 1 through 12 in public schools. Only a couple of duds in that bunch, too. And they weren't terrible, just not what I would call really good.