Make a donation to FOTPS

 

 

by Rachael Brunson, M.Ed.
Teacher, Round Rock ISD 

    

When asked what I do for a living, I proudly tell people that I am a teacher.   I haven't always been proud. There was a time when I referred to myself as "just a teacher".   I've been reflecting on those "just a teacher" years and trying to pinpoint where those feelings came from. Then it dawned on me that's how most of my colleagues referred to themselves as well.   Why the negative self image? Part of the issue lies in the negative perception about public school educators. It's no wonder the public perceives our educational system as substandard with the constant scrutiny of the media and political leaders continually promising to "fix" what is wrong with education.     

 

We can blame the media for part of the problem, but we as educators have to take some of the responsibility for how the public perceives us. Because teachers are under an enormous amount of scrutiny, we are often on the defensive and that feeling of contention trickles out into the general public. Jacques Barzun once said that "Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition". It's up to us to be change agents and to recreate our own image. We can change the public's perception of education by applying these six premises: perception, professionalism, partnerships, publicity, pride, and positive outlook.

 

 

  full article...

 

 

You absolutely cannot tell, by visiting a school, the difference between an exemplary school and a recognized or acceptable school. The difference is often times a small handful of kids and their score on one subject area of the TAKS test.

 

For example, my son's junior high is rated on 20 different criteria that include test scores on reading, writing, social studies, math, science, English-language learner progress, commended performance, and performance of White, Black, Hispanic and Economically disadvantaged students. Of those 20 criteria, the junior high was ranked "exemplary" on 13, "recognized" on 6, and academically acceptable on 1.

 

So, according to the Texas Accountability System, the ENTIRE junior high was ranked academically acceptable and that's what the local newspaper prints and that's what the community is led to believe about my son's junior high. That's right, his entire junior high of approximately 300 kids was ranked based on the score in one subject of 5 students. Talk about distorting what is really going on. 

A Little Overdue Praise for Educators   

 

by Mark Naison, professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University in New York

 

 

America's public schools were never perfect. But they helped hold the country together through wrenching economic crises that left many communities deeply wounded and many Americans wondering if they had a future. Some of what went on in our most economically depressed schools involved real courage and heroism. All of it required patience and hard work.

One thing these schools showed is that they could effectively run institutions without huge salaries and bonuses for executives and without a huge gap between the employees and their managers. In most public schools, the principal's salary was never more than a third higher than the highest paid teacher, rather than the 400 to 1 CEO to worker ratio that now exists in American industry. And maybe that was one of the reasons that public schools survived economic crises better than private companies, whose top executives never missed an opportunity to pillage a failing firm for their "golden parachutes."

If I sound ironic, and maybe a little bitter, it's because I think most elected officials today have it all wrong. It is not American business that is the great success story and public education the dismal failure. Maybe it's time to bring teachers and administrators into our top firms and have them show how to run things without wasting huge amounts of money on executive salaries, and without making people work in constant fear of being fired.

It is time to look more realistically at the role our public schools have played in America's transition from an industrial society into service information society, which has left out huge portions of our population. And it is time to give educators the respect they deserve for handling one of the most difficult jobs in the society with a lot more endurance and courage and generosity than some in the private sector.

 

  read more...