The Educational Fix for Indiana

As promised, here's the fix for the educational system starting with a couple of items from a list I received from the ISTA:

• that Indiana teachers rank first in the nation for credentials in teaching what they teach (in other words in CONTENT certification which the Governor said should be THE priority. We subscribe to a higher standard – that both content and teaching skill are important.)

• If Indiana were a country, our 4^th and 8^th grade math students would rank 7^th highest IN THE WORLD.

So, let's start the improvement process by recognizing that Indiana teachers are highly qualified both by the No Child Left Behind federal guidelines and just plain common sense. It's also obvious that if our eighth graders rank 7th in the world, obviously the situation is not as bad as it's being painted in the press.

Next up, let me tell you that I've been teaching "shop" classes for 35 years with my time split just about equally between an inner city environment and a suburban/rural one. My comments will be colored by my experiences, as well as the fact that I firmly believe in offering students technology/STEM classes, of course, but also art, band and physical education. Now lets move on to making things better.

In Indiana the local school superintendent no longer has to follow the traditional track of teacher, administrator, superintendent. This can be a real good thing. Education is a business and should be run like one. Huge sums of money change hands every year in the quest to educate young people of our communities. Someone needs to make sure we're getting the most bang for our buck. Granted, allowances need to be made for all the human factors involved, but it's possible to track progress and see what's working and what isn't. At our school, we try to compare ourselves to ourselves. That way the slightest improvement can be celebrated even if it's not statistically significant or we're still below what others are doing. They have programs to do it the right way. So the first thing we need is a strong leader at the top with excellent management skills.

Next thing we need is a decent school board. There are pros and cons to both elected and appointed school boards. I've worked for both. Regardless of how they get there, they have the same obligations. See to it that all state and federal guidelines are met, allocate the funds in a fair and equitable manner and negotiate fairly with the staff and support personnel. Our school board and superintendent really dropped the ball on this one last year. We still don't have a contract and the likely hood of a fair and equitable contract being offered in the future is highly unlikely. When I first started here, the union and the board agreed to take state average of settlements, plus one percent. No arguments, no hostility. We had a real good superintendent and board. Things went smoothly and the teachers were all treated with respect. If the state manages to revoke the right of teachers to collective bargaining, you soon see what a terrible idea that was as well as what a terrible school board can do.

It's also the board's responsibility to see to it that the buildings and grounds are properly maintained. You don't have to have the Taj Mahal but you need a place that is conducive to education. If you have to choose between funds being spent on a huge athletic complex or the classrooms, everyone knows where the money should be spent. I realize there is never enough to have everything everyone wants. Make the tough decisions as fairly as possible and keep pushing onward and upward.

School leadership. This is the big one. In all my years I've worked for only a couple of principals that were worth their salaries. Many of them leave the classroom and become administrators simply because bossing adults around pays better than bossing third graders around. To hear them tell it, however, they were the greatest educators since John Dewey. Of course not all of them become principals because they can't cut it in the classroom or they want to boss people around. There are some very good principals out there. Not enough of them, however. I have a lot of respect for the job they have to do. They, or someone in authority has to be at every school function. Basketball, football, track, choir. You name it, they need to be there. They also need to deal with discipline matters. That runs the whole gamut of things in this day and age. Everything from a couple of girls getting into it about some boy, calling child welfare because some kid's old man whacked him around again, to dealing with weapons. So I admit they have a tough job.

Because the job is tough, it takes a special kind of person to deal with the day to day events and lead faculty and students to the promised land. School needs to be interesting and fun to as many people as is humanly possible. It should also demand excellence from all parties involved. From a teacher's perspective, here's what I want:

Give me the supplies, equipment and facilities to do my job.
Support me when dealing with some whack job parent.
Support and show some interest in the work my students perform.
Do the same for me then get the hell out of my way and let me do my job.
If you value what I do, keep record keeping and paper work to a minimum.
Let's not have meetings unless there is a specific outcome we need to get to, remembering that if you don't want to get things done in an expedient manner, form a committee. On the other hand, if you really want to have things run smoothly, form a management team including the teachers in the decision making process.
If you make a rule, enforce the rule. You shouldn't need too many.
If you spend all of your time dealing with ten percent of the school population, get rid of at least five percent. Institute the ten run rule for office trips. If a kid shows up in the office ten times, games over.
Be visible. I worked for one guy and a Sophomore asked me who he was after he came in the room. Kid was on the second year of his high school career and didn't know who the boss was.

Last thing. Everyone needs to stop listening to the latest and greatest educational research. If you want to know what to do, look at Finland. Check out Big Picture Learning. Look at the Sloyd system. Go way back and look at Manual Training. Get the students involved in things they are interested in and present the material as much as possible with a hands on approach. Elementary school teachers don't bore the little darlings to death every day with hour after hour of lectures. Why would a high school teacher do that. With all the electronic stimuli the little scholars are surrounded by, they now have attention spans like snail darters, for God's sake. Give them something to do. We have a retention pond at one of the schools. Stock it with fish and start a fishing club. There are hundreds of things that can be done to keep kids interested. There are auto shops that run a drag racer. Give exit exams to students who quit. Hunt them down and find out why they don't like school. Do the same things for young teachers that quit the profession. Find out why they spend four years in college only to quit after four years on the job. Then fix it!

In conclusion, things aren't as bad as Mitch and Tony would have us believe. They're politicians and they have an agenda. All politicians need to be watched. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, after all. If good leadership exists at all the levels (state, local school boards, school administration), most of the teachers will perform admirably. We can deal with the students, we don't have time to deal with the silliness, incompetence or laziness of some slug administrator, especially some yahoo who thinks he's so much smarter that his teachers because he was able to escape the classroom and we didn't. We're here by choice, knucklehead. Not by default. And if you really want to know what's wrong and how to fix things, ask the nice elementary teacher who's been wiping running noses, doing playground duty and putting on Christmas programs for thirty years. She knows what's best and what causes the disconnect with education for most of the kids. She'll be reluctant to tell you because she doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. But she knows.