Wow. Education seems to be all over the news in the state of Georgia this week, and I haven’t seen a lot of positive comments. Go figure.
In Rockdale County, where I live, School Superintendent Rich Autry, whom I love, announced that he was “reluctant to implement” the long awaited $2,500 bonuses promised to the top 10 percent of Rockdale teachers when the school system became part of the federal government’s “Race to the Top” gimmick, designed to give lip service to promoting excellence in education by rewarding the top teachers.
I agree 100 percent with the superintendent on this decision, and not because the top teachers do not deserve more pay. The problem is the way the state and federal government want to go about determining those top teachers. I have said this a million times and I will say it another million if the Lord lets me stay here on Earth long enough. TEST SCORES ALONE DON’T MEASURE TEACHER COMPETENCE OR STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT.
Yes, I meant to shout. Maybe if enough educators shout it often enough and loudly enough someone in the ivory towers in Atlanta and Washington, D. C., will hear it. Not that they would care.
Now understand something. I would have loved to have been paid on the basis of my test scores throughout my teaching career, because my scores were always among the top 10 percent. But I know a lot of teachers who worked just as hard as I did and achieved just as much over the course of the school term whose students would never make the scores that my students made. In today’s convoluted system AP students take the same state tests as the lower level students. It is a lot easier to teach the basics to AP students than to students who may not be reading at grade level.
A teacher may bring a class of AP students on a hypothetical scale from a level 3 to a level 5 over the course of a term without much difficulty, while the teacher next door may be doing miraculous things to bring the students from a 1 to a 3. In what universe is it fair that the first teacher gets rewarded financially for accomplishing less? I wonder what that would do for teacher morale.
In other news, Nathan Deal has decided that this year he is going to be the education governor. Yeah, good luck with that. He has cut programs and short-changed teachers and presided over declining schools for four years. Now, all of a sudden, he is going to make education his focus. Let me know how that works out for everybody.
In Gwinnett County certain teachers are up in arms over the new AP U.S. History curriculum. They say that the curriculum not only waters down the history of this great nation but that the curriculum and materials used to teach it have a decidedly liberal and anti-American slant. They only say that because it is true. American Exceptionalism is a dirty phrase in most AP circles, the Declaration and Bill of Rights are just documents, and much more attention is paid to our warts as a nation than our accomplishments.
The College Board has been all about making money for years. When I began teaching AP classes they were designed to introduce college-quality rigor to the best highs school students — students who had the motivation, work ethic and mental capacity to go beyond the expectations of standard high school classes. In my school classes were strictly limited to 21 students per class. I taught three classes of 21 students each year for more than a decade and the students had to prove that they were motivated enough and academically qualified to do well in the class before they could enroll.
One year we had 69 students and only 63 spaces. The administration decided that everyone could stay until after the first major test and the six students who scored the lowest would transfer to an advanced class. One of the students who had to transfer was a great kid named Joey. When my son received his master’s degree from UGA, Joey was in the same ceremony, getting a PhD in genetic engineering, or some such field.
Yes, the bar has been significantly lowered in AP classes. The College Board realized that they could make more money if more students took their classes and the subsequent tests and bought their study guides. They began to encourage schools to expand their courses to everyone. They released studies showing that students who took AP classes in high school performed better in college (Duh!) and they began rewarding schools for increasing the number of minority students taking classes, regardless of the grades they might have made on the year-end exams.
Now classes are overcrowded, instruction is watered down, and the students who would truly benefit from the AP experience don’t get it because, regardless of what people might try to sell you, teachers teach to the mean. If they maintain the highest standards and let the 40 percent of the students who don’t belong in the class fail, they don’t teach AP any longer.
We will have to take up the problems with trying to teach math, which is also in the news, another day.
People often say to me about these issues, “You are retired. Why do you care?”
My response is, “You have to live in society. Why do you not care?”
Selah.
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