TOMMIE SAYLOR: If you want better education, you need more investment, not more testing

“But the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or the best lawyer or the best businessman.  These tests do not measure character, leadership, creativity, perseverance.”

-- William Julius Wilson

By Tommie Saylor

Kennedy High School Principal

Our federal lawmakers, who for the most part have no more educational experience than at one point in time being a student themselves, have decided once again to tell us how to teach students. 

They like to call this educational reform, which I’m sure will prove to be yet another in a long list of failed educational initiatives enacted by the federal government, plaguing both educational practitioners and students.  The roll call of such initiatives include The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA); A Nation At Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform, No Child Left Behind (NCLB); Race To The Top; Common Core; and now The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), recently signed into law by President Obama.

If the government truly desires to increase the level of education in our nation, the answers are simple, but require an investment.  We must put a stop to the incessant testing.  We spend so much effort, time and money in the preparation and execution of standardized tests that we barely seem to have the time to get through the most basic curriculum.  We “teach to test” as opposed to teach for understanding and learning. 

If students do not do well on these tests, we blame the teachers, the school and/or even penalize the district, as opposed to lending assistance.  This never made sense to me.  Blaming the teacher for a student not doing well on a standardized test, especially after knowing fully well that the student received proper instruction and preparation for the test, is kind of like blaming a mechanic for the poor driving habits of a motorist. 

Should the mechanic pay the speeding ticket or the parking ticket for a careless motorist? Then why are teachers, administrators, schools and districts paying the price for students who don’t care and don’t try even after receiving proper instruction?

As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

Learning is a personal choice: Either the student makes the decision to learn or they choose to be passive and put little effort into the process. At what point in time does the onus fall upon the student or upon the family? Research does not show a correlation between standardized test taking and an improvement in student learning, understanding and performance.  The top educational countries in the world very infrequently test their students, preferring to spend time and efforts on teaching and learning as opposed to test taking. 

If we want to improve the educational standing of our nation, we need to follow their example.

If we truly want to raise the level of education, then we need to place two teachers in every classroom.  When I go into a classroom that has a teacher and a co-teacher, the educational experience for the students is far superior to those without a co-teacher.  With two teachers in a classroom, as one presents the lesson, the other is able to move among the students, checking for understanding, answering questions, and helping keep students on task. 

Having two teachers in a classroom also gives teachers the opportunity for advancement without having to leave the classroom. Right now, once you secure your first job as a classroom teacher, you have automatically advanced as far as you possibly can while still remaining a teacher.  There are no levels of advancement for teachers.

If we use the co-teacher model, young teacher right out of college can enter the profession as a co-teacher. In doing so, they can spend years learning and perfecting the trade under the careful tutelage of a veteran instructor before advancing to the position of classroom instructor. Then, they would have their own apprentice and/or co-teacher. 

Taking this one step further, why not take the best of the best instructors and make them Master Teachers?  A Master Teacher would not have a classroom of their own, but would be the department head responsible for all the classes taught in a given department.  

The Master Teacher would assist the classroom teachers when needed or when a particular tricky lesson needs to be taught. They would make sure the classroom teachers have all the necessary materials they need to perform their job, be the curriculum expert and make sure all the teachers in the department are correctly teaching the curriculum, and would conduct teacher observations and evaluations. 

In short, the Master Teacher would be much like a pseudo administrator with an expertise in their specific field, charged with ensuring that all students receive the absolute best instruction, covering the best curriculum, with the best educational tools possible.

By utilizing such a hierarchy, teachers will no longer be in a “dead end job.” They will be in a profession that allows for advancement without leaving the classroom, allows for a learning curve for young and/or new instructors, and places two teachers in every classroom focused on ensuring that every student learns. 

Granted, this will require quite an investment.  But if we can so quickly and eagerly raise taxes to fix the roads, why can’t we do the same to fix our children’s future? Once again, the top educational countries in the world have at least two teachers per classroom, sometimes three.  If we want to improve the educational standing of our nation, we need to follow their example yet again.

The moral of this story is that more testing and oversight will not improve this nation’s education system. Only a greater investment, unhindered and without strings attached, along more teachers, will a lasting difference be made.

How and where will you lead them. Making Kennedy the school of choice. Excellence by design.