In the USAToday article Teaching our Children Can be a Profession by Joel Klein, Klein discusses what he believes to be the problems with today's education system. He also proposes solutions to these problems that will definitely leave you pondering his ideas.
Problems/Proposed Solutions
1. Teachers are not prepared for the classroom.
Solution: Have colleges provide more professional development in teaching degrees. According to the information Klein provides in the article, 23 states cannot name a single college or university that trains efficiently in mathematics, and fewer than 20% of schools equip new teachers for teaching basic reading. He proposes to train them more efficiently for the classroom.
2. Teachers are not being recruited effectively.
Solution: Hire only from the top third of the graduating classes.
3. Teachers aren't being rewarded properly.
Solution: Do away with seniority, and reward based on classroom performance. Do away with tenure and make teachers work for their jobs. This will stop making teaching jobs seem interchangeable.
In the southern parts of the United States, I feel that teachers are better prepared than this article claims. Teacher candidates at several universities are required to learn how to teach reading in every subject area, regardless of grade level. Mathematics is also a requirement at many universities. In other parts of the country, that may not be the case though. I do believe that schools can train teacher candidates more thoroughly so that they can excel in teaching their future students.
I agree that teachers should only be recruited out of the top third of their graduating classes. At the University of South Alabama, you are only required to have 2.75 GPA in your content area, and 2.5 GPA in your basics courses in order to be eligible for teacher candidacy. Sometimes I feel that you should be required to have a higher GPA than that to be allowed to teach students. If you can't make at least a 3.0 GPA overall then you should probably not be instructing students. 2.5 and 2.75 GPA are average. I believe we should have teachers that perform above average in their courses.
Tenure, in my opinion, is an excuse for teachers to do less work and still get payed the same as the teacher who works hard for their students to succeed. Now some tenured teachers really work hard in their classrooms, but some teachers do not. Tenure seems to me like a reward for teaching a certain amount of time. What should truly be rewarded is teachers that engage their students in active learning, and produce students who know material, understand why they have learned the material, and enjoy learning new material. Students should be proficient when moved on to the next grade level, rather than just making it by. When teachers make the same money as the teacher that does nothing while they work hard in the classroom, that decreases initiative for teachers to be phenomenal teachers for their students. Rewarding teachers does need to be changed. Teachers should be rewarded based on their classroom performance.
The education system in America does have places where it lacks in professionalism, initiative, and quality in teachers. Changes do need to be made, and should be made, to better our students' education. We can't produce mediocre teaching and expect phenomenal students to submerge from beneath. It won't happen. Teachers need to perform phenomenally for their students to be engaged and learn in the classroom. Students not only need good teachers, but the deserve good teachers. Teachers need to perform how they would want to be rewarded. If you do minimal work and have few successful students, did you teach or did you babysit? Are you getting paid for quality work or are you just sitting behind a desk for a paycheck? Teachers need to be engaged in their students' learning. Teachers should be inspiring their students to desire a quality education. And for the teachers that are providing as quality education for their students, are they being rewarded justly?
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