Make Better Use of Teachers

January 12, 2010

Bentonville superintendent Gary Compton and Robert Maranto of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas recently wrote in this newspaper that to make Arkansas public schools great three things were necessary: a larger and better pool of teachers, less red tape and paperwork, and a better system of special education. Concerning the pool of teachers, one could equally waste words with the counter argument that we need a larger and better pool of administrators and college professors. A more practical, less insulting suggestion is to make better use of teachers.

Persistent behavioral problems in public schools interfere with instruction and take too much teacher time. For the money it takes to attend fad conferences and pay lawyers, school systems could hire aides to do three things: Monitor inappropriate behavior, do secretarial chores and tutor. The order of the list is relevant. Within two years the order would reverse, with tutoring becoming the priority. Within five years instruction time would no longer be exploited by self-centered, poorly behaved children. Public schools would face the problem of keeping proper class size and providing enough classrooms to meet the demand.

In addition to monitoring behavior, these aides should also be able to give tickets for inappropriate behavior. Consider that passing a car on the right can get you a $200 fine if you are caught. Do you think someone who has paid $200 will continue passing on the right? The same principle will work for poorly behaved students. Parents will probably pay the ticket and it will not be $200, but even a fine of $20 would cause families to act on the problem and take steps to avoid another fine. Once a set level of fines has been reached and all the other discipline procedures followed, then habitual offenders would get spe cial placement and not be allowed to ruin classes.

Arkansas has supported alternative instruction, but we could do more. For example, a boarding school could be life-saving for children caught up in a bitter divorce or other catastrophic situations. Compton and Maranto might be surprised at the ability of the Arkansas teaching force once the heavy burden of policing bad behavior was lifted from their backs allowing them to teach without interruption.

Concerning Compton and Maranto’s second suggestion, they wrote about administrators having too much paperwork, but teachers also must do hours of paperwork in order to keep their jobs. The time spent on paperwork means less time on teaching. The fix is simple: Administrators must stop creating and requesting forms to pacify the validation gods. Do mandatory testing on computers and use hourly wage people for necessary paperwork. That would give professionals time to evaluate test results, by far the most important task. As written, President Clinton knew that the top level controls red tape so he reinvented government paperwork reduction and saved the taxpayer over $140 billion. Compton and Maranto wrote that Arkansas could do the same thing and that would free school districts from mind-numbing tasks and redirect money and time toward instruction.Compton and Maranto hit the nail on the head with their comments on special education. According to them, parents view special services as an entitlement and actively seek disability labels for their children.

The reason a parent wants a child labeled is that a label can be used as a wedge to assure graduation and a high school diploma. No matter that such a diploma is meaningless. Government forced two mistakes on public education: removal of vocational courses and eliminating special education classes. At one time, students could learn marketable skills such as carpentry, decorating, nutrition, welding, etc. (a list dependent on the master teachers available in the community), so that they could get a good job upon graduation or the enjoyment of a hands-on learning experience.

Now the curriculum is devoid of such courses. Today’s courses assume college enrollment and are aligned so as to satisfy state testing demands. Learning is a byproduct of the current boring, mile-wide and inch-deep curriculum.

Special education classes went by the wayside when specially-trained teachers were made to co-teach in a regular classroom rather than conduct their own class. The idea that children identified as special education students were not getting a good education in so-called restrictive special education classrooms led the government to demand that they be placed in the least restrictive environment or regular classrooms.

Schools had always placed qualified students in classes where they could perform best. So, for example, a special education student might go to a regular or even advanced math class, and then return to a special classroom for other instruction.

New laws led to closing special education classrooms except for extreme needs and placing special education children in regular classes. In reality, special education classes were the least restrictive environment for most children and the law should be reinterpreted so as to allow those classes.

Do we really want our public schools to be great, or is a powerful segment of society applauding their failure while experts make hay with the resulting chaos?