Q&A of the Day – Are we setting our teachers & students up to fail?
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s entry...
Teachers in Palm Beach County are not considered an effective teacher if they cannot control their classroom, which is understandable to a point, but it is getting increasingly impossible to do this. Unfortunately, teachers think twice before sending students out of the classroom because they fear it will affect their pay.
ANOTHER REASON I NOW TEACH IN PRIVATE SCHOOL!! NO ONE IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR BAD BEHAVIOR!
Thank you again, Brian, for always sharing the truth!
Bottom Line: Yesterday’s Q&A about student misconduct and teacher abuse struck a chord with several people including a few teachers who voiced concerns. All supporting the information I shared from the Broward teacher’s survey demonstrating extraordinary levels of misconduct. For me, it’s frustrating for reasons that are different than those who must live it daily. I see a system that’s setup by a bureaucracy that’s trained the education establishment to do certain things to obtain financial incentives. Question for you. If you were starting public education over from scratch would it look like?
Though well intended, the structure of having federal government influence in addition to state and local governments have led to convoluted goals that don’t directly relate to the objective of providing the best possible education. With financial incentives for things unrelated to education outcomes specifically like headcount, socioeconomic status of students, etc., we’ve created potential conflicts of interests and roadblocks to maintaining the best possible learning environment for students and educational environment for teachers. That’s often demonstrated in the incentive/compensation plans as you’ve indicated. School districts and school administrators naturally will seek to obtain maximum funding. If chasing superfluous goals leads to more money – they'll do it – regardless of whether it’s in the best interests of the students and teachers.
I don’t believe for a moment that if educators could rebuild the education system from scratch it’d resemble what it does today. And back to the deplorable conduct that Broward’s teachers indicated they’re subjected to – we shouldn’t be tolerating the status quo either. It’s understandable why you’d leave teaching within the public education establishment.
Public schools, like the rest of our government, resemble what we vote for and tolerate. If all of us collectively treated education based on what’s best for students and teachers rather than through the prism of politics as usual it’d be different. But political interests run deep in our schools and too many people are more dedicated to partisanship than solutions. Thus, my advocacy for maximum school choice.