The debate surrounding Educational Reform in New Jersey is about to go national tonight at the RNC. Chris Christie will rollout his vision of the future, and most likely, set the stage for his own presidential run.
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| Photo courtesy of the Governor's Office/Tim Larsen |
I have no desire to engage the Governor or other educational reformers, many of whom have no experience or contact with actual educators, in a debate about tenure, merit-pay, or pensions. All of these things have been debated and screamed about, and retorted back and forth in various town hall meetings, and contested in the anonymously written comments that populate the online forums of our newspapers. I have no desire to get into a screaming match with anyone, or be used as a campaign clip on a viral YouTube video. I am simply concerned about the future of teacher quality in the state, and how any of the circus we have created around a group of issues that must be intellectually and effectively debated, might negatively impact recruitment, hiring, and developing new teachers. In lieu of the Governor being chosen to give the Keynote Address at this year’s Republican National Convention, I’m very interested to hear his stance on the questions at the end of this letter.
The biggest concern I have about the culture we are creating, stems from two disparate notions of teachers. One side will argue that teaching is a “calling,” a career that is magically ordained for prospective educators as their “life’s purpose.” In the face of that idea, is the fact that almost half of new teachers leave the profession at or before their first 5 years of employment. The other side of the argument believes that great teachers are simply those that follow a prescribed set of previously agreed upon lesson plans and drills, that if delivered correctly will create the resulting rise in test scores that define success. Those that believe this method of teacher training and development very shortly reach the conclusion that as long as they are managed and extrinsically measured, that there will be quantifiable results. There’s no reason to pay someone well for this type of job, unless they are one of the people writing the provided scripts.
By any rational measure, it’s clear that either picture is incomplete. Great teachers can not simply “care” their way to success, without being skilled in delivering good instruction. Likewise, following a paint-by-numbers approach to educating children, devoid of any strong desire to work with developing the future citizenry of the country, reduces teachers to robotic deliverers of basic facts and myopic views of a complex world.
I’ve been an educator for the past 10 years in this state. I have worked as a Classroom Teacher in a Special Education High School, and as an 8th Grade Language Arts Teacher. Most recently, I became the Instructional Leader in our building, tasked with working with both new and established teachers to develop the new 21st Century Learning skills that will be vital to our children’s future success.
Sitting in these interviews, I’m struck by a few questions. The first is personal. When I was growing up, my father was (and still is) an Automotive and Technology Education Teacher in my high school. My mother was a Special Education Teacher who was able to stay at home and raise me and my four siblings. My father washed houses in the summer, and we were able to live in a Connecticut suburb of Hartford with relative fiscal safety. I looked at the profession that my parents were engaged in and I saw it as a source of pride, it carried a sense that they were doing something “worthy,” despite the fact that we would never be rich, or be able to vacation at our own shore house. I knew that I could do this job, provide for my family, and hopefully make a difference in the lives of young people. As a Morris County homeowner and recent father of two, who works 3 additional jobs in order to pay the bills, and whose wife is also a teacher, I sometimes wonder, cynically, if I would have made that same decision upon entering college today. Gov. Christie famously posited to teacher Rita Wilson, that if she was unhappy with her pay as a teacher, that she didn’t “have to do it.” He’s completely right about that, and people ARE making the decision to leave in large numbers, but what types of people WILL become teachers, and for the long haul, if we continue this vitriolic debate that poisons the future pool of prospective “good” teachers? How can we hope on one hand that our nation’s best and brightest students will become teachers, while at the same time expecting them to be martyrs?
I’m afraid that the current level of rhetoric, and the stigma that public education is being burdened with now, will have a devastating effect on the quantity and quality of people choosing to go into the profession over the next five to ten years.
To Gov. Christie and the educational reformers on both sides of the aisle in New Jersey: What effect do you believe the nature of this debate is having on the students and professionals thinking about entering the field of education, and what are we doing to ensure that the BEST people are choosing to become educators in the schools and communities that need it most? How do you plan to reverse the damage this debate is having on the way public education is being viewed, and how do you plan on attracting great educators to a state with a consistent history of strong academic success? I believe that the the response to these questions will tell us infinitely more about the direction New Jersey Education is facing in the coming years, than any other attempt at reforming policy.
Respectfully,
Matthew Daly
Teacher
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