Be Careful of What You Wish For

Across the nation teachers are under siege. Elected legislators and governors seek to reduce teacher compensation by eroding collective bargaining rights and holding firm on salary increases. Concomitantly, they are taking a meat axe to other educational spending, including substantial reductions in the number of teachers at a time when student populations are increasing. Classroom effectiveness has been under increasing scrutiny for several years, with calls for a thorough housecleaning of ineffective teachers on the one hand, and plans to first measure and subsequently tie teacher pay to some standard measurement of student performance on the other. One can only conclude that American citizens feel that teachers are not making enough of a difference in the classroom to justify the current level of oversight and funding.

The status held by teachers was far different when I was attending school. In the 1950s and 1960s -when fewer than ten percent of all Americans had graduated from college- teachers were viewed as a highly educated professional class. Classroom discipline issues were less of an issue, in part because parents had little tolerance for misbehavior in the classroom: parental respect for teachers was mirrored by student respect. America had its share of ineffective teachers, to be sure, but these were seen as the exception rather than the rule. This paradigm has been turned on its head. Today we extol our few super-teachers, and look for ways to instill these attributes in their less capable peers. Overseers look for ways to ensure a minimum acceptable level of teaching performance.

Part of this change comes from the increased focus on equating education with student performance on standardized tests. Surprisingly, however, the teachers we remember as special were those who made class interesting, treated us with respect, made us feel that we had the ability to succeed in life, and motivated us to perform at our best. The content of our learning took second place to the context. These characteristics don’t lend themselves to testing, however. It seems we have come to equate what is important in the classroom with what we can measure rather than what may really matter.

Young men and women enter and remain in the teaching profession because they are excited by the challenge of making a difference with America’s children. They recognize that the job has been made more challenging by standardized testing and larger class sizes, but they seem ready to take up to the challenge. Those who remain in teaching do so because of the positive feedback they get from their students. It doesn’t take much imagination, however, to foresee a substantial shift in attitudes of current and future teachers regarding the net benefits of teaching. It has become a thankless profession characterized by hyper-critical oversight, increased workloads, a decline in public appreciation, and reduced remuneration. We may be in the process of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Cutting education is not like closing a state park during the week, or reducing government fuel subsidies to the needy. In the latter cases, impacts are immediately felt and subject to quick adjustment. The combined impact of our current onslaught on the teaching profession will not be felt so quickly. It may take up to a generation before its impact is clearly understood. In the rush to balance our budgets we may find that we have been penny wise and pound foolish. In our relentless pursuit of academic rigor we may find that the qualities we shoved aside in the interest of test performance are the very ones that make all the difference.