Education
Issue discussion
I have been a teacher for twenty five years and an administrator at Temple University for three years. My views on education are shaped by my own experience as a teacher. But that experience is confirmed by both my experience as a student, as well as the research done during the last twenty years about what makes for effective schools.
Better Teachers are the Key to Better Education
Think back to your own education. If you are like most people, you will remember a few truly dedicated teachers who not only taught you a great deal but helped you appreciate the importance of learning. All my experience as a teacher and administrator tells me that the most important thing we can do for our school children is to give them dedicated, experienced, and skilled teachers. And all the research I have seen on education suggests that the one thing that makes a difference in the quality of education is the quality of teachers.
So, if we want to improve our schools, all our efforts have to be dedicated toward recruiting, training, supporting, and retaining good teachers.
Everything else is secondary. We can dispute about the organization of the schools, about whether they are fully public schools or charter schools. (I think charter schools can help, although I think teachers should work at them under the same unionized contract that teachers in all other schools work.) We can dispute about whether the school system is controlled by the state or the city (I'd like to see us return to city control as soon as possible.). We can dispute about whether we should turn some schools over to Educational Management Organizations. (I believe that, given the long history of failures in educational administration in
After all, education is a unique field. More than any other field, it is not the highest level administrators—the principles and superintendents—who determine whether the product of an organization is good. It is the front line workers—the teachers—who really make a difference.
So, how do we improve the quality of our teachers?
- Pay Teachers very well. We can’t attract good teaches if we don’t pay them well.
- Train, support, and protect our teachers. Teaching is difficult. It takes most teachers years to become experts. We need to train our teachers by providing money for them to go to effective institutes and programs that help them learn how to become better teachers. We need to provide support for them when they get into trouble. Experienced teachers should be paid to mentor inexperienced teachers. And we must protect our teachers by providing a hot line for teachers to report abusive behavior and by providing consistent disciplinary processes for students who abuse teachers or other students.
- Reduce Class Size. Having taught classes with students ranging from 12 to 120, I know the difference that class size makes. Research suggests that lower class sizes helps teachers become more effective, especially in the lower grades. With fewer students, teachers can spend more time helping students as individuals—and they will also spend less time with disciplinary problems and more time teaching.
- Give Teachers and Principals The Authority They Need Creative and effective teachers can be hemmed in by curricula that are too rigid. The most effective recruiters, trainers, and supporters of teachers are good principals. One thing that concerns me about the Vallas administration is that it has been limiting the flexibility of both principals and teachers. Good schools are created by good principals who have some flexibility to encourage effective teaching. And good teachers need the flexibility to be creative. We should give principals and teachers that freedom all professionals deserve, while holding them accountable for the results.
- Create Smaller Schools. Principals can more easily manage their schools and lead their teachers when schools are small.
- Stop Teaching to Tests.. Standardized tests do not test much that is important in education. And, when we demand that teachers focus on test scores, they are tempted to teach in ways that leave students with no love of learning and only slightly better test scores. In addition, the focus on standardized tests encourages schools to boost their scores through artificial means that actually undermine education, for example, by discouraging some students from taking tests or working to improve the scores of students doing fairly well while ignoring those who are doing very poorly.
- Provide Sufficient Social Workers and Guidance Counselors. All schools should have social workers assigned to them and high schools should have an appropriate number of guidance counselors. Many of our students need more than the usual level of support to be effective learners. And classroom teachers cannot provide all that support and do everything else we require of them.
- Give Teachers the Tools They Need: Libraries and Librarians
- Education in the Arts. We need the full complement of specialized teachers to provide the full complement of educational opportunities to our students. We must provide art and music instruction to every student.
- Connect Schools With Jobs. We have many good teachers who would like to help their students see a connection between schooling and jobs. We must help them do this better, especially for the sake of the Philadelphia school children who do not go on to college. Some of our vocational education centers are teaching students on outdated equipment. This must stop.
Provide the Funding Our Schools Need. While improving our teachers is critical, when we talk about education in Philadelphia, we always have to talk about money. For one thing, I think we all need to learn more about why a deficit suddenly appeared this year. Money does not solve all problems – but it will go a long way in helping the Philadelphia school district. There is no way we can provide the same quality education as Lower Merion when we spend only two-thirds what they do per student in the suburbs.
I would support spending more local money on the schools by increasing the share of dedicated tax revenues that go to our schools. But we must also work with our state legislators to get the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to increase its funding of the schools. Pennsylvania still contributes much less of the cost of elementary and secondary education than most states. I have been lobbying Harrisburg for years on many issues, including education. As a member of Council, I will take the lead in lobbying Harrisburg on education funding.
