Yesterday marked the start of teacher appreciation week at ANCS, when our PTCA provides all sorts of wonderful recognitions and gifts for our dedicated teachers and staff. It’s a stark contrast to two items from the news last week that are indicative of a national trend in recent years to belittle and minimize the work of teachers.
First, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gave an interview on 60 Minutes (which you can see in its entirety here) that has been widely panned. What stood out to me was how out of touch her responses seemed from the reality of what most teachers experience and what most teachers want from their schools. She argued–not always clearly–for education policies that have had mixed impact on outcomes for students and that most teachers will quickly tell you don’t work well.
Yes, DeVos is the head of the federal agency responsible for education in our country. But we could just dismiss this interview as a bad performance by someone who just doesn’t get it. Unfortunately, time and again as of late, elected officials and policymakers often suggest or impose policies and ideas–from using test scores to evaluate teachers to arming teachers to protect schools–that are overly simplistic and don’t reflect or respect the professional judgment of public school educators, something that was evident from another story in the news last week: a teachers’ strike in the whole state of West Virginia.
With a legislative proposal for a small pay increase after several years of none and costly changes to the state’s public employee insurance program and payroll tax deduction options, teachers in West Virginia went on strike for over a week to pressure lawmakers into revising the proposal. And while the strike was clearly tied to compensation, a different analysis surfaces other issues–such as another bill in the West Virginia legislature allowing anyone teach, regardless of their training or education–that suggest teachers there were angry because of a consistent devaluing of their professionalism. As the article says, “Public school teachers have arguably endured the most direct challenge to their professionalism [of any white-collar profession] in recent years.”
So if we truly appreciate teachers, we should listen to them when creating policies that affect their work helping students to learn. If we truly believe that education is the key to a successful life for a child, we should create the conditions for teachers to provide students with a great education.