Duct-Taping the Future of Tomorrow

It’s my second block class, around 10:30 in the morning. The fluorescent overhead lights are off, and the room is otherwise illuminated by the bright sunlight from the windows, the soft lamps surrounding the room, and the colorful Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. I sit on my stool in front of my 28 general education students. They’re white, black, brown. They’ve all been best friends since kindergarten. We take turns going over the daily writing, where they write about themselves and then we share our stories. The students laugh, smile. They know that we’ll be doing grammar next, so they all tell stories hoping to ward off the inevitable. When everyone has shared and we’ve all finished laughing, we review the sentence corrections, the sentence combining. I give them a little mini-lesson on some aspect of grammar that has eluded them so far. We talk about how weird the English language is, and then we pull out our textbooks or packets or novels or whatever it is we’re reading. We have pencils and highlighters loaded and ready to go. I scoot my stool to the center of the room, and then the reading begins.

Race is not an issue in this class; though the school is more Caucasian than not, we have plenty of diversity and all voices are heard. Sexism is not a thing in this class; everyone seems more or less respectful of each other. Leveling is not an issue: I co-teach this class with an amazing special education teacher who monitors and helps the six resource kids we share, and I have a wide range of students who are on-grade level and handful that should have probably been assessed for “gifted and talented” before now. Everyone speaks, participates. Everyone smiles. They seem comfortable. The only issues arise when some kids can’t handle the soft lighting and their eyes get heavier and heavier when the reading starts.

Is this luck? Did I just get lucky with these kids that I have in my class?

No. This is work. Hard work. This is weeks of preparation making sure that I’ve gotten to know each and every one of my students deeply. This is weeks of preparation in the summer to make sure that the curriculum has been laid out, vetted, and that everything is purposeful and data-driven. This is planning periods spent designing lessons, and time before and after school planning and prepping to make sure that we have structure, that there is no down time, and that every student gets addressed, evaluated, and looked after.

I have had the joy and genuine pleasure of being an English teacher in the state of South Carolina for these last 18 years, and yes: for the purposes of this rant, I consider myself a good teacher. Not just my opinion, mind you; I have statistical evidence to support that I earn my paycheck year in and year out. My students feel comfortable in my class. They understand my procedures and expectations. They have felt my wrath when they’ve fallen short of those expectations, and they’ve felt my love and admiration when they show effort, growth, and results. They work well together, respect one another, and desire that satisfying “Great job, kid” and pat on the shoulder when they surprise themselves with how much they’ve learned.

Most of my evidence of this comes from standardized test scores, scores from tests that I’ve seen come and go. I have seen state-of-the-art curriculum be born, then shrivel and die. I have seen students work hard and cross that stage by the skin of their teeth. I have seen an equal amount do almost nothing at all and walk across that same stage, receiving that same diploma. I have seen enthusiastic young people leave college and join our humble profession, and I have seen the fire in their eyes smolder, burn out, and fade away. Good teachers leave our profession every year. Unfortunately, bad teachers come in and thrive with little resistance.

All the statistics show that the system is flawed, broken even. And yet we toil on. We have this massive problem with student behavior. We toil on. We have this massive problem of low test scores, terrible state-by-state and country-by-country education rankings. We toil on. We have high turnover of excellent teachers fleeing to other professions. We have the unavoidable retention of terrible, uninspired, lazy educators, people who enter and stay in a classroom for all the wrong reasons. And yet: we toil on. The specific problems are innumerable, but I can’t help but feel if these major problems are addressed here, the public education system might find the balance it so crucially lacks.

Is there anything that could be done that could fix the problems of student behavior, poor educational standard, quality teacher turnover, and ineffective teacher retention? The answer is simple: accountability.

Education is a path paved with good intentions. You cannot go to a conference, a professional development meeting, or hear a guest speaker without hearing the word RIGOR. We must increase our RIGOR. Our assessments should be more RIGOROUS. We must challenge each student with RIGOR. Our expectations should be higher due to our dedication to bringing RIGOR back to the classroom. But when those expectations are met with student apathy, or if they threaten the established routine of a teacher who has mentally checked out already, then student scores decline. Failure rates increase. Graduate rates start to tumble. Are students given the necessary gluteal kick? Do the teachers come together and batten down teh hatches? No; the teachers are quietly encouraged to temper our expectations, and the rigor is lowered back to the status quo. But we’ll still use the word, mind you; we’ll still volley the word around at every faculty and department meeting, but we all understand the truth.

You need to find a way for the kids to pass. Threaten the graduation rate at your own peril.

As for behavior, every new year brings its own set of renewed promises. This year, we’re monitoring dress code. This year, we’re monitoring tardiness. There will be no smoking in the bathrooms. There will be a zero tolerance policy for fighting. No P.D.A. No cursing. No cell phones. No games on the Chromebooks. No A.I. And weeks go by and slowly, the misbehaviors start creeping back in. They are observed, they are reported, and they are dutifully ignored. And the first to notice are the students themselves. We can’t suspend them, because that affects scores, which affects failure rates, which drops graduation rates. We can’t expel them for the same reasons. Then we make excuses for them: "they have a rough life at home. They’ve never been taught better. They have mental health struggles. They can’t help it." Now I have, over the course of my career, seen students take haymaker swings at other teachers’ faces. Do I sympathize with their plight in life? With their poverty? With their single-parent households? With their clear mental health issues? Certainly. Do I want them back in my classroom three days later? No, simply put. I have lost count of how many times I’ve had administration remove a belligerent student from my class only for that student to return twenty minutes later with a smile on their face and candy in their hands.

We all understand the problem with good teachers, so let’s say them together: low pay. Enormous workload. Inflated expectations. Stress. Lack of support. A potential threat to your overall health and well-being. I have had the absolute blessing of working with some amazing teachers over the years. Better teachers than I’ll ever be. And they fall into one of three camps: #1- Martyrs. They know how good they are and they struggle on with the understanding that what they are doing is for the greater good and that any torture they endure is worth it for a greater cause. #2- Stoners. I’m assuming. I don’t know how they do it, but they manage a long career in terrible circumstances with perfect blood pressure and an aura that says they have it all figured out. I’m assuming it’s the proper combination of antidepressants, bourbon, and C.B.D. There’s no way they’re pulling this off naturally. And, sadly, the bulk of them fall into category #3- Out of the profession in less than ten years. This can be something education-adjacent, like getting hired by a curriculum factory and doing the professional development circuit, writing books on how to teach, or (Heaven defend) getting their administrative or guidance certification. Either way, the system is desperate for these teachers, but the system is so broken that it cannot find a way to incentivize them to stay.

Finally, the bad teachers. A football coach that I highly respect once told me, as sincerely as he’s ever said anything: “We’re in a teacher shortage. What are they going to do, fire me?” He was being a less-than-enthusiastic teacher, worried more about the upcoming region game, and that’s what he told me when I asked him about his classroom. And his logic makes sense: the school district can reshuffle him and maneuver him, but they can’t afford to release him. Not mid-year, anyways. In as crude a way as I can put it, I’ve been told that the only way a school can relieve you of duty is if you FIGHT a kid or… well… do another thing that starts with “F” that I won’t discuss here. But if that is the bare minimum threshold for continued employment, there’s no wonder our standards are in freefall. Teachers must be held to a higher standard, and more importantly, schools should be given the ability to assess and subsequently remove teachers who are unwilling to teach.

So how does accountability fix these problems?

A stat they bounce around in administrative training is that 90% of a school’s behavioral issues are accounted for by less than 10% of the school’s population. This means the vast majority of problems a school has are thanks to a small minority of the population. The flip side would be that 90% of the school population is trying to do the right thing, get their education and make something of their lives. It’s only about 10% that are creating the problems for everybody else. So why wouldn’t you try and find a way of dealing with these problem students? Quit evaluating a school solely on their graduation rates and start allowing the schools to hold their students accountable. We can reduce the distractions, make the schools safer, and start pushing that RIGOR word they keep fussing about. We do this by allowing schools to identify that 10 %, and (if those students cannot be rehabilitated to be students who want to succeed) allow them to be removed, either through expulsion or through things like alternative or adult educational programs. Hold the students accountable. A diploma should not be a 12-13 year participation trophy. It isn't fair to the ones who actually put the effort in.

The difference between good teachers and bad teachers is such a fine line, and I feel that accountability can fix them both. For bad teachers, hold their feet to the fire. Observe them. Develop them. Mentor them. And if they refuse that development and mentorship and refuse to change their ways, show them the exit. Stop wasting your time and the students’ time with people who aren’t committed to the cause. Hold them accountable, and if they don’t measure up, let them find something that better matches their ambitions. If we can give schools the freedom to weed out bad students, they should also be trusted to weed out the bad teachers. If a student fails through lack of motivation or apathy, that’s on them; if a student fails because the teacher is lacking, then the teacher is equally culpable.

But what, you ask, about the shortages? We can’t get rid of the bad teachers if we have no one to replace them. Simply put: we also have to hold the school districts accountable. We can find good teachers if we’re willing to compensate them properly. Better starting pay would get more young people interested in pursuing education programs in college. Substantial pay increases, ones that don’t cap at year 30, would better motivate good, experienced teachers to stick around and not settle for jobs at daycares or hardware stores.

Believe it or not, there is money in education, but that money is wasted away in pre-packaged curriculum, unnecessary professional development costs, and (and I can’t say this enough) wasteful bloat by overinflated salaries of redundant and dispensable district office staff. Just find a way to pay teachers more. End of sentence. So much money is wasted in education, and so much tax-payer money is wasted in general; put more tax-payer money into public education, and ensure that school districts are better stewards of that money.

You want good teachers to stay? Pay them more. You want bad teachers to try harder, do better, and fear losing their now sought-after positions? Pay them more. People consider teachers the most important part of building each civilization after the next; why don’t you pay them and treat them like they are as important as you say they are? "But they get summers off," you say? Say that to my face while I'm at work at my summer job so I can continue paying my mortgage.

Accountability, all the way down the line. From the government official not using your tax money wisely to the student smoking dope in the handicapped stall in the boys’ bathroom. Hold them all accountable.

And pay the teachers what they’re worth. That’s how you fix a broken system.