The number one problem in public education

Ten years ago, my name was Mr. G. I was the 10th grade English and journalism teacher at Graham High School in North Carolina. After five semesters of teaching, I had finally acquired the right combination of backbone, charm, and humor to manipulate a group of 25 teenagers into basically following my instructions or at least not blatantly derailing me. And then I quit to go to seminary.

I just went back to check out the Graham High School website. There are now two teachers on a staff of about fifty who were there ten years ago. I’ve checked the website every few years to see who stuck around. Within two years after I left, the turnover rate was over 50%. The only teachers that stuck around were the teachers that were already veterans when I got there.

Now I’m sitting in a different vantage point as a parent with two sons in a New Orleans charter school. There are many things about this school that we love. Our sons receive two hours of arts curriculum every day. The teachers clearly love their students, and it’s a small enough community that even teachers who don’t have my sons in their classes know them and talk to them.

The one thing that has shaken our confidence is the turnover rate. Last year, my oldest son lost one science teacher midyear and another one at the end of the year. His language arts teacher was let go at the end of the year and was replaced this year by an excellent teacher who taught social studies the year before. This year, his science and social studies teachers only lasted a month. His language arts teacher left after Christmas. Now the former assistant principal who had swooped in to take over social studies in the fall is also teaching him language arts.

Turnover sows complete chaos in a school’s learning environment. Because teachers are not interchangeable widgets that can be swapped out and immediately replaced. Teaching is one of the most personal professions that exists. Learning only happens with the right chemistry in a classroom. At least when you’re dealing with children and teenagers. The reason substitute teachers always get taken advantage of is because teaching is all about relationships that are built over time.

Genius college professors can get away with being socially inept, but high school teachers have to learn way more than communicating information clearly. You have to coax and inspire. You have to nip every attempt at derailing the classroom discussion in the bud with grace and humor. You have to be consistent. You have to create rituals. You have to be incredibly organized. You have to move briskly and speak with a commanding voice whenever you press the button on the wall to say that Johnny is coming to the office again. You have to be able to shift in milliseconds from a ruthless evil eye to a playful wink. It takes a long time to assimilate all the indispensable intangibles of owning a classroom. And most people quit before they get there.

It’s true that I have only my anecdotal experience to go by, but I have yet to meet the washed-up, uninspired, long-term union slugs that people like Betsy DeVos have made into the bogeymen of public education. Every veteran teacher I’ve ever known was damn good at what she did (almost all were she’s). The people who were stumbling around and failing their classes’ standardized tests were the twenty-five year olds who cycled in and out of teaching every 2-3 years like me.

I don’t understand how our society has become so ideologically hypnotized that we think cut-throat competition is the single way to motivate people to be successful regardless of what profession. “Accountability” is great at weeding out teachers; it just happens to weed out almost all of them. What young teachers need are nurturing mentors and adequate resources. In schools that keep teachers, each academic department has a veteran teacher with a reduced courseload and a primary assignment of coaching younger teachers.

If the only people evaluating teachers’ classroom performance are assistant principals without experience in their particular disciplines, then the only thing that will be evaluated is their ability to keep students quiet and staring straight ahead. If you want somebody to quit after two years, then only give them feedback formally under the auspices of deciding whether or not they get to keep their job. If you want them to stick around, then walk with them in the strange, terrifying journey of learning how to walk the tightrope of teaching.

And you’ve got to have resources. Too many public schools have dull learning environments not because the teachers are un-creative but because the only teaching tools they can afford to use are xeroxed worksheets. It doesn’t matter how dynamic your personality and teaching style are. Worksheet hell is worksheet hell. It makes a huge difference when each student gets a laptop to use. It makes a huge difference when there are enough copies of the novel you’re reading for students to take it home to read. It makes a huge difference when you’ve got a field trip budget so that your students can actually see a live performance of the play you’re studying.

These things cost money. When your school system is being squeezed because your entire state refuses to charge any corporations for their property tax, that means there aren’t resources. And there isn’t money to pay for the mentoring that is desperately needed. So you keep on getting bright and completely inexperienced Teach for America participants who eventually learn how to teach over the course of the two years they put into teaching before they head off to law school.

Nothing is going to change if all you do is give poor families a five thousand dollar voucher to spend on a twenty thousand dollar private school. If our nation keeps on treating teachers with condescending scorn, then they will keep quitting and public school students, charter or otherwise, will continue to suffer in the chaos.

If you’d like to detoxify your Christianity this Lent, check out my book How Jesus Saves the World From Us and tune into our Facebook Live video series #DetoxifyChristianity every Tuesday night at 9:30 pm EST starting on March 7th.

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