Sam Studer
The National Center of Education Statistics states there are more than 49.5 million public-school students and 3.1 million teachers. Those teachers have a big responsibility in educating our youth.
That’s why teachers cannot be described as mediocre, good, and great. When talking about a teacher, words such as “amazing,” “caring,” and “insightful” should be used. We all know teachers who did not help our education. They hurt our education and set us behind. Yet, in my K-12 educational experience, I only had a few bad teachers. The problem becomes the teachers who are just average. They had no effect on my education, yet they did not hurt it. This is worst because it did not get me excited about learning. What we need are young educators who can spark passion in students.
The answer isn’t firing every average teacher. Even if we wanted to get rid of average teachers, it would be difficult. Many of these teachers have tenure. Tenure refers to protection that is offered to teachers who have completed temporary phase of employment. Most states have tenure laws that require school districts to give tenure to teachers. Once this happens, teachers are locked into their jobs, and many states do not care about performance when rewarding tenure. According to the American Progress Organization, “Only four states require that some evidence of teacher performance be considered in awarding tenure: Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Minnesota.”
The problem is creating better teachers is expensive and hard. Even if we got rid of all the underperforming and average teachers, their replacements might not be better.
Higher education needs to have a renewed focus on education programs. Once teachers get into the workforce, they should have mentors who need to go into classrooms and show teachers how they can improve. This should be done for teachers no matter how long they have been teaching. Faculty also need to take concerns seriously when parents and counselors bring them up, and these concerns should be addressed as soon as they come up. Things cannot slip through the cracks. We need to try to help the underperforming teachers out or help them improve.
The system cannot seem as if we are trying to punish the underperforming teacher but that we are trying to help them. Teachers can come from Ivy League schools and still be ineffective in the classroom. We need to create a system that helps to improve the quality of education.
There is no question that teachers play a major role in the quality of education that students receive. They also have one of the most difficult and underappreciated jobs in the United States. The Sioux City Journal shows this: “Within the next five years — if averages first outlined in a 2010 Iowa Department of Education report hold — between 30 percent and 40 percent of the teachers who first entered the classroom for the 2013-14 school year will be gone.” Now, it is time to come up with a solution that will help all students be successful. Teachers are preparing our youth to help us grow and solve problems that we do not know exist, and we must do the same for our teachers.