I am a former public school teacher, years ago when things were much different. I wasn't evaluated on how my students did on a test. I received a pay raise based on my abilities as a teacher. I taught at a small school system with support from my other teachers, administration, and parents. I didn't have stacks of red tape and meetings to sit through on a regular basis. Delainey is thirteen, so she doesn't have a firm career path chosen, but she is leaning towards education...music education. I wanted her to see other people advocating for themselves and their careers. I want her to learn that she must have a voice for herself in her career.
This rally was not about teacher pay. Teachers know that they won't become wealthy in this career. However, they expect, as we all do, that they will get raises based on their performance. Indiana ranks last in teacher salary raises over the last fifteen years. Last...that is something that we should be ashamed of in our state. Housing prices go up, gas prices go up, food, clothing, everything goes up. Teachers salaries should be going up as well, but in some cases, teachers are being expected to do more for the same wage. We should be appalled at the thought of not taking care of our teachers.
I don't know what kind of testing is done in other states. I don't live in other states, I live in Indiana. My daughter goes to school in Indiana. Last year she spent an entire school day taking a state mandated test. She had to be told to take bathroom breaks and to go to lunch. D is a good student. She doesn't have big anxiety issues. She doesn't have ADD/ADHD that is undiagnosed. She is a typical middle school student who spent an entire day taking a test that didn't teach her anything. She missed classroom time when she could have been learning new material rather than being tested. Her math teacher can tell you more about her ability than the test did, but she had to take the test.
In our home, we really don't put much emphasis on standardized testing. We know D's abilities, as do her teachers. We communicate when there are problems. We can't communicate with a test...it's black and white. But is it really? What if she had gone to school with a headache? Would that be her best work? What if we didn't have the means to feed her well at home? It's hard to think about a test when you are hungry. What if someone in her family were battling a terminal illness? It's hard to focus on anything when there are big things going on in life. But now in Indiana, our schools and teachers are evaluated on how students perform on those tests. I struggle to see how that is a fair way to evaluate anyone. I don't have a solution, but I know that more testing is not the answer, but that seems to be what gets thrown at schools.
This is getting to be rather long, so I am going to wrap this up. I don't have solutions, but we need to start finding them or our children will be the ones who suffer. I know that Dr. Sues wasn't talking about teachers, education, pay, testing, and everything else that Red for Ed means, but this sums up why I went to Indianapolis with Delainey and 15,000 (or more) other people.
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| Dr. Sues, The Lorax |
