Let me begin by saying, I am the 2004 Teacher of the Year for the Sedalia, Missouri Public School District. My children are now raised, and I have time to devote to my students, which I willingly and freely do.
Given that, the points I express below about educational success are my beliefs based on my years of experience.
By the very definition of success, public schools, at least most of them, are doomed to failure. They have too many students. Most public schools do not have enough teachers, classroom space, or resources to have small schools with no more than ten students to one teacher.
Based on my experience with my at-risk students, the single biggest praise our teachers at the alternative school get is that our teachers care because we have time to work individually with students. (We average 10 to one.) The single biggest complaint about the nine sending schools that compose our alternative school is that the teachers have so many students in their classes that the at-risk students can do nothing and fail or act out and get sent to the office or ISS or EA or OSS. They get lost in the cracks, unless they find a school like ours. This seemed to be an opinion resounded at the National At-Risk Educators Network Conference in Feb. 2004.
If we re-vision education in this country, it must be student-emphasized.
When we start caring about where students are and where they need to be, and then developing individualized plans for them and their parents or guardians, then and only then will we in public education start making a difference.
But!!!!!!! Public school teachers do not have the time to individualize student learning. I know teachers on block schedules who have 35 students per class for three periods one day and four periods the next. That's 245 students over a two-day period.
In Missouri, there are only 175 student class days. That's not even one day per student. Another way of looking at the statistics: 90 minute class periods times 4 periods a day. That 360 minutes a day or 720 minutes every two days. That's about 3 minutes a student.
How long does it take a good teacher explain the difference between an apostrophe used for possession rather than for plural possession to a clueless student so that the student does an "Ahh."? Less than 3 minutes?
How can the average public school teacher individualize learning for that student and the other 244 EVERY day? How much time does that take?
I realize we are discussing charter schools' success here, but before we condemn public schools, perhaps we should use the same playing field.
That means an I.E.P. for every student, multiple conferences with every student and parent or guardian, daily assessment and revision of lessons that apply to each student.
Sounds like NCLB to me. Fortunately, I work in an alternative school where we are doing these things.
But?????where are we going to get the funding for our public schools that are not alternative schools? Who pays for the after-class hours of planning time needed? Some teachers in my district get just 200 minutes a week planning time. That's less than one minute per student. It's not enough given the number of students in our public school classes
For almost a century, public education has been run like an assembly line:
first grade, second, etc. through senior year. If the product, the student, missed something along the way, there was no time to stop the line and correct the problem. Perhaps what we need to do is to stop the assembly-line analogy and completely redefine education.
The problem is that despite the problems, there are still successes. Those schools that are successful do not want change and resist change.
Even those schools with severe problems, do not want change and resist it.
Consider Missouri schools in Kansas City and St. Louis. There are great success stories from these districts, but the overall statistics still seem abysmal to those who are outside the districts. Missourians resent all the public funding that has gone into Kansas City and St. Louis at the expense of the other districts in the state. Kansas City and St. Louis schools have charter schools, but they haven't been as successful as hoped.
I have a friend who "successfully" taught in a charter school in Kansas City. There were so many problems with the school this last year that it may lose its private funding. This is a school where the students were adopted by the employees of the funding source. I was thunderstruck to hear that the students in my friend's classroom got personal computers, vacations, and gifts worth nearly a thousand dollars for Christmas from the employees of the funding source. Still, the students may lose their charter school.
Throwing money at the problems did not solve them.
She also was a beginning teacher. She made over $32,000 her first year out of college. I am a tenured teacher, with twenty-five years experience with an MA in my subject area. This year I finally made $32,340, including my extra-duty pay.
When do we, American citizens, do something about the disparity in wages?
I do not teach for money, obviously, but this disparity between private and public funding may have something to do with the conflict between private and public schools.
I am digressing. Here then are the questions I posed:
1) How do we get enough funding to provide for the individualized education of every student in the US?
2) How do we find or build enough buildings to house students in "small schools" with a "ten-student to one-teacher" ratio?
3) Who Re-Visions education and how do we get others to join the bandwagon?
4) Who becomes responsible for individualizing the learning of every student? and who pays for the time required for the implementation?
5) What analogy do we apply to schools to change not only public perception of schools, but also the performance of students?
6) When do we do something about the disparity of funds spent to educate students? and to pay teachers?
Posted as a reply to:
"Successful" by Otho Tucker 
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