Beyond the initial shock and awe of being a first year teacher, I feel like I’ve taken a big, giant step in my life when it comes to understanding how the real world works.  Specifically, I speak of the bureaucracy that exists in the education sector.

I work in a very poor district, in virtually every way. Mapleton Public Schools is the smallest district in the Denver-Metro area. The building that I work in is the same building my mother went to junior high at in 1968.  I student-taught at a different school in the district and we had no books.  None.  The teacher that I was working with made copies of books, information, periodicals, and articles for about 120 students, each day.  Also, and quite possibly most importantly, our district and the constituency that makes up the population of it, has not passed a bond in 17 years.

In the spring of this last school year (2008-2009), our superintendent had a district wide meeting and presented us with a slide-show with information about how our district compares to others in the Denver Metro area.  If you click on the image to the left, you can see that compared to every other district, we spend the least amount of money on students that any other district.  Keeping in mind that last year was my first year, I was shocked.  Other teachers around me, were not.

Money

The lack of support from the community is evident by the lack of funding.  Our district is made up of the elderly and immigrants (legal or illegal).  There’s no real reason why they would want to pass a bond or mill levy.  To add to the problem, part of the district is unincorporated into any city.  This means very low income tax, property tax, and sales tax.   This leads to businesses that desperately want to  keep the status-quo.  In November of 2008, the district put forth a bond and mill levy that the school district needed badly.  This bond would raise property tax and the mill levy would raise sales tax.   I live in the district and I would be taxed, just like everyone else.  I calculated the amount of money it would be, monthly, that I would be paying: $11 a month.  That’s as much as a movie ticket to our local theater.

The local businesses absolutely defied all efforts for the bond and mill levy to pass.  They protested on the street, they informed their customers of the tax hike, and they talked of corruption in the administration, a very serious accusation.  The bond and mill levy failed to pass by a margin of 12-15%.  To the lead up of the election, it turns out that people who are closely linked to the bigger local businesses, had been illegally taking down signs put out by the school district and had been stealing campaign information and materials.  This information had been made public two weeks prior to the election.  It was too late.

This year, they will try again to pass the bond and mill levy for the eighteenth year in a row.  With the economy down for a year now, our superintendent planned last year to have a furlough this year.  This would be a week long break that would save on buses, power, heating, and water.  I don’t remember the exact amount of money it saves, but it saves all certified teachers from loosing their jobs.  The timing of the furlough, I’m hoping, will be in the middle of October, a month prior to the November elections.  This would mean that students would be running around for a week due to lack of funds and hopefully people would see this and hopefully vote for the bond.

Reform

My dealings with the bureaucratic side of education has been limited and brief.  For my first year, I was not considered full-time but I did receive benefits in a limited manner.  I did not join the district union because I did not have the funds to do so.  I plan on joining this year, once I receive my first paycheck as a full-time teacher.

When considering the inner workings of the education system and reform on a national/federal level, the obvious road blocks pop up and most subscribe to the theory that as failure.  No Child Left Behind has left behind many critics.  President Bush’s efforts shouldn’t be thrown out, though.  With NCLB, the accomplishments of accountability are evident and are based off of evidence.  So very, very few industries, understand the value of a standards based hierarchy.  There’s a level that must be reached or taught, one must achieve those standards, and then an evaluation of those standards are to be given to the constituency of that system.  This is the THEORY of the current model.  The PRACTICE is much different though.

I don’t choose to lament on the problems of NCLB, but it must be said that the aren’t academic in the sense of creating effective teachers.  I think some, if not all, of my colleagues would agree that the problems lie with in the teacher expectations and the translations of state testing.  This being my first year, I am unaware of other states and how they identify scores.  But it’s useless to talk about the state of education if you don’t actually look forward.   Change, cultural or political, for our nation starts with our education system.  I’m sure we’re aware of the scores of developing nations and the business that flourishes from them.  This is undeniable.

In thinking of education reform,  I think politicians need to understand that the motive is not FORM, but RE-form.  This, to many teachers, means using resources that exist and are in current use.  I am a teacher with a great deal of training.  I spent two years at a community college deciding what I wanted to do, chose the career path of a youth pastor, spent a year at a university for that, then changed to secondary education.  This was after my third year of post-secondary education and added three more years.  Essentially, I spent four years in a youth focused programs.  I am one of the few who don’t have a masters degree in my building, let alone the whole district.  Education IS an industry that is in high demand.  Teachers desperately seek jobs each summer and teachers work very hard to stay competitive in their current positions.

There is a dirty assumption that even our president has with our current education system:

We will recruit an army of new teachers and develop innovative ways to reward teachers who are doing a great job, and we will reform No Child Left Behind so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

This assumption is that a new army of teachers is needed in the first place.  I can speak for myself and the school I work in and, no, we do not need an army of new teachers.  I don’t think there’s any harm in replacing those who do not do their jobs, but identifying this will/has become a laborious task with MANY different variables to take into account (I’m speaking of replacing teachers in an academic sense). I am happy to see that they would reward teachers for doing a great job, but what is a great job? How is that defined?  Obviously, supporting schools that need improvement is a must.  No one would agree there (unless you’re part of the last administration in the White House).

As my last note on reform, I will say that the quote above was taken directly from the Obama web site and is part of a four paragraph statement on the goals and objectives of education reform.  I feel as though that education reform will come, but not in the next four years.