I’m a big believer in our public schools and believe they lay the foundation for the future of our country. As go our schools, in time, the country. While I know that we have any number of pressing issues in America, if we don’t begin to have the difficult conversations about our schools, it’ll only be worse for future generations.
I want to praise the Iowa House for passing a bill to give teachers a pay increase. It’s both well-deserved and long overdue. While teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers, many states are now recognizing that all other issues in education won’t matter if this trend continues.
My concern is for every teacher I've ever had the privilege to know. For them, it was never about the money. A pay increase is merely a temporary fix. But the reality is that, as the autonomy of the classroom continues to dissolve, the best and brightest will continue to leave.
Relative simplicity in 2002 quickly evaporated
In 2002, I came into the profession as an eighth grade social studies teacher. Even then, veteran colleagues would share how much worse the job had become since they had begun their careers. I vividly recall my social studies counterpart (about 50 at the time) saying she would never recommend coming into the profession to anyone. Not what you want to hear as a first-year teacher.
The biggest complaint I heard was that they were losing more and more of the autonomy they had once had with each passing year.
At the time, I was given a curriculum for eighth grade social studies. That was it. It’s almost scary to think teachers had even more autonomy before I started. I created my own lessons and my own assessments, and taught at my own pace. So long as I followed and completed the curriculum, it was solely my choice regarding activities, lessons, assignments and pace of my classroom.
Even with such autonomy, I soon found out that the oversight was only just beginning.
Although I was a licensed teacher, I had three years to prove I could teach. According to a state-mandated evaluation via a portfolio, I had to provide evidence of 42 criteria based on eight standards. I was assigned a mentor whom I had to meet with once a week, as well as attend district meetings several times a quarter. I realize these were part of both state and federal mandates, but, as a professional, I found the constant supervision from mentors and administrators to be offensive.
After my portfolio was approved, I thought the oversight would subside, but the supervision only increased until I chose to resign years later.
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Teaching isn’t a career that believes you’re a professional until you prove you aren’t; you’re constantly having to prove you’re a professional.
Like all teachers, we were expected to attend “all the other” meetings: staff meetings, professional developments, professional learning communities, curriculum meetings, team meetings and many more. And again, over the span of 20 years, the numbers of meetings only increased while the autonomy of the classroom was becoming less and less.
Initiatives, administrators, instructional coaches pile up
With each passing year, new initiatives, policies and mandates would come and go from federal, state and district levels. Some, like No Child Left Behind, would diminish only to be replaced with the Every Student Succeeds Act. And while some were simply replaced with another, every year something new was added to the teachers’ plates. In 20 years, I don’t recall anything ever being taken off of that plate.
In addition, to ensure the districts were in compliance with these mandates and to oversee that teachers were also following these initiatives, there were increases in the numbers of administrators and “instructional coaches." In time, what was once my class became less uniquely mine and more the same as all others.
By the time I resigned, my own style of grading was replaced with Standards-Referenced Grading. This included new policies (though teachers objected) instructing all teachers to grade based on a 50% bottom. By doing nothing, students earned half credit. No longer was there a purpose to assignments, as I could no longer add them to a student's grade.
So yes, I could assign work, but students didn’t have to do it.
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As a result, more students failed assessments but, as they had unlimited opportunities to pass, I was spending more time grading than teaching. Not only were all tests, lessons and activities the same as all other classes, but the expectation was that all grade levels and subject areas would be paced within a few days of each other.
What was once my class became anything but. It became the same as all others. And while I agree that there is merit and it may have been well intended, I think it has done far more harm than good.
Today, there are obvious concerns about grade inflation, as was to be expected.
Low-bar positive reinforcement replaces discipline
Discipline was replaced with something called PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports), which I adamantly opposed. Teachers were required to fill quotas by giving students positive “points” for doing what was expected of them: Walking down the hall appropriately, remaining seated at lunch, etc.
It was the exact opposite of the old quote, “You don’t give a man a medal for not robbing a bank.” For simply doing what was expected, students were rewarded, while consequences began to disappear.
In my early years of teaching, if a student was disruptive to the point of taking other students off task, after several warnings I’d send them to the office with the intent that they would make up that time after school. As school policies took that authority away from teachers, behaviors got worse. Teachers weren’t allowed to send students to the office. When they did, the students were simply brought back into the classroom.
A colleague once sent a student to the office as the student picked up a desk and threw it at another student while screaming obscenities. Within 10 minutes the student was returned to the class because it wasn’t appropriate to miss any “instruction time.” What message does that give to the other students in that class? And maybe more important, what does it say to a teacher?
Quite simply, teachers are the most accountable with the least amount of authority.
In my first year teaching, I made $30,000. I was single, no kids. The cost of living where I lived was relatively low compared with the rest of the nation.
Pay for teachers is based on two lanes: 1) years of experience and 2) level of education. I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English, but it was only after I earned my master’s degree that I became a teacher.
During my career I would continue to take classes to become an administrator (although I never did), which allowed me to jump more lanes as my career evolved. Most of my colleagues were busy raising families and never had the time to take advantage of the opportunities to increase their pay, like I did.
My pay increased, but the respect I received decreased
After 20 years, I chose to leave the profession at 47. At the time, I was making nearly $90,000 as both a teacher and (eventual) high school golf coach. Single, no kids, it was more than enough. If I had remained a teacher for 10 more years, I would have been making over $120,000 and would have hit the “rule of 88” (your age plus the number of years you worked must equal 88 to receive a full pension through the Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System).
I can’t emphasize enough: While it was more than enough money, it wasn’t nearly enough given what I was being told to do and the lack of respect to do it.
What is clearly the most important, and I’ve yet to mention, was my students and their families. The amount of time I spent filling out template after template by the administrative oversight that made them should've been spent building relationships with those who matter most in teaching: the students.
After all, that’s why teachers choose this profession. What’s more, it’s the adults in the classroom, who know the faces and names of their students, who are the experts. Most of those from outside my class, who were telling me best practices, were the ones with the least amount of classroom experience. Each year, more is asked of teachers: A first-year administrator has no idea what it means and what it takes to be a teacher today.
It’s time to stop the increase in administrative oversight and allow teachers to do the jobs they know how to do.We can certainly pay teachers like the professionals they are, but until we start treating them like the professionals they are, the best and brightest will continue to leave.
Ben Stein is a former teacher and coach in the West Des Moines school district. This column originally appeared in the Des Moines Register.
