A cultural shift is needed to save education, said participants in a discussion about school reform in the Nelson Poynter library on Sept. 28.
The discussion was hosted by the College of Education, the honors program and Kappa Delta Pi, an education honors society, to follow up to the screening of “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” on Sept. 12.
“School is only one of the building blocks,” said Karin Braunsberger, a professor of marketing. Home life is an important aspect of academic success, she said, and the film focused only on students with involved parents.
Braunsberger said active parents make great schools.
Vivian Fueyo, dean of the College of Education, said teachers could help parents become more involved. Teachers need to reach out and tell parents “I want you involved because it will help your child” because schools aren’t connecting with some parents, she said.
Parent involvement isn’t a dichotomy, but a spectrum, said Malcolm Butler, professor of education. Knocking on the school door every day and attending bake sales isn’t the only way a parent can be involved in education.
It’s about expectations, said Elsie Barnard, a retired educational psychologist. When she was in school, “we knew what was expected of us,” she said.
“But we respected education,” she said. Students need to have the mindset that when they go to school, it’s time to “go to work.”
However, while parent involvement is important, some factors can’t be controlled by the school, so the school has to adapt to the environment, Fueyo said.
She told the group about a middle school student who skipped in-school suspension to attend an algebra class he wasn’t enrolled in. The child’s friends said the teacher was fun and engaging and convinced him to attend.
“That’s what happens when you’re in a classroom where all the pieces are there,” she said.
Keeping teachers in the classroom long enough to develop those skills is a critical problem, however, as nearly half of new teachers leave the field within five years, according to a study by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, an education think tank.
This costs school districts $7.3 billion annually, the study concluded, and particularly affects the most troubled schools in low-income neighborhoods.
Teachers have also become a political target, said Thomas W. Smith, the honors program director. Pay isn’t the only factor that plays into keeping good teachers, but also respect and prestige, which has been ebbing.
“This is toxic,” he said.
Students come to school with their parents’ feelings toward teachers, Barnard said.
“It just makes teachers feel bad,” said Barnard, who counseled teachers in Pinellas County and Massachusetts for over 30 years. “They’re always left feeling like they’re not making it.”
More is expected of teachers, as well, she said. Some parents think the school will fix a child’s behavioral problems. “Those things are tough to deal with” and make it hard to retain teachers, she said.
One parent in attendance said that her youngest child had significant problems focusing in school and was eventually diagnosed with “borderline attention deficit disorder.”
“Some parents would not be supportive of teachers,” she said, but in her house, she took the teacher’s side by default. “I had to be on top of it.”
As the politicization of teachers continues, policies that link standardized test scores to teacher employment and compensation have become more popular.
When jobs are based on FCAT scores, teachers have to choose between educating students and teaching to the test, Butler said. Teachers struggle with learning how to do both, he said.
Standardized testing has other consequences, as well, he said. When a school’s test scores are low, the school’s grade is low, so it receives less funding. Property values in the area served by the school will also drop, exacerbating the problem.
Gina Novakovich, an education student, is currently interning at a school and has learned some of the difficulties that an inflexible, mandated curriculum can bring. Students can get frustrated and lose motivation if they don’t get a concept but it’s time to move onto the next subject, she said.
Novakovick said she does not have any second thoughts about her choice in career.
“No, I’m in the right field. I love it,” she said, but the strict controls were “alarming.”
“It’s a political quagmire,” Barnard said. Funding comes through the state, which diverts money away from the neediest schools and gives it to the highest achieving students, she said.
“When politicians get involved in education, education goes down the drain,” said Braunsberger, who has also taught in Germany, U.K., and North Africa. “That has to stop. … Give the teachers the tools they need and appoint teachers” to policy-making committees, she said.
While working on systemic change, teachers and communities have to continue working on making better schools, Butler said.
“The school is a microcosm of the community … but the community might also be a microcosm of the school,” he said. Teachers, parents and students need to work together to get the most out of their schools.
Students expect to do well in college but don’t take important prerequisite classes, Butler said. If students don’t take Algebra I in middle school, they are much less likely to succeed in college, he said.
“One of the most important things students can do is say ‘I want to go to college’ to their teachers,” Smith said.
Butler recommended that individuals get involved in schools, rather than waiting for fixes from the top.
Photo by Daniel Mutter
