My last piece did not have concrete suggestions for how to improve education and how to make life better for teachers. So, I should go through my credentials first. This is my 25th total year in education. I have taught Social Studies and English in high schools and intermediate schools. I have taught in public and private high schools. I was also an elementary counselor for a few years. I’ve spent the last ten years as a special education teacher, support facilitator, and case manager. I haven’t done it all, but I’m close.

1. No more STAAR and any other state equivalent.

As George W. Bush once said, “is our children learning?” The idea behind standardized testing is okay in theory. We want to know if we are teaching the same stuff and if our students are learning that stuff. Using a company to complete that exam is wasteful spending (to tune of well over a billion per state). Not only that, but these tests take four and five hours. This is especially cruel at the elementary level. You aren’t measuring reading skills, writing skills, or math skills. You are measuring endurance.

Most districts have instructional coaches or what we call instructional specialists. They can write local exams for the district.  These tests would measure those same things but in far less time. If I can sit for a test for 30 minutes to an hour then the chances of me concentrating throughout that entire increase geometrically. What most citizens don’t get is how many days we lose to these exams. You have four different days lost to five STAAR exams. You have a mock exam for each one of those as well. That’s another four days. Then, each class has common assessments usually once a six weeks on average. There are six days right there in that particular class. Then, you get the SAT and PSAT. Seniors will take something called the TSIA. Last year we took a field test for the STAAR that lost us another couple of days. Look up and you are losing a month. That doesn’t even count the days where we specifically cover STAAR strategies.

2. Let Educators Write the Curriculum 

For a brief moment let’s ignore critical race theory and issues specifically related to social studies. Focusing on Texas for a second, we have stuff we call Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Each course has over 20 with some as many as 30. How in the hell does anyone expect to adequately address all of those thoroughly in a school year? Remember, we are losing a month to standardized testing. We miss more class time with lockdown drills, fire drills, shooter drills, and all of the other nonsense that normally occurs.

Teachers have been trained to identify those things which we would call “power standards.” In other words, they are non-negotiables that we want every kid to know. Each course will have between 6 and 12 of those a year. Focusing on those allows each kid to demonstrate mastery and people to grow up actually knowing and understanding things. Collectively we know a lot about how people learn. We know what they need to know and what is more trivial. We’ve been trained to do this. Let us do it. You don’t call a carpenter to fix your toilet. You don’t go to a podiatrist to remove your appendix. Politicians don’t know what we do. They may have reading skills, writing skills, and math skills but they don’t understand how you effectively teach this to children. Don’t tell us what to teach. Don’t tell us how to teach it unless you happen to be an expert.

3. Pay Veteran Teachers More

This will be an unpopular opinion, but rookie teachers are fairly compensated. I mentioned this yesterday, but I get less than 15,000 more than a rookie teacher 25 years in. I have a masters degree and a special education stipend that augments my salary. The “steps” between years end up being about 600 dollars a year. When I get to year 25 in most districts I no longer get steps. In short, the difference between me today and me when I was a rookie is night and day. I knew a lot about my content but I knew very little about how to get that knowledge to the students. Furthermore, there is a ton of accumulated wisdom that has nothing to do with teaching directly, but makes me far better at my job.

If a teacher gets a masters in their teaching field I would give them an extra 5000 a year instead of just one. I would double the gap between steps. Teachers normally bail before their fifth year. I’d give bonuses at five year intervals to reward teachers for staying. In short, you want wiser and more experienced teachers. Youth and enthusiasm is great, but we need teachers to stay. They will stay if you reward them with something more than jeans days and breakfast tacos in the lounge.