No shortcuts to anywhere worth going…

I feel for the teachers out there who are doing a great job and not being rewarded for it. I can’t imagine how frustrating it is to try and not be able to counteract all the problems that kids face even before they get into the classroom in the morning. The national standards are very strict and many have expressed a desire for professional freedom.

I know my feathers were ruffled to learn that my school’s test scores were more important than our student newspaper winning national competitions—and while I think extracurricular opportunities deserve more weight, I understand now why testing counts.

It’s because the tests aren’t hard. They are basic information that is relatively necessary to perform well after high school, either in a job or in college. I don’t plot graphs, and I don’t use logarithms, but I use geometry and algebra at least once a week. After 12 years any student should have had time to learn fractions, basic sentence structure and spelling, and some relevant history. Chances are it’s more useful than students realize.

Teachers who are frustrated by the limits of teaching to a test should jump at the chance to show that they can handle a classroom, not be limited by teaching to the middle, and be rewarded for going above and beyond—by more than an apple on teacher appreciation day. Teachers’ unions, on the other hand, often come out against merit pay (though many teachers opt in to voluntary merit-pay programs) and against offering more choice to parents (who should also be privy to the results and statistics about their district). That leads me to believe that they aren’t representing the best interests of teachers.

Testing is, granted, imperfect. But all professionals are accountable for the job they do, and teaching is perhaps even more important. Teachers are paid by the public and should therefore be accountable to the public. I want more of my taxes to go to the teachers who taught me well, and less to the teachers who did not.