Public Education

In a letter in yesterday's Des Moines Register, Edward Moses of Knoxville states is writing about the problem of too many sources of funding for public schools in Iowa, with money coming from the federal government, state government, property taxes, state income tax surcharges, and local option sales taxes, the last two of which only apply to some school districts in the state, not all of them, although he neglects to mention that. Anyway, in part of his rant, he criticizes teachers for wanting to make a decent salary. He writes:

The "greatest generation" was usually taught in one-room schoolhouses, and generally by a high school graduate or even an eighth-grade graduate. How did they accomplish so much with so little? The teachers used to put the students first instead of crying where they rank in salaries around the country. And nowadays it would appear that home-schoolers are outshining the public school students.

Mr. Moses asks how members of the "greatest generation" could accomplish so much when being taught by teachers who were merely high school graduates. I admit that I was not educated at that time, so I have no firsthand experience of what went on in schools then, but at that time, not as much education was necessary to get by in the world. Students in these one-room schoolhouses were not taking classes as advanced as many that students today have the option of taking. Were high school students better educated back in the 1920s than they are today? According to the National Association of School Boards, since 1920, literacy rates, graduation rates, and college attendance rates have all increased greatly.

Next, Mr. Moses implies that today's teachers are complaining about where their pay ranks nationally instead of putting students' education first. Now most teachers who I know personally do but their students first. Many of these teachers are spending some of their own money to make sure they have the supplies that they need to teach. They also work longer hours than required by their contract to ensure that students have every opportunity. One of my coworkers is regularly at school before 7:00 although we don't have to be there until 7:30, she, as well as many others, is there routinely past 3:00, when out contract time is over. Just because public school teachers perform a service that is intended to help people doesn't mean that they have to sit silently when their salaries start to decline in comparison to teachers in other states. Teachers deserve to make a decent living too.

Finally, Mr. Moses ends the paragraph quoted above by stating that home-schoolers appear to be "outshining public school students." I don't know if home schooled students are doing that much better than public school students as a whole. Certainly there is a large part of the home-schooled population that does do better than a great number of their public-schooled counterparts. News reports often show home-schooled students winning spelling bees, geography bees, and other academic competitions. Some of these students spend a significant amount of their time preparing for these competitions. Also, I'd be willing to bet that most of my students could do a lot better if I had the opportunity to work with them in groups of four or fewer instead of teaching 20 to 30 of them at a time.

I was going to just let this letter go without comment, but I am just tired of people unfairly criticizing public school teachers. Now I know that the author of the letter most likely won't see this, I could write a letter to the paper instead, but I'd have to edit it down some as I'm sure it's too long. Besides, my main point in writing this was just to blow off some steam from frequently reading letters in which my profession is criticized.