Can't we all just disagree?
Because we live in the age of social media, we speak only in superlatives (every meal is life, we respond to moderately amusing jokes with "I'm dead," a description of even the mildest scenario leaves us "shook). Because of this, every conflict in society is painted as an epic battle between good and evil, on the level of The Oddessy or Harry Potter. Online conversations about the relationship between educators and legislators have become like that. The NC GOP is Sauron, and the poor teachers are Hobbits in the minds of many people. (For those on the other side, reverse characters.) I keep seeing teachers post that they've been suffering for "the last 8 years" as though education hasn't been a political football for many decades. I see those against the rally describe teachers as lazy and overpaid "when you consider they have summers off." The worst posts imply the other side is morally bankrupt. Notice that we can just be in disagreement anymore; one of the sides has to be evil. What kind of example does this discourse set for our students?
Teachers Are Not Monolithic
If you want to show solidarity, dress the same. These t-shirts (which, in case you haven't been following, are exactly the same as the ones in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and West Virginia - they just change the state shape) automatically present the impression of uniformity, not just in clothes but in opinion. Obviously, anyone not supporting the rally, or even disagreeing with some nuance of the argument is against education and teachers and for ignorance.
The problem with that impression is that teachers are intelligent, educated, thinking people. When you put more than one thinking person in a room, you are likely to get disagreement about important things. (This is a lesson I learned from a teacher in middle school, by the way). There are teachers who don't believe they would do their jobs better if they were paid more money. There are teachers who don't believe all their problems would be solved if there were democrats in office. There are teachers who don't believe the lottery has benefitted their classrooms. There are teachers who keep their mouths shut because their opinions are not in line with the t-shirts and bumper stickers, but there are some willing to speak. Consider this courageous post from a Durham school teacher who has elected not to participate in the rally.
Real Progress is Slow Progress
Real problems aren't created in a day, which means they also won't be solved in a day. No matter how many teachers gather at the state house on Wednesday, they aren't going to return to their classroom on Thursday with their problems solved. They'll have gotten media coverage, but that's not the end goal, is it? What is the end goal? In all the online conversation, I haven't been able to find it.
Real progress involves the painstaking work of sitting down with motivated experts, gathering and analyzing relevant data, compromising on difficult issues, and passing laws. These activities can't be summed up with a hashtag. They don't get you on the news. They do take time. They do require calm and deliberative action. They do get results. Isn't that the goal?
Money is Mismanaged at the State and County Level
Here's what gets lost in the funding conversation. Education in NC is not underfunded, but individual schools are. According to their website, the per-pupil expenditure in Wake County is $8570, on par with private school tuition (results must be caused by something other than money - more on that in a minute). That means, if we are going to have a rally, we shouldn't really be having it at the legislative building. We should be having it at the county office.
Fifteen years ago, when I taught in Wake County, there was a different rally. There was a mandatory celebration at the PNC (then RBC) Center, required for all employees of the WCPSS in spite of the fact that there weren't enough seats. I don't know how much it costs to rent that arena, but I feel like it would buy a lot of paper and copier toner. The speaker was Jim Hunt. While I know he prides himself the education governor, he didn't speak for free. Two days before school started, we would have all rather been in our classrooms, but we were required to fight traffic find seats (or not, I sat on the floor) at this very expensive event. I am unable to find how many people work in the central office, but I know they are inefficient. "Keep four copies of anything you send to the central office," I was advised, "because that's how many times they are going to lose it and tell you that you failed to send it." That person was correct. I finally had to show up in person and hand walk my test scores from secretary to assistant to higher level assistant until I was certain that I wouldn't lose my license for failing to send something I had thrice sent.
By the time money gets to the school level, you are limited to a tiny number of copies per month, but it isn't because SCHOOLS in the plural are underfunded. It's because the money didn't get to you. That said I don't recall ever getting turned down for budget reasons when I needed to buy something. I was talking to a friend last week who just left public education, and she said the same. "There was never something I asked to buy for my classroom that I couldn't," she said.
Money Can't Solve All Problems
That conversation with my friend is what prompted me to write this. When we started swapping stories, they didn't sound fifteen years apart. She had a student chuck a backpack at her head; I had a student take his shirt off during class. In both cases, the kids in the room were more supportive than our administrators or the students' parent. She and I agreed that the biggest problems we had in public school weren't the kinds of problems that could be solved with more money.
The goal of public education should be education, but that has changed. The general public now expects schools to do everything from sunup to sundown from ages three to twenty-one (you only think it's 18). In addition to educational needs, schools are expected to meet students' nutritional, emotional, physical, and social needs. Expectations of schools have become unmanageable (I wrote about it in this post). Thirty years ago, if a kid came home complaining about a bully, his mom would have called the other boys' mom. Now, she calls the school. Dads used to teach kids about cars; now we expect auto shop to be a required course (and if a school doesn't offer it, the person complaining about it online doesn't volunteer his time to teach it). Replace that with your pet skill (sewing buttons, chopping vegetables, balancing a checkbook, making change, character education, obesity prevention, athletic ability, penmanship, drug prevention, bullying prevention . . . do I need to list more? because I can). Meanwhile, no one wants to add minutes to the day or days to the year. Money won't reduce these expectations; it may increase them.
Once people decided they wanted schools to raise kids, they stopped supporting them. Discipline a kid in school, and the parent you haven't seen all year will show up to complain about it. Have all the rallies you want; money won't create discipline or solve parenting problems.
Conclusion
Public schooling is the most complicated problem this country has. You can make a case that it is immigration or foreign relations or health care, but education is the only thing we promise to every single citizen whose expectations are always changing. Methods cannot be assessed in the short term, but the clientele has no patience for the analysis of the long term. As teachers, we should model patience. That's not going to happen with a hashtag and a rally, no matter how snazzy the t-shirt.
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