Ezra Solway
I do not subscribe to the principles of trickle-down theory, which argue for tax breaks on the most wealthy in order to stimulate the economy. This has failed in my book and continues to be a retrograde economic modality espoused by many in the Republican party. However, I believe a different trickle-down theory should be implemented, one that will not only stimulate the economy but also revitalize the nation. For the sake of parallelism, I will coin this theory “trickle-down teachers.”
This is the notion that if we provide our teachers with financial and creative autonomy at the top, it will trickle down to our students and eventually the production of society as a collective. Let’s face the unremitting truth: There is little extrinsic incentive for someone in this country to want to be a teacher. The emphasis on maintaining teacher quality in our school system is lackluster at best and pernicious at worst. Teachers comprise the very fabric of our country, as the future is ostensibly contingent on their success. Yet they are in many ways cast aside as secondary professionals, paid barely livable wages and forced to conform to a rigid educational system that has proved increasingly ineffective.
According to a recent Pearson index ranking, the United States comes up average in comparison to many European and Asian countries regarding “cognitive skills and educational attainment.” Nevertheless, the United States consistently remains at the top of the pack in educational spending, as more than $600 billion are allocated to the public school industry.
This lends credence to the burning question: How do we efficiently invest in education and mitigate the widening chasm in the system?
The first order of business is to make teaching more attractive in order to procure exceptional staff members. One way to do this is simply to pay them more and raise the standard of teaching. For the past few years this has been exemplified in The Equity Project Charter School in Manhattan, which pays each teacher $125,000 a year, double the normal salary, with a chance for a bonus. The teachers are required to participate in ongoing reviews throughout the year as well as four weeks of professional development. After four years at the charter school, eighth-graders tested much higher in math, science and English compared with similar students in local public schools.
One of the obvious difficulties of this is to maintain this high-level standard while retaining an already dwindling number of teachers in a large market. However, value needs to be added on the profession somehow, as countries like Finland require their teachers to have masters degrees. While our country is much larger and more diverse, it should still be our priority to communicate to prospective employees that it is a distinguished profession with good benefits.
Another factor contributing to educational woes has been the flawed testing system. On Saturday, President Obama proposed a plan to cut back standardized testing through his testing action plan, which reduces the amount of class time spent on standardized tests to 2 percent. Before, students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade were taking eight or more standardized tests a year, and as a recent report by the Council of the Great City Schools illustrates, more testing does not necessarily equate to better results. Moreover, teachers feel pressured to devote their curriculum to accommodating these tests, stripping them of their creative autonomy in the classroom.
The profound impact a teacher can make on a student’s education and vocational pursuit cannot be overlooked. I have been fortunate enough to have some truly brilliant teachers who have inspired me to broaden my horizons. Validating and investing in teachers will trickle down to our students and make the education system flourish again.
