Superintendent Matt Robinson sat down with the Sheridan Express Thursday to ponder the strengths and weaknesses of President Barack Obama's education plan and what it might mean for the Worth County school. President Obama gave a major policy address on education last Tuesday that could affect local schools. Obama called for more charter schools, longer school days and school years, more funding for early education (which could boost the area Head Start program), merit pay for teachers, and making it easier to get bad teachers out of the classrooms.
Obama stated in the address, to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, "Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy, and unacceptable for our children. We cannot afford to let it continue. What is at stake is nothing less than the American dream." But Obama's problem is that while everyone -- including Superintendent Robinson -- agrees with this assessment of American education, the problem is that there are as many ways to address the situation as there are people in education. And Robinson's opinions of Obama's prescriptions ranged from the supportive ("I'm all for more funding for head start.") to downright opposed ("It's not in the best interests of our school or students to have charter schools.") to somewhere in between.
Robinson said that he was all for recruiting more highly-qualified teachers and putting them in the classrooms. He said that in order for that to happen, policymakers needed to find creative ways of identifying and recruiting such teachers from the private sector without diluting the rigorous standards required of teachers. "There are plenty of good people who can teach who are in other professions," he said.
Regarding any stimulus money for the district, Robinson said that he wasn't sure yet how the money was going to be divided up and that a lot would depend on the guidelines. He said that it was likely that it would be used for short-term projects rather than hiring more personnel or raising salaries, seeing that it was a one-time shot in the arm. For instance, it could be used on school projects such as heating and cooling, doors, or better security.
Regarding longer days, Worth County has already gone to longer days in order to meet new state requirements for graduation. And schools have started around Labor Day and ended by Memorial Day, give or take a week or two, for a long time. Robinson said that if the school were to have longer days, there might be problems with teachers wanting more pay for more work, which, in turn, would be a question of where the funding would come from. "And longer is not always better," he said.
Speaking about early childhood education, Robinson said that it was a push in the right direction. He said that brain research has shown that kids were likely to develop more in their earlier, which meant that it makes more sense to reach them at an early age. In fact, he noted that Colorado was looking at starting children in kindergarten at four years.
"I agree that we are behind in many ways," said Robinson. "School buildings need repair and we have lost a lot of good teachers to business," he said. But Robinson said that the school didn't just want federal mandates, he said that the school did a good job of controlling its own affairs and that he wanted to keep it that way. "It seems that we're always being asked to do more by the federal and state governments," he said. "It doesn't always seem fair, but that's the game we play." Robinson said that a lot of these issues would be solved by more equitable funding, citing the ongoing lawsuit by the school and many other schools against the state to try to force them to develop a more equitable funding formula.
But while he was generally for more local control, Robinson said that there was one area in which he "almost wished" for more of a federal role -- testing for students. He said that although Missouri has some of the most rigorous state testing in the country, it did not show up because Missouri was being compared to states with less rigorous testing.
Robinson said that one of the biggest challenges facing teachers was keeping up with the students; he noted that many times, students would master new technology before teachers did. "It's amazing what kind of original material that kids can produce with new technology," he said. He said that it was getting to the point where students were living in two different worlds -- one of their own and one in which they were getting drilled with questions all the time. "And then we wonder why we are not getting through," he said. Robinson said that he supported some forms of merit pay; for instance, although he thought pay based on test scores was a bad idea, he thought that rewarding teachers for going above and beyond the call of duty would be a good idea. For instance, teachers could be rewarded for doing professional development in the technology field in order to keep up with their students. "I'm all for merit pay if it's set up in the right way," said Robinson.
Robinson said that one of the dangers of putting in a merit pay system was that it risked creating a situation where it would be comparing apples and oranges. Missouri is one of the few states in the country which allows merit pay; however, he said that having a merit pay system based on test scores would not work because "there were too many variables." For instance, one group that tested well on the Missouri tests might be a totally different group than one that did not test so well. "On one hand, why shouldn't we reward those teachers who go beyond the call of duty?" he asked. On the other hand, Robinson said, "There are tons of variables that could account for how kids do on a test."
Obama called for more mentoring of teachers; however, Superintendent Robinson said that Missouri already has a strong mentoring program in place. In Missouri, new teachers are required to go through two years of mentoring with a more experienced teacher. He said that it was not a perfect system, but that if the school could keep a good teacher for five years, there is a good chance that they will stay. Robinson said that the success of a good mentoring program was dependent on individual situations; for instance, in a small school like Worth County, it was difficult for a teacher and their mentor to have common planning periods because the school had limited offerings. Another example involved the area of teacher dismissal; Robinson said that there was always a proceedure in place for schools in Missouri to deal with tenured teachers who were ineffective. He said that it depended on administrators doing their job and monitoring classrooms for effectiveness and documenting them; he said that while it was easy to dismiss teachers in their first year or two who were ineffective, it was a lot more difficult to do so if the teacher had set up roots in the community.
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