Testing, Teaching, And Tenure—

Education Through The Eyes Of Five Generations

By Nancy K. Crevier

What makes the educational system in America good? In what areas could there be improvement? What kinds of changes to education need to happen, and how can they happen?

The Newtown Bee asked five residents ranging in age from middle school to post-retirement to think about education in broad terms, as well as on a local level. Several issues were common to the age groups, but whether those issues fell into the category of “good” for education or “bad” for education was viewed differently.

Overall, education in our nation gets decent grades from Les Burroughs, Pam Buchler, Chris Tomacek, Matthew Mossbarger, and Beth Uniacke.

Matthew Mossbarger is an eighth grade student at Newtown Middle School, and president of the student council there. “I and my friends realize now that school is important. I didn’t always like school and complained about having to go,” admitted Matthew. “But now that we’re in middle school, we look at the positives and have started to like it more,” he said.

Teachers are one good aspect of education, at least in Newtown, said Matthew, and are an important part of a good learning experience. What makes a good teacher is knowing that the teacher loves what they are doing. “I like how teachers always try to make activities fun. That keeps it interesting,” said Matthew. He appreciates that most of his teachers give homework that is relevant. “It’s about an hour a night, and that seems good,” he said. He and his friends do not like to receive homework, though, that does not build on what they have learned that day, or is work given just to make sure it meets a particular time quota for doing school work at home.

Subject testing and standardized testing does not bother Matthew. “Knowing that you have a test forces you to study,” he said, and if a student has been paying attention throughout the school year, mastery tests should not be a problem. However, he does think that preparing for standardized tests can be restrictive for teaching. “Sometimes a teacher might start talking about something really interesting, but then they have to stop and get back to what they are required to teach us,” he said.

Feeling Secure

A feeling of security when in school is important to learning, said Matthew. Worries about what goes on outside of the classroom would make it hard to focus on what is being taught. Safety, he said, is not taken for granted in Newtown. “Our school is well prepared. We expect the unexpected with fire drills and lockdown drills. That’s a good thing,” he said. At Newtown Middle School, he said, most students do not worry about bullying issues, either. “Kids can get picked on in school. Sometimes you have to be with kids you wouldn’t choose to be with otherwise. Our schools teach the importance of how you treat others,” said Matthew.

School buildings need to be well maintained. At NMS, he said, heating and air conditioning problems affect students’ learning.

Part of a good learning experience involves socializing, he said, and he likes that between classes and at after school activities there are opportunities to be with his friends. After school activities are another place to broaden learning experiences, said Matthew. “It’s a chance to get to know the teachers who are involved [as advisors] better, too,” he pointed out.

He would like to see more choices offered outside of academics during the school day. “I take five academics, and I think it is preparing me for high school, but the only elective I have is Spanish and one other that changes during the school year. I would like it if foreign language started earlier than seventh grade, and if we had Spanish every day, maybe for a shorter period. It’s hard when you have it only three times a week and then if there is a weekend in between to pick it up again the next week,” said Matthew.

The school day starts too early at NMS, he said. “I’m lucky that I have two nonacademic courses early in the day. It would be hard to be alert if I had an academic like math first thing,” Matthew said. A little more time between classes would help when going from one end of the building to the other, and a longer lunch period would give students much needed time to wind down. “We could shorten the learning lab part of the break,” he suggested, “so we have more time to eat and visit.” Shorter classroom periods might make it easier to retain the focus on learning, too, he said.

The Student Teacher Connection

Now in his sixth semester at the University of Connecticut, majoring in biological sciences and minoring in psychology, Chris Tomascak is a 2007 graduate of Newtown High School. Speaking specifically to his high school education, Chris said that he found the student to teacher ratio then to be sufficient for the material taught in high school. “Every traditional class — math, sciences — allowed enough teacher/student interaction, and many specific teachers were experienced at getting the class involved and making it feel more personal,” he said. The variety of courses offered at Newtown High School was “outstanding,” said Chris.

Higher education received a somewhat lower grade from Chris, so far as teaching is concerned. “There are a large number of wonderful professors, but there are also many who are mostly researchers, who happen to teach. Many professors at universities are there for research and see teaching as a side requirement,” he observed.

Students at NHS are used to routine days, so the loose structure of the college schedule is an adjustment that students must be ready to make in post-high school education, said Chris. In addition, different learning styles are harder to address in college. Students must be adaptable to different types of teaching , and accept class sizes of more than 200 students.

Chris believes that standardized tests serve as a superficial comparison of students and noted that tests like the SATs are being removed from many college requirements. “The reality is, that every student learns in a different way,” Chris said, “and is able to recall that knowledge through different media.”

He feels that more government funding would increase education quality and allow the hiring of more teachers. But he admitted that he is unsure from where that funding could come.

Maintaining Morale

Pam Buchler and her husband, Bill, have two children at Middle Gate School in Newtown. Both of the Buchlers are college educated, and Ms Buchler owns her own business, Aquarian Caterers.

Ms Buchler also cites teacher quality as being essential to a good education, and on the local level, has found teachers and education in Newtown to be very good. She would like to see the school days tweaked locally, with later start times for the middle and high school students, and an extended — but not full day — kindergarten implemented. “Maybe a flexible schedule would work for kindergarten. There is too much for teachers to cram into a two-and-a-half-hour day,” she said.

She worries that underfunding results in low teacher morale. “Cuts mean that workloads for instructors are huge. When a teacher has 30 or 35 kids in a classroom, I wonder, how is one teacher doing this?” she said. Budget cuts that take away educational assistants also adversely affect the classroom. “We devalue our teachers when we don’t pay them well, and we ask so much of them,” she said. “Teachers are the ones showing our kids the world. They are the sounding board for creativity and dreams. They should be taken care of and respected.”

But even while she had great praise for teachers, Ms Buchler is concerned that tenure allows incompetent teachers to remain in the system and does not encourage teachers to continue to excel every year. “We should get rid of tenure. Teachers should have to be kept on their toes as much as our students are. There needs to be some kind of incentive program instead,” suggested Ms Buchler, and added that family participation in schooling is essential to success.

Let Teachers Teach

The focus on No Child Left Behind and standardized tests has had a negative impact on learning. It is crippling to a teacher’s ability to teach, said Ms Buchler. “Standardized testing stifles a teacher’s teaching style. Our country is so wrapped up in standardized testing, that I wonder if we see the big picture,” she said. “I don’t really know what is learned from standardized tests. I don’t think you get to know the true student through testing,” said Ms Buchler. “If we just let teachers teach, I think everything will equalize over the years. Some years you would have better teachers than others, but testing and tenure don’t make a difference there now. We still have variance in teaching abilities. The teachers are human, after all.”

One area that education excels in today is technology, Ms Buchler said. “Technology has opened the doors for so much, and kids have information right at their fingertips. It is a powerful tool and that’s a plus.’” She does fear that current technology has caused students to lose valuable verbal and written communication skills, though.

Caution should be taken, she thinks, when cutting school subjects like the sciences, art, and music “that bring great hope to humanity. Are we creating inquisitive minds by cutting these subjects?” she asked. She believes that nationwide, schools are underfunded in the sciences and arts. It is not enough for children to be “book challenged,” she said, but rather that they be challenged equally in problem solving. Nor should the value of after school activities be underrated, said Ms Buchler.

The greatest improvement schools need to make is in preparing students for college, said Ms Buchler. “Kids are not prepared for higher education, especially in math. We have to make the basics available. I’d like to see a world where everybody gets a chance to experience a college education, too. People should not have to go into debt for a college education. It’s become an elite institution. If every child had the chance to go to college, maybe we would produce more world leaders.”

Connecting School And Home

“Education prepares our children to be future leaders,” agreed Beth Uniacke, a Newtown resident who, like her husband, Kim, is a college graduate. The Uniackes have two children, Kyle, who is a college graduate, and Kristie, now a junior in college. “Dedicated teachers make a huge difference in a student’s schooling experience,” she said. She cited Phil Cruz, a teacher in the Newtown system, as an example. “My children never had the pleasure of having Mr Cruz as a teacher, but the many stories I have heard proved time and time again that he went above and beyond what was expected of him,” she said. Teachers have a difficult job, and salaries are not always in line with the importance of the field, said Ms Uniacke, but it is also teachers that can be the bad thing about education when an educator no longer has the ability or desire to teach.

“I feel there are many educators that are burned out and no longer effective, but due to tenure are kept on,” she said.

The unreasonably high cost of a college education is the other area in which education is failing, Ms Uniacke said. “I feel if you want a college education, it should be available to all.”

In order for education to improve, a strong connection between school and home is necessary regarding a student’s progress, said Ms Uniacke. “For education to be truly effective requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers, and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum,” she said. Demand accountability from educators and use test scores and surveys to reward the best teachers, and to identify those “who should find another career,” Ms Uniacke said.

Questioning College-centric Education

Les Burroughs is retired now, after 40 years at Sikorsky Aircraft, where he began his career after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in engineering. He has looked at education as a parent who put six children through the Newtown system and through colleges, and from the inside, having served on the Newtown Board of Education from 1964 to 1975, and again from 1981 to 1984. He has also served on the Police Commission in town and from 1962 to 1976, was on the Public Building Committee, overseeing the building of schools in Newtown.

The good news, said Mr Burroughs, is that students are more technically advanced today and have a broader world knowledge. Modern school facilities are better due to state mandates, too, than four decades ago. “The level of education that our teachers have to have is much better than in the 1960s, when there weren’t enough teachers and we had to rely on a lot of temporary teachers,” said Mr Burroughs.

While his six children have done well, college may not have been the right choice for all of them, Mr Burroughs said, in retrospect. He has his reservations about where public education is headed, based on their experiences and the experiences of others with whom he has spoken.

“Public education in this country is a failure, because we teach to the college-bound,” declared Mr Burroughs. Schools are not serving the whole population. Schools are measured by how many students continue on to college, but not all students are college material, he said. “That is not to say they are not smart. They have smarts in a different way and when schools push college, it makes those kids feel bad for not wanting to or being able to go on to higher education,” said Mr Burroughs. “Why is college so important to American society?” he asked.

There is a sense among today’s parents and children that a college degree is necessary for success. “I feel that schools need to better support kids who prefer a trade, and to convince parents that that’s okay,” said Mr Burroughs. More technical programs in the schools and opportunities for hands-on experiences would help, as well as more technical schools around the state to accommodate the great number of students who could benefit from the education gained there — a number that he estimates to be 30 percent of any graduating class.

Temperament, Testing, And Tenure

Even among those who continue on to college, Mr Burroughs sees that a lack of discipline and informality between teachers and students, and a lack of parents supporting teachers, all of which leads to a lack of college success. “You have to have the discipline to get through the college school system in order to perform well in the real world,” he said.

Standardized tests are another area that needs revising, he said. “They measure where you are in comparison to area schools. But they take so much time away from learning situations.”

Getting rid of teacher tenure would improve education. “I don’t believe that tenure can’t lead to mediocrity. We do have an awful lot of outstanding, wonderful teachers, but the poor teachers are rewarded the same as the excellent ones,” he pointed out. A merit system would be beneficial to the educational system, Mr Burroughs said, and benefit students, too.

Funding school programs can be better managed, Mr Burroughs said. “Dismantle the budget,” is his advice. “Don’t look at what we spent last year. Build a budget from the bottom up, really looking at what we need, and what it costs to provide that good education each year. It seems to be there has to be another method of saving money than making cuts to programs. I think there should be room in this town’s budget that would cover extracurricular activities, without parents subsidizing them. Extra curricular activities are beneficial to a child’s learning,” he said.

Education administrators need to make sure that money spent is directly spent on education and the students. “We’re putting money into our education and not getting what we put into it, out of it,” he said.

What it boils down to, is to teach the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as good written and oral communication, said Mr Burroughs, through better management of funds, having performance-rewarded teachers, and creating accountability for students and teachers . But most importantly, he said, do not make college the focus of why students are in school. “Don’t push along kids who shouldn’t be pushed in that direction. If you look at our history, there are many successful people who were not college educated.”

Perhaps summing it all up, eighth grader Matthew Mossbarger observed, “With any school you’ll find bad things about it. But you have to focus on what you are there for: learning.”