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Is Your School Better Than Most?
By Gary Beckner, AAE Executive Director

In a past AAE survey we asked our members (mostly public school teachers) to give us their opinion about this incongruity. Two general opinions surfaced the most:

1. Public school systems, pressured to try to please everyone, have lowered their standards of achievement. Parents are especially happy after returning from a parent-teacher conference with a good progress report on Johnny. In fact, he is earning an "A". He is doing so much better compared to the other students in his class. The problem is Johnny would be getting a "C" compared to the work students submitted 50 years ago, because he also would have been graded on such things as spelling and grammar as well.

2. Many districts are doing better than we think (in many cases even better than fifty years ago). However, many of the larger school districts have grown so top heavy with bureaucratically unproductive positions and loaded with unessential programs that teaching productivity is suffering and the lower academic results are pulling down our national measurements.

Two other plausible reasons for why parents think their school is the exception emerged from our survey. One was public education is not in as bad a shape as we think but it is being used as a political football by self-serving critics and media personalities for personal or political advantage. The other was the leadership of the NEA is responsible for the public’s negative opinion of our schools. Their out-of-the mainstream resolutions have drawn so much attention from parents and conservative watchdogs that the good job many teachers are doing in the classroom is being overlooked. Both answers would explain why parents are happy with their local teachers—and schools, but not with what they hear about public education in general.

It would be reasonable to conclude that the answer is found somewhere in a combination of all the factors expressed above. The AAE is convinced, however, that the biggest problems facing public education today are not caused by teachers, but by a bureaucratically bloated system that no longer serves teachers or the public as well as it once did. That, of course, is our opinion. Unfortunately, it would seem that our opinion doesn’t hold much weight with the public.

If you missed LIFE magazine’s September 1999 issue, I highly recommend that you order a back copy. The feature article was entitled “Is Your Kid’s School Good Enough? Was Yours Better?” In the article, LIFE cleverly compares a survey taken fifty years ago with a nearly identical survey taken last fall. Not surprisingly, the survey revealed that many of the very same issues being debated today were being debated half a century ago. However, since that time there has been an ominous change in the public’s mood.

LIFE wanted to know how good Americans think their schools are. In 1950 the answer was Not very good but getting better. Today, the answer is Not very good and getting worse.

Fifty years ago, a majority (55 percent) told LIFE they were “only fairly satisfied, or not very satisfied” with their community’s schools. But most believed that the problems in those schools were being addressed. Two-thirds felt kids were “being taught more worthwhile and useful things than children were twenty years ago” and that schools were hiring “more capable teachers.”

Today, the number of Americans “only fairly satisfied or not very satisfied” has swollen to 66 percent. And a majority (53 percent) now feel that kids are being taught “not as worthwhile or useful things.”

There was, however, some good news for teachers: the LIFE magazine survey showed that Americans agreed on the “profound importance” of teachers and 61 percent now say that teachers are underpaid—up from 44 percent! Unfortunately when asked, “Would you say we are getting better trained and more capable teachers in our schools?” only 31 percent of the public said yes—compared to 67 percent in 1950.

That is disturbing, but I cannot whole-heartedly disagree with the public on this issue (see J.E. Stone’s article – Will Teacher Training Reform Led by the Schools of Education Improve Student Achievement?). It compels me to drive home a point you’ve heard me say many times. I do not believe teachers will win back the respect of the public and receive the pay the public seems so inclined to give them as long as the teaching community is inextricably linked to labor unions. Teachers desperately need a professional voice representing their best interests. It is encouraging to see more and more teachers recognizing that fact and are choosing to join the nonunion professional educator associations such as the AAE. Let’s keep the movement growing. Tell all your colleagues about the choice you have made and why.