The education system is, by some standards, broken. Expensive, inaccessible and sometimes ineffective, academia in the United States needs a restart. Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, is ready with the defibrillator.
In his seven-step solution to improving the education system in Texas, Perry illustrates the fate of the country’s education system if it adopted his plans.
Here are some of the highlights:
Part one of the solution would be to create a common measurement for teachers’ effectiveness. The most interesting part of this resolution is that teachers would be graded on the number of A’s and B’s they give out.
Now, for people who are concerned that this will be detrimental to the quality of teaching and that teachers will pass out A’s and B’s like candy, never fear.
There could be a cap on the number of A’s and B’s that teachers are able to give out. This means that students who earn an 80 percent or even an 85 percent in a class may not fall inside the parameters for a B.
Another element of the proposed solution is to use evaluation forms filled out by students to rank teachers.
These rankings would then be used to decide which teachers are eligible to receive bonuses. Their rankings, however, would be based on both student satisfaction and the number of students they teach. The first problem with this solution is student satisfaction.
Although, according to texashigher.com, Perry suggests that both an English 101 course and Physics 401 course should encourage students to “learn and grow and stretch.” Students know that the amount of stretching done in English 101 is not equal to that done in Physics 401.
The second problem with this solution is that it encourages larger classes. Anyone who has ever been in a 500-person lecture knows that such large numbers can make it difficult to actively participate in a class.
One other interesting contribution to the solution is mandating that tenured faculty prove that they are, in fact, effective teachers.
In order to be effective, they would have to have been teaching an average of three classes per semester with a minimum of 30 students in each class for at least seven years before applying for tenure.
If the number of classes and students that a teacher sees each semester is measuring effectiveness, then this is indeed an appropriate measurement of effectiveness.
While Perry’s reform is largely unrealistic, there are several positive aspects.
An accountability system that would force instructors to clearly define the expectations of their course would ensure that students knew were never surprised by the work load or outcome of a course.
There is also an aspect to the seven-step solution that allows more than one accrediting agency to evaluate universities.
This would encourage university competition and, therefore, ultimately breed better educational institutions.
There is no doubt that life needs to be breathed into parts of the educational setup to make it cheaper and more accessible, but targeting teachers, the very foundation of the system, is a bad idea.
More people than ever before are pursuing higher education. It would be a disservice to this growing population to have teachers competing for higher bonuses, tenure, and approval ratings in what can very easily turn into popularity contests.
Reach the columnist at lweinick@asu.edu.
Click here to subscribe to the daily State Press newsletter.
