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Miracle Workers and the Decline of Public Education

The director of the Connecticut Writing Project finds that his son's Blue Ribbon school suffers a rating decline after budget cuts are implemented.

By Jason Courtmanche '91 (CLAS), '06 Ph.D.

There's an old joke in education: A member of the public speaks out at a Board of Ed meeting and is critical of the teachers. "Just look at the test scores!" he hollers. A sympathetic board member says, "Sir, we can't expect the teachers to be Anne Sullivan," referring to Helen Keller's teacher. Immediately, a teacher speaks up and says, "Of course we can't. She had a better teacher to student ratio."

The point is that good teaching has everything to do with context. Standardized test scores and college placement rates are high in wealthy towns because families are educated and schools are well funded. Teachers in poor towns face inadequate funding and large classes but are criticized when their students struggle. Yet many in the public, the press and the legislature expect teachers to be Miracle Workers.

As director of the Connecticut Writing Project in the English Department at UConn, I work with both classroom teachers and the undergraduates studying to become teachers. I advise dual-degree students in English and education, teach a required course called Advanced Composition for Prospective Teachers and run a graduate summer institute for teachers. So I have a good idea of what teachers experience in public schools today.

So I got upset this past May and June as I conducted site visits for UConn's Early College Experience program, observing high school English teachers whose students take a course comparable to freshman English. I observed a dozen teachers at very economically and demographically diverse schools, from urban schools in Hartford, East Hartford and Windham to suburban schools in Glastonbury, Hebron and other towns. Repeatedly, I was impressed by the quality of teaching I observed. In the midst of this, however, an editorial ran in The Willimantic Chronicle calling for the dismissal of teachers in Windham the day before a vote on the town's education budget, which subsequently failed by 19 votes. Similarly, The New York Times ran articles about the expansion of standardized testing, the tying of teacher merit pay to student performance on these tests and the possible elimination of tenure for K-12 public school teachers—all cornerstones of the Obama administration's attempts to reform education. While these reforms may sound good to many in the general public, they aren't going to make students any smarter, and the reason is that these reforms rest upon the same assumption explicit in The Willimantic Chronicle editorial. They assume the fault lies with the teachers.

Here's how the reasoning goes: Teachers are overpaid, underworked and enjoy too much job security. Their union-negotiated contracts make them complacent and lazy. If we eliminate the job security provided by tenure, reduce their pay and provide incentive in the form of merit pay, they will work harder and students will learn more. The logic looks good on paper, but it couldn't be more faulty.

Here's an example of why: My son just completed the first grade at Windham Center School, one of four elementary schools in Windham, a poor town whose schools have some of the lowest test scores in the state, as well as some of the lowest-paid teachers. Nonetheless, in 2005, Windham Center School received a federal Blue Ribbon for excellence, awarded to schools "that are either academically superior or that demonstrate dramatic gains in student achievement," according to the U.S. Department of Education. However, by 2008, Windham Center School was a failing school, labeled by the USDE as "in need of improvement," a label it has carried for three years now, for its failure to make "adequate yearly progress toward reaching the goal, by 2014, of having 100 percent of its students scoring at or above the Proficient level in mathematics and reading on the CMT." So what happened between 2005 and 2008?

For one, poverty and bilingualism continue to rise. According to one former administrator, more than 50 percent of Windham's students are now bilingual or English Language Learners, and almost 70 percent receive free or reduced-price lunch. Furthermore, budget cuts have resulted in the elimination of 64 teachers, 60 paraprofessionals and more than 17 noncertified staff members since 2004, according to a school board member. Approximately 30 of those teachers were eliminated in the first year the In Need of Improvement label replaced the Blue Ribbon.

This has meant larger class sizes and more English Language Learners in those classes, as well as fewer paraprofessionals and less professional development. The average class size in first grade at Windham Center School has climbed from 15 to 21, and the numbers are worse in the later grades. Last year, the fourth-grade classrooms had 28 students. Where does the fault lie? Other than the elimination of teachers, the faculty did not change much.

With the election of a new president, many teachers hoped for a revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that would increase federal funding for schools. President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have dangled federal funds to states under the Race to the Top grant program, but to qualify, states have to reform tenure, implement merit pay and tie this pay to student performance on standardized testing. Last year, only Delaware and Tennessee received any Race to the Top funds. Some emergency and stimulus funds have been approved for states, but those run out in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Then what are towns like Windham to do? If the teachers at Windham Center School had funding to hire (or retain) teachers and paraprofessionals, to provide training in bilingual education and to keep class sizes small, they'd still be working at a Blue Ribbon school.

Jason Courtmanche is director of the Connecticut Writing Project at UConn and a lecturer in the Department of English. A 1991 graduate of the Department of English, he earned his doctorate from the University in 2006. He is a former high school English teacher at RHAM High School in Hebron, Conn.