Since we have this Politics subforum, I guess it's the appropriate place for this.
This week I received my official teacher certification, which means that not only am I a school nurse, I am a teacher. The subject I am certified to teach is "school nurse." It is a requirement to be a school nurse in the state of Massachusetts, and it is representative of the gray are in which school nurses find themselves. We don't really fit in.
But we do have a unique view of public education. Of course schools vary widely from region to region, so I do not assume that my experiences at an upper-middle-class suburban school on the tony North Shore of Massachusetts are necessarily reflective of schools across the nation. But a few themes emerge.
First of all, understand that in the United States public schools are governed by school committees, local officials elected from the community. More than any other democratic institution in this country, school committees truly represent the communities they serve. It's not a flashy job, not a high-paying one (in most places it's a part-time commitment with a stipend), not necessarily a desirable one from a professional politician's point of view. Which is not to say that a few professional pols don't get elected to school committees, because they most assuredly do. It's a great place for an eager young pol to start. But they don't stay there long. The ones who stay, and who do the job seriously, are not professionals. More often than not they are parents of current or former students in the school system they serve. They always live, and often work, in the community in question. They are, in short, just ordinary people. School committees are democracy in the purest sense of the word.
In conservative communities, school committees are conservative. In evangelical communities they are evangelical, and that's where you get things like Creationism being included in curriculums. School committees have final say over curriculums (yes, I know it's technically "curricula," but that sounds stupid). And since they are reflective of the community, school committees rarely approve curriculums that are controversial in the community they represent. Which is not to say that school committees do not frequently approve curriculums that might be controversial elsewhere, but for the most part elsewhere does not concern them. Local government rarely gives a fig about what is going on elsewhere.
In most places there are also teacher's unions. These tend to get a bad rap in this country, as do unions themselves. This is a terrible shame, since unions have done a huge amount to improve working conditions in this country. Nearly everything we take for granted, like the 40-hour work week, are the result of unions. Ah, but that's another story.
My short spiel on unions is this: No matter how you feel about them, it takes TWO sides to agree on a contract. Maybe there was a time when unions could hold management ransom with the threat of a work stoppage, but if so (and I have my doubts about that — it sounds more like propaganda to me) it is long past. Nowadays management has the upper hand in most labor negotiations, and unions have given more and more concessions over the years.
I am a union employee, as are all public school teachers in Massachusetts. Before becoming a school nurse I worked at both union and non-union hospitals. Ironically, the non-union hospitals were better to work for, because the fear of unionization led them to bend over backwards in terms of benefits, compensation, and flexibility. At union hospitals management and labor had much more adversarial relations, and there was zero flexibility outside the contract. An ironic situation, to say the least.
The teachers union is not really all that relevant to me, so I don't pay much attention to it. If I were to get sick or hurt on the job, however, I could turn to them for support. And if I were to be terminated they would be involved, and might take action if they believed the termination was wrongful. My benefits are good but not great, ditto my salary. The average teacher salary in my town (Ipswich, Massachusetts) is $67,301, which sounds like a lot. But consider that to be a teacher in the state of Massachusetts you need to have a master's degree plus 30 credits, just a few credits shy of a doctorate. People with comparable levels of education make a lot more than $67 grand a year in this neck of the woods, one of the more expensive regions of the country. Plus that average salary is reflective of the current faculty, which is made up of a lot of people at the ends of their careers, i.e. making the most they're ever going to make. I make less than $67g and i am one of the higher-paid faculty in my building. My health benefits are okay but nothing special, and basically the same as health insurance packages for jobs everywhere: an HMO. My co-pay for an office visit is $25, for meds it varies from $10-40. In other words, pretty run of the mill.
No golden parachutes, no cushy benefits packages. Just the same old stuff as most jobs, certainly most professional jobs, only with a lot more red tape and requirements. To be a teacher in the state of Massachusetts means jumping through a lot of bureaucratic hoops. This is on top of the ones required to be a Registered Nurse. I deal with a lot of bureaucracy.
Teachers get a bad rap. I think this is because everyone thinks they know what teachers do. It stands to reason, after all we all had teachers for at least twelve years of our lives. The problem is that what you see from the kid's perspective, and what is actually happening, may not always be the same thing. And teaching has changed a lot — even people in their 20s might not recognize some aspects of what goes on in modern elementary schools, for example. Expectations have changed a LOT. So has the culture. The best way I can explain it is this: When I was a kid, if the school called your parents you were in trouble. Nowadays if a kid gets in trouble the parents assume the school is in the wrong. A combination of helicopter parenting — wanting to protect little Johnny and Suzie from every bad thing that could ever happen — coupled with modern parents' preoccupation with being their kid's friend first, parent second, has created a world in which schools more often than not find themselves on the defensive.
I cannot speak for all schools. I cannot justify the actions of every school official that ever was, is, or will be. So whatever specific examples you might bring up of BUT WHAT ABOUT SO-AND-SO?!? is going to fall on deaf ears. I cannot say that every teacher and administrator in every school system across America is a wonderful person. But I do believe that most teachers are hardworking professionals who genuinely want to do a good job. These days that's not easy, given the demands of standardized testing (more on that later) and other mandates, all in the face of 30+ years of tax aversion on the part of the American people.
Standardized testing is the bane of public education. Teachers hate it, administrators hate it, parents hate it, students hate it. Everyone hates it. Except for politicians, who seem to love it. Why? Probably because standardized testing is the darling of the big education companies — you know, the ones who do the testing? They are big contributors to political campaigns, and have powerful lobbying presences in Washington and state capitals across the country. They effectively write the standards, then sell curricula and other materials that help meet those standards to school systems. It's a pretty cushy, corrupt system for those at the top.
THIS is where public outrage should be directed. But all politics is local, and nothing is closer to the heart than the welfare of our children. Teachers are the front line of the relationship between citizen and government, a difficult position in a country that largely considers government to be the enemy. Couple that with helicopter parents, standardized testing, ever-morphing state and federal standards, new politicians coming in every few years and changing everything, and a whole heap of regulations and red tape and... Well, I think teachers deserve a break. They are not the lazy, overpaid bureaucratic evildoers the corporate right has painted them to be. This propaganda aimed at dividing people and preventing them from seeing the real enemies at the top. Unfortunately it works.