Walk some miles in teachers’ shoes

Kudos to Georganne Rollans, whose excellent letter regarding school vouchers (“Won’t Solve the Problem,” Feb. 8) was spot on. In addition to reading her letter and listening to “voices from the field” (education professionals), our legislators need to do a few more things before they can pretend to know what is best for education in this state.

First, go spend time in a public school, not just to present an award, read to a class or be a “celebrity” presence for some event, but to actually volunteer your time. And not for something simple like lunchroom duty, lining up kids for picture day, loading buses, judging the spelling bee or art show. Those things are important and helpful, but they do not qualify you to make decisions you seem eager to make, like deciding how much a teacher is worth, what curriculum is appropriate and how to “fix” poor academic performance with school choice vouchers.

Instead, volunteer to tutor children for a period of time, taking responsibility for delivering instruction, then evaluating the performance and letting the results inform the next lesson you plan, including remediation if necessary. Until you do that successfully, and “own” the scores your students make on state-mandated testing, you have no business trying to tell teachers what and how to teach, nor will you ever have any appreciation for their expertise in pedagogy, or for the challenges they face day in and day out. Last time I looked, they don’t get a “per diem” when school is in session, either.

Second, to better understand “accountability” you need to take the same middle or high school ACT Aspire tests the state requires of students, under the same testing conditions used in schools and with the same expectation for proficiency. Making your scores public might help you appreciate how teachers feel when the newspaper prints the performance reports for every school and each demographic sub-group within it. Come to think of it, the disaggregated test scores of the Arkansas state Legislature would be interesting to see. I would also feel better if every elected official had to pass the American Civics Test (required for a high school diploma) before being allowed on a ballot.

For those of you who believe financing school choice with public tax dollars is the answer, please think again. Do some research. Pulling money out of the pot to support private, charter and home schools will reduce the resources available to low-performing public schools that need them most.

NANCY SWEARINGEN Rogers