Why does the answer to improving student achievement always seem to come down to lengthening the school day and adding more professional development, asks Philadelphia schoolteacher Christopher Paslay. “I’ve been teaching in Philadelphia for 12 years, and I still don’t agree with this philosophy,” he writes in an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “More isn’t always better.”
There are three parts of the education equation: teachers, students and parents. All three of these must be up and running at a minimum level for education to take place. Just as a car needs a working battery and transmission to operate properly, so a school system needs the support and cooperation of parents and students as well as teachers. If parents and students don’t get actively involved, how will extending the school day improve academic achievement? If education isn’t made a priority in children’s homes, what will requiring more professional development for teachers accomplish?
Accountability absolutists will dismiss Paslay’s take as an exercise in excuse-making, but his point that teachers are “only one part of a complex instructional ecosystem” will ring true to teachers. Paslay’s Rx includes reducing class sizes in poorly performing schools, tuition reimbursement for teachers who agree to teach in failing schools, and most pointedly, “stop demoralizing teachers by making us the eternal scapegoats. In other words, hold parents and the community accountable, too.”
Do more of the sort of thing former Mayor John Street and former Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson did in 2006, when they gave summonses to 6,000 parents of truant schoolchildren, bringing them to Temple’s Liacouras Center to talk about the importance of getting their sons and daughters to school.
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