Lack of autonomy. Pressures of standardized testing. Little to no chance for career advancement. Low wages.
These are just a few of the many reasons the number of first-time teaching licenses being issued by the state of Indiana has dropped by 63 percent in less than six years.
As someone looking to join the education field in three short years, that is more than a little unnerving.
It’s shocking and disappointing.
I have always known I will never receive the most impressive salary as a high school teacher.
This is something I have come to terms with in order to pursue a career I am passionate about.
What scares me is the education system is rapidly morphing its ideals and values into something I am not passionate about.
In fact, I’m entirely against it.
By placing so much emphasis on standardizing testing, we are teaching students what to think, not how to think.
In no way is this a realistic representation of how students will be expected to think as citizens in the real world, or even as college students.
Speaking of unrealistic expectations, standardized tests give students the notion that it is not okay to make mistakes by allowing one test score to determine a student’s entire future.
SATs anyone?
What sick-minded individual came up with that idea?
This is not at all to say I blame educators, or even school officials.
After all, they only emphasize standardized testing as a means of receiving more funding from the state.
Without funding, there are only so many ways teachers can properly educate their students.
I do, however, believe we are being failed by state officials who use performance on state-mandated tests to determine which school districts are more deserving of funding.
If we are going to use test scores to determine funding at all, does it not make the most sense to give more funding to schools where students perform poorly due to factors such as lack of resources, as opposed to schools with higher performance that likely are equipped with better
student resources?
Regardless, something has to change.
If not, we’re doomed to fail not only ourselves as educators, but our students as well.
This is only reinforced by the fact that many potential educators are opting out of pursing a teaching degree in Indiana.
We cannot afford to keep teaching young people to recite facts back to us and memorize equations
mindlessly.
Where’s the fun in that? What student would want to come to school day in and day out? Who in their right mind would want to teach that way?
Rather, we must educate our youth.
Not to score the highest on standardized tests and not to act as factors that determine funding.
We must go so much further and be so much more influential than these tests require.
In the words of James A. Garfield, our 20th president, “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”
tatadams@indiana.edu
