Quality education

In order for changes to take place in American education, both issues of teacher preparation and school funding need to be taken into account. In regards to teacher preparation, both college education programs and the first few years of teaching need to be examined. The teacher collaboration and learning team models are in my opinion a fantastic way to approach teacher roles, especially combining veteran teachers with novice ones. In the article Cross-Generational Learning Teams Could Create Millions of ‘Encore’ Careers, Tom Carroll states that “We think our effort to go to scale with encore careers in education is stymied by the current stand-alone teaching model that requires every educator in the classroom to be certified. We want to deliver education with teams of certified teachers and adjunct members who have knowledge and experience in the areas of learning that the teachers and students are working on.” In my opinion, involving parents or community members that can offer expertise or “real life” information on subjects could only improve student interest and learning.

Also, as shown in the NCTAF Did You Know? teaching is the one profession that has not evolved from having one person to using a team approach. Why is this? In my field experiences in college the only teachers I really saw using a team approach were the preschool ones, and it worked very well. I am of the belief that if teachers are able to collaborate then they are able to implement the best ideas for their students. Maybe it needs to be a bigger part of the teacher preparation programs to expose pre-service teachers to the learning team model. Another thing I found interesting was the exercise that Tanya Judd-Pucella did with her students in the Education Week article Teacher Leadership, Hollywood Style. After choosing an influential teacher movie and analyzing the lead role, her students discovered that even the portrayals of “hero” teachers in Hollywood films usually worked alone and did not share their struggles/successes with colleagues.

As far as school funding goes, it appears that Governor Strickland plans to make some beneficial changes to Ohio’s plan by introducing the evidence-based model. According to the article Creators of Evidence-Based Approach Review Ohio Plan on the “School Funding Matters” website, the creators of the model examined Governor Strickland’s plan and concluded “By using the power of all the money available to schools, combined with a growing research base on what kinds of programs work to improve student learning, Ohio has the potential to shift the debate on education away from how much money is needed to how it can most effectively be used to improve student learning”. Perhaps this is the more important part of the issue, not necessarily how much money the school is receiving per pupil, but how they are using that money to benefit the individual student’s learning experience. As unfair as it was to see that the difference in funding per pupil in Northeast Ohio schools is more than $13,000 (Where School Districts Get their Money), I don’t believe that the main factor going into a child’s education is the amount of money that a district can spend on them. The quality of education they receive at school in my opinion depends on the excellence of the educators and administrators that make-up the school environment.