That’s Right Nate

Nate Peele: I’m here with Tony Federko who is a Chicago Public Schools teacher.  I wanted to get his thoughts on Obama’s proposal to extend the school year and school day.

Tony Federko: Thank you Mr. Peele, but when you asked if we could have a conference, I expected that you wanted to talk about your daughter Emily.

NP: Well, she’s doing fine–isn’t she?  She loves your class and I think she’s really learning a lot so far this year.

TF: Yes, but…

NP: Good, now how do you agree with the liberals or conservatives on education?

TF: I don’t really see a difference honestly.   Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton are currently promoting the President’s education reforms.

NP: Really?  I wasn’t aware of that.   What do you think of the President’s idea to expand the school year?  He says we’re falling behind other countries because we don’t spend enough time in school.

TF: He’s wrong.  Don’t get me wrong I voted for him…

NP: Oh really?

TF: Anyway, Obama said that he wants our children to go to school as much as they do in Korea.   An American eighth-grader gets about 1,150 instructional hours per year while a South Korean would get 923.  Our kids have more instructional time than Taiwan, The Phillipines, and Japan who score higher than us on aptitude tests.

NP: Right, because we have teacher’s unions.

TF: Most of those countries do too.  The difference is we have a third world rate of child poverty and a third world medical system where children are forced to go to school sick and malnourished.   We also count everybody on our tests, but they only count citizens.   We do better on these tests than most developed countries like Germany and England.

NP: Germany and England are socialist countries you know.  Still, education reform is a good thing.   Don’t we need to run schools like a business?

TF: Business isn’t doing too well right now.  Maybe we should run businesses more like schools.   If we wanted to run it like a successful business, we’d start with the employees who are in the trenches everyday.  Instead, reform seems to stem from corporations who want a chance at all the money in education.

NP: Liberals are like that with social programs.

TF: It isn’t just liberals.  The very people who attack the Heritage Foundations of the world on Health Care and demand a public option are the same people joining forces with the Heritage Foundation on education to push for more charter schools.   Charter schools do the same thing insurance companies do and do not always take the students with pre-existing conditions like behavioral issues or learning disabilities.  Despite all that, test data shows that the charters don’t do as well as the regular schools at educating kids.

NP: Don’t you think that the school day should be longer?   I’d love to have a job like yours where I get out at 3:00

TF: Before we talk about adding more hours to the school day, maybe we could talk about paying teachers for the hours they already work.   Georgia has started furloughing teachers and states like California are hemorrhaging jobs.  I work a 10 hour day of which I get paid for 6 hours and 15 minutes.   Even if I was paid for an 8 hour day, they couldn’t afford it.  You know I always tell people who say they’d love my job, that they should go to school and become teachers–or go to a charter school where you wouldn’t even have to take education classes to teach.

NP: I think I’d be a great teacher.   I have a way with kids you know.   Don’t you think we need to have tougher standards for teachers though?

TF: With charters, we’re actually making the standards lower, but here’s the problem.   If you have 1000 apply for 1000 job openings, you can’t be selective.  In the wealthy school districts and the schools where they have new computers and good security they can hire good teachers.   In inner city schools some good teachers are working hard, but sometimes they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

NP: So how would you improve schools?

TF: First, I’d pay teachers more for working at those inner city schools.   Then, I’d try and reduce class size.   People who say that it doesn’t make a difference haven’t taught.  I’d give teachers more preparation time because many of us work almost as many unpaid hours as paid hours.   I’d keep tenure because  due process is important in this type of job, but I would make it easier to terminate somebody who was obviously not doing their job.  I’d focus more on public education and only allow charters that did creative or experimental curriculum that could be studied and possibly implemented in the public schools.  Doing those things would give you a better pool of candidates for teaching jobs.  Then comes the next two big steps:

I’d search out successful people in business, sports, the arts, you name it and I’d ask them what was it in school that helped make them successful and I’d try and reproduce it.   Everything is so geared for tests now and I don’t believe those are the most important things.   Then, I’d pass very strong health reform with a public option and I’d make childhood poverty a major focus.

NP: So is it too late to get my daughter transferred to another class?

TF: I’m afraid so.

NP: OK, well thanks.

During a speech last week, Barrack Obama reminded us that South Korean students go to school a month longer than our students do.  After looking up the statistics, I learned that they are also scoring better on standardized tests than our students even though we have a higher percentage of students scoring in the highest category.  I decided that we need to look at what it will take to replicate the South Korean educational miracle.

First, we need the kind of quality teachers that they have in South Korea.   First, all teachers in this country should get a 75% raise so that they are equal to South Korean teachers in salary as a percentage of GDP.   I’m not thrilled about this aspect of things either because a teacher who is currently overpaid at $40,000 a year would now make $70,000.  Wow!  OK, let’s just skip this step.

One thing that South Korea has that we need is hagwons.  Hagwons are private tutoring schools that students go to after their regular school day is completed.  South Korean families spend 7 percent of their income on their children’s education and that’s for students in public school.    Student days in South Korea are much longer with both school and hagwon taking up time.  It isn’t unusual for students to catch up on their shut eye in class.  The saying in Korea is, “Sleep 5 hours and fail.  Sleep 4 hours and pass.”  Especially in high school, students routinely begin school at 6 a.m. and spend the day in classes until midnight.  This schedule lasts 7 days a week.

Students in South Korea know that they have a lot pressure to succeed and unfortunately, there is an abnormally high suicide rate among teens and children in South Korea.  However,  the schools know that if they need to instill discipline they still can.  80% of schools in South Korean still employ corporal punishment.  There was one famous story in 2006 when a teacher hit a student 200 times for being 5 minutes late for class.  You can be sure that student was on time the next day.  This iron willed discipline allows Korean teachers to use a curriculum that features far more rote memorization than are children can handle.

Some may argue, that this kind of approach is too costly or that it saps children of their childhoods.  However, what is the effect of a childhood on a country’s economy?  We need to start working to get our students capable of competing with the hard working automotons of South Korea.