The State of Education

I am a Baby Boomer. For you young folks in the audience, that means I am old. Our generation currently makes up about 22% of the population with around 10,000 of us a day turning 65. That means we are getting really old. By 2030, all of us will be at least 65.

I retired from teaching in 2021. I was blessed to spend my 36 year career in my hometown. My father taught there for 38 years and my mother 41. We loved it. I have three adult children but only one of them chose to go into education as a career. This last year, 20 of my fellow teachers, out of a staff of around 50 at the high school, also either retired or went somewhere else. 

I share this to highlight that a crisis is looming in our state as the forewarned teacher shortage evolves to full bloom. It is well documented that in the next 4-5 years, there will be more teachers retiring and leaving the field than we currently have people enrolled in teacher education programs in Arkansas. We are also told that 4% of our teachers don’t currently hold a state teaching license compared to 1.7% nationally. We cannot lower expectations for those we place into the classrooms with our kids or go back to the way things were when I was a new teacher in 1985 with 40 students in a classroom and no resources available to teach them. Arkansas politicians must act now before the Covid-19 generation is harmed even more.

So why is a fossil such as myself, who has completed his tour of duty in the classroom with all of his children being full grown adults, doing here today?

I am here because I have two granddaughters still in the public school system. I don’t want them being taught by a rotating cast of teachers trying to make ends meet at home, struggling to prepare students for the endless cycle of political high-stakes tests, while simultaneously looking for their next job. I am here because, like Thomas Jefferson, I recognize how important it is to our form of government to have a well educated populace. I am here because I understand that in today’s world, educated people have increasing career opportunity options and that if teacher pay isn’t elevated to competitive levels with other occupations, we will not attract and retain the best and brightest applicants into our schools. I am also here because I recognize that we have a growing number of legislators who are being bought by powerful anti-public school groups who are continuing to siphon away needed resources from our public schools for less-regulated private and home schools. Those elected officials understand the importance of competitive funding. Ask their lobbyists.

Then what can we do to address this foreseen problem now?  One answer proposed by some of our elected officials is that we use the massive budget surplus that the State of Arkansas currently has and give the wealthiest people in our state, which are some of the richest people in the world, another large tax cut. Surely that will fix everything. Again, ask their lobbyists.

But for a moment, how about we envision a different solution to our dilemma? How about dreaming of a scenario where those men and women sitting in power at our Capitol actually used a portion of that money to provide funding that would raise teacher pay to competitive levels with other occupations? How about instead of worrying about whether the rich in this state can afford yet another luxurious vacation or stock buyback, they used the excess money to address the growing disparities between urban and rural schools in our state? How about they work to attract a new generation of teachers to replace those of us riding off into our retirement years? How about raising the pay for our classified staff beyond the paltry amounts provided now?

But we must be careful in how they fund these raises if they do agree it is a priority. If the legislature takes action by forcing unfunded mandates onto the schools, as they recently did with health insurance, it will force rural school districts to make drastic cuts in other areas of their budget that benefit our kids and make the teaching profession even less attractive for new recruits.

Unfortunately, money talks not dreams. The only way to convince our elected leaders that they must take action now to support our educators is for teachers, their families and those who care about our kids and the future of this state to rally together and make a statement with their phone calls, emails and votes. 

Words inspire but actions make a difference. If we want our children and grandchildren taught and inspired by the brightest, most dedicated professionals possible, we need to treat teachers like a valuable asset and not a financial liability.

Our state can do better for the children of Arkansas. Our state must do better.

Thomas Jefferson is a man, who judged by 21st Century standards has many flaws, but we would be remiss if we failed to acknowledge his role in establishing our revolutionary form of government and for championing public education in America.He believed in the necessity of  having an educated populace if our nation was to make the experiment in self-government a success. To this end, he worked diligently to establish a system of public education and founded the University of Virginia.  

However, we are not here today in remembrance of the past, we are here out of concern for the future and the dangers facing our education system in Arkansas as well as across this nation. It is a danger that all patriotic Americans should take seriously.

A crisis is looming in our classrooms. It is well documented that over the next 4-5 years, we will have more teachers leaving the profession than we currently have students in college to fill those jobs. Baby Boomers, who make up 22% of the population with around 10,000 of us a day turning 65, are continuing to retire in large numbers. By 2030, all boomers will be at least that age with 85% of the US population projected to be living in urban centers. Old people are leaving the profession and young people are largely not attracted to the field of education right now, in large part due to the low salaries compared to the amount of money it requires to acquire the requisite education for the job.

I spent my 36 year teaching career in my hometown of Huntsville, a mainly rural area just around 30 miles east of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers-Bentonville metropolitan area. When I began teaching in 1985, I went to work with educators who had been my own teachers growing up. Back then, teachers in our system would generally only leave by retirement, death or the occasional change in family status. Today, it is a much more common occurrence for our district to hire quality young teachers only to lose them a few years later to one of the metro area schools when they have developed their skills or to other occupations. The difference is the massive disparity in salaries between the larger urban schools and the smaller rural schools and other lucrative career opportunities. This disparity will continue to grow.

At a time when we need the most educated population in history, and with so many career opportunities for educated people in this nation, why would it be believed that teaching would currently be an attractive occupation for educated people to enter? It does not take a legislative committee to recognize the large number of “Help Wanted” signs around the state to understand that the competition in the labor market for employers is significant. In NWA, our poultry processing companies are offering jobs that start out at $17 an hour, with full benefits, weekly bonuses for coming to work every day and $2,000 sign on bonuses as well as routine hourly raises. These workers, who do dirty jobs for our society, can earn in the mid to upper $30,000 range. Some are not required to have a high school diploma or a GED certificate. 

Most politicians are still programmed to state that they support public education and teachers yet are also quick to find excuses as to why they can’t finance the salary needs for educators. But we must also note that there is a growing base of anti-public school legislators in the state, supported by well-funded organizations in the state, who are not in favor of doing anything for public schools. Instead, they are being rewarded for steering money and resources away from public schools to private and charter schools.

This crisis does not require legislators to pass more unfunded mandates on to school districts which will in turn force smaller schools to implement massive cuts in other areas as they scramble to meet the law. The time is now for our elected leaders to demonstrate fortitude and reasoned thought to solve this problem and take steps to raise teacher pay to a competitive level with other occupations. A failure to do so will result in schools forced to increase class sizes to inefficient levels and staff them with large numbers of people who are looking for their “next” job. Not to mention the problem in recruiting skilled trades people to take a significant pay cut to teach CTE skills to high school children.

As Jefferson believed, public schools are vital to the success of our form of democracy and if we continue to lose the best teacher candidates to other professions, our children will be the ones to suffer and ultimately our democracy will be damaged.

What kind of world do we want to leave our children and our grandchildren?

With the massive political divide within the United States and the growing threat from China and Russia, it is a question worthy of serious reflection and consideration.