Collaboration Helps Teachers Deal with School Crisis
Dwayne Ashley and James E. Whaley
DETROIT NEWS
May 6, 2008
Looking back, everyone can name one teacher who sparked their interest and changed the course of their lives. Great teachers not only impart knowledge, but give us the foundation and inspiration to follow our dreams. Educators, more than any other professionals, shape the future of our nation through their direct influence on the pipeline of tomorrow's workforce.
As the country today honors our public school educators on National Teacher Day, we should reiterate the importance of their work and focus on the lack of support provided to them.
According to the National Education Association, within the next 10 years our nation will need more than 2 million new teachers because of rising student enrollment and the impending retirement of more than 1 million veteran teachers. These numbers are overwhelming, especially when paired with teacher turnaround statistics -- 20 percent of new hires leave the classroom within three years and close to 50 percent of new hires leave urban districts within five years.
We are facing a crisis in the education system, which has been publicly acknowledged for a quarter of a century since the 1983 publication of "A Nation at Risk." Yet, in the past 25 years our students' rankings, and consequently our nation's global competitiveness, have skidded down a slippery slope.
The United States dropped from first to sixth place in the World Economic Forum's "Global Competitiveness Report 2006-07" due in part to our 40th-place ranking in education and health. Countries such as Switzerland, Finland and Sweden moved up because of their top-notch education systems that focus on technology and innovation.
Without a solid educational background, especially in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects, today's students will not have the resources or abilities to develop technologies to improve homeland security, cure terminal illness or create alternative energy solutions.
We are now faced with two choices -- to continue empty posturing of recent past or join together and fix the problem. Instead of pointing fingers and declaring the problem hopeless, let us come together.
If public, private, and government institutions pooled our resources to focus attention on meaningful and honest dialogue, the United States could have the No. 1 educational system in the world within 10 years.
To do this, we must directly confront the challenges facing our educators. There is an inherent "inequality for all" in the educational system, especially in our city schools where there is a revolving door of teachers and extreme dropout rates.
According to a recent study by America's Promise Alliance, the average graduation rate of our nation's largest cities is 52 percent, with graduation rates as low as 25 percent in Detroit. As our urban environment changes, so do our urban public schools and the faces within them; mandating us to tailor our schools to fit this new population.
Nearly four out of 10 students is a minority, while the teaching profession remains 90 percent white. It is important that the faces of the teachers who teach in these schools represent those of the student body.
As a step toward fixing the larger problem facing our educational system, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the Siemens Foundation partnered three years ago to provide $1 million in scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students majoring in educations, and enrolled in historically black colleges and universities. By investing in the development of new math and science teachers, we are investing in the future of young men and women who will explore, analyze, and probe the unknown.
Supporting black colleges is so critical to our public education system because more that 50 percent of African-American teachers are taught and trained at these colleges and universities. Our partnership is just one example of the potential collaborations that can reverse the educational decline in the United States.
By working together, we've pool our resources and talents to learn from each other. We call for an increase in collaborations to confront the issues that face our educators, and we challenge politicians to make education the highest priority on their agenda.
If we collaborate rather than just debate, the U.S. education system can rise above its checkered past and keep the U.S competitive in an increasingly global and competitive business landscape.
Dwayne Ashley is chief executive of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and James E. Whaley is president of the Siemens Foundation. Please e-mail comments to letters@detnews.com.
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