A Little About A Lot

A little about a lot.

Take home pay for Oklahoma teachers has increased about 17% since 2018, about half the rate of inflation. Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill last month raising teacher salaries by $2,000, but when that increase is calculated after taxes, it translates into less than $6 a day.

According to a recent post by The 74,

“’We have to have substantial increases annually to catch up [to the rest of the country],’ said Shawn Hime, executive director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association and a former assistant state superintendent. He applauds lawmakers for increasing teacher pay 37% since 2018, but high numbers of teachers still either leave the field or depart for other states for better pay. ‘We’re all in the same race, and we started a lap behind.’”

And Oklahoma isn’t close to the bottom when it comes to states that pay their teachers low salaries. Oklahoma ranks 36^th in average teacher pay. Louisiana, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida, and Mississippi inhabit the bottom five spots. California pays their teachers the highest salaries in the country, with an average of $101,100.

In addition to struggling salaries, current Oklahoma teachers point to a heightened level of disrespect from student and parents toward teachers as another major reason why current classroom instructors feel under-valued and why the state has an on-going teacher shortage problem.

News flash!

“American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten believes our schools are not ready for the ‘seismic shifts’ that artificial intelligence is bringing.”

In an interview with The 74 this week, Weingarten stated,

“’We’re in the middle of an industrial revolution that’s bigger than the dot.com revolution, and the world is not prepared for it. And our country’s leaders have a laissez-faire attitude about it. So I feel a huge responsibility to try and get it right.’”

It’s nice to see the leader of the second largest teacher’s union step up and say she wants to be part of the solution when it comes to tech in the classroom. But her ideas on how to proceed to a better place are suspect.

“Weingarten has proposed reshaping how U.S. public schools navigate AI in particular and technology more broadly, saying our kids are experiencing a crisis of attention and well-being – and that teachers are getting precious little guidance on how to help young people navigate these challenges.”

“Her proposal: Trim tech use, especially for younger kids, and teach all students how to think critically, communicate, collaborate and persist. ‘One of the worst things we’ve done in education was to call collaboration and communication ‘soft skills,’ she said, ‘because applied learning, problem solving, communication, collaboration, persistence – all of these – are the skills that any young adult is going to need in an AI world. In fact, these are the skills that are going to be much more competitive in an AI world.’”

Although Weingarten’s comments probably make for good press, the truth of the matter is that the AFT leader comes up short when trying to offer solutions to the current tech challenge.

Stopping today’s tech movement is nearly impossible. While many see artificial intelligence, devices, and social media as threats, more see these technologies as gateways to better lives. I’m afraid the genie is out of the bottle, and even Randi Weingarten can’t put it back in.

Weingarten’s ideas of radically changing the American curriculum, even if we decided to do it, would take decades to achieve. Our modern tech challenge is here today – now.

The best action Weingarten and her AFT could take right now would be to set up a national training academy for teachers to access the best knowledge and skills when it comes to building a learning model using artificial intelligence, devices, and social media as instructional resources. Adult learning leaders desperately need tech training, and organizations like the AFT could be leaders in that movement.

Finally, some good news from our Nation’s Report Card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. According to a post by The 74,

“Math and reading scores from the ‘Long-Term Trends’ edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress…offer some of the first proof of recovery from COVID-era learning loss, with the average 9-year-old improving by 4 points since 2022. Surprisingly, those gains were driven in large measure by struggling students, who enjoyed their first major leap in several decades.”

“But 13-year-olds made no similar progress, with scores in both subjects flat or declining for virtually every demographic group. Average performance in reading for these students was no higher than in 1971, when the program was first conducted.”

America’s educational data, year after year, suggests that the reading and math lessons we present to elementary learners produce world-class results. What that data also presents is that the bottom falls out in this nation’s reading and math performance around the time our young learners turn age 12.

So maybe we don’t need a different learning model for our youngest learners. Maybe what we need is a model of learning for our middle school- and high school-aged learners more akin to how our elementary schools operate?

ABPTL will be back Monday, June 15^th. Til then. SVB