Education Could Have The Military Budget And The "Achievement Gap" Will Remain

People seem to think that funding is the answer in closing the achievement gap. Let me be clear...President Barack Obama could give schools the military budget and there would still be an achievement gap. The problem is not money. Schools in countries around the world have less funding for their schools and they continue to out perform our students. The reason why the achievement gap persists is because of the non-effectiveness of some teachers, some administrators and some districts. We can not continue to blame the problem on the lack of money. As we can already see our government and communities are not going to fund education in the way we would like. So, since the funding is not there does that mean us educators are off the hook for providing our students with an education that will help them be able to compete in the global world? The answer to that question is...NO! We still have a commitment to offer them an education. If we are concerned about offering a valuable education to our students without money let's look at the black schools during school segregation in the south. We would have shut down a school that even slightly resembled schools that those students had to go to. Those schools did not have anything close to the resources that even our poorest schools now have and their students received a much better education than many of our black students are receiving now because they had effective educators (if you do not believe me look at some folks who went to these schools like Thurgood Marshall).

What is the answer to closing the "Achievement Gap"?? Simple, it is effective teachers. Yes, teachers are wonderful. However not all teachers are effective. I love all heart surgeons but if one was not proving effective and more that 70% of their patients died after a surgery performed by him or her I would not want them operating on me. But the funny thing about that is if there was such a surgeon they would have lost their license a long time ago. This goes for our teachers as well. If I knew that a teacher was failing 70% of thier students I would not send my child to that teacher. After additional professional development and mentoring, if a teacher continues to neglect giving his/her students a quality education, then he/she needs to be let go.


Side note: Many people say that the curricula that districts are mandating teachers to teach are not providing students with a quality education. I agree with this and I am a teacher who has been subjected to these types of curricula. I feel that we need curricula which teach students core content and because I feel so strongly about that I have created curricula that enable me to give all my students a valuable education. Yes, it was hard work but I did it and that is why my job isn’t easy. If you know it is not right don’t do it. We have to start standing down to districted mandated curricula that we know is not going to breed a successful education and we have to start standing up for the future of our students and our country!