An Op-Ed for the Gazette
The recruitment and retention of top-notch professional educators are two of the most troubling issues facing our Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). These two issues are inseparable. Simply recruiting the people we need at the front end does us no good if we are unable to retain good teachers and keep them working at peak performance.
According to the 1996 report from the National Commission on Teaching and America�s Future, What teachers know and can do makes the crucial difference in what children learn, " . . . students are entitled to teachers who know their subjects, understand their students and what they need, and have mastered the professional skills required to make learning come alive." Therefore, the Commission argued, our desire to recruit and retain the best teachers is tied directly to the success of a school system�s professional development efforts.
It�s pretty obvious that the education community faces a crisis. That crisis involves the ability of the profession to both attract and retain skilled, motivated, inspired -- and inspiring -- school-based education professionals.
In recent years, the funding of professional development has suffered due to budgetary constraints and different priorities. Budgetary issues have coincided with increasingly complex classroom demographics and diminishing opportunities for mentoring from principals, veteran teachers, resource teachers, instructional resource teachers and instructional support teachers.
Reductions in administrative staffing and the elimination of area offices have been partly to blame. The reduction in non-school based administrators has not been accompanied by innovative support structures for school-based personnel. Those who should have been available for mentoring and assistance either experienced a cut in the time available to them or were given additional duties or increased workloads. Add to this either cuts or no increases in teacher training funding and we see how this situation has proven to be highly detrimental to training and morale.
This condition is unacceptable now and will become increasingly intolerable in the future. No rational institution facing similar challenges would ignore them. It is analogous to sending military personnel into battle without either individual training or unit exercises. We would never consider reducing training opportunities and professional development for police officers or firefighters. Neither should we accept the continued low level of teacher training and support in Montgomery County as acceptable.
The good collaborative work that has begun to fashion a peer assistance and review program is not yet off the ground and needs support. Teachers report that lack of support and bleak opportunities for future training have caused some first and second year teachers to leave the system � and yet pulling teachers out of their classrooms during the school year hurts the learning process and strains the already thin ranks of substitute teachers.
This all relates to our desire to address class size in the County. There is a lively national debate at the present time over the relative value of dramatic reductions in class size compared with more modest reductions in class size coupled with training and professional development that ensures that the reduced class size is used to the best purpose. Given the same increased investment, the research suggests that the best bang for the buck may be in increasing resources for professional development -- along with modest improvements in class size.
Public education in Montgomery County is about to experience another example of the "Doctrine of Unintended Consequences." We have taken the right path in planning and funding smaller reading and math classes, but in doing so have compounded the problem of attracting and retaining good teachers. We are creating programs which by their very nature require hiring greater numbers of teachers at a time when the teachers are in short supply.
Our best teachers are making the Reading Initiative succeed and professional training for the program has been very good. However, the reading initiative training has been provided in the summer � when teachers are not working � and this has limited the availability of the training that these initiatives require. On-going training for these and other initiatives is essential.
Improving professional development has been the subject of much joint work in MCPS in the new contract with the Montgomery County Education Association, the ongoing Continuous Improvement efforts of the school system, and the work being done in the Professional Development Process (PDP) joint work group �- to mention just a few of the efforts currently underway.
Still, how we provide supports to young teachers in order to keep them in the profession and nurture career teachers to continue to grow and improve will determine the future quality of education in MCPS.
Professional development can improve the skills and abilities of the individual educator, bolstering educators� self-esteem and helping with retention of school-based educators and classroom teachers, as well as with school-based administrators. If the County wants to preserve and increase educational excellence in a time of teacher shortage, we must offer a vigorous program of professional development directed toward school-based educators in the public school system.
We need additional training time -- during the school work year -- to specifically address the professional development needs of teachers.
Here are five things we can do to meet this need:
Private sector support for this bold new institute could be solicited from locally-based Fortune 500 companies. A separate Board -- made up of teachers, professors, principals, and business people -- would be constituted to run the Institute. This board would interact with both MCPS and the college and would advise the College on curriculum and the school system on professional development issues based on a school- based needs assessment. It would work with the University of Maryland System and other teacher education programs in the metro area for both opportunities and research in the field of professional educational development. Students also could be attracted to MCPS from those institutions. The Institute would be designed to be the focal point for research as well as offering professional development courses and opportunities.
Each school would provide release time for each classroom teacher so that he or she would be able to observe colleagues and receive school level support for improving instruction. Each secondary school teacher would be provided with a certain number of days per year for professional development. Secondary resource teachers would have their teaching load reduced two or three periods, depending on the size of the department, in order to provide support for each teacher in their department to implement a professional development plan.
Instructional Support Teachers would be provided for each elementary school with a clear focus on instructional support for individual teachers. Each elementary school would be assigned one available permanent substitute teacher in order to release teachers for training and/ or observing their colleagues in a mentoring relationship.
In the end, our schools can only be as good as our teachers can make them. We must give them the tools they need to light the lamp of learning for our children. There are no panaceas. There are no shortcuts. It�s time to roll up our sleeves and get serious about professional development programs.