I know this is a little late but the first time I sent it to Steve Lopez I did not hear from or see anything about my comments. I will try again.

I am retired from education having spent two years as an Associate Principal of a high school, nine years as a high school math teacher, four years as a secondary school substitute teacher for LAUSD while I earned my teaching certificate, four years as the director of Submarine Missiles Technician Training at U.S. Naval Guided Missiles School, Dam Neck, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and 18 years teaching and learning from my peers on oil tankers, destroyers and submarine tenders.

I read the LA Times and pay particular attention to articles related to the troubles with public education and particularly LAUSD. I see that, in general, the public and the Mayor believe that the public school system and particularly the Los Angeles Unified School District is bankrupt in terms of leadership and intellect. In my view, the Mayor and the general public are not correct and neither is really qualified to judge. True they are allowed an opinion, but that and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee at Philippe’s.

Why is it that people with a college degree in engineering, accounting, law, business or what ever think they are educators. They decide that education is not doing an adequate job and they know just what to do to improve the system. Parents with a college degree think they can tell the teacher just what the teacher is doing wrong. Even The Mayor of Los Angeles, Anthony Villaregossa, thinks he is qualified to fix the Los Angeles Unified School District. This, of course, is misguided ego run a muck.

Another issue I have not understood. Why do these brilliant, educated, parents, politicians, lawyers and judges require that educators include in public schools, students with severe learning disabilities, physical, mental and emotional handicaps into a main stream classroom. Their expectation is that the system can provide the same level of education to all students with minimal additional training, very little funding and to accomplish this in the same State mandated school day and with already inadequate salaries. This is another example of the public and the politicians failing to think to the end of the string.
Also teachers are required to include in their classroom immigrants who are not in possession of the English language. The teacher is then required to teach those students in their home language but, many of these students have no language at all. It seems to me if these critics allowed themselves to exercise any of their objective intellect to operate without their individual bias, they would be in awe of the astonishing success achieved by the public schools.

In Bob Sipchen’s article in the Times, “Friends Face Off in Legal Fight Over L.A. Unified” the only comment of any value was made by Kevin Reed, to the effect that under Superintendent Roy Romer, LAUSD has made great strides to improve the districts seating capacity and general appearance. With that solution set in motion, Admiral Brewer (Sorry Admiral, but you will always be an Admiral to me.) will have clear sailing to upgrade teacher education and thus teacher performance. Teacher training and subsequent teacher performance is the crux of the solution to how to improve student achievement.

Because teachers, in the United States, do not have a career path there is no incentive for a teacher to improve to better meet the needs of students. That is a subject I have discussed with the California State Superintendent of Schools. The comments I received from the Superintendent were positive but issued two challenges to be addressed in my plan: a) The courses to improve teacher preparation must correspond to the Standards of Quality and Effectiveness for Professional Teacher Induction based on the requirements set forth in SB 2042. And b) the manner in which small districts would be able to participate in the “Teacher Career Path” Program. The following is an outline of the program.

. “TEACHER CAREER PATH”

I have always felt under the present system there is no incentive for a teacher to continue to learn and to study to improve methods and techniques. Teachers have no Career Path!
What if there was a teacher followed this sort of a developed career path?

1. A person could begin teaching with a BA/BS, Computer literate and little or no Education training. Just basic classroom management and discipline per California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP) Standard for Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning. Key Element: Establishing and maintaining standards for student behavior. Pay grade T-1 (Teacher Apprentice).
2. After two years actual classroom experience and 12 semester hours of Education classes in teaching techniques and brain studies. Per CSTP: Standard for Understanding and Organizing Subject Matter for Student Learning. Key Elements: Demonstrating knowledge of subject matter content and student development, and, Organizing curriculum to support student understanding of subject matter. They would be advance to pay grade T-2 (Teacher-in-Training) and be responsible for helping other T-1 teachers in their Department.
3. After another 4 years classroom experience and another 16 semester hours of curriculum development and integration of technology (insert appropriate courses) they would become eligible for promotion to pay grade T-3 (Classroom Teacher and awarded a California Teaching Credential). Promotion to be based on completion of requirements, a recommendation from the Dept. Chair/lead teacher or appropriate assistant principal, positive performance reviews and an Interview with the principal, appropriate assistant principal and the department chair. A T-3 classroom teacher would be assigned one or two T-2s (teacher in training).
4. After a total of at least 8 years classroom experience, 9 semester hours of Psychology, Behavioral Psychology, Child Psychology and Abnormal Psychology a T-3 teacher would be considered for advanced to a pay grade T-4 (Mentor Teacher). . Mentor Teachers could be assigned to deficient teachers and or review and update curriculum to keep pace with State standards.
5. From the ranks of Mentor Teacher a person could be elected to Lead Teacher/Department Chair (Pay grade T-5) for a term of 5 years within their particular Department. At the end of their tenure as Department Chair they may be re-elected for not more than one more 5 year term or returned to Mentor Teacher status retaining pay grade T-5.
6. The Department Chair/Lead Teacher would be responsible to the principal for classroom assignment, department books, budget, and teacher supervision and evaluation (Stull).
7. Teachers in pay grades T-4 and T-5 could continue to study courses in Personnel Management, public school law, budget and accounting, leadership, social behavior and neighborhood dynamics. They would be awarded salary points for these courses. With the addition of these courses teacher would be well qualified for a Masters Degree in Education and an Administrative Credential.
All pay grades would be required to assist other teachers in pay grades lower than theirs. All Mentor Teachers would be required to supervise and observe, on a daily bases, T-1 Teachers in their Departments.
I believe there are several benefits to this method of organization. People could enter the classroom sooner making more people available to Education. Educators would have a greater incentive to rise in the teaching ranks and become far more professional. Teachers would be better classroom managers and then have more classroom time for education. Classroom and school standards will improve and along with them grades.

It is probably a little known fact that LAUSD has a program called, Uniting Professional Development and Technology for Educators, UPDATE, which develops and presents on-line curricula designed for teachers to improve their knowledge and technique and these courses are tied to the Standards of Quality and Effectiveness for Professional Teacher Induction and can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. Therefore, the Teacher Career Path can be incorporated into this program which will assure that the standards are met.

Again LAUSD will come to the rescue. Small districts will be able to contract with LAUSD for any other district to make the courses available to their teachers. These courses can be accessed outside the LAUSD firewall so that any district that contracts with LAUSD would have access to the courses.

The Teacher Career Path follows

I realize this is a rough run through and that is needs to be refined and fleshed out, but these are the thoughts I have had beginning with my experiences as a substitute at LAUSD and Pasadena school district as well as the problems with Centinela Valley Union High School District.

I have e-mailed a copy of this to the State Superintendent for California Schools. The response was positive but suggested the State Teacher Standards be tied to the teacher pay grades and some thought be given to the small or very small districts for methods of implementation.
I am currently working on the States’ suggestions.

What do you think?

Ronald N. Masters 1schief@earthlink.net or Cell (626)482 3975
706 N. Bushnell Ave., Alhambra, CA 91801
(626) 289 8990
OR
P.O. Box 1513
El Prado, NM 87529
(505) 758 2668

Smart way to get people reading the blog. ;-)

I absolutely love the article. Never read anything by you previously...this is my first and its so engrossing and so bang on!! I mean ur writing an op-ed not an open debate. brilliant

Poor Mr. Stein. Perhaps he is still feeling bad about no longer being a columnist for Time Magazine or Entertainment Weekly. I mean the LA Times is Nice but it is not national publication.

Joel Stein sucks, but that was a good column.

High 5, Joel Stein.

this is the first time (i think) ive read anything of Joel Stein's, but i must declare how he's right to stand up against this world of false, easy community, where columnists pretend they think their essays are no more valuable than yours, and friendship is a stranger who thanks you for the MySpace add.

Such a typical man. Always wants to talk about himself, yet never wants to listen. (Then again, that's not Joel, that's everyone.)

No matter how sarcastic or sincere Mr. Stein is, it's refreshing to hear someone spout off what they think instead of censoring themselves because it may be un-pc.

I just read his TIME article about Mark McGwire: incoherent, vacuous, terrible. And now this waste of space. The man follows and proffers weak logic. He clearly lacks principle. The only thread that connects it all is his weak, fraying ego. Pathetic.

The combination of Mr. Stein's article and this comments page has given me a much-needed laugh this morning.

JS - keep it up.

commenters - you as well

I love it.

haha joel, i think you are fantastic. and went to the best university ever. go card

I read this column because there was a link to it from a Washington Post blog (Achenblog)--that's a blog written by a different "Joel" who has a more solicitous attitude towards his readers. Even so, anybody who writes on deadline and also has to deal with emails from strangers must feel what Mr. Stein is expressing, at least sometimes.

I thought this column was very funny--I saved it, I printed it, and I have read it out loud to two different people in two days--both of them also thought it was funny and well-written, and that it makes an excellent point. For someone who reaches a large audience, answering email has to be optional--at some point it becomes impractical, even impossible. What if you get so popular that you're getting 1000 emails a day? People like Dave Barry or Scott Adams have that level of readership. Someone like Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt, if they opened up a forum and invited emails, there's no way they could personally answer everyone who would write to them.

However, I think if it is voluntary, it isn't onerous. You write a column, you receive emails. You can delete them without looking at them, you can read them and delete them, you can read them all and respond to some of them, you can reward the positive commenters and ignore the negative, or you can practice your diplomatic skills on the negative commenters, or whatever.

Keep up the good work, Mr. Stein. I'm about to go and read some of your archived columns and then formulate an opinion and then refrain from emailing you about it. You're welcome.

Joel:

U rock.