Florida lies well outside the rust belt. Indeed, we have very little heavy manufacturing capacity compared with many other states, especially states which joined the Union before we did. However, we now rival other parts of the country in terms of mass production. Sadly, not of heavy machinery but of high school dropouts.
I scarcely can believe them myself but the updated statistics I have learned about public education in Florida in the past week will leave you reeling. Measured per student, Florida now trails the nation in financial investment while we lead the nation in violent juvenile crime. Do you wonder why? To an extent, I wondered why since we are the most magical place on earth and the tourism capital of the world. Then, the worst statistic of all struck me and my wonderment ended. No fewer than 10 schools in Orange County, where the City of Orlando is located, have been ranked "Dropout Factories" by the United States Department of Education.
How the mighty have fallen!
Are we incapable of learning from the past? Can the lessons of other metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia teach us nothing? You bet they can but we must be willing to learn. Right now, it seems that too few elected officials are willing to do that, passing the buck and focusing more on their own reelection than assuring that the next generation emerges from the system better educated than we were.
What can be done? Inspiration is the key. We must begin by remembering the powerful quote from Bill Gates about schooling, "Learning is mostly about creating a context for motivation. It’s about why you should learn things."
As I meet the voters of Central Florida, I speak about a national minimum wage for teachers. $40,000 is a nice round number for 2008. My parents are retired public school teachers, music teachers no less, and I remember keenly the constant struggles they faced in making ends meet when my sister Jessica and I came along. While we never starved, at times it wasn’t pretty.
The current system in Florida and elsewhere which allows school boards and other government agencies which prepare budgets for our public schools to place the question of teacher salaries as a low priority is terrible. It doesn’t work. In combination with growing social pressures from parents who must hold two and three jobs to keep a roof over their head, it’s no surprise that so many students slip through the cracks. On a daily basis, it’s a toss-up for them as to which is worse, trying to learn in crowded classrooms with too few books and overtaxed teachers or being latchkey kids because they only see their parents for 30 minutes a day if they are lucky.
A national minimum wage for teachers will go a long way toward rejuvenating our crumbling system because the budgeting process always will have a baseline. Here’s what I mean.
If a school has 2,100 students and a maximum of 30 students per classroom, the school will need 70 teachers. $40,000 per teacher multiplied by 70 teachers means a minimum line item for salaries of $2.8 million for that school, period. No fudging or robbing Peter to pay Paul! Instead, what we have right now is a starting figure of what bureaucrats and politicians are WILLING to spend per school and which must cover capital expenses such as building maintenance, buses and new properties.
In the end, if we want our students not just to hear the message that staying in school is their best choice but take it to heart and apply it in their individual situation, they must see that they have successful, professional instructors in their classroom who can afford to live in the middle class by what the school district pays them. Otherwise, the students will sense that the potential reward doesn’t justify the effort.
Kids are smarter than we give them credit. Let’s see that they receive the respect which is their due and operate a public education system which inspires them to learn rather than corrals them into cramped spaces to be spoon fed a narrow syllabus with the main purpose of passing an inflexible testing regime which never was intended to do more than diagnose their process instead of judge their worth.