School and Community Summer 2023

The Realities of Missouri Education:

What Lawmakers and Education Leaders Need to Know BY DR. KIM CARSON-SWIFT M y name is Dr. Kim Carson-Swift and I have been teaching in Missouri since 1996. When the state sent out a survey in the fall of 2022, I was very concerned with the short-sightedness of the survey. While teachers deserve to be paid more, money cannot make up for the problems taking place in education. If the system is not changed, we will continue to lose teachers and substitutes at an alarming rate. Since 2021, I have seen at least ten excellent teachers from my district leave the profession because they were completely defeated by student behavior, testing policies and the educational focus of our government officials. Our schools are struggling and our teachers are bearing the load. Joy is leaving our buildings. Please consider the concerns I have listed and start looking to teachers, not so-called experts to fix the problem. Teachers know the students and have ideas to help them be successful… if someone will just listen. Special needs - I teach an adaptive class for special needs students, which can be challenging. Some students have acted out and caused harm to themselves and others, resulting in injuries to staff. The state standards for special education haven’t kept up with the growing challenges. In one case, a student with mental health issues was not provided with services because they didn’t meet Missouri’s academic criteria, but was able to receive help in Kansas. In another case, a student with a learning disability was denied services in Missouri but qualified in Texas. Six months of data collection to test students is too long and takes away from teaching time. We need better ways to support struggling learners and revise our guidelines. Small group instruction is effective for students behind on reading, but high caseloads for special education teachers make it difficult to provide adequate attention to students. Teachers must work around classroom schedules and chronic behaviors can disrupt small groups. The state needs to establish maximum caseloads based on the number of students and required minutes for each individual. The number of diagnoses and interventions should also be considered when determining how many students a teacher can handle. Behavior issues - Many students lack social-emotional skills, but current solutions such as referring them to the STAT program and reporting behavior to parents don’t provide daily opportunities for reteaching. Behavior should not be considered under the same requirements as a regular IEP. Students that disrupt the class often have trauma or a mental health condition that is causing them to act out. Because of this, administrators with limited teaching experience should not dictate pedagogy. Has anyone considered consulting teachers to brainstorm ideas to remedy this problem? We have so many teachers with years of experience and multiple degrees, but more time is spent telling them what to do than leaning on their expertise to create plans for our buildings and do what is best for kids. Give the teachers their classrooms back - Give them the tools and the standards and let them teach their way. Teachers do not need more things to do. Collaboration time is spent discussing data instead of best practices. We must be empowered to use our professional judgment and make a difference in the classroom. Public officials dictating curriculum is like a political science major telling a construction worker how to pour concrete. These are children, not programmable robots. They need to be nurtured and taught with joy and love, and teachers need encouragement more than meetings. Minimize disruptions - When I first started teaching, I was told that one of our key goals was to minimize disruptions so that students could learn. This has changed over the years and now it seems the emphasis is to keep students in class no matter the cost to other students. Many students would not get

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