By Dr. Saidas M. Ranade
Here are some practical suggestions that might show immediate positive impact while being consistent with any future long term solutions.
Make teachers’ job less stressful. One way to retain good teachers is to make their jobs less stressful. I have three suggestions.
• Increase the annual Income tax deduction for classroom supplies for teachers from $250 to at least $600. So, teachers can replace broken chairs and buy adequate emergency supplies for the classroom.
• Keep the class size below 18. At my school the problem was not the number of teachers but the availability of classrooms. Just adding new teachers without building new classrooms will not work. Just hiring qualified teachers is only a part of the puzzle. Class size has a big impact on student learning. The ideal solution is to build new classrooms. The other option practiced in many South American cities is to run two shifts per day and extend school days per week to six.
• Assign all non-teaching activities to qualified Para-professionals. On many occasions I was given the task of not teaching but simply “watching” and “monitoring” students. One year I was asked to monitor the boys’ bathroom during standardized testing. To me monitoring is not teaching and should be eliminated as a job activity for qualified classroom teachers. The State should mandate that all non-teaching activities be done by qualified Para-professionals.