Rating students would create successful classroom mix

Substitute teaching is a recent addition to my long list of work experiences. Serving as an on-call educator for all grade levels in a public school district of a major city has been my own public education. Being a substitute teacher, with its rewards and pitfalls, has allowed me a firsthand look at classroom dynamics at all grade levels. What I now know about the challenges teachers face humbles me.

In any field, those who spend extended time are prone to a form of nearsightedness; the inability to see the forest for the trees. I know from my experiences in other industries that over time minds can become less porous, more resistant to new industry ideas. Sometimes a newcomer brings fresh perspective.

It would be easy at this point to join the current chorus and deem public education in the United States miserably broken. But, no. I am not educated enough or experienced enough to deem public education anything at all. Beyond my lack of qualifications, I lack the desire to castigate those who, I now know, care very much and try their damnedest to work within a system that bears little resemblance to modern day models of business success.

While many things about public education must be considered in brand new ways, from teacher training to teacher recruitment to teacher compensation, my fresh perspective tells me that students, too, must be considered in brand new ways if a successful, modern model for public education is ever to exist.

Students are not all alike. The teacher in Class A with twenty-five students and the teacher in Class B with twenty-five students do not, let me repeat, do not bear identical workloads because their student mixes are not identical. The expectation that the two teachers will take their identical headcounts to identical benchmarks of achievement is fallacy. Once this truth is embraced, the sacrosanct “teacher to student ratio” can be redefined and improved for the benefit of all.

I propose a system of categorizing students by demand units based on individual needs using a scale of one to five, with a rating of one-demand-unit being a student with a learning style that requires very little of a teacher’s energy and a rating of five-demand-units being a student requiring rigorous teacher management. Distribution of students by this rating system would result in classroom equity. While each teacher might be assigned thirty student units, that could mean thirty Category 1 students, or six Category 5 students, or any combination between.

Rating mainstream students based on needs would be new educational terrain. Supreme care would have to be taken to prevent judgments based on student ratings. The introduction of such a system to parents, educators and students would have to include promotion of the ratings as being merely an assessment of learning styles, no more judgmental than a personality quiz or career test. Category 1 students could not be held up as preferred, nor Category 5 students as problems in the classroom. Category 5 students, those talkative students who ask more questions and move about the room more, must be allowed pride in being assessed highly interactive. Steadfast Category 1 students should take pride, too, in their needs for more calm and solitude in a learning setting.

While my experiences are limited, I believe too many classrooms have too many Category 5 students and too many Category 1 students are overwhelmed. While most students are Categories 2 through 4, I feel certain that Category 1 students could thrive among dozens of students who share their learning styles and Category 5 students would do well together in smaller groups. The limits to human energy and time in a school day prohibit a teacher’s effectively advancing an improper mix of students.

Rate our students according to learning styles and watch test scores rise. Watch student and faculty satisfaction increase. Watch good teachers become great.