W. H. Brady Scholar Charles Murray

It is a bad time to be a good public school teacher, as I had occasion to discover at a personal level when I recently wrote a book on education.

I was criticizing the anemic curricula in history, science and literature currently taught in too many elementary schools. To illustrate, I used the curriculum of the public school system in Frederick County, Md., that two of my children attended. Since I knew that readers would ask why my wife and I left our children in the Frederick County schools if they were so awful, I added a footnote pointing out that most of the teachers had been dedicated and competent, several had been excellent, and, I concluded, "Three were the finest K-12 teachers, public or private, that my wife and I have ever known. They deserve to be named: Frank Booth, Steve Nikirk, and Lee Vogtman."

Mr. Booth taught English composition at Brunswick High School. He was fun--he would do things like declaim a Jonathan Edwards sermon standing on a chair in a Puritan minister's robe--but no one got higher than a C- on the first paper, most got Ds and Fs, and Mr. Booth's detailed mark-ups explained exactly why. But his classroom wasn't a punitive place. In the atmosphere he created, the whole class was excited when the first student got a B and ecstatic when the first student got an A. By the end of the year, Mr. Booth's kids were prepared to write term papers at any college in the country.

Mr. Vogtman ran the drama department at Brunswick High. He was a fine teacher, but his crucial role was as head of a community where students could be found during free periods, lunchtime, after school and on weekends, completely absorbed in working on the next production. His drama department was also a place for growing up. "Mr. V. always demanded respect as a teacher," my daughter recalls, "but interacting with him outside the classroom taught us how to interact with adults in general."

Steve Nikirk taught fifth grade at Valley Elementary in Jefferson, Md. It would take a book to describe his classroom techniques. Former students in their 30s and 40s still reminisce about the year they spent as citizens of Nikirkskiland, complete with its own culture, government and laws. But the techniques do not capture what he did.

Mr. Nikirk knew how to teach fifth-graders in the same way that Renoir knew how to put color on canvas.

In describing these three teachers, I used the past tense throughout. Here's why.

Mr. Booth no longer teaches in the Frederick County Public Schools. He left Brunswick High four years ago because of Maryland's high-stakes testing program. Faced with relentless pressure to teach to the test, Mr. Booth said, "I want to teach my students how to write, not how to pass a test that says they can write," and resigned. He now teaches at an elite private school in the Maryland suburbs. That's good news for the children of rich people in Great Falls and Potomac. It's bad news for the children of parents who rely on the public schools in Brunswick and Jefferson.

Mr. Vogtman no longer runs the drama department. He is no longer a teacher. At the beginning of this year, a female student brought an allegation against him. Legal considerations prevent me from being specific, but think of the intense feelings that teachers who work most closely with students--coaches, music teachers, drama teachers--inspire in adolescent students, and you'll be in the ballpark about the nature of this case. There was no independent evidence for the allegation. Abundant collateral evidence that makes the allegation implausible. Overwhelming agreement among the adults and students who were closest to Mr. Vogtman was that he was innocent. But none of that helped. The rules may say that such cases are supposed to be decided by a preponderance of the evidence, but it doesn't really work that way. The reality is that teachers must prove their innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt. Mr. Vogtman couldn't, so his professional life has been destroyed.

Mr. Nikirk still teaches fifth grade at Valley Elementary, but the educational bureaucrats have despoiled his magical classroom. Last fall, he returned to school to find a new regime was in effect for Frederick County language arts classes: Teachers were provided scripts and ordered to teach from them. This year, rumor has it that scripts will also be provided for math instruction. I have not observed what Mr. Nikirk is actually doing in his classroom, and I like to think that he tossed the scripts in the wastebasket. But what an awful environment for teachers to have to put up with, most grimly so in his case. Renoir, ordered to paint by the numbers.

When I named these three men in the book, I did not choose teachers who ran into difficulties. I started with the three finest K-12 teachers I have ever known and then found out what happened to them since my children were in their classrooms. Am I dealing in mere anecdotes? Think of it this way: If you reach into a jar and the first three marbles you pull out are all purple, there are probably a lot of purple marbles in that jar. If you're skeptical, have a chat with the good teachers in your local public school. These problems are endemic.

Teacher's salaries can never be made high enough to be the lure for talented people. Teaching is a vocation, and the attraction must be the work itself. Destroy the environment in which teachers can do what they love, and they disappear. During an election year, when the air is filled with grand promises for improving education, let's give some thought to starting with this simple goal: Our public schools should be places where good teachers want to teach and are permitted to teach.

Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at AEI.