Teachers play big role in childhood learning

If you grew up as a kid who came from a great home with caring parents and siblings in a neighborhood full of like families, in school you likely encountered one or more great teachers who significantly added to your early years of learning and growing.

For the children who do not come to school from a great family or neighborhood, but still somehow make it in life, they can likely look back and thank a lucky star for having had a teacher great enough to make a meaningful difference in their life.

This fact makes Gov. Terry Branstad and joining politicians not look too bright when it comes to remembering what childhood learning is about.

It is not hard to understand why a school full of kids from a neighborhood of homes full of books and newspapers will post higher reading competencies scores than a school full of kids from a neighborhood of houses devoid of reading matter. A low-scoring school (but not the neighborhood) will be put on No Child Left Behind's list of schools in need of improvement.

If the governor would like to produce a miraculous improvement in teacher competency this summer, ignore the whole thing until fall and then switch the entire teaching staffs of the variant schools described above and viola! One group will go from lousy to reading teacher greats, but something also will appear to have regrettably happened to reduce the teaching abilities of the former greats.

Gee, makes one wonder what ... oh, the switch?

Sam Osborne

West Branch