More teaching: Plan to eliminate paperwork step in right direction

If you are not a teacher, you can't imagine.

For every hour spent teaching, hours more are spent filing out forms, creating state and federal paperwork and satisfying a billion other reports and planning requirements.

And that is just for teachers -- the paperwork doubles and triples on the way up the chain.

So here's a thought: Instead of creating a bunch of paperwork that sits in file cabinets, what if we gave teachers more time to do what they were actually hired to do -- teach?

And what do you know, the North Carolina Legislature is taking one small step to make that happen.

The leadership in Raleigh has proposed eliminating PEPs -- personal education plans for at-risk students.

They listened to educators, who told them that they really do nothing except consume time and paper.

So, the General Assembly decided that the time would be better-invested in actually working with those at-risk students to achieve their goals.

Hallelujah.

No amount of bureaucratic red tape nor flurry of paperwork will ever equal the value of more time, more attention and more focus on what really matters -- the state's classrooms and the students in them.

If we can reduce the busy work, we will see higher test scores, better achievement measures and more students who end up with graduation caps on their heads.

And as an added bonus, think of all the trees we will save -- and storage space.

How about that for a win-win?

Published in Editorials on May 22, 2015 10:28 AM