Within any career field, employers strive to have employees continuously learning in order to constantly create a better output. This can be employed nowhere better than within the education system. Continuously improving teachers seems as though it would lead to continuously better students, which is just what our country is striving for.

Unfortunately, school districts’ budget constraints put professional development and student learning at odds by simultaneously limiting both. Anyone remember in-service days in high school? Many school districts frequently allot half-days, and oftentimes full days, during which students could be learning, to contribute to teacher education.

According to the Des Moines Register, school officials in Davis County would like to take a day every other week from educating students to educate teachers. With the maximum number of days students can attend school being 180, just short of 20 days of learning are stolen from students in this scenario. Even with their plan of tacking on 17 extra minutes to each school day, you’re still looking at around 50 hours in a school year that students aren’t being taught.

Furthermore, are these programs effective? While some studies indicate furthered learning of teachers results in better teaching, effects on student test scores are blurry. Even so, individual districts’ approaches to in-service days are diverse, so a general study on the effectiveness of the teacher-learning days seems convoluted. If dozens of hours are being pulled from students, we implore school officials to be sure that in-service time is efficient and effective.

Even if we were to assume that teacher in-service days were being used efficiently, we’re still caught up on the amount of school that students are missing for the professional development of their teachers. Can’t other options be utilized? Budgets make it tough for teachers to take these classes outside of the normal school day or year, but some suggest the in-services could take place during teachers’ planning periods every so often. It may not be ideal, but it’s eliminating loss of student education.

Despite our dissatisfaction with the deteriorating classroom time, we can see that school districts are put in tight spots with their need to continue professional development, educate students, and stay within the budget. Nothing new. We’d like to see more federal and state funding of education — this time especially, because the lack of money is reducing the time students are learning.

We think a solution needs be pursued with lawmakers’ money and school districts’ adaptability and efficiency, to meet somewhere in the middle.