Secretary of Education Arne Duncan likes to boast of the success of the turnaround model, in which the principal is fired along with at least half the staff or the school is closed. “We can’t wait,” say the reformers. Here is a report from a turnaround school.
This email came today from a high school math teacher in a “turnaround” school:
Pushing teachers to pass everyone is a widespread practice now. Anyone who has more than a 15% failure rate in a class, not hard to do in math, is called downstairs and asked to explain what the problem is. At this time of decision about who will be back next year, many see fit to pass almost everyone to stay off the radar and be asked to return.
The new principal issues orders which are often contract violations but no one challenges her because they need to work. I hope you understand how hard it is to do this. If you know Ms. XXXXXX, please don’t tell her I said any of this. There used to be a television show, “Dallas.” Oilman JR Ewing’s famous line:”Once you lose your integrity, the rest is a piece of cake” is really how it is now. Hoping the State will kill the turnaround model. It’s not helping anyone. All of this is confidential. Like others, family needs to be cared for.
Grade inflation, score inflation, and social promotion all in one package. As Secretary Duncan used to say, ” We have to stop lying to our children.”
No wonder college remediation rates remain stubbornly high. Some success.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If he likes it so much, perhaps we should try it for government. Let’s fire Duncan and half his staff, and turn around a department that relies on untested and/ or failed nonsense to educate our children.
Evidently the banking industry and Wall Street need turnaround models too. Read Matt Taibbi’s newest piece in Rolling Stone Magaizine. I say bring in BFA..Bankers for America….maybe it can be all the fired and laid off teachers from Louisiana.
After all, he’s been Secretary 3 years now, and America’s schools aren’t top of the world in test scores. Time for a turnaround at the Department of Ed, yes?
Yes, forget schools…we need turn around administrations manned by teachers who have actually worked with real children not con artists who major in BS.
Sounds like an excellent idea. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. We can gin up our own facts, stats and data to back it up.
Arthur, as in the schools of OPC, this doesn’t work for the likes of Duncan and his pas.
Same here in CT. We are told sped. cannnot fail, but then they want to know how they passed your class but scored below basic or basic on the state tests. Everyone should be covering the same material at the same time, but don’t forget to individualize and differentiate. Yeah…okay. I am schizophrenic and so am I.
If a student is failing you are called into the principal’s office to show your data that supports you have been using SRBI techniques. However, when a student is absent frequently (at least 1/3 of the school year) we are required to give them all their missed work. Then we are told it makes us look bad if a student passes who missed so much school.
Lose lose for the lowly public school teacher…damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
Make sure all pass, keep your mouth shut, stay under the radar!
Yes. That is exactly how it is in my district too. The turnaround and charter schools are not held to the same accountability. Students who do not come to school or participate in class and homework, resulting in failing grades are much more easily gotten rid of if they are NOT in a public school. So where do you think those kids end
up? “No Child Left Behind” has certainly reformed education. With all of the fear and number crunching, how can anyone really teach students what they actually need know to thrive?
As the comment above indicates, this is a model, the smoke and mirrors model. If folks really believe the drivel put out there by Arnie Ducan, the road ahead is rocky indeed. The whippings will continue until morale improves.
What is Arne Duncan’s education reputation? He reformed Chicago which is being reformed again and he is friends with Obama. Is that how he got the job?
He repeats certain sound bites that no one would disagree with, but there isn’t any substance there. Kind of like Rhee. I don’t get how these people earn these top positions with no evidence of success on their part.
They don’t seem to be held to the high standards they want to hold teachers to and they continually get away with generic feel good edubabble. They leave to go to another city or top position before their success can be measured.
When will they be held accountable? Because if we all follow along blindly and do whatever they tell us and then that is complete failure, who will take the fall? Of course, the public school teache…who else?
When Atlanta got rid of their super for cheating and an acting superintendent came in (I forget his name right now) he said: “Education is the only industry in our nation that blames failure on the workers and not the leadership.”
Check out the disaster happening in Bridgeport, CT. Search for the many entries on Paul Vallas:
http://jonathanpelto.com/
Linda, not a good reputation in Chicago. He has no education background. His mother is a highly respected educator who started an outstanding after-school tutoring program. The extent of his “teaching” experience was to help tutor (sometimes) there. Paul Vallas (who, interestingly enough, you mention later) preceded him in his job as Supt. of CPS. I’m not really clear on how people felt about Vallas (Chicago teachers–answer!), but I have some friends who DID like him. He did promote eye testing & glasses distribution
(more than Supt. Arne ever did!). When the famous student beating occurred at Fenger High School (which many Chicagoans felt was spurred by school turnaround–students had to walk to school in “rival” territory, where, before the turnaround, they stayed in their neighborhood), now Sec. Duncan returned, & a press conference was given at a fancy, downtown hotel (where meetings were also held).
And, to answer your second question, yes.
Did the acting supt. in Atlanta retain his job on a permanent basis?
He sounds like a good man.
I was teaching a class, in a “turnaround school” i had a student who had only been in class for three days. The school jammed an “accelerated academy” down people’s throat before they became “illegal”. There were still supposed to be qualifications for it. You know, like the teacher of the class had to recommend the student. I was scheduled to “teach” the final session. And lo & behold, here comes that student, who had only attended three classes all term. This student, getting this sham credit, will now graduate. This was eventually reported to the powers that be, but shockingly (well, maybe not) nothing was done to this administration. It was just ignored. More proof that the rules are just for the teachers and union members. Principals and their higher ups are not accountable for a thing.
Just like the Assistant Principal in Brooklyn that was suspended for improper conduct with students. He got suspended with pay. The secretary that was suspended for obstruction, running interference for her boss, was suspended WITHOUT pay.
For good measure, the online news story in which I read this, has since been edited to take the part about the secretary and not getting paid out.
Doesn’t this turn accountability on its head? I thought the reason that we needed standardized tests was to avoid grade inflation, social promotion and favoritism by teachers. If teachers are forced by the administration to pass unprepared students, won’t that show up on the test results? Or are the administrators fiddling with that, too?
Yes and no. They can and will juke the stats when they want to and when they don’t want to they will use them against the teacher to make tenure decisions, if that still exists or to get rid of teachers they don’t want. Either way the teacher is screwed which then promotes more teaching to the test and less creativity, which does NOT benefit the kids. The only thing the high stakes test does is ensure Pearson and other companies make tons of money. Screw the teachers and the kids.
Final part of the story, I forgot, the grade (and I have seen the transcript) has been changed, and it was changed without my knowledge or signature.
When you prefer bureaucrats and legislators to run public ed, what do you expect?
Do you NOT see them destroying teachers and public ed yet? What will it take to wake people up to the destruction of the teaching profession in public education?
Good news, Arne and Gates have a plan. They will simply USE teachers as babysitters (facilitators) and the computers will do their job. (sarcasm)
Your federal govt. is destroying public education and the teaching profession and instead of focusing on that, we are going to get on our knees and beg and plead for them to stop.
Tyranny isn’t so great, is it?
Give the power back to the people instead of empowering the govt. Didn’t the head of the teachers union endorse Barak Obama ? Some will never learn!!
Yes, BOTH the NEA & the AFT endorsed Obama. Last year, the NEA leadership endorsed Obama EARLY. There was protest at the national RA Convention, but 73% voted for the endorsement. As a
former (now retired) NEA member, I–& others–have asked those we know who are attending the convention to move that the endorsement be rescinded, to be reinstated only if Sec. Duncan were
replaced by an ed. professional; Race to the Top is repealed & the testing stops; the Dept. of Ed. is abolished or streamlined. AND–no promises will be accepted–these actions must be taken BEFORE November. THEN the NEA can reinstate the endorsement.
Oh–an amusing anecdote (if anything amusing can be found in all of this! However, we teachers have always retained a sense of humor!):
I recently read that someone said that we shouldn’t tell the President how to do his job. Someone else replied, “Is that so? He was elected by us, we weren’t elected by him!”
The teachers unions will be stuck endorsing Obama. There will be no conditions as you describe because the unions have no leverage right now. Wisconsin is the most recent proof point for that. There’s no third-party presidential candidate to support. Teachers may fare better concentrating on races for Congress, governor, and local government.
I am a supporter of some school reforms and I am also a believer that teachers must have unions and those unions must serve as a strong counterweight to those who want to reduce teachers down to minimum wage employees working 70 hours a week spending their own money on classroom equipment and supplies.
Unfortunately, over the last decade, teachers unions have done a terrible job advocating for teachers. They have been grossly ineffective. The public holds these unions in low regard and believe they do not operate in the best interests of children.
How incredibly sad is it that teachers – who by all accounts is made up of people who love and cherish children – have been positioned as advocating for things not in the best interests of children.
I hold the leadership of these unions responsible. Teachers have no leverage because of them. Teachers are losing badly in the court of public opinion re ed policies. Union leadership remains clueless about the simplest of things.
The current situation teachers find themselves is the direct result of a failure of leadership and that leadership starts with the NEA and AFT. Accountability has to start there.
I don’t usually reply to what I read, but am up early today, thinking about the school year before I get dressed to go to graduation. I am a supervisor of a social studies department in a NYC public high school. I am thinking about how many extra pull-out programs, after school review sessions, etc., it took this spring to get the same number of students to pass our two Regents exams as we had last year. Why is that? Because too many students listed as level 2 readers could barely read and write when they came to us, too many students came to us thinking all they had to do was show up in class most of the time to pass and too many students never got the preparation they needed to become high school students. This lament is not a condemnation of elementary and junior high school teachers. We know the kind of pressure they have been put through to pass 80% or so of their students. However, high school is the end product. Many of the students we have in our school today have little or no hope of graduating on time. If high schools aren’t vigilant about failing those who do not successfuly complete their work, too many students will be paying for remedial courses in college. The pressure is on. The smoke and mirrors continues. And the emperors (choose the appropriate names) aren’t wearing any clothes.
I can certainly sympathize with high school teachers and admin. who get students who’ve never been prepared. One can assume that the students didn’t put forth the effort however if you look at the materials and the pedagogy, you can often times see a recipe for failure.
Fuzzy math, group learning, Constructivism, Extended Learning Opportunities, Real World Learning, rote memorization no longer required, etc. ALL fads that will continue to fail students.
Progressives have pushed these failed fads over and over again. Outcome Based Ed that does nothing to improve academic excellence, changes names and is re-sold to the next district.
What has happened to common sense??
Rote memorization is now a bad thing?? Who comes up with that kind of nonsense?
Our principal frequently comments about how statistics show that students who fail classes in middle and high school are less likely to graduate. Therefore, the answer to low graduation rates is to make sure that no one fails a class, whether they are proficient or not.
When someone pointed out that correlation is not causation, admin only got angry at the person who said it. I’m kicking myself for teaching in a turnaround. At the same time, i’m glad that my family is eating.
This is what is happening, folks and it is widespread. Soon, parents will wise-up and start suing the schools (as they did in the early 1980s) because their kids are failing out of college. Schools also get higher grades for graduating more kids on time so of course we have “credit recovery” classes for kids who never went to class. If teachers speak-up about this travesty, they get bad evaluations. There are terrible things going on that educators who need to support families are powerless to stop.
I keep hearing that teachers are powerless to speak up. While I can certainly sympathize with the difficult position they’ve been put in, they MUST speak up.
Parents have NO idea what is going on in those classrooms.
There is a local teacher who has her own local tv show where she tells EVERYONE exactly what is going on in her district. She’s consulted an attorney and knows exactly HOW she can present the info without getting sued.
She IS doing what other teachers refuse to do.
Until they start speaking up, I’m afraid this is going to continue.
As I said, I do sympathize but honestly I see NOTHING changing until the teachers speak up.