There is this superintendent in a small district in Texas who is brilliant. His name is John Kuhn. He speaks like a giant. He writes like a dream. He says what teachers everywhere are saying, and he says it better than anyone I know.
Read this and thank John Kuhn for being a hero of public education, a hero of teachers, and a hero of students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Inspirational. Happy Teacher’s day everyone. Wish it was under better circumstances….
Just like Motel 6, thanks for keeping the lights on! @hanna_hurley
John Kuhn is our hero too.
Beautifully written. So true. Thank you John Kuhn.
Thank you, John, for being one administrator who gets it and is willing to speak out against rheeform.
We need more individuals like John Kuhn in this world. Thank you for adding your strong voice and caring words of support to teachers and children everywhere. This retired New York teacher applauds you.
We all need to tell every teacher, parent and concerned citizen we know about John Kuhn and give this guy a bigger platform. What a powerful, honest voice! The deformers would have us believe that administrators would be able to solve most educational problems if they could just sack the lazy, good-for-nothing teachers that the union is protecting. Administrators know better, and John Kuhn has the courage to say it.
There are signs that some in the media are waking up. See this editorial in the Reading, Pa. Eagle:
School evaluation system can paint misleading picture
from the Reading Eagle
“The Issue: Six local districts receive warnings for failing to meet student performance benchmarks.
Our Opinion: Complex regulations built around standardized tests can make good schools seem like failures.
Two recent stories concerning standardized test results in Berks County school districts reinforce our belief that this is no way to judge an education system.”
http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=418396
See also:
School Funding Inequity Forces Poor Cities Like Reading, Pa., To Take Huge Cuts
from Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/school-funding-reading-pennsylvania_n_1922577.html
Phenomenal piece. Nobody else is saying this in a public forum.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
As a teacher who struggles daily with the types of students mentioned in the article by John Kuhn I have often said, “We’re the only ones left in the village.” No one else seems to be doing their job, and teachers are left to take care of everything and then blamed when everything doesn’t change.
I actually disagree strongly with John in this instance. We have to band together to defend our children from the economic and physical assault on them, not attack their main protectors: their desperate and increasingly disenfranchised parents, including their devalued and overworked mothers. I don’t know where anybody got the idea these attacks on the moral fiber of the guilty American people haven’t been said elsewhere. We’re awash in them.
I wish all the teachers who joined in the stupefied stampede to condemn parents would pull themselves together, and help defend whole families from the economic, physical and cultural war our financial and corporate leaders have declared on all of us. If you were a herd circling our young, would you leave their mommies outside your protection?
You’re not the only ones who are tired; don’t kid yourselves. Since 1990 the average lifespan of an American white woman without a high school diploma has fallen five years; the daddies only lost two years. That’s one racial gap the Walton family has helped close.
What laggards those daddies are, though! They should be working themselves to death in equal numbers with the mommies, doing their own part in failing to feed and shelter their children.
Joy Cooper Van Aukin was one of my teacher-mentors when I first studied for my teaching credential. She taught us, and showed us, that teachers don’t burn out from working too hard. They burn out from losing heart, if they don’t stand up for their mission. Teachers are demoralized when they turn on the communities they serve instead of standing up to their own scary bosses.
Insult is heaped on the injury done to our people by daily economic violence. Don’t pass the venom along. Instead, work to acknowledge and defend the warmth, grace, and humanity we’ve managed to preserve. Keep the faith.
“I don’t know where anybody got the idea these attacks on the moral fiber of the guilty American people haven’t been said elsewhere. We’re awash in them.”
We’re awash in attacks on a lack of parental responsibility? This anybody doesn’t seem to notice that view oozing out of the public discourse regarding reform. Read the papers. Watch the news. Public schools are almost always painted as the root of all education’s problem in the mainstream education dialogue. I am curious to see the wash of examples calling for parental accountability that you reference. If you have any links to substantiate this claim, please post them. I did read one article posted through this blog where parents protesting the film “Won’t Back Down” were criticized by a “reformer,” but I don’t believe that is the same thing as expressing the effect of parents as responsible partners in education.
I agree that there is no need to lump all parents as acting irresponsibly toward their children’s learning successes. That view is just as wholly unfair as lumping all teachers, principals, and schools as irresponsible for the same. However, parental influence is very much a piece of puzzle. I find it odd that we are hard-pressed to find anyone else addressing that familial accountability (or lack thereof) can be a factor in the learning success of our children. Is it not very relevant?
I concur LG. I hardly find fault with chemtchr, but on this particular post, I do. In fact, we have know since the Coleman Report that parents have more to do in determining the academic destiny of their children. Some researchers have attempted to put a range on the percentage that factors outside school play in the success of a student, particularly for the influence of parents. I would rather default to the knowledge almost 15 years of teaching has supplied me and conclude simply that parents play much more of a part in a child’s education than do their teachers or schools.
Parents have failed, period. I am reminded of this every time I see a pregnant woman walking through the parking lot of Wal-Mart with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I am reminded of this every time I attend one of our football games and witness the behavior of our fans in the stands. It’s not the kids that act like fools, it’s their parents.
If parents would simply realize the monumental disaster divorce is for kids, they would choose otherwise. One researcher remarked that if for nothing else, parents ought to stay in their relationship, if for nothing else, for the sake of the kids. This was after researching the effects of divorce on student achievement. I’d be lucky to find that study now. I saved it, but who knows where.
This is essentially manifested in urban areas where daddies are no where to be found. Single mothers are much more likely to be poverty-ridden.
Our parents have failed. In fact, that is the exact reason why our schools struggle. Let’s place blame where blame belongs. It means were not only telling the truth, which may be cause for some improvement in the future for our family unit, but it also makes for astounding data that reformers simply can’t deny (or shouldn’t deny).
“One father is worth a hundred schoolmasters”, when he sticks around.
I would turn your comments into a post but I’m not ready to deal with a swarm of angry home schoolers who bristle at any criticism of parents
Diane Ravitch
@Diane. I am not sure if you are responding to me or LG, but I know I did what LG is warning against (lumping all parents together), but if reformers want to lump ALL public schools as failing (which they normally do), and politicians want to enact reform efforts on ALL public schools, then I feel it is equally legit to lump all parents together (and for that matter all teachers).
I know all parents aren’t bad parents, but the bad ones cause more issues with our schools than bad principals or bad teachers.
The problem with our family unit, although spurred by economic issues (as Chemtchr is indicating), is by far a larger reason why schools may struggle.
Economists indicate that 5% – 15% of teachers are failures and need to be fired. I would indicate that the failure of parenting in the U.S. is substantially higher.
I often wonder if this is why Asian students do so well, even here in the U.S. where they were born alongside their U.S. counterparts.
There are plenty of attacks on parents, especially mothers. Just about anything you do as a parent is criticized. You aren’t breastfeeding?! You breastfeed in public?! You co-sleep?! You don’t co-sleep?! You force your child into a rigid schedule?! You don’t have your child on a consistent schedule?! And hell, that’s only the first year – it gets worse the older the kid gets. Wait ’til your kid has a meltdown at the big box store. Half the people will be telling you you’re a horrible monster because you’re trying to discipline your child, the other half will tell you what a rotten parent you are because you’re not disciplining them enough.
I understand the frustration teachers have with parents who don’t parent, and I know there are plenty of those. And of course there’s no “accountability” measures for parents because parenting is the one job where you almost can’t get fired. But ultimately parents and teachers are in the same boat (unless you happen to teach children of the 1%) and need to find ways to stick together. Taking our frustrations out on each other is exactly what our overlords want, so that we don’t direct our frustrations to them, which is where they belong.
I am a teacher. Year 10. High school physics. I am a professional educator in a field that demands professional credentials, continuing education, skill and knowledge based licensing exams and background checks including fingerprints so I am deemed responsible enough and safe enough to work with children. I’m a mandated reporter of physical abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse.
There, now I’ve established my bona fides and authority to speak knowledgeably on the subject.
Oh, wait, I have to knock out the ones who claim I’ve only ever taught. I served in and was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps. I then spent six years carrying a badge and a gun and worked a beat as a police officer in a city of 180+ thousand people. I’ve done other things than teach.
When I was a cop, if crime went up on my beat they didn’t blame me for not working hard enough. They brought in additional officers to beef up the presence and manpower. They did dispassionate studies of data to identify problems, communicated the results to me, and let me help decide how to address them. They swarmed identified problems with social assistance and community programs, assigned undercover officers to work from the inside, provided more funding for Women’s Protective Services and Children’s Protective Services, brought in the narcotics and gang task forces to assist, assigned volunteers from the DA’s office and City Council to spend weeks riding around with me as observers so they could see what I was up against, and provided me with medical aid and psychological care (mandated after certain stressful incidents like shootings) and never, ever, accused me of not working hard enough or being a good enough cop. Instead, they identified poverty, drugs, poor or absent parenting, and legitimate mental illnesses and disabilities as the root of the problem.
I was provided the proper equipment to do my job and it was regularly serviced and updated. I was provided continuing training in the mental and physical duties of my job.
I got tired of seeing kids as victims or criminals and went back to a school to try and help them from the other side of life. I became a teacher. I took a $24k per year pay cut for this privilege. I saddled myself with 20 years of student loans. I spend in excess of $1000 a year of my own money to provide equipment and student supplies so I can do my job effectively. I take every student in my class, whether it was the year I am doing inclusion teaching or the year I have the AP kids. I turn none away nor should I. As an American citizen, It’s my task and privilege to educate everyone who comes through my school’s door. I make progress with every student but that progress cannot always be measured by a standardized test. I feed some of my kids. I’ve bought them clothing. I’ve visited them in juvie, hospitals, hospices and at the graveside. I’ve been praised, cussed, disrespected, honored and ignored by parents and administration.
I lead my department, my campus academic competition team and my students. I follow my principal and superintendent. I’m responsive to parents.
I love kids and teaching.
I’m tired. I am not respected. I am underpaid.
I am not responsible for what happens outside of my 45 minutes a day with your child. I only accept that responsibility for my own two children.
Please help me do my job for your child and community. Stop demonizing me, my profession, and my fellow teachers. See through the deceptive manipulation of the reform movement and high stakes standardized testing. Don’t buy into the propaganda about teachers unions and how evil they are. Don’t listen to political hacks like Rhee who are only in it for the opportunities to gut the profession and privatize it for the wealthy to plunder profits from.
Let me teach. Allow fellow professionals and administrators to evaluate me fairly and help me if I don’t meet expectations. Listen to me when I speak for I am a professional and I am in it to do the best job possible with the kids I am given.
Help me. I want to help you.
Sir, if this is an accurate portrait of your experience in life and labor, then God bless you.
I want to be just like you when I grow up.
This was VERY inspiring.
Diane Ravitch, you need to publicize this response.
That’s extremely kind of you, but really she doesn’t.
Most of that is to take the wind out of the reformer’s sails. The salient point is this: I’m a teacher and, as a professional, I know what’s best for my students. Listen to me when I speak and weigh it as you would a professional’s words in any other field.
All teachers are professionals. We must be treated like such.
You bet I will!
Send each and every word to the President. Scream it from the mountain tops. You speak for so many teachers. I applaud you.
A much better thing to publicize is the recent appointment of a TFA alumni to be the new Chief Talent Officer (HR manager I believe in OldSpeak) for DISD. This individual, responsible for reforming how Dallas ISD hires teachers and retains them, has spent a grand total of 2 years teach middle school social studies. He’s a poster child for the TFA philosophy of Teach For Two Years and then move up into administration and policy. And yet this man is supposed to know what a great teacher looks like on paper and in person and in the classroom and hire them for DISD?
I wonder how many of the new hires will look like him.
Relevant news stories:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20120522-teach-for-america-exec-to-be-disds-chief-talent-officer.ece
http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2012/10/dallas-isd-chief-charles-glover-on-restructuring-the-human-resources-department.html/
Note how he dodges the questions in the second news stories.
Incredible blog post. No one likes uncomfortable discussion that makes one look at themselves. The problems are multifaceted as are the solutions. Unless we all work together the most vulnerable in our society suffer. Thank you Diane and John Kuhn
Applause is in order! Thanks, John Kuhn!
Although we as teachers cannot control what our children experience in their life at home, if they have one, a community as a whole can get on board to support teachers and provide community services and opportunities to help find solutions. The school and the teachers can not do it alone. The village includes more than the school building and the people within.
Here’s a great reason why teachers are so demoralized. LIES, LIES, and more LIES.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/03/05/why-we-must-fire-bad-teachers.html
That article is still really hard to stomach. And people believe that trash.
Can I give a LOUD Amen to everything Mr. Kuhn has said?! John White is speaking on Tuesday at the NFUSSD Conference in New Orleans and it will be all I can do to sit in my seat and not yell at him for being an instrument of destruction across our state of Louisiana. I am a retired teacher and principal, now serving on a local school board and I spend my days trying to encourage our teachers not to give up.
I hope you speak out.
Swopescience, I have found my lost brother. I have said this to my board and to others. My oldest son just told me of research he has come into contact with in his graduate studies. He is a doctoral candidate in rehabilitative therapy and counseling. Neurologists have been doing long range longitudinal studies on the effects of divorce and sustained poverty on the neurological development of children. They are about to publish their findings and include a new category showing a juvenile form of PTSD. They find heightened levels of stress related hormones and impaired brain development. The true sciences know how we have damaged our children, they also can identify the causes. One day we will look back and be amazed at our ignorance and our gullibility.
Let’s hope that day is sooner rather than later.
Has your son considered, or has he done research with students from what are considered rough schools, or alternative placement for discipline schools? I’ve worked in one, and some of those kids have every bit as much combat stress as some of our veterans. The difference, of course, is that we by and large recognize it and at least pretend to treat it in vets.
They are actually preparing to include it in the next DSM manual. He works in a VA hospital and his wife is working in a poor school near ST. Louis. You are correct in your comment, he has told me just how similar it is to what our soldiers are experienced. The problem is that it is much harder to develop effective therapy because of the developmental impact it imposes. We may find the damage can not be mitigated.
Matthew Swope points out that as a policeman he was not accused of being incompetent or not working hard enough. “… they identified poverty, drugs, poor or absent parenting, and legitimate mental illnesses and disabilities as the root of the problem.” As teachers, we are all tired of being harassed and micromanaged if not downright abused for circumstances that are beyond our control. I am with chemtchr, though, when it comes to warning against a blanket condemnation of parents. He speaks eloquently of the challenges that many parents face.
I raised my four children in a privileged community. My children were never hungry, inadequately clothed, or homeless. They never had to worry about dodging bullets or avoiding gangs and managed to steer clear of the drug culture. They had two parents who worked hard but who earned enough to provide the essentials. They had two parents who had gone to college and even earned advanced degrees. Their parents had parents who were educated and able to offer support when needed. When they were teenagers, they certainly tested the limits. I shudder at the thought of trying to raise them under the conditions in which some of my students have lived.
Parents have to be our partners. I hope most teachers feel this way. However, just like in a marriage, sometimes we have to sit down and seriously talk with our partners and tell them they’re not meeting their end of the pact. Educate, train, help, but not condemn. Excellent reminder from you about not making parents our enemies, 2old2tch.
I have found that as I have helped by teaching adult GED classes and showing my concern for their families I have earned their trust. Education is a series of relationships. If we are deliberate and careful we can get their help. I constantly show my parents that if I have erred, I apologize, but they know that I have always had their children’s best interests at heart. It will be a long struggle, but we can prevail one family and school at a time. We can vote locally and shape policy from the ground up.
You’re exactly the kind of teacher who models the very best in professional and human behavior to students. I hope someone in your building recognizes your fantastic work and occasionally praises you for it. You should seriously ponder hosting a quick, 30 minute professional development where you teach others how to effectively communicate with parents.
As a special ed. teacher in a school district with a very large low-income/free lunch (as well as ELL) population, I must say that some of my favorite days/evenings were Open House, Parent-Teacher Conferences, and Annual Reviews (and other special ed. meetings which involved the parents). I also taught Special Ed. Early Childhood, and part of the program was to make home visits, in order to teach parents how to work and play with their children. Just as with the students, there were numerous “I get it now!”
moments. I have tears in my eyes, looking back on all those years.
I need to change my sign-in to “ReTiredbutMisstheKidsandParents.”
Thank you, RetiredbutMisstheKids. I miss you too, all of you.
Long ago I was once one of those young parents, who was visited at home by a pre-school specialist named Beth Pepper, with her colorful rollers and great big ball. All I was sure I knew how to do was hold my little son in my arms; there were books, but when I tried to follow them to work with him he just stiffened and seemed worse. I was in such despair that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, because then it made them despair for me, too. I was afraid my husband’s mind would break.
What would I have done without her? I think I may owe her everything in my life after that time. I understand that the springs and gears inside parents, as well as children, can be broken.
Beth stayed with me through a bad seizure, and when my little boy had fallen asleep exhausted with his head on my heart, and I was afraid to move for fear of setting him twitches, she made us tea and sat and talked quietly with me.
There are 232 comments on John’s column. What demoralizes me is that they’re mostly from teachers displacing their trauma and fear by denouncing parents. The charge that they choose to prosecute is parents’ failure at “disciplining their children or teaching them virtues like honesty, hard work, and self-respect.” That’s the same thing I heard from diehard segregationist teachers 25 years ago, when I subbed in the Boston Public Schools.
Frankly, its the same thing the upper classes have always said about poor peoples’ children. Unfortunately, the result is that uneducated, under-resourced families try to deal with their kids’ unmet needs by more “discipline”, to win society’s approval or make their children more acceptable to the scary and unforgiving teachers. My own lifetime of experience with real parents is that they need warm, safe places to learn how to talk and play with their kids.
A different problem is apparently that teachers of ordinary American children have bought into the idea of their own “failures”, and deflect the attack with the defense that they are working with defective materials. There are lengthy comments condemning Marge and Homer Simpson for students like Bart, believe it or not, but none crediting them with Lisa.
What about the other culprits, then? John writes, “Nevertheless, many pundits and politicians are happy to train their rhetorical fire uniquely on the teachers, and the damnable hive-feast on the souls of our young continues unabated.” Just fix the blame squarely on parents, instead. The same cowardly colleagues who wouldn’t stand up to this abusive “reform” until it was directed at them will pile on.
Excellent post.