This letter was written by an early childhood educator. It expresses succinctly what many readers of this blog believe to be true:
Dear President Obama,
Please wake up and see that the education policies your administration is promoting are decimating our public schools, harming our children, demoralizing our teachers, and threatening the future of our democracy. Worst of all, your policies are promoting inequities in our education system and diminishing the opportunity every child in the nation should have for an excellent education
Your mandate for more charter schools is fast creating a three-tiered education system in our country. Children of the wealthy and privileged such as your daughters attend elite private or public schools. Children of less affluent families who are relatively able students with better informed parents increasingly find their way to charter schools, many of which have access to private funding and greater resources. But the third tier is left for the majority of poor or working-class children who must attend underfunded, under resourced, mostly inner-city public schools.
I am an early childhood educator and I can say with certainty that your policies are impacting the early childhood field in many negative ways, but that the greatest harm is falling on our nation’s poorest children. They are getting the worst of test-based, restrictive, standardized, rote instruction, while children in more affluent communities continue to benefit from more play and activity-based curriculum. More often the teachers in lower income communities have less training and are therefore more dependent on the standardized tests and scripted curricula that are a result of your misguided policies.
Standardized tests of any type don’t have a place in early childhood. Children develop at individual rates, learn in unique ways, and come from a wide variety of cultural and language backgrounds. It’s not possible to mandate what any young child will understand at any particular time.
Early childhood teachers are leaving the field in great numbers. They can’t teach using their professional expertise and many detest having to follow prescribed curriculum that they don’t agree with. As one teacher said recently, “I see kids with eyes glazed who are simply overwhelmed by being constantly asked to perform tasks they are not yet ready to do. I finally had to leave my classroom and retire early.” (www.deyproject.org).
Please look closely at how your education policies are impacting children, especially our youngest and poorest children. Your focus on competition and market-driven reforms is resulting in greater inequities in our education system and an undermining of our public schools. A vibrant, flourishing public education system is the cornerstone of our democracy. Please be willing to re-examine and reverse the direction of your approach to education. Please don’t be the President who abandoned our nation’s children and our public education system.
Respectfully,
Nancy Carlsson-Paige
Professor Emerita
Lesley University
Cambridge, MA
Terrific! TY! Neal
The thing is that I am amazed how clueless and unimaginative Obama is on this… he is just a “tool” and that is very sad… where is his creativity and leadership FOR public education???
A Powerful, Important Letter to President Obama by dianerav This letter was written by an early childhood educator. It expresses succinctly what many readers of this blog believe to be true: Dear President Obama, Please wake up and see that the education policies your administration is promoting are decimating our public schools, harming our children, demoralizing our teachers, and threatening the future of our democracy. Worst of all, your policies are promoting inequities in our education system and diminishing the opportunity every child in the nation should have for an excellent education Your mandate for more charter schools is fast creating a three-tiered education system in our country. Children of the wealthy and privileged such as your daughters attend elite private or public schools. Children of less affluent families who are relatively able students with better informed parents increasingly find their way to charter schools, many of which have access to private funding and greater resources. But the third tier is left for the majority of poor or working-class children who must attend underfunded, under resourced, mostly inner-city public schools. I am an early childhood educator and I can say with certainty that your policies are impacting the early childhood field in many negative ways, but that the greatest harm is falling on our nation’s poorest children. They are getting the worst of test-based, restrictive, standardized, rote instruction, while children in more affluent communities continue to benefit from more play and activity-based curriculum. More often the teachers in lower income communities have less training and are therefore more dependent on the standardized tests and scripted curricula that are a result of your misguided policies. Standardized tests of any type don’t have a place in early childhood. Children develop at individual rates, learn in unique ways, and come from a wide variety of cultural and language backgrounds. It’s not possible to mandate what any young child will understand at any particular time. Early childhood teachers are leaving the field in great numbers. They can’t teach using their professional expertise and many detest having to follow prescribed curriculum that they don’t agree with. As one teacher said recently, “I see kids with eyes glazed who are simply overwhelmed by being constantly asked to perform tasks they are not yet ready to do. I finally had to leave my classroom and retire early.” (www.deyproject.org). Please look closely at how your education policies are impacting children, especially our youngest and poorest children. Your focus on competition and market-driven reforms is resulting in greater inequities in our education system and an undermining of our public schools. A vibrant, flourishing public education system is the cornerstone of our democracy. Please be willing to re-examine and reverse the direction of your approach to education. Please don’t be the President who abandoned our nation’s children and our public education system. Respectfully, Nancy Carlsson-Paige Professor Emerita Lesley University Cambridge, MA
Neal H. Hurwitz NY, NY
I am increasingly pessimistic about the future of education in this country and wonder if I can put up with the craziness of rheeform until retirement. I am continually crunching the numbers to see how early I can get out, and it’s not because I no longer love working with kids. I would imagine many teachers who thought they would retire in the near future are seriously weighing their options and deciding if they could leave earlier than planned.
Yes, it is happening everywhere. There will be a mass exodus in the next three to five years of the experienced, highly paid teachers. Apparently, that’s what they want….a whole new fleet of newbies will be easier to control and brainwash. This will be the Obama/Duncan legacy.
Hold up a minute! I think this letter was good until she had the nerve to say “more often teachers in low income communities have less training”. What? Where did she get this from? It is bad enough that teachers are bashed from without, now we take to bashing each other! Unacceptable and inaccurate!
Let me set the facts straight, since I have taught in a low income community for over two decades and hold two degrees, and credits beyond that and participate in yearly staff developments and attend workshops outside of the school year during summer vacation! All of my colleagues hold an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree and have passed a battery of exams to teach. Many of the teachers in my district also have double master’s degrees and some on top of that hold administrative degrees as well.
Let’s keep the focus on the children, not casting stones at each other!
Do not leave education! When “reform” dies a slow painful death you will be needed. Don’t wave the white flag! Don’t desert the children. Those of us who, like Diane, are no longer in the classroom and are devoting our every waking moment to save our schools, have your backs and need you desperately. Teachers may not know how many are fighting for them nationwide but we are a large, persistent, loud voice!
Thank you for fighting for us. Those of us working on the frontline are becoming reform weary while our districts become top heavy.
Carole, She was referring to Teach For America grads who are given scripts, and many other non-certified “teachers” employed by charter schools. In Louisiana, charters can hire 100% non-certified teachers. These TFAs and charters proliferate in low income and inner city schools. I personally don’t call TFAs teachers. I call them instructors because Teaching is a Profession that these interlopers are not qualified for nor seek to attain. It is timely and appropriate to “cast stones” when those we are calling out are complicit in this destruction.
And in some cities TFA members are nothing more than scabs.
Well Linda, thanks for making it plain, since the writer didn’t. I agree about TFA instructors, but it is not clear in the letter. Just call it what it is, say TFA instructors. I think the letter needs to be explicit. Now is not the time to tip- toe around with our words, or be nice, because the reformers aren’t! Like Malcolm X said, ” Make it plain.”
I agree with you….call them temps, scabs, the replacement refs of education….do not call them teachers. Actually it appears they are the future deformers of America….FDA!
The writer of the letter is absolutely correct! The greatest harm is falling on our nation’s poorest children. Before Race to the Top came to my school, I too would have bristled at the suggestion that teachers in low income communities have less training. I too have taught in a low income community for over two decades and hold two degrees, additional credits, and years of relevant experience in the STEM field. My school had highly-qualified and dedicated professional teachers until our local university secured a 2011 RTT grant to implement Arne Duncan’s Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) in our school,
http://www.tapsystem.org/newsroom/newsroom.taf?page=features&id=71
As a result of the RTT funded TAP program, every classroom decision from the choice of curriculum activities, to the type of questions we ask of our students , and even the displays we post on our walls came under the control of eight reformy-minded TAP mentor and master teachers (funded by the RTT grant). These deformists were less educated than me, less experienced than me, not experts in my content area of science, didn’t understand my students, and didn’t care about my students. They administered biased evaluations on lessons they didn’t understand because of their lack of content knowledge and tried to convince our parents and community that “beginning teachers were better than experienced teachers.” The TAP program additionally required lengthy weekly cluster meetings where we teachers were berated, infantized (not allowed to go to the bathroom), and fully lectured to about the failings of our school system and the importance of test scores. Teachers were not allowed to speak during the cluster meetings. Eight pages (or more) of weekly typed and printed lesson plans were required. Because of the additional TAP support, our class loads soared from 125 students to 180 students daily. These RTT policies greatly reduced our time available to interact with individual students and to provide enrichment and tutoring. The time demands exhausted teachers and greatly reduced our availability to help our needy students and communicate with our parents. The reformists demanded that my inquiry-based science lessons be replaced with common core test-prep and they often expected the changes be made overnight. After one year of the TAP program, our school had a staff turnover greater than 50%.
The TAP leadership team assured our community that they were ridding the school of ineffective teachers and teachers that did not support the improved school culture of accountability. I am the only experienced teacher left at my low-income school and I will retire in December. Even worse, many of our current replacement science and math teachers are not qualified teachers. In our state, long-term substitute teachers can be hired to fill teaching positions when a “qualified candidate cannot be found.” Therefore, there are long-term substitute teachers in our science and math departments who are not teachers, who are willing to work for less than $100 a day, and are just waiting for the economy to improve so they can move on to their regular STEM careers. They replaced our experienced teachers. http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/01/26/20090126subs0126.html
As the author of the letter states, these unqualified and inexperienced teachers are completely dependent on the scripted curricula that are a result of the misguided policies. Sadly, the scripted curricula does not develop conceptual understandings in science, but instead drills students on vocabulary that is likely to be on the common-core language arts tests. (Something that TAP is currently demanding that I do.) And as the author correctly states, the greatest harm caused by these RTT policies is falling on our nation’s poorest children because low-income schools are the targets of these RTT policies and grants.
Before the president’s RTT money came to my school, I too would have thought the author of this letter was casting stones about unqualified teachers in low-income schools. However, the author is spot-on correct about the facts of the RTT policies and President Obama and other policy-makers need to hear them.
The link above (after the first paragraph) should be
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/10/14/20101014arizona-schools-receive-federal-aid-for-improvement.html
I’ve often wished a teacher in a middle class suburb would trade with me, an inner city high poverty teacher, for a year. It doesn’t seem fair that our pay is the same, since my job is so much more demanding. Not to mention the amount of money I spend to have trade books, technology, and other teaching materials, which my district does not provide. I do not agree with “performance pay,” but pay for a more demanding position warrants some thought.
The TAP program in Arizona is funded by Teacher Incentive Fund TIF federal grants.
A fine letter, but I think we are a long way from a three tiered education system. About 1.6 million students go to charter schools, 5.3 million will go to private school, and 49.8 million students go to public school, making charter school students less than 3% of all students. No doubt it is higher in some school districts.
Teaching economist – Referring to a three-tiered PUBLIC EDUCATION system funded with public dollars. In Louisiana even our local dedicated tax millages meant to be spent on construction and maintenance of our district schools are being stolen by the state and given to private, parochial and charters either in the name of vouchers or for children who live in our district but go to schools outside the district. This is the first year that these students are called “transfer students” and districts are required to pay their tuition elsewhere. In my district we were charged $2,123,422 for these students. That’s why our STate School Boards Assoc and two teacher unions are suing the state to challenge the constitutionality of these thefts.
The letter states that charter school students are made up of the class of relatively able students with involved but less affluent parents. I would like to think that this might characterize 30% of all students, not just the 3% that currently go to charter schools.
Yes, it is 80% charter in New Orleans, which ranks 69th of 70 districts in Louisiana.
In many urban districts, the charter sector is 25-40% of all students and gets no different results than public schools.
I’m a teacher in a high poverty urban school. I’m well trained, have a master’s degree, and have hundreds of hours of professional development. I see the damage that testing is doing to my students. I see the damage that the “rigor” of common core is doing to my students. I fight every day against these damaging policies. I’m exhausted, but I will keep on fighting.
Thank you. Be there when the bad ideas collapse
Diane Ravitch
RL. I am with you. It is a painful road, but if we don’t take that road, I am afraid what will happen with our children in the high poverty urban schools. If we think we’re stressed, just imagine how stressful it is for these children to be categorized as “successful or unsuccessful” at the age of 10! As Nancy stated in her letter, children mature at different rates. I think the psychological aspect of developmental education (i+1, Vygotsky, Piaget etc) has been thrown out. Very sad indeed.
My hope is that the president will take to heart all the letters he receives from students, parents and teachers about the dismal result of RTTT. If he turns away from all our concerns that have been voiced on the Internet, in rallies and letters, he will have to accept the responsibilities of his actions. That’s what we teach our kids!
R.L, don’t give up. Every day I get on my motorcycle and travel 50 miles to school, the last 20 off road. I am there early to tutor kids that aren’t in my class, I have their parents in G.E.D. and English classes at night. We build relationships that reformers don’t understand. We could win this fight if we will persevere. They will have to fire me, I won’t quit teaching. Please join and fight on. We need your strength, you encourage your colleagues.
Obama is awake. He just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your kids. Your future is to work in a $13/hr temp job with no benefits. Your kids will get pitchforked into slums and prisons. Now, what are you going to do about it?
I have a teaching credential, have taken many classes during summers, and have a master’s degree. I used to teach primary grades in elementary school. I took an extended mommy break in order to give my own children a good early foundation, and when I returned to teach in 2003….it was a horrific job market which has continued through to 2012 for teachers. I would spend 4-8 hours on every public school application and usually be rewarded with a rejection letter. Occasionally I would get an interview, but the only time I was hired was for a half time one year contract. I substitute taught, and became really disillusioned with what I saw happening in public schools. I have been working in alternative environments such as homeschool enrichment programs and have had the freedom to be super creative and provide developmentally appropriate curriculum which is play based and hands on for my students. I generally earn about $15,000 a year which is less than the first public school teaching job I had in 1983. I buy private health insurance, but that pretty much wipes out any money I could actually use to visit the doctor! I love my work and I look forward to seeing my students every day! Sadly…it sure would be nice to earn a decent living. But the saddest thing is what the federal government and thus the states are implementing in the name of educational reform. I know their are several reasons for all of the testing mania. One is that it generates lots of data and is simplistic. The other is that it earns millions of dollars for companies like Pearson Education. But kids develop at different rates,and many things like creativity just can’t be measured on a multiple choice test! But they can be measured by observation and documentation in portfolios and with photos for instance. Portfolios take time for teachers to manage. They are individual. The government wants it done quickly and with those black and white answers.