A teacher sent me this post, which has generated lots of discussion on Facebook.
She said that the discussion on this blog shows a widespread bullying of teachers by administrators, who are in turn being bullied to produce “results.” Everyone is under pressure to meet demands created by politicians, economists, and statisticians who never spent a day in a school classroom after their high school graduation.
Here goes:
“Paul’s Story”
Yesterday I received an emergency phone call from an experienced teacher in a Bronx school who received his first ever “U” on an observation report.
Emotionally overwrought with fear and anger, it took all I could do to calm him down and get him to figure out how he could resolve this issue and continue to teach and at the same time maintain his principles while having to deal with his principal.
She, as authoritarian personality as they come, simply follows NYC DOE/Teachers College orders in FORCING her underlings to follow the lockstep TC workshop model lesson plan. Because he veered and used different materials and interacted differently with his kids than the plan permits he was given a “U”.
It was quite evident after seeing her 20-page write-up that there was something more here. Her discussions of the 2 pre-observation were filled with evidence of her obviously one-track mind. Do it this way. I will not accept any of your alternatives.
Her most consistent and often repeated criticism is that he did not use everything the Model presenter from TC demonstrated in the 3 short demonstrations he attended.
It as if everything that came before NYCDOE/TC’s workshop version of teaching was anathema in this new pious world of top down education. By the way…it is a terrible way to teach if used as the one and only lesson plan every single day.
But that is probably why he received this “U” in the first place. You see, he is not passive. He is not one to just follow orders. He speaks up and out. He argues. He was being punished for that more than his not following the lesson plan.
He expressed to me that he was ready to give up, to get out, to simply go to the rubber room, or be made into an ATR (absent teacher reserve).
That is the new leadership’s plan. Veterans: If you don’t follow the rules you have two choices. Retire or be exiled. This way “The Big Talking Heads” of education can take in their fresh young faces and train them to be, as my friend said, Star Wars “Clones” obeying the orders of the dark side.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If only economists and statisticians could demand things. For better or worse, it is our elected officials who determine education policy.
Oh, TE, you can demand all you want. Doesn’t mean said demands will be heeded.
And I’m not sure that economists and statisticians would do any better or worse than the politicos.
You’re right, TE, economsts don’t demand anything: they are paid to provide the pseudo-scientific pretexts for those making the demands.
Congratulations: the check is in the mail.
Easy, Michael. Unlike teachers, who are despised as a group but loved as individuals, your poor neighborhood economist is hated by all teachers whether he/she serves the deformers or tries to predict which way the market for corn is headed. ;>)
That’s what comes when your profession is based on the idea that here is no free lunch.
There’s not a free lunch?? Since when???
Let me get this right. It is ok to demean all economists based on the actions of a few. But it is completely wrong to label all teachers based on the actions of a few. Do I have the basics of your hypocrisy down?
How are the plans for your witch hunt going? Great plan by the way–when faced with a witch hunt against our profession, plan your own witch hunt in return. That is a sure way to build support for our cause. Thanks for setting the example that too many people believe is true of all of us.
“If only economists and statisticians could demand things.”
Sorry, I don’t see it.
Witch hunt?
Really?
After the economists?
Hyperbole much?
Wilbert,
Please go back and read some of the exchanges TE and I have had. I actually like a lot of what he has to say, but at the same time economics leaves a hell of a lot to be desired when it comes to describing the human condition.
Are you an economist or statistician?
Duane
Economic arguments and statistical methods have been used by both economists and statisticians to paint a false picture of the US system — to portray it as failing and in crisis. Yes, elected officials have the final say, but they depend on money from vested interests that run contrary to preserving public education. Economic arguments and economists have too much influence and economic goals dominate educational policy.
Worst of all is the false picture of American public education as failing and in crisis and then blaming Teachers Unions. Organized teachers are the one real hope for American public education. The most important things Teachers Unions can do are to, on the one hand, help preserve the middle class by standing up for reasonable pay and working conditions and not capitulating to the neoliberal restructuring of work relations, such as pay for performance; and, on the other, continue to fight for teacher autonomy and against publisher’s curricula and the outsourcing of pedagogy.
However, to achieve either of these ends, the TUs need to debunk the assault of US public education. David Berliner and others have been working for 20 years to show this is a manufactured crisis, but the TUs seem either unwilling to pursue this tack or outgunned. Nonetheless, a good first step would be to highlight US successes and how much more difficult the challenge is in the US because of high poverty rates among children and, especially, the way the children of poverty are concentrated in apartheid-like districts. the “crisis of our country’s schools isn’t a crisis of schools that educate middle-class or affluent children; it’s a crisis of poor children’s schools..” Heidi Steffens and Peter W. Cookson Limitations of the Market Model, Education Week, August 7, 2002 http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/EPRU-0208-30-OWI.pdf
Michaeel,
You all do know that I was referring to Dr. Ravitch’s statement above where she says “Everyone is under pressure to meet demands created by politicians, economists, and statisticians….”, right?
I didn’t, but that you cannot put all the blame on
politicians. Or, if you can, it is because, as Aristotle says, we
are all political animals, we all live in a political community and
those who disdain politics and abstain from it are just as much to
blame as anyone. But Economists –a lot of them– have their own
role in this. Economistic arguments for education reduce it to
preparing children for adult roles in the productive sphere, not
considering preparing citizens to participate in Democracy or
creative individuals to add to our aesthetic sensibilities (unless
they sell) or compassionate ones who actually care about the less
well to do. MIchael Peters, writing a decade ago, outlined “the
neo-liberal model of the entrepreneurial self” with its associated
educational forms, the ‘enterprise education’ and the ‘enterprise
curriculum.’ Certainly this was a political movement — the idea,
pushed first by Thatcherites and then by Third Way politicians such
as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton — was to push for self-reliance as
a way of justifying cutting back on the government’s promotion of
the general welfare and individual welfare schemes. It called for a
type of hyper-functionalism on the part of the individual and
unfettered investment. Yes, it was political, but it was politics
justified by economic arguments based on micro-economic
understandings of society. The influence of economists such as F.
Hayek and Milton Friedman conflated freedom with free markets, a
very dangerous misidentification. As for statisticians, they have
come up with this value-added framework. While I would not go quite
so far as to call it ‘junk science,’ it is dangerous. It is not
even a science at this point, just a method which is still in its
rudimentary stages. But even if it were more developed, it still
has severe limits that many of its practioneers (Thomas Kane, for
instance) don’t seem to recognize or are unwilling to recognize.
Statisticians and economists put forward what they assert is an
objective view, but it is highly skewed and is objective in the
worst way — it turns thinking, breathing, spontaneously creative
subjects into objects to be measured along one dimension and then
be labeled. Sure, politicians could reject these approaches and
there are economists and statisticians with nuanced views, but when
we see an economistic and statistical approach to education we
should be very vary. 9 out of 10 times they are missing the point
entirely, but that does not stop them from recommending
policy.
When we assign numbers to students and teachers, when we say that objective measures can tell us who you are-that there are objective measures-when we say that we will measure outcomes and be accountable (‘count’ able)-when we give the power of decision making to testing companies, their tests and their vulnerable contract laborers scoring those tests- when we use the discourse of standards and benchmarks–when teaching and learning to teach are about high stakes canned measures and curriculum–we open a huge door for bullying of all kinds. This is the untold story of our lived experience as educators: we are being dehumanized, pressured, and threatened. Bravo to the Seattle teachers who, in solidarity, are saying no to bullying by saying no to testing. Sign the petition supporting them here: https://www.change.org/petitions/seattle-public-schools-support-garfield-high-school-teachers-refusing-to-administer-the-map?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=url_share&utm_campaign=url_share_after_sign
That’s what the new evaluation systems are meant to do – push out the teachers who will not follow orders, promote a “One Model Fits All” approach that has as much to do with making money for the education “nonprofits” and consultants as it does with instruction, and drive home the message to children – grow up to be compliant consumers, obedient workers and rule followers or have your livelihood taken from you.
That’s the Obama/Duncan/Rhee/Klein/Tisch/Gates/Broad/Walton/Cuomo/Bloomberg/Murdoch education reform movement in a nutshell.
This is becoming a rampant issue here in Florida, and especially my school district as we adopt the corporate reform model and Marzano. We are being turned into cookie cutter teachers and asked to innovate at the same time.
The frustration is forcing out as many teachers as the lack of pay here.
Marzano is an edupreneur sellout. Why anyone listens to what he has to say is beyond me.
Marzano is Full of Bull.
Twisted,Decorated, and Complex Bunch-o”Junk…sort of like The Hoarder.
Marzano….Get rid of your Decorations and as the saying goes…*”Keep It Simple St*Pid” *author…who knows?
does anyone have an article picking apart Marzano?
My former large high school district with about 500 faculty cut 257 teachers a couple of years ago. The same year Wis. gov. Walker was attacking unions. Increased class size, extended the school day, and made other changes. Then hired back about 150. There is still a union, but it is useless. Nobody dares strike when there are so many looking for a job. I visit every year and it has the atmosphere of a wake.
I’ve checked the “school report” card after 2 completed years under this new way of doing business. There is no significant change in student test scores.
The result is lowering costs and the school has climbed out of debt.
A number of years ago, the school hired 40 new teachers to replace those that retired under 5+5 (early retirement plan for IL). 4 years later, I recognized one of those new teachers that was introduced to us at that first day of school. I asked, “Of that group of 40, how many got tenure.” His answer was, “I’m the only one.”
I’ve noticed the pressure on teachers increased every year for 40 years. Since I retired, the increase has tripled. I did not know it could get that bad so fast.
Basically, it is the teachers’ fault. I believe this is just creating job frustration so there is a greater turn over in teachers to keep salaries low. This will in turn create a demand for more provisional certificates and privatization to fill the gap.
“Basically, it is the teachers’ fault”
To a degree you are right. Unfortunately the vast majority of teachers have gone along to get along. Those of us who have spoken out are viewed as pariahs. I see/feel it everyday. Some of us have been fighting this data driven bullshit and have paid the price. I know I have been fighting it since I first heard the odious words “data driven dialogue” in the 90s.
Data..Data…is only as good as the ones that interpret it.
It can be and IS skewed for the sole purpose of getting what the person in power so desires…..The people that collect the data for the testing look at the scores and the race..Nothing more..nothing..
.I mean nothing….
EXAMPLE
Teacher 1–35 children..some homeless…come to school to eat breakfast and lunch with knives in their pocket and a parent 13 years older than they themselves..
Teacher–2—10 of the Most Privileged in the State…Private
airplanes…Vacation Home…Parental Support….Computers..I-pads….Tutors…Money…
Teacher 1..”You are Fired”..We gave you extra money to teach these low performers and you have low scores..
Teacher-2-..You get a raise and we would like to hire you in the admin so you can teach other teachers how to teach…
And so it goes…and so it is..
Absolutely!
How do you think our students feel when they don’t conform to traditional school? What happens when they drop out? Teacher evaluations are poorly done in this country because of factors that include poor higher education training and lots incompetence of building administrators with respect to teaching and learning. Many administrators have spent little time crafting their responsibilities of effective instructional leadership. So the few teachers that everyone knows should not be in the profession but unfortunately remain. Then the teachers who do a great job in the classroom are the ones that have to succumb to this stupid evaluation system. Where is the support for this teacher?
IMHO, Duane Swacker has written in an uncharacteristically understated fashion on this piece. Perhaps he is tired from all his other postings…
🙂
The economists and statisticians who have fattened their wallets [and diminished their moral standing] by hiring themselves out as thugs to the charterites/privatizers are willing accomplices in the service of terribly destructive policies. They lack the one excuse that the ‘no-excuses’ politicos and edupreneurs will later claim as their primary defense: “I didn’t know better. I relied on the experts. I would have done better if only my unscrupulous subordinates had told me the truth.”
And it seems like carrying coals to Newcastle on this blog, but not everyone who posts here acts like a responsible adult, so to make it perfectly clear: not all economists, not all statisticians.
Thanks, KrazyTA!!
I think all economists and statisticians could greatly learn that the human condition is not all numbers and stats but comprised of many other realms.
My corrective for them would be to read and thoroughly understand Andre Comte-Sponville’s “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues”. It took my doctoral advisor a year to convince me to read it (I had heard enough about “virtues” from the nuns while growing up in the parochial Catholic system in St. Louis.) I’ve since read it over a dozen times and have given it as a gift many, many times (I’m fortunate to know a manager of a Barnes and Noble that gets it for me fairly cheaply-around $14.) and have referenced it for many others..
A SMALL TREATISE ON THE GREAT VIRTUES is also available ‘instantly’ for the Kindle from Amazon for $9.99. Thank you Duane for this very interesting and helpful reference.
No hay de que, Harlan!
Comte-Sponville’s work is a very readable bit of “philosophizing”.
There are too many Paul stories, and there will be more. President Obama, Arne Duncan…..your policies are destroying lives of people who care, people with values and character, people who are the heart and soul of America. How do you justify your policies and look at your own children with honor? How can you not see the effects of your policies? How can you continue to support something so wrong? Can you really be so heartless?
They have no clue how heartless they are as they are some of the “Best and Brightest” this country has to offer
WordsMatter I have seen your posts here and in our local paper so I believe we are from the same area. Your words are sobering. Please continue to speak the truth. I am out on sick leave right now because of all this turmoil. I just can’t do this to children. 4 years from retirement I’d rather use my skills in an area that is less pressurized even if it means taking a job for less pay. If this is the way I feel I can only imagine how children feel. I was the one that had to look them in the eye on a daily basis and I chose to do things that were sane for children. In 25 years I have never felt so bullied by a supervisor because I didn’t do it “their way”. Learning should be a joy. Children need to learn how to learn. Teaching is a joy under the right conditions. I now have to choose between my morals and money, I will pick my morals. One friend told me “I should just do what they tell me to do.” I think what bothers me the most is the apathy of fellow teachers just trying to “stay under the radar”. My family lived through one holocaust and I don’t think my body can tolerate this one.
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New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) does not mandate Teachers College (TC) model – that is a decision made by the local principal. In the NYC model principals join clusters of schools, called networks, affinity groups which usually agree on a mode of instruction. Schools range from TC to Core Knowledge to whatever the principal chooses – the NYC DOE only requires that schools select a number of elements within the Common Core. In NYC teachers can move from school to school under the Open Market system and principals frequently “recruit” teachers from other schools who are instructionally compatable. See William Ouchi, “Schools That Work,” (2003) for a detailed description of the model.
Sounds great, but it ain’t . . .
Sure, principals get to choose. And, sure, some are great. But my experience in the system tell me that since 2002, when the Mayor begin to put his imprint on the schools, that principals have become more authoritarian. As one administrator told me, “It used to be that our goal was to enable teachers.” Now the model is not to enable, but to direct and control. Experienced teachers are bullied into accepting the model the principal chooses.
You make it sound as if these affinity networks and the open market system create a world in which like minded people gravitate towards one another and all are happy forever. But a teacher seeking a new school has very limited possibilities. In the Open Market system, principals have to keep their budgets in mind when they recruit and have a huge incentive to choose lower paid, newer teachers. A teacher with 10 years experience can earn nearly twice as much as two novice teachers, so even a principal who likes that teacher would be hard pressed to hire him or her, especially if the principal’s budget has tightened, which it almost certainly has over the last few years.
What the Bloomberg/Klein system has done is to bring in a lot of new, young principals who are given an MBA style training and given them much greater authority over the instructional model of their schools. They also have a huge incentive to hire new teaches.
Overall, this is way of removing teachers from positions of autonomy and that is the point. If you don’t have a truly professional teaching class, then canned curricula from publishers seems a blessing. Seems Bloomberg/Klein were sold on Chubb and Moe’s vision, but it is a farce and much of the justification is just window dressing for what is actually going on — the Balkanization and selective privatizaion of what is perhaps America’s greatest achievement: a comprehensive system of public education.
Yep, glad those educational “leaders” (administrators with probably less than 5 years in the classroom) can “guide” my teaching of Spanish considering none of them speak a second language. Eff them and the “leadership” train they came in on.
I noticed that the rhetoric of “educational leadership” came into full force in the late 90s early 00s to coincide with the NCLB. Most (yes, I am generalizing but it’s my experience that this is way it is) administrators aren’t qualified to say shit to a classroom teacher as most of them didn’t last 5 years in a classroom. Yeh, get all them newly credentialed friggin 30 year olds to tell me how to conduct my class. They must be the “Best and Brightest”, eh, especially if they went through the Bored (sorry, meant Broad) Administrators Academy.
The bullying of teachers is all about saving money on pensions and salaries–nothing more, nothing less. It’s more organized now than in the past. No teacher should EVER consider his or her job safe from these tyrant administrators without a clue. “Tenure” doesn’t protect teachers anyway but protects school districts from having even more lawsuits filed against them by putting a brake on a principal’s worst impulses to fire. However, a principal can do whatever he or she wants without consequences.
In the old days, few teachers were fired not because they had much in the way of protections–they didn’t–but because principals understood that throwing teachers out the door undermined school morale and was hard on students. Back then, principals generally were ethical types who had many years of teaching experience before they became principals near the end of their careers. Nowadays, there are few principals who have principles; many are completely unfit to be in a classroom at all, let alone head a school. However, the system is so rigged in their favor they can break laws with impunity.
Even if a teacher gets reinstated, that teacher will forever have a target on his or her back. A school district will find a way to get rid of that teacher. Districts don’t give up once a teacher is targeted.
You are right! No matter what they are talking about, it is the money.
Whatever happened to the ethical principal? Oh, I know
there are many of them who are still out there, but whatever became
of the ethical principal as a norm
I seriously doubt many administrators are being “bullied.” THEY are the ones who have the ironclad job security and given wide leeway what to do. Few principals are fired at all by school districts unless they break laws that embarrass the district or are exceptionally ethical and speak out against a school district. When principals screw up, they are merely moved around, promoted, or once in a while demoted. I have a hard time believing principals are being bullied much at all.
I love the management mindset that says, “I attended a two day workshop, now you should recreate the job you’ve done for twenty years.”
My principal — a product of both Teachers College and Teach for America, where she spent a whopping 3 years in a classroom (none since!) — also suffers from this “my way or the highway” leadership style. She has recently been doling out negative evaluations to veteran teachers for not following the teaching format she spent ALL of last year jamming down our throats as the “instructional leader” — a title she bandies about constantly. I am a union representative for the building, so I am privy to my colleagues complaints and frustrations. This adherence to one singular pedagogical style and method is not only unfair to us as professionals and experts in our content areas. It also will surely contribute to the death of the real education of our children, who deserve to be served a variety of classroom approaches, practices, personalities, and experiences. My God, what a way to bore the pants off the kids! When will this nonsense end? What’s next? Scripting my lessons? Will the “reformers” then try to standardize the university classroom?
I would suggest this piece of education reform. Any principle must have a minimum of 10 years of classroom experience. Same thing for any person who sits in a classroom evaluating a teacher as they are teaching.
The apprentice should not be grading the master. The Sensei must be respected, or learning itself is discredited.
That used to be the de factor rule — indeed, 10 years was usually considered far too little. But this is an effort to get rid of the teaching profession and replace it with something that will have only a few well paying jobs and a lot of young, inexperienced people using scripted lessons from publishers — at least when they are not administering tests from data companies.
“a product of both Teachers College and Teach for America, where she spent a whopping 3 years in a classroom ”
Your have my sincerest condolences!!
I proudly wrote “Paul’s Story” and changed his name. He had told me to feel free to use his real name, but I declined.
http://dcgmentor.com/?p=294
I have met with him twice since then to try to coach him to be able to keep his job and continue to be that gadfly. I hope it works.
When a school’s principal opts to do the TC model, he or she is under the impression that it will fit “The Model” of what is being passed off as of a successful school in NYC.
“Paul’s” is not a successful school. I recently learned of two other similar circumstances in nearby schools where similar tactics have been used to rid a school of expensive gadflies.
Everyone teaching in schools knows that today’s atmosphere is one of fear rather than real innovation. Real innovation is done by creative outliers who are too often these days are being told not to let the door hit you on your way out as new easily led by the nose inexperienced teachers are “recruited” to be followers.
Teachers College “philosophy” allows even the most inept administrators to target teachers because there are so many angles that administrator can “get” those teachers.
Lucy Calkins needs to denounce how her reading and writing program has been negatively used by the NYC DOE.
Oh I feel the teacher’s pain. That happened to me. We had just adopted the TC model in our school and I had participated for years in the workshops in the summer and been trained extensively. The principal told me my lesson was all wrong because I did not do my mini lesson for the prescribed number of minutes and I did not follow the script exactly, “Now today and everyday…” I tried to explain that the lesson didn’t call for the full mini lesson time (this was Kindergarten) and that I didn’t find the script to be natural. I fought it, but had to do it exactly as she expected whenever she walked into the room. All other times I shut the door. Eventually our principal, 7 years later, came to her senses and we dropped TC.
In the end my thought is that no teacher’s guide or program is a bible that needs to be followed exactly. We are all different, believe differently, and we teach children who are different and learn differently. We need the higher ups to recognize that a good teacher takes the guides, PD’s, and everything else we are given and use them in the most effective manner for their students to get them thinking and learning rather than regurgitating a text book companies version of the world.
I have mentored a few new teachers in TC Schools. In each I saw the failure of that approach. In one case my menthe used the TC model to begin and end the lesson, and in the middle used a discussion based inquiry approach (as per my coaching). When, during our post observation conference, I asked her how it went, she said the first and last parts were horrible (They were.) And the middle went well. (It did.)
The I asked her why she doesn’t do more of the middle and less of the TC model…and she said she had no choice.
Can you imagine any other professional working in a field where they had no choice?
Models, I don’t need no stinkin models to teach the way I know is best!!
Generally I find all of this “continuous improvement” and “growing” to be very insulting. How many other professions have to have a friggin professional development plan to show constant improvement? NONE.
It’s a bovine excrement to keep administrators from doing their job which is to appropriately handle all the student issues.
More and more, evaluations are used punitively and to curb dissent. There are those who believe the evaluation system is broken in this country, but that is a ruse to keep us from seeing what is going on — the evaluation system is been used in a corrupt fashion by those who have an ideological stance that plays into the hand of those who want to see more and more private profit made on public education.
I have also taught in the Bronx, have also dealt with authoritarian principals (usually from the so-called Leadership Academy), also taught at schools that used the TC workshop model, also been outspoken and critical, also been threatened with U-ratings. Clearly, evaluations were used to punish — as one commentator said, there seems an effort to push out the teachers who will not follow orders or who voice criticism. Or course, that means they are also used selectively, against those who would dissent from the latest fad.
But beyond that it also targets older, more experienced teachers who earn more money. Under the guise of reform, it is an effort to de-professionalize teaching so that there is room for publishers and data companies to sell pedagogical content to school systems. This is not about providing a better education for students, it is not even about saving money — it is about making money. (See Valerie Strauss’s post, “Education reform as a business,” at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/09/education-reform-as-a-business/)
And for much of this we have to thank Mike Blloomberg and Joel Klein. A decade ago, when I was teaching at a large HS in the Bronx, we were told to forget everything we knew. What follows is from a diaryat the beginning of the 2003 school year:
8 Sept., 2003, the Bronx — I’m going over the materials they gave us at our three day orientation. A bunch of stuff from the University of Pittsburgh, who, if I remember correctly, a few years ago trademarked the term New Standards. They have a lot of terms with superscripts following them. Accountability is big. Leading a discussion is not leading a discussion, it is Accountable TalkSM–
Accountable TalkSM supposedly “sharpens student’s thinking by reinforcing their ability to build and use knowledge.” Teachers are supposed to model “appropriate forms of discussion . . . questioning, probing, and leading conversations.”
With Accountable TalkSM there is accountability to the learning community, to rigorous thinking, to knowledge itself:
Accountability to Knowledge
1. Students make use of specific and accurate knowledge. . . .
2. Students provide evidence for claims and arguments. . . .
I would make one of my snide remarks about stating the obvious and trademarking terms such as breathing, but the reality comes close enough. Pitt –a private university making money selling educational products — has taken ‘learning’ and ‘walk’ and made a compound term ‘LearningWalk.’ It isn’t trademarked in my copy, but my copy is only a draft. It does, however, use the two upper case letters.
These New StandardsTM are part of the new standards which guide educational practice.3 Moreover, there is in this attempt to fashion a neo-liberal meritocracy a false equation guiding education:
instruction + evaluation = teaching
Given the variations in private education among students, limiting education to instruction is class-biased. It is also conservative in the traditional sense of conserving the past, for one result is that the potential of education for social transformation is sometimes reduced to social maintenance. This is not an outcome that is particularly bothersome to the powerful in society so it is not surprising that economics-based approaches tend to follow this line.
So much for “differentiating instruction.”
The scripted program does that, silly, not the teacher. We are simply robots who bleed.
Don’t they have to cut us before we bleed?
This exemplifies in very stark and bold terms the pinnacle of the death trap set for teachers by the political corporate reformists. The politicians and reformers have defined and demanded compliance to unproven and micro-managed strategies that in practice act as further barriers to student success. The natural effects on kids are amplified struggles, low self-esteem and a general sense that the system cares not for their success. These strategies bind the teacher from making professional judgment calls that are critical for basic cognitive and emotional support many kids need.
This system is a loose/loose scenario for every teacher. Follow the “plan” and be penalized because more kids fail as they are further disenfranchised form the very human dynamic that is the essence of teaching and learning. Don’t follow the plan and be penalized because of insubordination. Either choice leaves teachers at severe risk and gives reformers the needed anecdotes to support the myth of the ineffective teacher.
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Any guesses who will be forced to take the blame for the colossal failures of the “innovative twenty-first century” scripted lessons? Teachers of course! They will be damned if they do follow orders and damned if they don’t. Sound farfetched?
Readers of this blog should click on this link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/14/local/la-me-0414-banks-20120414
John Deasy of LAUSD, an edubully if ever they was one, didn’t like what he saw a substitute teacher doing over a period of a few minutes, so instead of talking to her privately, or consulting with the principal, or insisting on having a meeting with the regular teacher who left what he considered a grossly inadequate lesson plan, this edugenius had the substitute fired!
Yes, fired! For doing exactly what substitutes are required and expected and forced to do. And this substitute got high marks from colleagues and the principal of the school. But no amount of public outcry or appeals to sanity changed his mind. So teachers beware: following orders will be no protection when the time comes to assess who is at fault for the failures of your students. Compliance will not buy you protection, silence will not win you any favors with the edubullies.
I know this advice runs counter to how a lot of teachers feel, because many people in public schools value cooperation and teamwork.
But forewarned is forearmed.
I agree and have seen similar actions.
I can’t be everywhere, but it would seem that this is all over the USA.
I email former colleges and they refuse discuss school because of what I believe to be fear.
One teacher was called down because she wrote, “I had a hard day at work today.” on facebook.
There is no longer freedom of speech in or out of schools.
Are the new TC models common core aligned? I have seen this type of forced curriculum in Indiana as well. Teachers are complaining about being given a script and penalized for failure to follow it with “fidelity”. The force behind this narrowing of curriculum is the Common Core Standards Initiative which was developed with huge donations from Bill Gate’s foundation. They pay other organizations to help drive these standards into the classroom, regardless of how teachers feel about them. The Teachers College, Columbia has received, wait for it……$16,297,553 from the Gates foundation to create curriculums and push their agenda on schools. Search this link to find out what other groups are being financed by Gates to buy education policy: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/grants/Pages/search.aspx
As a nation, we must stop letting corporate interests dictate how and what our teachers teach. Ending common core is the first step to stop the privatization of our education system.
In my experience, the rigidness comes not from the TC model but the way it’s interpreted at the building level. Somea dministrators who are used to rigid programs turn everything into one. TC has many talented staff developers doing great work with schools.
I remember visiting a classroom in Oregon in the 1990’s where I saw first graders reading (many of them of course not reading) from a basal reader in unison. The teacher told me why: “No more reading groups, it’s all whole language now.” Bad things often happen to good ideas.
It’s the response of administrators who have not spent time in the classroom or if they did not enough to become “proficient.” I got let go for teaching “off model.” The same “off model” teaching had been more than adequate my first two years. Change who has the power, change the evaluation. My evaluation happened the week before they had to inform us whether we would be rehired the next year. Need I say more?
One teacher received his evaluation a week before he retired. He went from “satisfactory” to “excellent.” “What did you do that was different?” “Nothing.”
The students did not pick up as they should after art class and the evaluation read, “The students were so engaged, they forgot to pick up.” Different from his evaluation by the same administrator two years prior that criticized him for the students not picking things up.
I’ve compared notes with other teachers across the country over the years. To a large extent. there seems to be a uniformity in how schools are being run throughout out the nation. England seems to be 10 years behind.
Nope! That’s how the bastards work.
I continue to have conversations with my colleagues regarding the Teachers College Workshop Model. NYC loves this because it gives administrators a cookie cutter format to evaluate teachers. In essence, it allows administrators to tick of items from a list – no critical thinking involved.
We, as teachers, keep asking ourselves why our children can’t seem to problem solve for themselves. College professors are saying that students are coming to their classes lacking the ability to take initiative for their own learning. They blame teachers. It is not the teachers, it is the workshop model which relies on a spoon feeding and regurgitation of minute skill sets.
Diane, I read your historical comments you blogged in a previous post. Unfortunately, many “bosses” in education know the “how”. The teachers know the “why” but are being bullied when we fight back. When will this end? We are damaging whole generations of children.
Paul’s story is universal. Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2013 14:52:48 +0000 To: rke25@hotmail.com
This scares me, as I am one of the veteran teachers. Trust me when I say that the young teachers I know for the most part are woefully unprepared. Rigor is gone. They don’t take work home at night. (There are exceptions, of course.) I am speaking of a trend, however, that is scary. And if they don’t know any better and can’t critically evaluate the powers that be and the mandates from on high, public education is doomed in the U.S.
It’s too polite to say the pressure is coming from “politicians, economists, and statisticians.”
It is coming from hedge fund managers and trust fund babies who want to trade our kids futures like so many pork bellies. The politicians, astroturf political groups, and rent-an-experts are just salting the pork.
@ MIke Dixon on trade our kids futures like so many pork bellies and rent-an-experts are just salting the pork.
I don’t know it what you say is true, but I do know it is extremely harsh.
My guess is that is is harsh and true at the same time.
@ David Greene — I don’t know Lucy Calkins but I think the TC model is fine — as a model, one of many. That is, I don’t have any problem with the TC model when it is presented as one method of teaching a class and the teacher is given enough autonomy to choose how, when, how often and whether to use it.
The problem when I taught at Walton was the B/K DOE dictating that it be used every time, every class, by all teachers and then taking out stop watches to time whether the mini-lesson was exactly ten minutes. They also took out rules to measure the margins of blackboards and other stuff you would not believe.
Your point is well taken.
I have always advocated the use of a variety of methods within each particular class section. That is differentiation.
The problem has become this. Most teachers I know do not like the TC model. It doesn’t get used often by choice. It is usually forced down entire staffs’ throats because administrations have paid for the program and the expensive “training” that goes along with it.
That dictates. Teaching is not to be dictated. It is a craft that takes creativity, communication, critical thinking, talent, and skill. “Models” like this do not allow for those essential teaching abilities.
Look up Lucy on line. What she sells goes for a lot more than a 5 cent therapy session.
BTW. Was that Walton HS, in the Bronx?
Yes, Walton HS in the Bronx. You can contact me through my facebook page . . .
To DR NARIB…. Love to talk. I worked in the BX for a long time and have friends who have been there even longer. If they didn’t get out in time to take advantage of this ridiculous to gain F status, they were demoted to ATR status and treated as a serf.
As far as the “TC” model… it has been around a long time and has made much money for Lucy Calkins and her “Project”.