A reader sent this sad commentary on the state of education today. When you read dozens of letters like this from districts around the country, you have to wonder if the “powers that be” are trying to force experienced teachers out of the classroom, to make room for the young teachers who don’t know enough to think differently, who won’t stay around long enough to get a pension, who won’t question the New Order of testing and submission. Maybe the greatest act of defiance is to stay and fight for what is right. Because the end of the “reformers'” time in charge draws near:
I QUIT and I did not send a letter…One day’s notice ….as I have one life to live and had rather rake yards, mow lawns, and even clean houses thasn to walk in any of these schools..
I am exhausted from trying to figure out what to teach for the next county test……then state test.
I am tired of the CLAWS that come at you and the Ugly Faces of the Powers that be when your class of 33 can not make an A on one of those SO BAD BAD TESTS!!!.
Those “Frowny Powers that Be” people may not know it but they will die early and have so many wrinkles form those Ugly Ugly Facial Gestures!!!
I am so tired of the hiring of all of the coaches that nag and nag and nag the veteran teachers and pretend to know more…but they do not..
I am tired of the Professional Learning whatevers where teachers discuss TEST SCORES for a kid with a 58 I.Q….while an administrator that has never taught more than one year takes notes back to the Super Powers…or they have some person whose position has been created to sit there and take notes to take back to the Super Powers..
NY…..NC….should call those meeting-”TESTER MEETINGS”
I know that those States test and test and test and test and test and test!!!!
I am almost positive that the Powers that be will be in the future mandating Pregnant Women to test their Embryos for Gene Defects in order to get a Head Start on any problems the child may have for Future Testing…
I am tired of not having a book…but am asked instead to get all of the material on the web….run off enough material to kill all of the trees in Pennsylvania…..all of the trees in the National Forests.,…etc…
I can not believe that the State is asking for activities that the teacher creates to put on their website for this Common Core..
If I were that teacher..I would charge the state $500 for each and every activity after I had copyrighted the activity…
What the Educational Super Powers have done is to Drain teachers of any motivation and creativity…
The media has turned their heads on this one…unless someone comes to school with a gun or a knife, you never hear of any news of the Destruction of Public Education.
What a shame..
Diane Ravitch's blog 
All of the money going down the drain to greedy adults. My heart bleeds.
We see letters and e-mails that express this sentiment repeatedly in Houston ISD. We have had 344 teachers quit the district by December 4 in spite of the fact that their teaching credentials are suspended for the balance of the school year. We expect this number to climb dramatically in January and February. We know that 25 more walked off by January 10. We are expecting a huge mid-year retirement by mid-February.
Gayle Fallon, President
Houston Federation of Teachers
Re: you have to wonder if the “powers that be” are trying to force experienced teachers out of the classroom …
Their goals are hardly so modest as that — they are working to retire an entire profession, the very idea of teachers as professionals.
Yes indeed. In IL there was a big push to bribe us into retirement and even early retirement. Then the state ran out of money and we were demonized for taking advantage of the system. I asked how the state expected to pay us in 2000. The answer was that the state would replace us with cheaper help. Even then, that did not make sense. After the state bribed us into retirement, the state wants to cut pensions.
My sentiments exactly…that’s why I left after two decades..three years earlier than planned. I never wanted to abandon students but, finally, what I was forced to do felt even worse than that, a dehumanizing and degrading charade. What do we need to do to make people realize what’s happening to our children?
It is so sad to read letter after letter about the profession I have held so dear. I think you are absolutely right, we are looking at the end of public education, as we knew it. It is turning into McTest School, Off-the-Wal School, Rhee-Ritual Academy, Gates’ Gates to Whatever Academy, Arne Duncan’s Doldrums Academy….. Not to make light of it, my heart is heavy. We have taken our jobs seriously, made huge differences in children’s lives and parents’ lives. The American Way has taken over, with unethical, uncaring, sociopathic practices which have nothing to do with children, teachers or learning. I wish I could say the words, I QUIT, but I cannot bring myself to it. Although, I retired a year ago, my heart still beats for the same purpose. I will pick myself up, dust myself off and hope to have the energy to fight the tireless fight. I see no other options, but to keep sounding the bells of decency for our kids and grand kidlets.
I had planned to teach a minimum of three more years (had hoped for five). But after three days of inservice before the start of school, I knew education, as currently being addressed, no longer was in alignment with my personal philosophy. I “retired” the day before school started—I actually had my classroom emptied shortly after midnight the first day of the school year. Never would I have dreamed THAT would be the way I’d exit the profession, but I am 100% certain “it was the RIGHT thing to do.” Loving life, MY life!
Not only is the state asking for teachers to upload lessons for the common core for free, so is the AFT. Meanwhile, I saw a story on CNN about a kindergarten teacher who became a millionaire selling lesson plans on the teachers pay teachers’ website.
In my district, many if us were given iPads with the expectation that we will be utilizing technology in the classroom. It’s nice that they have a budget for these, but they come with an expectation of the technology initiatives.
The newest initiative is the concept of the “flipped classroom” where every teacher records a lesson demonstration video that is uploaded to YouTube and assigns its viewing to students for homework. These recorded lessons are essentially available to the public-at-large for free. I wonder how many people working in for-profit environments outside of the schools will use these lessons created by professionals? There ought to be laws about intellectual property for educator-created digital instruction.
You may want to inform your district that they are going to be SOL when they have to switch over to the Common Core tests. You can’t administer the PARCC on iPads (I’m sure Bill Gates made sure of that). As far as your district asking you to video tape yourself and put it on youtube so you can “flip” your classroom, don’t waste your time. There are excellent videos on youtube already that are probably aligned with your course. I know the crash course world history series is way more interesting than I would ever be. Second, if your students don’t listen to your lectures during class when you are there to supervise them, why are they going to listen to you at home where they have a million distractions? Third, what is the pedagogical value of having them watch a video of you talking? I post my power points on my website and will give them a quiz on that the next day. At least they are practicing their reading skills.
I don’t think the CC tests will be an issue. Students are using desktops and laptops–it’s the teachers who have iPads for daily classroom use.
I have yet to creat a flipped lesson. Not much for recording myself, and I can guarantee that there are probably far more interesting people on the Internet, already.
The reasons behind flipped classrooms are many:
1. It is believed that students attend to videos more than to written explanations.
2. Students can watch the videos as many times as they need to.
3. Videos take the place of direct instruction in that teachers can utilize the videos as introductory or expository information, then give students an assessment of their understanding online. The results of the assessment help the teacher tailor the structure of student support the following day in class monitoring the students who need the most help in understanding the concept while giving other students more advanced independent work on the topic. This is supposed to make teaching more efficient in that the direct teaching component is now taking place without the teacher-student interactive environment of the classroom.
4. Teachers can share lessons within grades and subject areas thus spreading the direct instruction component around eventually requiring less direct instruction from any given teacher. Sounds like a perfect excuse for a person who has very little training in teaching to harvest teachers’ expertise in the form of videos and use them.
Teachers are caring, generous, loving individuals. But, there comes a point in everyone’s life, if there aren’t enough deposits, there is nothing left to withdraw. I weep for our nation as we lose the pillars that have been supporting this country inwardly, as strongly as our military supports it outwardly. I wish I could say, “Stay, it will get better,” but unless I see a new wisdom and leadership from President Obama, I believe our schools and our nation will continue in a downward spiral.
This blog has been the one and only place where teachers feel their voice is heard. My heart breaks reading the words written by this teacher and for all teachers who feel the same discouragement waking up each morning, dreading the daily irrational demands, yet returning to a calling they once loved. Thank you Diane for all your continued efforts and for your steadfast faith in the work teachers do. I truly hope your belief that the “reform” tide is turning, will be the strength that gives teachers hope and encourages them one more day to continue to do the most important work of educating and guiding children. Who else do they have? What other hope is there?
My heart aches, as well, for this teacher and all teachers. I am still angry about what happened to me–feeling forced to retire two years early–but this blog has helped with that anger. There is camaraderie here. The last week of my teaching this past May, the school secretary came to me to tell me that she knew I was leaving because of the Principal. She also told me that the Program Coaches were her spies. Whatever the teachers told them or whatever they were doing in class went directly back to her. The secretary said it wasn’t totally the program coaches fault. They had to do this. I wondered why one of the program coaches was crying one time when I dropped by to give them something. I asked her if I could do anything for her. She said no. Later, I received a card from her about what a caring person I was. I can’t believe that we have been reduced to this. What does this tell our kids? I think many of them know what is going on. Some of my parents figured out I was leaving due to the way I was being treated. So, I am truly sorry for this teacher. Life does go on. We can all hope that things will change and improve for the sake of our children and children’s children.
How do you REALLY feel? We veteran teachers saw this coming a few years ago. I marched down to the DO and State officials in educ the summer of 2011 to speak out about the doomsday race to nowhere that was on its way. Condescending replies led me to believe we were in for a world of hurt. Blindsided and coerced through fear, today’s teachers are just starting to see the insanity of this latest curriculum deform. Until they get angry enough to go to their superiors and say “No more!”, silence will be interpreted as compliance and agreement. Follow the money and you will find the culprits. Teachers, YOU and parents of your students are the only ones who really care. Anyone higher than that is in it for the power, prestige, money and reputation. I don’t trust any of them. Take back your classroom on behalf of the children. That space belongs to the public, not CEO’s or state officials. Just say no to the insanity and move on. Do not fear the fear mongers. YOU have the power and will to do the right thing. Be strong. Be the professional that you want to be, know to be, need to be in this battle against outside interference with your work. Speak up so you can alert others of the travesty bearing down on your campus and grow that allegiance because numbers matter. The more you gather as a group to stand for justice, the more chance to change minds. Your principals know it’s crazy what they have to do. Give them a pass b/c their jobs depend on you jumping through irrational hoops to perform wizardry when all you have to do is teach. That is what you know how to do. The doubt of that fact has seeped into the fabric of every public school campus to the point where teachers are forced to work from a place of apathy, fear, confusion, anxiety, worry and insecurity. I bet this kind of brute intimidation happens in many business offices around the country. Learning is not a business with finite measures, objects, outcomes to be tinkered with. We are in the human being business. We grow children to citizens with integrity, knowledge and independence. Schools are not cookie factories where the ingredients are exact and the outcomes all the same. Product control does not exist in public schools. We’re there to provide learning experiences to all children, no matter their abilities, motivations and social status. It is the heart of our work to find ways to help each student learn as much as they can and in the time that fits their needs. All students do not learn in the same ways on the same days. There is no assembly line in a classroom, though one would imagine that possibility from the way the reformers are pushing their agenda on us. No parent wishes for a child to be treated as though s/he is an object or number to be evaluated as either good or bad, acceptable or discarded. Teaching humans is a confounding endeavor and that’s how we teachers like it. We love being solutionaries! What can I do today to help students believe in themselves, embrace learning and know that they will do it in their own time, not by the measures of some corporate dogmatic person that they have never met. Oh, I could just go on and on…I am retired but never so impassioned by my beliefs and desires to save public education. Where’s that magic wand of mine? If only I could wave it over the schools and it would be done.
This is why I quit my job as an administrator when my children were born and I will homeschool them when they are old enough.
“Maybe the greatest act of defiance is to stay and fight for what is right.”
Diane, I believe most teachers who have decided to leave the profession felt that way years and years before they left. These changes have been a long time coming. The writing was on the wall years ago and most teachers hunkered down and got the job done anyway. They stood up to bullying principals and insane edicts, more paperwork, much more testing, and more decisions being made by people who never taught a day in the classroom. They fought hard and were belittled, ignored, or forced out.
There comes a day when it becomes impossible to stay, when you feel you can no longer be a part of something that is directly harming children and that takes a little piece of your soul each day that you continue to play by someone else’s rules. I know because I was one of those teachers. I taught for 20 years and the district offered a buy out, hoping to get rid of their veteran teachers so they could hire cheaper, more pliable, younger teachers. That was almost two years ago, and most of the teacher friends I left behind are retiring this year. Like me, they reached a point where they had to leave.
Even though we’re no longer in the classroom, we continue to fight “from the outside.” Thank you for everything you do.
This is so frustratingly true. Sadly, those teachers with 5 to 10 years in the classroom will not escape the fact that they can be replaced. Principals are not hiring with the intent to keep a new teacher on staff permanently. The new model is the 1 year contract (During which time you pray for an extension). I too, have had enough!
I don’t mean to be obnoxious here but I don’t agree at all with teachers walking out mid year. These people leave the students and colleagues behind to pick up the pieces. Our students of poverty have been abandoned by teachers time and time again and struggle to trust us because of this. I understand the frustration and the stress of this job and how this reform movement is grinding us down but walking out doesn’t help, at least wait until the end of the year so that quitting doesn’t create chaos for those left behind.
It definitely is getting more and more difficult for teachers to stay. As an administrator, I see the panic on their faces as the date of the state test looms closer each day. Here in Louisiana, our jobs are tied directly to their VAM score, which over-rides any evaluation score given to them by our team. As administrators, we do our best to help to empower them with information and resources, but it will never be enough. Our governor has set us up for failure. I often think about returning to my special education classroom to finish out my last five years before retiring. Then I realize there may not be a retirement system left in five years. The joke is on me. After dedicating my life to teaching, I will probably not have anything to show for it except memories and/ or nightmares. My starting salary years ago was around $13,000 a year. I definitely didn’t get into this career for the money. Thanks to this blog I stick it out. I now have a place to stay abreast of what is happening across our nation. Don’t know how long I can last… one day at a time. I agree with Jesse that it is unfair to leave in the middle of the school year.
I too am saddened by the treatment we are getting “the powers that be”, the media and the government, as well as the union……I am trying to hold for the seven years I have left before I can retire…..Here in NYC we used to be strong as a union during the Albert Shanker days…..but no more……I feel our union has sent us down the river….Sure union pres. Mulgrew and the little Napolean mayor Bloomberg did not agree to a teacher evaluation system, but I fear the union will agree to something and sell us the bill of goods saying, “Its the best we could do. You should have seen what they really wanted us to agree to! “…….Why can’t anyone see that you can not hold teachers totally accountable for a student’s success, especially on a test, when there are other factors that play into this?……Can someone in the other states who have an evaluation system explain to me how are gym, art and any other teacher outside of a classroom evaluated?………We need to stand up for our profession……I know in NYC we can’t strike, but why can’t we ALL call in sick one day just to prove that we ate INDEED sick of this treatment, the excessive paperwork, curriculum writing, not having textbooks, having the threat of not getting tenure hanging over your head, being professionally developed up the whazoo, being lead by incompetant so called leaders who only taught for two years and who was 12 when I started teaching, working with scared spies who only care about themselves and will give you up to an administrator in a wink of an eye!……If we don’t stand up and do SOMETHING, we will end up with NOTHING…..Remember what Rosa Parks did?……..She sat down so that others could stand…..WE NEED TO STAND UP!
I am not a teacher, but I admire them. I attended public schools in CA in the 1950s. Our class size was around the 20’s. We were integrated. We did fine. I am absolutely opposed to standardized tests. I used to grade the old TX TAAS tests. I heard the comments about “Ghetto children.” I’ve worked for 2 testing companies and they cheat like Lance Armstrong. No randomized sample selection, they falsify data, they increase one portion of the data (minority data) without increasing the whole sample size. And, no one monitors them. They are accountable to no one. No one checks their data or their test results. These are the tests you are teaching to. These are the tests they are closing schools for. These are the tests they are eliminating Arts programs for. (pls. pardon my hanging preps)
Thank you for your honesty.
For those who believe such shenanigans [to be polite] couldn’t possibly be true, read Todd Farley’s MAKING THE GRADE: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY.
For those who might think it must be due to the recent very rapid expansion of the for-profit standardized testing industry, google “NIna Metzner” and “NYT” [New York Times] and “2001.”
That is exactly what I have been saying since NCLB and standardized testing came about. Publishing companies. Period. The End. Money talks. Where is John White from? NY. Where are major publishing houses based? NY. Who gains when standards are made or changed? Publishing houses. If public education, a state’s right, is ‘remodeled’, a.k.a stream lined to on-line classes with little more than a warm adult body in the computer lab, who will benefit? State budget. Who will suffer? Our children. If you don’t like it, what can you do? Send your kid to private school for an actual classroom teacher. Yes, La. was doing so bad financially so we need to make deep cuts to education but now, Bob Jindalliar plans to cut state income tax. Wow. Who will benefit from that? I know my income as a teacher isn’t very much but I’m sure those that do have large incomes, would surely support that measure even if all of the teachers across the state won’t have their jobs, retirement, medical insurance, years of their lives back, or the $30,000 they spent on their college educations (yes, some of us actually paid for our college educations). John White is a joke and this entire reform movement is politicians and publishers in bed together with the blinds open and the lights on.
I do not understand why we don’t organize and fight against the insane amounts of paperwork. I teach a high school science course (jr-sr level) and am required to script lesson plans. It takes hours to write just one. It is not enough to merely write out a list of objectives and activities. We have to have a hook, the essential questions, the “we will” statement, the “I will” statement, the TEK, the vocabulary, the Kagan strategy for that day, the closure, and the “product”…. every single damn day for TWO preps. I have a record of success that spans 23 years. Why not leave the good teachers (those that have a record of success over several years) alone and only badger the bad ones (you know who you are, too). I am so close to quitting right now. I’m so close to retirement and I’m about ready to chunk it all for a little peace. We have middle-managers (glorified department heads) and I’m unlucky enough to be in the the department with the micromanaging, know-it-all, tell-everyone-how-to-do-their-job department head. This person makes our lives miserable. I used to love teaching and my job. Now I can barely make myself get out of bed in the morning.
But I decided I would do something about it. It’s not legal to do what this person is doing. I feel like I am being bullied. In addition, the paperwork requirements do not follow the law. I have sent an email to my union and hopefully I’ll have the guts to fight back. All of us should. There are more teachers than administrators. They can’t fire you just for standing up for decent working conditions. Let’s fight back!