There is this motley group of people and organizations in the U.S. who call themselves “reformers.” Few of them are educators. Most are corporate leaders, pundits, think tank thinkers, or rightwing politicos.
They say they want to “fix” education but their main goals seem to be to belittle the people who actually work in schools and to close down public schools in high-poverty districts.
These self-named reformers (did GOP wordsmith Frank Luntz write their playbook?) have been in charge of federal policy since the passage of No Child Left Behind. President Barack Obama built his Race to the Top program right on top of the NCLB approach.
And what’s the result?
The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher 2013 says the troops are stressed out, demoralized, and doing their best to survive. What kind of general would go into a crucial battle with his heavy artillery pointed at his own troops?
Actually, the survey includes both teachers and principals. Both are beaten down by the Bush-Obama reforms. It seems that the non-educators and entrepreneurs decided that to impose their ideas without bothering the people who do the daily work.
Three-quarters of principals say their job has become far too complex. Half of them feel stressed out lost daily. Their job satisfaction has declined, and about one-third of them are thinking of quitting.
Despite the constant reformer sniping and whining about “bad” teachers, 98% of principals–the ones with boots on the ground–have a positive view of their teachers.
But we have all seen those Hollywood movies that tell us teachers suck, and teachers have seen them too.
The reformers’ nasty portrayal of our nation’s teachers has had the following result:
“Teacher satisfaction has declined to its lowest point in 25 years and has dropped five percentage points in the past year alone, from 44% to 39% very satisfied. This marks a continuation of a substantial decline noted in the 2011 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher; teacher satisfaction has now dropped 23 percentage points since 2008.”
Principals and teachers think they can implement the Common Core standards but only one out of five educators (or fewer) feel “very confident that the new standards will raise achievement or better prepare their students for college and careers.
Among high school principals and teachers, only 11-15% of principals and teachers are very confident that the Common Core will help their students.
Bottom line: a workforce in the schools that is increasingly demoralized, stressed out because of the demands imposed on them by politicians, and worried that they and their students are being set up to fail by clueless reformers.
When will the CEOs of the “reform” movement be held accountable for the harm they are inflicting on students, teachers, and principals?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am posting this at my school today. Unfortunately, my fellow teachers already know this first hand. It will likewise go up on my campaign page and facebook pages. We should uses any means available to put this in front of parents.
We have to get the message beyond those of us who already know the truth.
Thank you Diane for put so much into a very succinct, readable account. World – start sharing.
“What kind of general would go into a crucial battle with his heavy artillery pointed at his own troops?” and “the ones with boots on the ground”
Diane,
Must you use militaristic terms to describe the insanities that are modern education rheephorm? Aren’t there other ways to get your point across? To me it’s sad that such ways of looking at things are so well understood that you would choose to use them.
Duane
Perhaps it’s because it’s a metaphor that people outside of education can relate to? Those of us in education don’t need convincing – it’s those outside it (directly) who do. Hate to stick with the metaphor, but ultimately we are engaged in a battle for public opinion.
As to metaphors people can relate to, we are making the exact same horrific mistake with our teachers that we made with our soldiers returning from Vietnam. We are blaming and disrespecting them for things beyond their control and things they have no responsibility for as well as misrepresenting their efforts and experiences.
A couple of additional points. There absolutely is a war being waged against public education, so the military rhetoric is spot on. The military would never do to their soldiers and command systems what is being done to teachers. The on base schools for military dependents would never do what is being forced upon public schools, in practice, they resemble private schools or Finland’s schools. They out perform public schools and are 100% unionized.
This just confirms what I saw, heard and felt up until 2 years ago when I quit and went into higher education. Thanks Diane for getting this out there, and thank you MetLife for doing this survey.
So how do schools and school districts get away from these mandates? Diane, you would know. Is it the funding? Is all district money tied to funding that is only received if districts adhere to testing?
I guess what I’m wondering is….how can districts get out from under this? If they refused to use the standardized tests, do they go bankrupt?
If not, why aren’t more educational leaders (i.e. superintendent/school boards) taking back the control of their school districts?
It’s all about the money!
“When will the CEOs of the ‘reform’ movement be held accountable for the harm they are inflicting on students, teachers, and principals?”
Never. They crashed the whole economy for personal gain. Not one has been gone to jail. They got bonuses and cabinet positions. Really think crashing the educational system for their own profit will fare better?
Absolutely correct, Joanne.
However, the body politic has allowed this, is continuing to allow this, and probably will allow this in the future.
If they allow the shysters to control their money, what chance does public education have?
We have had a decade of the “reforms” of No Child Left Behind. The approach embodied therein actually is traceable back 30 years, to the release of A Nation at Risk, continued through Goals 2000 which claimed that it would result in America being first in the world in math and science by that date, has seen policy doubling down through Race to the Top and the proposals in the Obama administration’s “Blueprint,” and now we continue the insanity through Common Core and the common assessments. In each of these cases what was excluded in the making of education policy were the voices of those expected to implement the policy choices, professional educators – teachers and principals.
Instead we have had think tanks, we have had politicians, we have had organizations that stand to profit from the decisions – and that includes ostensibly non-profit organizations such as the College Board and ETS among others.
The results to date have not been as promised.
We have failed to address many of the real issues affecting our students, starting with the high percentage (compared to other industrialized democracies) of children in poverty, children who do not get proper nutrition or health care, whose teeth may be rotting, who need glasses but do not have them.
We have had imposed policies that have already been tried and found wanting – turning schools over to “educational management” organizations, converting them to charters, turning to mayoral control – or not yet piloted and evaluated – here the Common Core is one of the best examples. The “data” that has been produced is often either incomplete or in fact downright manipulated – such as graduation rates in Texas, from which we got No Child Left Behind. We ignore contradictions in policies – we have too many students dropping out so to fix that we are going to raise the bar and impose “standards” that are not based on what we know about brain development and differential development rates.
Unfortunately too often the media organizations which should serve to explain things jumps on board the bandwagon. Perhaps it should be expected when the corporation which owns one of the major national newspapers, The Washington Post, gets most of its profits from a for-profit educational venture, Kaplan, which benefits from policies such as increased emphasis on tests.
Fortunately modern means of communicating and organizing are allowing pushback – by parents, students, teachers, administrators, even school boards.
Slowly Americans are beginning to realize that the emperor of educational “reform” is naked – that is, what is being forced upon America’s public schools is less concerned about real learning by students and more concerned about political and economic power.
Perhaps it is time for major media organizations to be far more transparent in their presentations on education, to give equal voice to the voices that have not been heard.
I once had a conversation with a sitting governor, close to a decade ago. The governors had just had a conference on education. Each governor had brought a business leader, which he acknowledged. I asked why each governor had not brought a teacher, or some other educator. He was shocked and acknowledged he at least had never considered the possibility. That is symptomatic of what is wrong in how we make educational policy.
It is also why so many educators – principals as well as teachers – are so demoralized. They are excluded from the making of policy, they are demonized when they object and try to raise the issues that should be discussed. Meanwhile they continue to see the conditions necessary for serving their students disappear, what protections they had to enable them to do their jobs correctly are being taken away from them.
I once told Jay Mathews that I might not object to having my students assessed by quality tests at the end of a course, but I refused to be held accountable if you told me how I had to teach them, because then I had no ability to shape my instruction according to what I knew of my students, and how they were learning.
Increasingly we are trying to tell our teachers not only what to teach but also how to teach it. Sometimes we are even imposing scripted lessons.
Should not the real evaluation be of the results of what has been imposed by those who are not educators, who are not attempting to address the individual needs of the students in their classes, in their schools? And were we to evaluate that way, would w not find almost all of the “reforms” to be failures?
Except the ‘reforms’ have not failed in their other purposes
– increasing profits for testing and curriculum companies (often the same)
– breaking the power of teachers unions
– diminishing the professionalism of teachers, principals and superintendents
– effectively privatizing one of the most important public functions
– removing democratic control of public education and politicizing it in places where it becomes easier to impose the corporatizing agenda.
You know all this.
You have written and spoken out about this.
We need more voices speaking out, loudly.
Thanks for being an important voice.
Ken, thank you for YOUR voice.
This is a long-running debate, to state it mildly.
To wit, from 1995:
Here’s a lab rat’s take.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2013/02/why-would-teacher-satisfaction-be.html
Placing blame only on Right wing reformers clearly misses the mark. Go back to America 2000/Goals 2000 which served as the base legislation upon which NCLB and all that has followed has been built.
Google the DEAR HILLARY LETTER and read the celebratory reaction from the Progressive Left.
Far Right and Progressive Left share the REFORM blame.
Yes, in the perverse world of so-called education reform, intimidating and demoralizing teachers counts as “success,” since it clears the way for one of its prime objectives: the creation of a temporary, at-will and de-skilled (and thus cheaper and more compliant) workforce.
Both parties are complicit in this… but so are voters who believe the private sector can do no wrong, taxes are a burden, and “government is the problem”… These three mantras have been repeated for over 30 years and are now part of the DNA of both parties because that’s what the voters want to hear… The privatization of public education is a by-product of this thinking…
Wonderfully stated.
I’m with Michael Fiorillo – this is actually more ammo for the reformers.
Present day teachers are incompetent, given the contemporary “reforms”, and we must replace them with TFA’ers and younger teachers.
This attitude saves our politicians money they can use to prop up the private sector.
Reminds me of the business culture that has spawned the reform movement–privatize profits and socialize losses.
“privatize profits and socialize losses”.
Neat trick, isn’t it?
Do you thing we (regular citizens) will ever catch on that we are being ripped off?
When I was a senior in high school, I volunteered in a first grade class for an hour every day for an entire school year, and I just absolutely fell in love with the students and with the work. Ever since, I have been dreaming about and working toward becoming a teacher. I am currently enrolled in an MAT program and teach an after school science program in Chicago. I just have to say, for a future educator, it is so disheartening (but not surprising) to hear these statistics and to read so many of the posts on this blog, although there are many stories that give me hope for the future.
Despite all the hardships that the public school institution and teaching profession are facing, I just cannot imagine a profession more challenging and fulfilling for the mind and the heart. I hope I am not too idealistic as I prepare to enter into teaching. I hope that we can take back the profession and make it what we know in our hearts it should be, and not what those outside prescribe. I hope someday when I answer this survey, I feel the joy of educating.
As a parent, I see the weary burdened expressions of teachers and principles. Even as they try to square their shoulders and put a bright face on it.
I also see my kid’s shoulders slumping as she faces another test or is reminded to meet her AR goals.
I wake in the night fretting about the fate of my children. I fear for our collective futures. What happens to people who have learned to measure their success by a test score? What kind of a life (internal & external) are we preparing them for? Shallow, not inclined to reflect or question, judgemental and resigned.
I want our young people to have a rich, joyous educational experience through out their all to brief childhoods.
I want teachers who love connecting with and inspiring young minds. I want dedicated teachers to have an honored position in our social structure. I want them to be free to be creative and fully engaged in designing their curriculum, to be empowered to taylor instruction to the class experience.
I want to see our tax dollars spent on compensating invested teachers, expanding the curricula and providing wrap around services so that the learning experience encompasses the developmental needs of every child.
http://signon.org/sign/repeal-no-child-left-1
What a powerful peek inside the trenches, oops, public schools who now are truly battlegrounds for the survival of sane, nation-wide, public schools, devoid of the think tank tinkering that has a wretched track record and farcical, “core” plans to fix the problem these ivory tower idiots created! I found the satisfaction #’s fascinating, but continuing the descent of what once was a wonderful, fulfilling profession. I had a peach of a principal back in ’98. He truly supportive and inspired his faculty. We used to have long talks about the demise of teachers staying longer than seven years, before they exited the profession. He did his thesis on this very issue, and found the number 1 reason for teacher drop outs was not; bad pay, difficult parents/students, BUT, abusive administrators. And number 2 was far below, number 1! I worked in a system that had, as a union administrator told me, AT LEAST 50% of the principals were “Bullies!” NOTHING WAS DONE TO STOP THAT ABUSE! One may ask why, and I feel it is promoted by administrations for several reasons: the stated goal of getting rid of more experienced, older teachers and swapping them for TFA novices and freshly minted “baby teachers,” the desire to have, as industry also wants, docile, silent, robotic workers who passively accept facetious edits without a whisper, and administrative leadership that deny the experienced or not, faculty member’s input of techniques, creative approaches with proven results in classrooms. Teaching has fallen to a drab, joyless, fear driven
profession that, as the old fairy tale’s premise was, demanding educators to spin gold out of straw. I truly ponder to what end the Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee types seemingly love hacking away at the success of, say the 70’s when these draconian demands were not part of teaching and the school buildings were joyful, educational institutions! Worth
exploring the reason for the madness!
Education reformers have changed the face of education in many positive ways. I hope teachers remember that. http://atthechalkface.com/2013/02/24/ungrateful-bastards/
Here in Australia too, we have so-called “reformers” taking their cue from their US counterparts and peddling the same rubbish. They forever claim that “progressive education” is to blame for “failing” schools. Yet it is their impoverished ideas about education, such as more standardised tests and privatisation which have been ruling the roost in education for the last 20 years.
Yet when the results don’t go the way they planned on, they never take any responsibility or think, “maybe we’ve got it wrong.” It’s always more of the same poisonous medicine. Teachers are to be held “accountable” (one of their favourite words), but never them.
Of course, the worthless CEO at the top of the corporatized school has no accountability whatsoever.
This speech sharply attacking “ed reform,” and placing it in a context larger than just education, is as relevant today as when it was first given: “School Reform and the Attack on Public Education” – the text of a speech by Dave Stratman delivered to the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents Summer Institute in July, 1997. Must reading for parents and teachers! http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/old/edspeech.htm
John Spritzler, editor
http://www.NewDemocracyWorld.org
spritzler@comcast.net
Very interesting. It sounds like a speech that could be made today and be just as relevant.