A comment from a reader who has seen the results of No Child Left Behind:
“1) The system is broken from top to bottom. The vast majority of people making these decisions have not set foot into a classroom since they graduated from college.
2) An administrator makes any where from double to four times as much money as the teachers who work 50+ hours a week teaching, prepping, and grading.
3) Common Core, NCLB, Race to the Top, and any other program designed to “make education better” are nothing more than band-aids that only slow the bleeding. We need to completely reconstruct our education system from the bottom up and focus more on the individual needs of every child through curriculums designed to highlight the creative exceptionalism of each child.
4) Cutting money from the public system to then allow room for vouchers should be a red flag to any citizen with an ounce of common sense – we’re not addressing the issue of horrible school reforms of the past, but instead we’re aiding in the speed of how fast our public system will die. If every child deserves a quality education, why aren’t we evaluating our current system and finding ways to completely reconstruct it in a way that it is successful.
5) For everyone on this board who has attacked educators and their apparent “lazy” behaviors, it is obvious that you have no idea what is happening inside the classrooms now. Since “A Nation at Risk”, teachers have been slowly stripped of their ability to do what it is that they are overpaid to do: teach. Instead, they have been forced into a world of teaching to a test that barely covers the amount of practical knowledge students need. I am an English Teacher at a community college here in NC, and every semester in my 2-3 freshman comp classes I see the results of NCLB. I have 30 18-21-year-olds who can’t write a complete sentence. I have never blamed a single high school teacher, middle school teacher, nor have I blamed any elementary teacher for this lack of skill. 15 years ago when I entered the profession, the quality was much higher even for a community college. I have witnessed the slow decline of intelligence, and it has nothing to do with the teachers, but the resources that these teachers are losing. You want to support the cut in funding? Fine. Let’s divert the money that administration is getting into better programs, let’s re-envision how education works and construct a system that allows for the money we are dealt, and let’s face the facts: “bad” teachers make up less than 5% of the working population. The rest of the teachers out there are fighting to keep this sinking ship afloat.
If you think you can do a better job, get the damn degree and do the job yourself. Other wise, let the people who have been trained to do this job do their job.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We have let the politicians define the following premises. 1. American education is broken. 2. Everyone can and should go to college. 3. If only teachers would work smarter, not harder, then all children can learn.
A majority of our society does not value education. That’s where the struggle to educate begins and that’s where we are losing.
7th grade teacher in a title 1 public school
And probably none of those three propositions are true. I would, however, dispute that the “majority” of the society does not value education. Everyone that I know does, but principally for their own family and friends and friends’ families. They are NOT willing to pay for ‘other peoples children.’ I say again and again that “You can have whatever your daddy can pay for.” But not more.
What you’re saying, then, is that the majority (and I think this includes you, no?) doesn’t believe in democracy.
Dienne:
You’re going to have to lay out the connections for me between my post and rejecting democracy. I certainly don’t reject democracy at all. I think democracy is crucial to this country. I just don’t see how you get from looking after one’s family first to repudiating democracy.
Well said! If only teachers were just allowed to teach…
Hear hear!
Excellent points, but I don’t know about you, but I’m one who is surely getting sick of singing the same song and dancing the same dance, just to have it fall on the deaf and blind eyes and ears of those who “matter”.
I think the key to getting school up out of the rubble that wound up being what billions really are worth, is the point you make about reconstruction happening from the BOTTOM up. The faster the media cast a new light on teachers, allowing us the value that we really are worth, the sooner we’ll be trusted enough to start fixing this mess. And it already is starting to feel too late.
Hopefully im wrong.
theindignantteacher.wordpress.com
Regarding “results” of No Child Left Behind…
As ESEA/NCLB lumbers along on continuing resolution without proven benefit for any of its objectives or claims, only a few critics point that its continuance is not neutral, but is doing real harm to nearly everyone affected by it. In my recently published book, Teach the Best and Stomp the Rest I identify and elaborate on eight major harms emanating from its continuance. In summation, these are:
1. NCLB high stakes testing is leaving tens of thousands of young children emotionally marred. There are “throw-up” reports with children getting sick before the test, during the test, right on the test itself, not to mention loss of bladder control. Elementary school teachers often describe these multiple choice tests for young children as cruel.
2. The high stakes testing followed by punitive discipline has caused degradation of public school educators, especially the teachers, which serves no one’s benefit. Beyond the tears of some children on the test documents there are sympathetic teachers in tears also, most of whom have a real sense of attachment and love for the children they teach and serve.
3. The unintended but pervasive inducement of unprofessional, and sometimes immoral and illegal activities on the part of the participants is unconscionable… Some of this questionable activity could be regarded as civil disobedience. It goes way beyond test cheating and includes brinker management, test taker management, and lower ability student pushouts among others.
4. The continuance of NCLB lacks ethical values and principles in that the legislation designed and promulgated to be for the benefit of children from low income, minority race families, through its introduction of school choice and charters now benefits mainly already-advantaged students, and increases school racial segregation.
5. The continuance of NCLB high stakes testing corrupts professional classroom practice and abrogates responsibility for individual student care and the teaching of important curriculum. It is no secret that teachers across the nation are teaching to the tests, and when they can, the tests themselves. This takes time and when combined with the time extracted for test taking results in decreased instruction time, already in short supply.
6. The testing programs have effectively cancelled efforts of some states to improve schools and learning. To get in line with the high stakes collegiate based testing, many states have given up efforts to create thoughtful school and student assessments measuring individual student performance in problem solving and critical thinking as well as mathematics and intelligence.
7. NCLB has placed an inappropriate “hyper-blame” focus on schools for a mainly a sociological problem, the learning gap in academic test taking skills between low income black and Hispanic racial minority students and so-called “regular” white and Asian students. As a direct result, a much larger educational issue (as expressed in terms of number of students involved and national economic and sociological impact) is that the education, training and societal integration of the “forgotten half” has been largely ignored–to the peril of this nation.
8. And finally, NCLB as being implemented has spawned and promulgated “innovative structures” which are working directly against the original goals of ESEA/NCLB. These include revered advocacies of school choice, vouchers, charter schools merit pay for teaches, and private corporate management. None of these have helped reduce the “learning gap” or provided any other advantage for low income and minority race children. These advocacies are helping already-advantaged children and their parents while dumping profits into the private sector.
This won’t begin to be fixed until people like Arne Duncan, federal Secretary of Education (who’s never even been a teacher), begin to listen to teachers instead of being singularly influenced by corporate interests who want huge profits from selling tests and test scoring to states for millions of dollars per state for the foreseeable future. This is who Duncan listens to, as well as think tanks paid by the uber-rich to produce reports that favor privatization of schools because these same few stand to profit, again. It is no accident that teaching has been taken out of the hands of teachers, starting with the myth that our schools are failing, created by……guess who? Teachers know full well what and how to teach, but they can’t, thanks to high-stakes testing and the Race to the Top boondoggles.
Thank you fellow North Carolinian.
What do we do about people (and there are a lot of them, and they seem to hold all the power) who believe that all the things mentioned are features, rather than bugs? Those who think that the sooner we can get education out of gubmint hands and into private hands, the better. Those who, like Harlan don’t want to pay for other people’s kids. Those who don’t want their special snowflakes to go to school with “those kids”? Is there any way to reach such people? Is it even worth debating with them? Is there any common ground to start from? What do you say to people who think that private is always better than public?
I didn’t say that I don’t want to pay for other people’s kids, but that my impression is that a lot of people in society have come to see themselves as having a right to the foundation grant of the public pool of money to spend in charters or via vouchers. Public schools will always have to carry the main burden of education in this country. What is new is that middle income parents seem to want the privileges of choice which wealthy people have always had. I don’t think it is racially driven per-se, either. I believe they just want their kid to have a shot at an adequate education, without having to deal with kids driven by the social pathologies of poverty. Who can blame them for that? Black parents who want the same thing for their kids support charters for that reason, they can leave kids with bad characters behind. They can’t solve it, but they can get away from it.
Dienne, What if this whole “reform” ruse is really just a canary in the coal mine? What if America is really in debt and broke. Cities are starting to declare bankruptcy, etc. The states and cities simply don’t have money to give teachers a decent living or pay their pension obligations. There is a desperation or fear that sets in. Every America will be affected in some way by this “Fall of America.” Wealthy Americans are selling their American holdings and stocks, and buying gold and foreign currencies. How much longer will the dollar hold its value? Cities want to privatize everything from parking meters to education to US Postal. They want to get rid of as much as they can and try to filch as much money as they can on the way down. This is the end phase of our kind of Capitalism. There just won’t be enough of a tax base in the future for us or the corporate reformers. Who will buy products? This will be the new normal for America. No, things are not getting better economically. That is just propaganda. The govt. doesn’t want to make people panic. Maybe the gas is running out (peak oil), etc. Who knows? My gut feeling is that when America “transforms” “deforms” into its new form, education will be the last thing on anyone’s mind. Things like food, water, and basic needs will be much more pressing. We’ll see.. My gut tells me that nothing (not just education) will ever be as it once was. We are just paying more attention than usual because our careers are now being destroyed, but we are in a transformative time. Our country is “off the rails” and into “unchartered territory” now. What will happen next? Will they sell public parks and privatize them and charge admission? It wouldn’t surprise me at all? Will they sell the public beaches and charge to swim in the water? Anything..
So you’re saying there is nothing to say because it’s all over anyway?
I don’t think “it’s all over” but the effort to recover freedom from the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-exploiting federal government will be a long struggle, possible lasting two or more generations. We all need government, but we do have to believe that the government is at least not corrupt. Incompetent we can almost stand, but corrupt, as in the recent IRS scandal, really can’t be tolerated. However, until the economy begins to really grow again, to provide jobs for many more people than it does now, I suspect “john” ‘s description of the state of affairs could very well come about. Funding for public education as a system will probably continue to shrink, as in North Carolina, and be diverted to charters, and if conservatives have their way, vouchers. It isn’t that “private” is intrinsically better. Far from it. The great city school systems of the pre and post war years were the glory of the country. They could be again, I’m convinced, but they have been saddled with dealing with the consequences of a deep change in social behaviour among a minority of a minority. The psychological pathology is so deep, that one wonders how it can ever be remedied. And probably not by the schools, although a strong public school system with health care, and other support services might go a long way. It is no longer a question of race. It’s a question of behaviour. A few violent kids will make any classroom almost unmanageable. The problem isn’t even poverty per-se. As my mantra goes, “You can have anything your daddy can pay for.” But if you have no daddy, and the government or school is the closest thing you have to a daddy, the results won’t look good. And that’s where we are now. Good order among the students, the public school works just fine. Disorder and chaos among some of the students, the public school system does not work so well because it is not set up to do behavioural therapy.
Once again John, I agree with your overall analysis of where America is headed. Hope everyone here got the excellent post today from our colleague Mercedes in her alterego, Deutsch, wherein there is a remarkable, if simplistic, explication of how ALEC and the industrial/military complex controls most avenues of our lives, specifically including education. Even the Institute of Foreign Policy is part of it.
The goal of it all seems to be to educate America’s youth to be compliant cogs in a new world order of top down directives.
I am just finishing a term of higher ed teaching The History of Economics, and seeing the evolution of economics from biblical times to today, we see clearly that social orders do change but each establishes an economic system . But with the focus in the US in our generation on the free market of Shumpeter, Stigler, Friedman, et al, and the Austrian School, the monetarists of U. of Chicago where our Prez taught for 10 years (and SCOTUS Justice Scalia), we see the rapid rise of the super wealthy whereby now 1% of our population owns 40% of the wealth, and where now, over half the population lives at or below the poverty level, and the rapid dissolution of the Middle Class.
The government as devised by the Constitution was set up to be of and by the People, but today it is owned by the corporations. Is all lost? Are we on the brink of true fascism?
I want to believe that with the voices of educators and people of intelligence and good faith shouting out as we do on this blog, more neighbors who have seemed to sleep through it all with the planned dumbing down of our values as seen by faux news, reality TV, cash driven violent entertainment, media abdication, they will awaken and fight to take back control by proposing serious educated candidates who do not poison us with their tea, nor have the need to show their sex organs to the world. And that more than 15% of us turn out to vote.
Maybe I too am dreaming the impossible dream, but from my 7th decade, I do see that historically things can and do change…the cycles are consistent, but not without a major battle.
“If you think you can do a better job, get the damn degree and do the job yourself. Other wise, let the people who have been trained to do this job do their job.”
The arrogance on display here is breathtaking. Your community college kids can’t write a sentence but the teachers that had previously are blameless? What utter, complete, and total crap. (Although to be fair, the kids who CAN write a complete sentence generally are going to full four year schools, not 13th grade).
Your industry is failing miserably but your customers have no right to point that out? How nice to be insolated from the market. The best thing that can happen is for the market to be freed, let kids go where results are achieved, and let the arrogant dinosaurs like you be blown into the dustbin of histpry where you belong.
DH, we aren’t making cars here. I can’t select my raw materials, and I can’t “hire” or “fire” anyone, as much as I’d like to. I have to teach everyone who comes through the door. Some leave me and go to Harvard, and others go to community college if they are lucky. Not all people have the same ability. You seem to think that the teacher can control all of these variables and “make” these students perform. It’s not like that. I am more like a dentist. I “educate” the students and tell them what to do, just like a dentist. These are the things that will make you successful, read these books, etc. Should dentists get fired because their patients continued to eat candy, and never brush their teeth. Do you have children? Can you control them? Now picture a class of 30 (in high school) most of whom have no interest in what you are teaching, do little to no homework, try to text the entire time, and then grade the teacher based on whether the kids perform on tests. Ridiculous. We should grade the kids based on their individual effort! Most teachers I know are very good, especially the veteran teachers. So what can be done? Make teaching the most desirable job in America. Attract the best talent because I am telling you that the way things are going now, you will just get the dregs. Who on earth would want to be a teacher now, with no respect, low pay, declining students, vanishing pensions and no protection from idiot administrators and disrespect from tire salesmen like yourself with no understanding of education at all.
John,
Thank you for making my point. If I don’t like my dentist, I find another one. If enough of my dentist’s patients feel the same, he goes out of business.
When you fail (btw I dont mean you personally, but teachers as a group), you just pass the kids on and fail the next group. I can think of no other business where there is such an organized, concerted effort to avoid any accountability of any type. I understand your position that test results may not be the best measure, but it is an objective one and teachers buck at ANY measure; not to mention the incredible irony of teachers complaining about testing when they test the students to assign grades regularly.
To answer your question, yes, I have 3 kids: 2 have graduated college and 1 is a senior in high school. And if any of their teachers were to try and sell me on the idea that they have no ability to succeed in their job and it was all the fault of someone else, I’d have her moved to another class immediately.
Who would want to be teacher? I certainly wouldn’t, but then I didn’t bomb out of my chosen field and have to major in education instead. That said, if you leave, I’ll have 100 more just like you, ready to take your job, in 2 days or less. Again, the free market is a bitch.
Get over yourself. You aren’t that special. Teaching has always been low pay. Only difference is that as a group, teachers used to succeed. The kids didn’t change, the education establishment did.
Now onto the important stuff … you want whitewalls or all black?
I disagree. Society has changed- a lot. Where have you been the last 20 years? The kids and parents did change. I don’t know how old you are, but when I started teaching twenty years ago, almost all my kids did their homework, and ran up to me wanting to retake their tests after being absent. I can’t remember anyone talking back to me or shouting out in class, etc. If I called home, the parents were supportive. Now, in 2013, maybe 50% do their homework regularly, and many students just take a “0” for a missed test or quiz. They don’t have the time or desire to make them up. There are a handful of students in any class that need to be controlled very strictly, and this can disrupt class. When I call parents today, the parents attack me (similar to what you are doing now) about it being my fault and that I am picking on their student, or that “I” am not letting them succeed. Many students are from troubled backgrounds, even in the wealthy suburb where I am. Teaching is more challenging today, and that is a fact. Every teacher, including myself, tries to get their students to succeed and do well. Every student has the same chance and attention in my classes. I do believe in personal responsibility, and I think the student is responsible for doing their part of the work. It isn’t all up to the teacher. I can’t force a kid to read at home, study, or do homework. Teaching is not what changed, and I would argue that society has changed: technology, short attention spans, enabling parents, lack of respect for education.
Teachers are not people who “bombed” out of their profession. I had an executive job with Mercedes before becoming a teacher. I made good money, and traveled to Germany regularly, but I didn’t feel that I was making a difference in life, besides selling trucks. I wanted to make a difference in young lives. I wanted to share my love for my subject. Teaching is a lot harder than working in business. Teaching, despite all the disrespect and attacks, and other traits, is still the greatest, most noble profession in the world. Even with this war on education, I still don’t regret going into teaching. Here is a quote by Lee Iacocca : In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else. I do applaud you for reading and being engaged in this debate.
I love the part of this about the teachers fighting everyday to keep this sinking shop afloat! That is exactly what it feels like a d if is exhausting and demoralizing. Yet, for most of us a strong conviction to the public school ideal of educating all children brings us back everyday! After a year of nothing but data analysis, threats to my career, and only focusing on reading and math I was very interested in your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. You gave support and statistics to what I have been feeling related to high stakes testing and charter schools.
I love the part of this about the teachers fighting everyday to keep this sinking shop afloat! That is exactly what it feels like and it is exhausting and demoralizing. Yet, for most of us a strong conviction to the public school ideal of educating all children brings us back everyday! After a year of nothing but data analysis, threats to my career, and only focusing on reading and math I was very interested in your book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. You gave support and statistics to what I have been feeling related to high stakes testing and charter schools.