Ken K. Kumashiro’s Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture should be on your reading list. He has written a thoughtful critique of the current fad in which it is fashionable to blame teachers for the ills of society and for low test scores and student misbehavior. The current fad eliminates any accountability for those who make the laws, write the regulations, decide the policies and context in which teachers work.
Here is a good review of his book.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think you mean Kevin, not Ken. ( author)
There’s a definite war against the real public schools ( or “ourfailingschools” as Lou Dobbs – [insert any right wing media name here] – says over and over and over and over and over), public school teachers and their unions. To listen to Chris Christie here in NJ, you would think that NJ schools are a flop and that the NJEA was the spawn of Satan.
I treasure this Politico headline because it exactly captures the prevailing media celebrity-politician narrative on public schools that was rolling along completely unimpeded by dissenters until Diane so rudely raised objections and upset them all, and it does it in 8 words:
“Do American public schools really stink? Maybe not”
Straight talk, indeed 🙂
It’s very important to counter this false reformer narrative at every chance. Here’s the real story:
http://www.epi.org/publication/fact-challenged_policy/
COWARDS!, All of them. When challenged, the first words out of the mouths of critics, “oh I couldn’t do that.”
Very SAD. Tavis Smiley, whom I like, does a puff piece interview of M. Night Shyamalan, a film maker, who is now an expert on education reform. Yeesh, here we go again. N. M. S. says that class size is not a determining factor but teacher quality is!!!!?? He says that a great teacher with 31 kids will do a much better job than a mediocre teacher with 19 kids. Why do all the elite schools have class sizes of 12 or 14 kids and even less? OMG, here we go again with these pseudo experts. Excuse me while I vomit.
I know, right.
I have some thoughts regarding improving his recent films.
Think he wants to listen to me?
Seriously! The Last Airbender was awful.
Right there with you Joe. I have taught each year with increasingly large classes across the grades and as an experienced teacher KNOW FIRST-HAND (“thank you” very much Shyamalan) that students need individual attention. When the ratio of teacher to student is too large… common sense should make these “know-it-all reformers” realize that students do not get the same level of individual attention. A class of 32 kindergarten students is a far different experience for teacher and student than a class with 22 students and no pseudo expert is going to tell an experienced teacher otherwise!
He’s not even an expert director. As I reckon, he’s not had many (or any) hit movies recently. He needs to spend his time looking at his own track record. Actually, I would enjoy seeing another film as good as “The Sixth Sense.”
Really, though, in light of his actions, I don’t know that any of us should spend any money on his future films.
Hey, Anyone want to start a board where teachers deconstruct and critique his film?
Make tons of pronouncements and suggestions based on our expertise.
Could be fun.
Better yet, critique his book –which is getting high marks mostly from ignorant people who know nothing about education– and recommend they read Diane’s book instead, as I have: http://www.amazon.com/Got-Schooled-Unlikely-Moonlighting-Education/dp/1476716455/
Ang and others, How about reviewing this ridiculous book, which you can read a lot of in the Look Inside feature and even search?
If you got to the M. NIght Shyamalan Foundation website, you can see that he works with KIPP and TFA, both of which he mentions many times in his book. That would help to explain why the book is replete with common corporate reform jargon: http://www.mnsfoundation.org/international-initiative/25
Nothing new there. Just a regurgitation of the corporate “reform” talking points.
THE NEW EDUCATIONAL EXPERT: M Night Shyamalan spent his first six weeks in Puducherry, and then was raised in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, an affluent suburb of Philadelphia. Although Hindu, he attended the private Roman Catholic grammar school Waldron Mercy Academy, followed by the Episcopal Academy, a private Episcopal high school located at the time in Merion, Pennsylvania. Shyamalan earned the New York University Merit Scholarship in 1988.[6] Shyamalan is an alumnus of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, in Manhattan,[7] graduating in 1992. It was while studying there that he adopted Night as his second name.[8] (From Wikipedia)
So the “educational expert” came from an elite family of privilege and he attended elite private schools. How precious is that? We have yet another millionaire pontificating about public education, just what we needed.
This is just another example of the corporate “reform” pattern which consists of eliciting film directors from privileged families that attended private and Ivy League schools, such as Davis Guggenheim, who directed Waiting for Superman, and Won’t Back Down director David Barnz. As with the spokespeople for corporate foundations, they’re given research from economists, such as Eric Hanushek, to cite in support of their demands for larger class sizes, charter school expansion, and demonizing teachers and unions –though they all happen to belong to a union themselves.
Same old see-through tactics, just in book form now. Shyamalan proffers the typical obstructionist picture of teachers’ unions as other corporate “reformers” do. I wonder when the last time Shyamalan’s union, the Directors Guild of America, worked actively towards getting bad directors fired… or the Writers Guild of America, or the Screen Actors Guild…
Corporate “reformers” will resort to virtually anything and anyone to try to get America onboard with privatizing public education. Poor areas in inner cities are increasingly becoming saturated with charters, due to mayoral and state control, resulting in the abdication of governance over public education and the hand over of schools to private enterprises. So, “reformers” want to propel expansion into the suburbs. It’s free money and they are strongly motivated to get their hands on as much of those public funds as they possibly can.
They never mention that privatized schools offer no democratic representation for parents and community members on their boards, but often include people from outside the area and family members of non-educator executives who are paid six figure salaries, whether they are non-profit or for-profit.
Act now or you can say goodbye to public schools with democratic representation in America.
This thing about unions is baffling to me. There are so many ignorant union haters out there who regularly fill the comments sections of my local newspapers and feed into the national campaign to bash teachers.
I’m a teacher but I have never belonged to a teacher’s union. I do not understand why teachers’ unions are expected to do what no other unions are charged with doing, ridding the profession of undesirables. Isn’t that why we have laws? Since when are labor unions the police? No one wants substandard people in their profession, and there are gatekeeping and stop gaps to prevent that, but it is not the job of labor unions to choose the members of a profession, whether they are teamsters or teachers.
It’s a popular misconception that teacher tenure in P-12 means teachers get a lifetime job. That’s what higher education is about, not lower education. P12 teachers with tenure are only eligible for due process, to ensure academic freedom. This is absolutely necessary for ensuring that teachers can teach about controversial topics, such as evolution.
This info about unions really needs to be more widely distributed.
I explain that in my book–the difference between tenure in higher education and in K-12.
What is really bizarre is that people blame the unions even in states where unions are barred from collective bargaining and have no power at all. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people who hate teachers and think they have an easy job and make lots of money. This is all madness, but if you read the comments sections after a column about education, all that nuttiness spills out.
So very great to see people fighting back on the ignorance, stupidity, and monetary greed by those purporting to know how to “fix” our schools. Fixing is the right word, as in fixing dogs so they cannot reproduce.
Those fighting this inanity are, in my view, fighting to save not only our public school system but by extension our democracy. Public schools are, were the real melting pot which brought Americans – from GREATLY diverse backgrounds into a nation. Now the divide and conquer mentality of those with extreme money and power either are abysmally ignorant, primarily money grubbers caring nothing about those “less capable” than they, possibly stupid, or just do not care what they do to others in attaining their ends. Whatever, the outcome will be the same if they get their way in my view.
Does anyone here have statistics on the average class size in the Chinese, Korean and Japanese school systems?
@Jim.. are you about to compare apples and oranges with the need for stats on Chinese, Japanese and Korean school system class sizes??? I teach with Filipino teachers who tell me that they can have 60 students in a class but that they also can leave the room to go to the bathroom and know that the students will remain in their seats and will be reading a book if told to do so even while they are not in the room. Behavioral issues are nearly non-existent. Not likely to happen in a public school in the States! And then there is THE HUGE difference in how students are taught in the US as compared to many Asian countries. Not too much innovation comes from systems that are so cookie cutter and rote. Perhaps this is why the Chinese are trying to figure out how US students are educated (ironic isn’t it in a time when “ed reformers” are so desperately created rigid standardization reforms for title one public schools throughout the US.
Interesting thoughts on innovation. I guess innovation is too hard to measure (even in a flawed way).
Distorting the “Big Picture” has always been used to create a strategic stupor.
Blaming the teachers for low test scores and student misbehavior, makes as
much sense as blaming the SOLDIERS for the outcome of a military venture.
Both teachers and soldiers follow orders. Following orders IS a consequence
of enlisting to serve the Government. Right or wrong, teachers and soldiers
serve the Government. As you see, the Government Does NOT serve you.
To “Think” otherwise, is a distortion of the “Big Picture”.
The Government compels Public Ed. to disguise it’s actions as a Democracy.
The Government compels Public Ed. to teach a “History” of omission, the
influence of Capital (Corporations) behind our Government Policies.
The Government uses Public Ed. to establish it’s principle of credulity,
by instilling a false consciousness of Representative Democracy.
I BLAME the orders beyond the “Enlistees”, however the execution of orders
requires enlistees.
I do understand a strong resistance to accepting negative feedback.
After all, What “Genius” wants to be lectured by his lesser…
test 1, 2d