A comment on the blog:
I have been recently forced out of Education after 30 years – perhaps there’s a truth that I am tired, a bit worn out and old school – I cared as much about the child as their progress. But I still have a child in the midst of it (although not in the US) and am appalled at what is happening.
Good teaching is paramount and that means good training and an understanding of educational theories and practises, such that most children can be taught and more importantly they will learn. I feel for young teachers who are led by inexperienced leaders, too many who have come through these ‘fast track’ programs. It’s the business-ification of teaching – cheaper teachers, profit and quick turn over if you fail to meet all these silly targets based on dubious data.
The persistent dismantling of the teaching profession in many Western countries is doing untold damage – to the profession and more importantly to the students. It’s very hard to delivery good quality lessons when you are constantly under attack, being observed by others, criticised by politicians and others who should know better. Our under-achievers need more consistency, more calm and continuity in order to feel secure in their learning, take some risks, learn and make the needed progress.
Teachers are being scape-goated for years of political interference in the US and UK especially: two countries that have NOT improved outcomes for the poorest students. Check the various reports and look to Finland and Australia if you really want to do something about social mobility.
If reformers genuinely want to improve education and not just grand-stand and parade their egoes, they should talk to classroom teachers and perhaps some exit-polling might be informative…
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent comments and observations.
I was not “forced out” per se, but decided to retire to avoid being forced into a “system” that I refused to accept as being right for children, teachers or society.
The implementation of the domains as listed in Ohio’s Praxis rubric seemed absolutely doable when I received my Praxis training after 25 years of teaching. We took the course and were thinking that we already had incorporated implementation of those behaviors into our teaching. The new principal, however, was uninterested in who we were but in applying this evaluation in a manner that took no prior knowledge into consideration.
She even had the audacity to tell us that we needed to tell her all of our previous accomplishments on our “lesson plan” for evaluation.com. Did she ask us anything to further understand the depth of our involvement with the students and the community? No. She just put unfounded negative assumptions into writing.
This new means of using rubrics to drive the picking apart of lessons and the teacher’s attention to details while attending to student needs that arise and interrupt the flow of real teaching and learning became an obsession of this principal. She was excessively harsh in evaluating experienced teachers, giving little in the way of interpretation.
We have all chosen to retire … with nearly 100% student passage on the exams for 10 years, despite the constant mental abuse we received from this woman. Yes, she was “in charge” but but uninformed. She had no idea about what she was evaluating when it came to implementing our curricula.
The stress of dealing with the changes plus the exhausting amount of change (frequent – learning one new system and having it change mid-year to another, repeatedly) as well as the disrespect in real terms of the teachers’ dedication and contribution to the community at large, effectively shoved us out the door. But was it truly voluntary?
I agree with you when you say that it is difficult to plan a good work when we as teachers are being constantly under attack, being criticized by politicians and society instead of paying us at least a good salary. In Peru, where I work as a teacher, the salary of a housemaid is better than a teacher who has to invest in updating at universities at his/her own budget.
We can see, for example, how happy congress leaders feel when they propose new laws against teachers rights. Teacher must be always trained, evaluated and supervised by untrained people and supervised by bureaucrats. In addition to this, parents of children think that school organization must teach their children, transmit good values and take care of them.
A poet, once told the following: Teaching in Peru is a very dangerous way of working but teaching in Peru is the most reliable way of living.
Sounds almost exactly like an ex-boss I had. Straight from an elementary school and had ZERO experience in a secondary school. To keep this long story short, lets just say she completely disregarded any and all education and experience that ANY teacher had and was famous for “dumping” or “loading up” any problem kids and IEP kids on any teacher that dared to challenge her. A challenge by-the-way may just be a polite disagreement or a suggestion to make things better. It was not uncommon for one teacher in a department to have as many as 30 IEP kids while the others would have 2-3 IEP kids and almost no kids who frequent the office.
What made this boss particularly deplorable was that she insisted that we have short cycle tests every two weeks on the dot and would publicly show the data in staff meetings. Doesn’t matter is you the teacher were absent a few days, doesn’t matter if you have virtually all the IEP and problem kids who EVERY educator on the planet knows learn a little slower and a little differently. Truth is that nothing mattered except the data. Then you would be grilled on the data and compared and told how to improve your teaching!
Yes, she was that clueless. She would even tell seasoned veteran teachers with 20-30yrs experience how they were teaching “wrong” and should be following her data driven teaching style. And by “wrong”, I mean any thing different than what she wanted you to do. In fact the way she wanted us to teach was WRONG, ill informed and at the lower levels of Blooms. I took great pride in shooting her down with logic and research. Any time she would ask us to teach “her” way I would easily find dozens of peer-reviewed reports showing that her way was the “wrong” way and would refuse to budge. I would politely remind her that I had a Masters and that I took at least four classes alone on how to teach science and how it is different than teaching L.A. or math. I would also politely point out that I, along with many older teachers, would attend professional development seminars and classes over the summers on science education – every summer without exception and how I alone had over 60 college units above and beyond the Masters ( I chose to buy the credits sometimes at the end) just from the summer classes. None of this seemed to matter. The lack of autonomy and the micromanaging was unbelievable and simply stunning. I had a Bloom’s pyramid next to my desk that I would circle her way and my way. My way almost always was on top.
After her last year (3 year reign ) every single teacher with 20+ years experience left. In the last year alone the last five retired early or transfered to get away from her caustic leadership style. Out of 42 teachers there were about 10-12 that had been around for the 20-30 years – all had Masters degrees plus 1000’s of hours of post-secondary training. They were the brains, the life blood and the distiled wisdom that I tapped into regularly. Infinite were their bag of tricks they had and tempered was their logic, and reasoning on education. They left in droves as I almost did.
Instead of tapping into that deep wisdom, education and experience(20-30 yrs) , we had the youngest and most inexperienced (2-4 years) teachers being openly rewarded with easier classes, better rooms, and an easier work loads while the wise and older teachers were given the hardest students, moved to crappy small rooms and generally harassed for not going along quietly. Duties and every little thing else always seemed to be the crappiest ones there were. NEVER did an older teacher get a cushy collateral duty.
This person had ZERO integrity and had been caught in more than one lie. She left more than one department in shambles and divided. She was also famous for pitting teacher against teacher and stirring up unhealthy competition. Guess which ones “bit”? Give yourselves a cookie if you said the young inexperienced teachers. Why wouldn’t they. Easy classes, big rooms, all kinds of praise and accolades. And, they could plainly see that the old stubborn teachers who were stuck in their ways were obviously crappy teachers. They caused trouble, spoke up, and had the lowest scores. If only the old ones would have “drank the Koolaid” and recognized the superior intelligence and wisdom of our new leader.
It was then that I realized that the reformers could easily win with people like this on OUR side! Especially when some of our very young ones could be heard in the lunch room on almost any day talking about a lot of the reform rhetoric: merit pay, purpose of a union ( our is week so maybe they had a point) and the mythical creature known as the “bad teacher.” Over night anyone over 30 was seen as a bumbling obsolete fool. The hubris was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
The last few months before our pointy-headed administrator left I put up a homemade poster directly across from the door so she would see it first thing when she came in to try and tell me how my activity-based or inquiry-based instruction was not the Cornell notes and Powerpoint presentation that she wanted ( sometimes I would print out the peer-reviewed studies and have the relevant info highlighted). She never could understand why Cornell notes and a foldable were not good enough.They worked for her when she taught.
The poster simply said,
“It is better to lead through inspiration and perspiration than through intimidation and domination.”
When scores came out the next year she finally gave up harassing me and a few others. Seems our heavily loaded-up classes had scores that were not too much lower than the easy classes.
Guess I did not do so good on keeping it short, but I felt it important for this story to be told. We as teachers need to stand up to tyranny and we need to stand together with conviction.
I have a friend who is 70 and still works everyday in a school with young special education students. She is major in special education and will not stop. She has the best crew of special ed people in the country. We regularly communicate almost daily on education issues. They have from 40-50 years in the game from the beginning and have the documents and complete knowledge of every switch and change. This really helps. You do not have to give up even if you leave. In fact, now you are most dangerous as they cannot touch you once you have your retirement. Now you can really advocate. People ask me either are you a teacher or lawyer. I answer I am not a teacher and you cannot be in their employ and do what I do as they will wipe you out. As to the lawyer I say “No, I just eat lawyers for lunch” and I do for fun regularly. No good lawyer speaks about that which they do not intimately know and have the proof. We have 3 lawyers at the dais who are not worth much in that profession as they always break the major rules of being a top level attorney.
Teachers, if you are now retired now if the time for you to come to the defense of students and our society. Now, with your retirement you are untouchable. Now you can do what you could not do before when employed as they could terminate or falsely charge you with a crime, not now.
LDA at their convention in Feb. next year at Disneyland in Anaheim will have L.A. County Sheriff Baca speaking. I think for the first time special education K-12 will hear from the sheriff with 18,000 employees and 18,000 in the jails, the largest in the U.S. and most progressive, talk about what happens after school and how important special education is and how it effects the criminal justice system. I cannot wait to hear the speach and the reaction of those present. We need to close the gap of what happens after they leave school as this is a part of the cycle. Suddenly everything is not better. I see it every day and in the phone calls I get some late at night. Tragedy, if we do not deal with it.
It’s amazing how many of us have the exact same impressions & feelings about what’s going on & what drove us out.
My story is a little bit different in that I think I’m in the generation directly following you guys – which is what I also consider to be the “last” generation of teachers who were educated before corporate reform hit. {I can’t even fathom what a masters program (or undergrad) looks like today, or of they’re even learning what needs to be taught; it scares me.}
Anywsy I was driven out too, but I’m not even close to retirement (actually I turn the big 4-0 tmrw:); I resigned from the Boston Public schools in April (since 1998) & threw myself into the fight – literally have devoted my life to it since then.
Unfortunately, there’s no $$ to be made fighting the corporate reformers, & I’m the single mother to 3 boys (6,7,&9yo) whose def not independently wealthy.
Bc of this – & also bc I really didn’t want to put my boys through another year wasted as BPS aligns more closely w Common Core – & we careen towards that cliff even faster – I have found myself at an amazing opportunity…
Tonight my boys & I will fly off to Dubai, where I have been hired as the Director of Special Ed @an international private school! I am SO excited & am actually grateful to Bill Gates & friends for allowing me this opportunity!
I can’t wait to see for myself what education is rly like globally, & how the American system compares. I’m especially thrilled that I’ll become trained & experienced with an IB curriculum, & moreso that my boys will be trading in the Common Core for that one!
Anyway, I’m nowhere near ready so must get off the computer, but hoping that when I come back in 2 years we will have won this war…& like you, I will continue to do my part – I can still be Indignant from abroad!
Jill, be sure to write us from Dubai and keep us informed.
Jill:
Congratulations and good luck with your new adventure and endeavors.
Your new challenge raises an interesting question. By IB I assume you are referring to the International Baccalaureate? Do you see that the IB is a superior curriculum to the Common Core?
Like Deb, I have retired from teaching after 41 years – the last decade of which was filled with an increasingly uncomfortable feeling. It is only now that I have retired I am beginning to recognize the the cause of that discomfort was not just old age or fatigue but rather finding myself in a situation that had slowly, almost indiscernibly surrounded me. It was of course, the current corporate reform movement with its accountability that lacked a basis in reality.
The writer makes an important point with his comment that
“Good teaching is paramount and that means good training and an understanding of educational theories and practises, such that most children can be taught and more importantly they will learn.”
What those outside education fail to grasp is what Piaget observed – that different people are ready to learn things at different time as their brains grow and their intellect develops through various stages. Consequently, while however much we wish it to be true, teaching and learning do not exist in the same simple causal relationship that seems to be so obvious. That is, a teacher can do everything correctly (procedurally), but unless the learner is actively involved in the process and her or his brain has developed to the level required to comprehend the lesson being taught, learning will not take place and it is not the fault of the teacher.
If I might use an analogy from basketball. The best basketball coach in the world will never teach me to slam dunk a basketball and it will be through no fault in his or her coaching techniques but rather that my body cannot with any amount of guidance, practice, and desire accomplish the task short of “lowering the rim of the basket” – no pun intended . . . Perhaps the basket of expectation was simply and arbitrarily established too high. As such I will always be a failure at that task.