Patrick Hayes is a third-grade teacher in Charleston, South Carolina, who is bravely battling those who are destroying public education and the teaching profession in the guise of “reform.”
South Carolina has one of the highest numbers of children living in poverty, which is a reliable predictor of poor academic performance. But reformers don’t talk about poverty. They talk about “bad” teachers, “lazy” teachers, teachers who need to be incentivized with a bonus to do their job.
In this newspaper article, Hayes thoroughly debunks these slanders against the teachers he works with daily.
He writes:
”
“Nobody envies Charleston County School District leaders.
“How would you recruit, retain, and motivate teachers with salaries below those of comparable districts?
“Would you start with an approach that teachers have told you they don’t like?
“Would you gamble on one with an extensive record of failure?
“The district’s plan to replace its current pay structure with merit pay is just such an approach.
“Merit pay appeals to many people. They just aren’t CCSD teachers. In a survey, only 1 percent responded favorably.
“Somehow, a system that teachers distrust is supposed to attract, retain and motivate them.
“CCSD’s plan goes further than just dangling bonuses. By 2015, it would withhold promised salary increases and make teachers hit targets to win them back.
“It would also use unreliable data to threaten their jobs.
“Working in schools for 18 years, I’ve never noticed a motivation problem.
“Most teachers come early and stay late, trundling out to their cars with armloads of work.
“Some get better results than others. All of them care deeply about how things turn out.
“That’s probably why merit pay has failed to raise student achievement each of the many times it’s been tried.”
Teachers won’t profit from merit pay, but Mathematica Policy Research will.
Even though MPR knows how flawed “value-added” rankings are, how they fluctuate from year to year, it is being paid $2.9 million to design a test-based accountability system for the teachers of Charleston.
By the way, as Hayes points out, only three states have a higher child poverty rate than South Carolina.
Forget about that. It is time to give a fat contract to find and fire those bad teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane: This is off-topic from this post, but did you see the NY Times article today regarding NYS AG Eric Schneiderman’s investigation of Pearson and its foundation? Pearson is going to be paying millions in fines for its wrongdoing in NYS.
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I think maybe if what we want is better education, just possibly what is needed is direct instruction by teachers who work half the day teaching a class and spending the other half of the day evaluating what they have discovered about each child and planning accordingly. No one public or private would agree to pay for this, though. The expectations are that the teacher work all day with the students, work before and after school, attending staff meetings, professional development meetings, and child study process meetings during the provided plan time, and the carry the evaluating and planning and grading at home in what is usually personal time for most professions.
I believe that teaching has become so stressful and exhausting that it is difficult to give 100% to the students 5 days per week. How can we be expected to be at the top of our abilities when we are worn out? On top of that, when we are treated as if we are ignorant and lazy and simply not doing enough. And we are blamed for test scores that are not indicative of a true year’s growth based on the use of inappropriate tests.
As more and more record keeping, data entering, and so-called accountability is required, there simply needs to be enough time in the day to do the job efficiently.
But if teachers were to ask for fair wages to do what is being asked of them, they would likely be told their salary would be cut in half. The job has changed! It demands more time. Yet these union busters want to pay teachers less.
So I am.just thinking that this entire argument among the ed reformers and the real educators needs to pause, regroup, and look at what is really happening. If they want these changes to truly be effective, then there needs to be realistic expectation from those running things. Sometimes we need to pay for what we expect to get. So maybe we need to wake up.
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From what I understand about the schools in France, the teachers do actually teach about half of their workday. The rest of the time is spent planning, preparing, grading, and performing duties such as serving on committees and having team meetings to discuss each student one at a time. There, the objective is to bring each child out of himself by helping develop his talents while ensuring that he acquires the skills necessary to be a good citizen.
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I have heard similar information about France schools. We’ve had several French college students stay here a few weeks. They are appalled at much if what we do. Ficaus on sports is bizarre to their thinking. Commercials are bizarre to them. Disrespect for teachers is incomprehensible. But generally when we bring up France, we are “socialists”… And schools are supposed to teach about capitalism. So profits are the focus.
I wasn’t trying to play the “die us me” or “overworked” card. But I do think kids deserve to have teachers who are rested, happy, and collaborating with high morale. It is a function of time.
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But national high stakes standardized tests are the norm in France.
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France also has universal preschool available from the age of three. They have universal health care for everyone. The rate of child poverty is much lower than in the United States. They have strong unions, not just for the teachers, but also for the students and parents. It’s not unusual for the students to go on strike in support of their teachers. The focus of the schools is on bringing each child to his or her potential.
The tests in France are also not mass-produced and robo-graded. The college entrance exams begin AFTER school ends in the summer and they last two weeks, beginning with a four-hour philosophy exam. They are generally essay tests or orals, and their classes do not teach to the tests. Students are expected to learn everything, synthesize all they learn over the course of several years, and then organize their thoughts into clear, cogent essays. The exam questions are published after the test sessions end, and the students’ results are also published for all to see. So the pressure is on the students to learn. The teachers are not rated according to their students’ scores.
High-stakes testing has many faces. Just because a country has them doesn’t mean that they are used the same way that the US uses them.
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If somebody was trying to devise a system to widen the achievement gap, they would probably come up with something like merit pay. Give financial incentives to teaching high performing high scoring students, and give finacial penalties to teaching low performing low scoring needy students.
Whoever thinks this stuff up doesn’t think very far, obviously.
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To me the “profit motive” should be educated students, not dollars to private corporations. If we want students to be “better educated” we need to pay for it and pay those who provide it very well. Either being well-educated is preferable or it isn’t. So we need to get out of the business mindset that education should be cheap’
We are accustomed to thinking that a “free public education” means “cheap/inexpensive public education”. We are offended by paying taxes of any sort. Public schools are the only layer of government where people think they have influence. We take out our economic frustrations on public school by being unsupportive. We want more, more, more. We want to pay less, less, less. Even teachers at my school vote no on other districts’ levies.
Because of the one-on-one time needed in order to meet ALL students at their levels, we cannot expect a time on task efficiency study to produce more for less. But when doing d common sense ever enter the mind of a privatizing school reformer?
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Deb, I’m so glad you’re expressing this idea of reduced teacher class load. I agree it would do wonders. Yet to suggest such a thing is so far outside mainstream thinking that one risks getting labeled clinically insane. One would not be taken at all seriously. What you and I are suggesting is that teachers be treated like real craftsmen and women. Craftsmen know that quality work cannot be done on the cheap. But the trajectory of modern civilization is away from craftmanship and toward cheap, fast, efficient production. Americans worship the god Efficiency. Aren’t there other important values?
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“If we want students to be ‘better educated’ we need to pay for it and pay those who provide it very well.”
Few would argue with the sentiment. But what is ‘better educated’? For most of the 20thc, there was not a lot of dissension on the definition. The advent of psych and ed psych introduced new theories of ‘how’, which caused a number of changes in public ed. The civil rights era expanded our ideas as to whom [everyone] should be better educated, & most of the establishment was hard at work assimilating those ideas & relevant legislation right up through the 1980’s. But in the ’80’s, the digital era combined with mfg decline caused the ‘what’ increasingly to come under question.
Deeper thinkers– academicians– understand that the definition of ‘better educated’ is changed neither by the digital revolution (a ‘how’/ delivery question) nor by tough economic times (a ‘how much’ question). But the average voter can easily be convinced that the world will return to normal if we just change the ‘what’.
Hence the appeal of Common Core, & stdzd testing, & absurd teacher-pay schemes– just teach my kid the ‘right’ 21st-c stuff, prove to me you’re teaching it & he’s learning it– & he can climb out of the economic hole.
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I make no claim of having a definition for “better educated” … But I was making a general reference to those who do think they know and want it in the cheap. That includes the reformers and the privatizers.
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Spanish/French,
You’re right: we need to talk about the “what”. Common Core is so reductionistic. A classical liberal arts education can make a higher caliber soul. But most people are blind to this –what’s wrong with the soul we were born with? What I need is job skills. Hannah Arendt writes about the reduction of man to Homo Economicus and Homo Laborans –a stripping away of our full humanity and our reduction to mere economic players/workers. Many developments in education have facilitated this process. By making “skills” central in every school in the country, Common Core seems to be eradicating the last vestiges of the old classical/Renaissance project in education to make well-furnished, wise, far-seeing, balanced, virtuous minds. (Common Core actually calls for a rich, coherent curriculum, but schools seem to be ignoring that part).
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deb – didn’t you hear? We can all be replaced with cheaper TFA students. They are instant teachers – a few weeks of training and -Viola! A teacher!
Why do they need to pay you the big bucks. For a fraction of the cost they can get young, enthusiastic, people to tackle those pesky low performing students. Poverty? Not a problem! Lack of skill sets? Easy to fix! The kids will settle right down, eager to learn.
And if they don’t work out – there’s a new batch right behind them – younger and even more dedicated.
I can’t wait to see what happens when 30 TFA teachers show up ready to teach math, science, special ed, and ELL classes in the lowest performing Buffalo Public Schools. Their students will start showing up every day, sit straight at their desks, and not mouth off, but start learning instead. Their old, veteran teachers didn’t have a clue. Now they’ll have the real deal.
I give them each a week.
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To Ellen T Klock: I just had an idea … we are being replaced by Sea Monkeys, just add water.
TFA, just add 5 weeks “training” and sprinkle with CC and we have instant life rejuvenating our profession.
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“I give them each a week.”
You’re being way too generous!
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Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
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Thank you, Diane, for keeping up with what is going on here in Charleston County Schools. This disastrous BRIDGE teacher evaluation plan may be considered for our state model, so we are all very concerned. Parents and teachers are done with the high stakes testing and want to focus on teaching and student needs. Our local PAA chapter is on this, as well as some local teacher groups. Wish us luck!
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I’d like to follow up on that Mathematica contract. Any chance of adding a link?
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Oklahoma is conducting “work groups” of teachers to “set” rules and guidelines for implementing VAM; which will be 35% of our teacher’s evaluation. Mathmatica is trying to explain to us ignorant teachers why this is a good thing. But when we asked direct questions looking for concrete answers we get “we don’t know yet… That is what you are here for”. When we do give suggestions they are shot down, and God forbid we suggest there may be a political or economical agenda attached to this process. (“That is not what we are here for and we can’t get into that right now”) They did sent us two “research papers” explaining why value added measures work. Both financed by the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation, but we can’t comment on this because that would be “political”. Now it seems there is an event planned by someone to get as many teachers as possible to go to our capital the day before Oklahoma’s legislature votes on our budget. We will be “showing” our support for a salary increase and an increase in funding for educational resources. I know our conservative newspapers will crucify us in their stories. “If the greedy teachers want money make them earn it. That is why we need to link their pay with improved test scores.” We can’t win.
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I’m getting a little worried about retaliation by the district against Hayes, We’re a right to work, non-union state.
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This school is in inner-city Salt Lake City, and has been praised by Arne Duncan. Note, however, that they are now 31st out of 39 middle schools in the state (most schools are still junior highs here), so it’s not like merit pay is all that. But this news report makes it sound like a miracle:
http://fox13now.com/2013/12/13/school-seeing-increased-success-cites-merit-based-pay-for-teachers/
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Mexican teachers reply to American ed-reforms
http://rt.com/in-motion/teachers-mexico-protest-police-252/
way to go!
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As a retired SC teacher (36 years) and teacher-trainer I can only say, “This too shall pass.” I know that’s not very comforting, but I was involved during my career with the coming and usually thankful passing of the “latest” thing. I jumped into merit pay and did receive two years of great bonuses by carefully playing the current game, but endured scorn and some harassment from fellow teachers. I, too, had sofas and chairs and lamps in my classroom when we were “emphasizing a comfortable environment”, removing the classroom feel, but still trying to teach. That passed after a few years.
My philosophy became, out of desperation what I called “hide and teach.” I prepared the plans, had a plan I could use for a surprise observation that followed the latest trend, but in general, taught my classroom in the way that worked for me and the kids. I can cite many successes and I did manage to last 36 years.
Oh, BTW, I quit, finally, because I really didn’t like the students anymore. Time to go!
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I would also point you to the work of my professor, Dr. Al Ramirez front the University of Colorado: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec10/vol68/num04/Merit-Pay-Misfires.aspx
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