Eclectablog has been posting a series of interviews with teachers in Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s Education Achievement Authority. This is a statewide district intended to “save” the state’s lowest performing schools.
In this account, a teacher tells how he was suddenly fired without notice and describes what happens in the EAA.
It is dangerous for a teacher to spill the beans. He or she will be fired. Even after firing, it is dangerous because speaking out can mar future job prospects.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Even after firing, it is dangerous because speaking out can mar future job prospects.”
Now why would that be? Could it be because the vast majority of administrators are GAGAers who prefer to be surrounded with toadies who will kowtow to every whim with a smile on their face saying “Yes, maam/sir” or “No, maam/sir”. GAGAers who prefer lies and sycophancy to truth and doing what’s right by the most innocent in society, the children. Could that be why?
This is so far beyond anything I ever saw. However, school administrators have always had unethical ways of getting rid of teachers. Keeping your mouth shut was the only course of action if you ever wanted to teach again. The deformers didn’t invent poor management techniques although they have shone themselves to be masters of shoddy, ethically challenged leadership.
“Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder created the EAA in 2011 to take over the state’s failing schools, defined as those in the bottom 5 percent of student achievement. The EAA operates 15 schools — all former Detroit Public Schools buildings — although the state has 137 failing schools.
Snyder has said he wants lawmakers to authorize the district to take in additional schools. Dave Murray, a spokesman for the governor, said the EAA schools are helping students learn better.
“These schools have taken an innovative approach through highly individualized learning plans and no set grade levels,” Murray said. “We’ve already seen some dramatic academic gains, and expect that progress will continue.”
A lot of really prestigious and powerful adults rubber-stamped this experiment, so I don’t see it ending soon, no matter the results. Does Eli Broad make a bad 10 million dollar investment? I don’t think so! 🙂
When reform efforts are opposed or come up wanting, the backers use one of two tactics, they blame unions or they blame people in these communities who are apparently too stodgy to recognize the reformer’s brilliance.
They can’t blame unions here, so the Fordham person quoted in the piece blames the people who live in Detroit. It’s amazingly effective because it immunizes them from ANY critic. Unions or “resistant” local people are at fault, never reformers. It allows them to dismiss critics and just roll right over them.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131230/SCHOOLS/312300023#ixzz2sjjcH7hA
I think it’s sad they’re using computer instruction as a replacement for teachers for grade school kids. I thought the computer instruction model experiment at these schools was limited to high school.
My fondest memory of second grade is when our teacher taught us “Low Bridge” (15 Miles on the Erie Canal) with an acoustic guitar she brought from home.
It’s the only thing I remember from 2nd grade, actually 🙂
Someone needs to collect all of these true stories and write a book.
The account of the experiences of this teacher are truly frightening and bone chilling. It’s straight out of Animal Farm or Kafka.
This same stuff is going on in Detroit charters too. They use fear and intimidation and the upper management ignores the teachers, etc. It is all a scam and they have done it to the poorest people with ease.
some of that stuff, like no students in the hallways, sounds criminal. Going by the comments, students couldn’t go to the bathroom? I’m sure there are a whole bunch of laws, or I would hope there are, covering different aspects of this. Including wrongful termination. OTOH, while in the letter he says he has not been written up for anything, in the interview he describes being written up for “teaching to the whole group.” The whole thing sounds like a lawsuit. At a bare minimum, I would think he has a lawsuit just for the bank fees and deposit.
I would also think that the parents almost have an obligation to sue if there’s no teaching going on, as described in the interview.
“in the interview he describes being written up for “teaching to the whole group.”
I think the punishment for “teaching to the whole group” comes from that fact that the whole system is (ostensibly) based on “personalized learning”. The value of the thing is that the kids work at their own level, on the computer.
The rhetorical switch from “online learning” (which people probably perceived as impersonal) to “personalized learning” is really amazing marketing. I don’t know if it has value outside that (and they don’t either, hence this experiment) I don’t know if it’s TRUE that it’s more “personalized” than the “whole group” they’re banning, but the rhetorical shift is very savvy marketing. Taking a class of 50 students and selling that as more “personalized” than a smaller class may or may not be true, but it is sure a smart way to sell it.
Can you imagine sending your kid to this school? It’s bad enough that they have high school students doing this, but what about the little ones. I can’t even imagine.
I am beyond offended when I hear them call computer instruction “personalized learning.” Can anyone imagine anything more mind numbing than a day in front of a computer screen? My students used to purposely start to answer questions incorrectly, so the computer would stop asking questions. To get a high(er) lexile level required more correct questions in a row. Some of my really challenged students’ scores tanked on subsequent tests because they started at the new higher level at which they were not ready to be assessed. Their scores were not an indication of learning but of motivational and emotional factors. If you fail on purpose, you can preserve face. You can’t be labeled stupid if you don’t try.
yeah, for a little kid that’s child abuse. I was going to say “tantamount to” but I think we can go right child abuse. I mean, I wonder what the state child protective services would have to say about that? Yes, it’s Orwellian to call that “personalized learning,” I can’t think of something more impersonal still involving people. All that being said, these are allegations.
working at your own level on the computer sounds like a great idea in the abstract. Obviously it depends on the implementation. I liked what I saw of khan academy. OTOH, there’s value in group discussion. Even lecture classes have their place, IMHO. What I wonder is why this school seems to do things so badly. The would probably manage to screw up anything, regardless of the model.
I had to proctor kindergarten students using online ELA and Math assessments. From first-hand experience, it is child abuse; developmentally inappropriate in every way imaginable.
This is a line from a Lou Reed song referencing the Viet Nam War:
“The Gooks were fierce and fearless, that’s the price you pay when you invade.”
The way I see it the corporate reform movement is nothing short of an invasion of the public schools. Will we be fierce and fearless?
I was a very happy Detroit Public School special ed teacher until they closed my school (I work in another county now and we actually have funding!). I loved the kids–the gang bangers, the neediest of the needy, the misfits, the popular ones–they were all great and they do not deserve this. No kid deserves this but especially the poorest of the poor…I can guess that a fair number of these kids are living with nonrelatives or in foster care. At the very least, they may be living with caregivers who don’t have the time, inclination or means to protest this bullshit. I say that not to slam on the caregivers (who are often doing their best but are completely disempowered) but to point out that this would NOT happen in Ann Arbor (where I live). At the first sign of broken computers, the parents would be marching in the streets. If the parents/caregivers can’t stand up for the kids and the teachers will be fired for standing up for the kids…what’s left?
I told Chris this on his blog and I will say it here again…I actually had to stop reading some of the interviews because I felt physically ill. These kids had little chance to begin with and now I feel like they have no chance. And our gems up in Lansing are going to vote to expand this nightmare….
I was a very happy Detroit Public School special ed teacher until they closed my school (I work in another county now and we actually have funding!). I loved the kids–the gang bangers, the neediest of the needy, the misfits, the popular ones–they were all great and they do not deserve this. No kid deserves this but especially the poorest of the poor…I can guess that a fair number of these kids are living with nonrelatives or in foster care. At the very least, they may be living with caregivers who don’t have the time, inclination or means to protest this bullshit. I say that not to slam on the caregivers (who are often doing their best but are completely disempowered) but to point out that this would NOT happen in Ann Arbor (where I live). At the first sign of broken computers, the parents would be marching in the streets. If the parents/caregivers can’t stand up for the kids and the teachers will be fired for standing up for the kids…what’s left?
I told Chris this on his blog and I will say it here again…I actually had to stop reading some of the interviews because I felt physically ill. These kids had little chance to begin with and now I feel like they have no chance. And our gems up in Lansing are going to vote to expand this nightmare….
Dee Dee
February 8, 2014 at 10:31 am
Can you imagine sending your kid to this school? It’s bad enough that they have high school students doing this, but what about the little ones. I can’t even imagine.
Well, one of the reasons there was a huge political push to expand it was they were losing students. They lost almost a quarter of the students. The business model is built on growth. It was unsustainable with just the original 15 schools.
There was a controversy early on with EAA where they submitted incorrect information to the USDOE. They vastly over-stated how many schools they had taken over. It was amusing, because I remember the superintendent of Kalamazoo schools was surprised to find out his schools had been seized. Kalamazoo is quite a ways from Detroit 🙂
Anyway, that wasn’t true, they hadn’t seized all those schools, they said it was an error, but I wonder. Because the business model relies on X number of students ($) I wonder if they didn’t submit a bigger number of potential “seats” to make the model look rational and sustainable for the feds.
What is happening under the EAA is a clear example of what “data-driven education reform” is like in action.
Tortured numbers, invented figures, manipulated stats—don’t believe anything the EAA and the rest of the rheephorm crowd crows about.
It is all vain and illusory.
The only metric that counts for the the leaders of the “new civil rights movement” —and that they count out to the last penny—is the $tudent $ucce$$ they amass for themselves. Nothing else makes as much ₵ent¢ …
😒