Anthony Cody here describes teachers as “reluctant warriors,” as men and women who chose a profession because they wanted to teach, not to engage in political battles over their basic rights as professionals.
The profession is under attack, as everyone now knows. Pensions are under attack. The right to due process is under attack. The policymakers want inexperienced, inexpensive teachers who won’t talk back, who won’t collect a pension, who will turn over rapidly:
In years past we formed unions and professional organizations to get fair pay, so women would get the same pay as men. We got due process so we could not be fired at an administrator’s whim. We got pensions so we could retire after many years of service.
But career teachers are not convenient or necessary any more. We cost too much. We expect our hard-won expertise to be recognized with respect and autonomy. We talk back at staff meetings, and object when we are told we must follow mindless scripts, and prepare for tests that have little value to our students.
No need for teachers to think for themselves, to design unique challenges to engage their students. The educational devices will be the new source of innovation. The tests will measure which devices work best, and the market will make sure they improve every year. Teachers are guides on the side, making sure the children and devices are plugged in properly to their sockets.
First, the privatizers came for the schools of the poor, because their parents and communities were powerless and were easy marks for privatization. Then they came for the union and the teachers:
Schools of the poor were the first targets. It was easy to stigmatize schools attended by African Americans and Latinos, by English learners and the children of the disempowered. Use test scores to label them failures, dropout factories, close them down, turn them over to privatizers. But this was just the beginning. And now, as Arne Duncan made clear with his dismissal of “white suburban moms,” they want all the schools, and are prepared to use poor performance on the Common Core tests to fuel the “schools are failing” narrative.
Teacher unions are under ruthless attack by billionaires, who conveniently own the media, and provide the very “facts” to guide public discourse. Due process is maligned and destroyed under the guise of “increasing professionalism.” Democratic control of local schools is undermined by mayoral control and the expansion of privately managed charter schools.
Congress and state legislatures have been purchased wholesale through bribes legalized by the Supreme Court, which has given superhuman power to corporate “citizens.”
Teachers, by our nature cooperators respectful of authority, are slow to react. Can the destruction of public education truly be anyone’s goal? The people responsible for this erosion rarely state their intentions. With smiles and praise for teachers, they remove our autonomy and make our jobs depend on test scores. With calls for choice and civil rights, they re-segregate our schools, and institute zero-tolerance discipline policies in their no-excuses charter schools. They push for larger classes in public schools but send their own children to schools with no more than 16 students in a room. Corporate philanthropies anoint teacher “leaders” who are willing to echo reform themes – sometimes even endorsed by our national teacher unions.
Now, he says, as the truth gets out about the privatization movement and its bipartisan support, teachers are starting to fight back. They are joining the BATs, they are joining the Network for Public Education, they are speaking out, they are (as in Seattle) refusing to give the tests, they are organizing (as in New York City) to protest the low quality of the tests.
Join in the fight against high-stakes testing, which is a central element in the privatization movement. They use the data to target teachers, principals, and public schools. They use the data to destroy public education. Don’t cooperate. Join the reluctant warriors. One person alone will be hammered. Do it with your colleagues, stand together, and be strong.
Let the politicians know just how strongly you feel about the CC testing madness that has enveloped our public schools like a toxic cloud. The powers that be will only act if their power is threatened. This is a political battle, pure and simple. They have the CA$H but we have the numbers
Easier than you might expect.
In 48 hours, 2,304 letters/emails have been sent to Washington DC by outraged parents and educators from all across the country. Read their comments and add your own feelings and experiences. There is a map that shows the distribution of signees when you mouse-over each state.
I just started this at Petition2Congress yesterday morning. It is very easy to sign, copies are automatically sent to President Obama, and your own senators and your House representative. Please take the time to read and sign the petition entitled:
STOP COMMON CORE TESTING.
Thank you all.
http://www.petition2congress.com/15080/stop-common-core-testing/?m=5265435
Thank YOU. ( not shouting just emphasizing. 🙂 )
Thanks or taking the time to sign the petition.
2,436 letters/emails and counting.
Will Joffrey Lannister Cuomo seek revenge on those who sign? I’m having flashbacks to the McCarthy era.
Its still America.
You’re right; so I think I’ll exercise my First Amendment right.
Never, ever operate in fear. Thanks for signing. 2,600 letters/emails.
And more importantly 1,200 FB shares.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Yuh! I’ve gotten it in twice!
Thank you! I am parent fighting Common Core in Indiana. What is being proposed is a poorly re-branded version of Common Core. It is SO bad, that both Common Core proponents and opponents have panned it. The vote by the Indiana Education Roundtable occurs today. Please tweet @GovPenceIN this morning with the hashtag #NoCommonCoreRebrand. He promised we were getting out of Common Core, and now unless he acts otherwise today, is ushering it right back in. This is not federalism! This is not what teachers and parents wanted! We are calling for restoring our pre-Common Core standards, with which our teachers are familiar! If Pence goes back on his word today, it will be his “Read My Lips Moment.” Likewise, our Superintendent Glenda Ritz, who ousted Tony Bennett in part due to expressing concerns about CC, is bringing his signature agenda back. She supports Indiana students taking the Common Core “Core Links” assessment this Fall.
Shouldn’t these comments emphasize that the wherewithal exists and has existed all along to fight the “reformers”. Fighting deformers by joining “Bats” and “NPE” is all well and good but real power lies in the NEA, UFT/AFT membership with about 4 million members. Much greater efforts should be made to force union leaders to take a much more aggressive stance against the assault on teachers and public education in general.
Sounds good on paper, but look what happened here in NY when the NYSUT membership pressured Richard Iannuzi to fight the reform that is devastating our profession. He was quickly forced out of office for another quid pro cuo(mo) lackey. Karen Magee will join the long list of union leaders that are making Al Shanker cry in his grave over this shameless abandonment by the very people who could have stopped this in its tracks..
Because we have been politically orphaned by our union leaders at the state and national levels, grass roots seems our only viable option.
NY Teacher, you are so right. Too many of our union members are ready to kiss the feet of Bill Gates and embrace whatever chameleon skin Randi chooses to wear this week. The union has largely been complicit in this travesty.
Please don’t stop working on both fronts. Yes, yes we need not to wait for the AFT or NEA to lead us forward, for that would mean doing nothing as Rome burns all around us and beneath our very feet. Of course we cannot and do not do this. Our children and schools and colleagues and society and our very lives would not allow us to do so.
BUT, sisters and brothers, Michael’s point is valid. We must, must keep up the work to transform our unions into the member-led, fight-FOR-us organizations they should be. Without illusion, without waiting, but keeping the pressure in and growing there as well . Chicago’s CORE showed us how. We owe it to the kids not to give up on this front as well admittedly NYC is a tough place for this battle, but lots of our sisters and brothers are working on this there, even. The rest of us should do no less.
The NEA and UFT have fallen prey to the corporations and fail to protect us anymore. It’s time for grassroots movements to take up the cause the NEA and UFT have abandoned.
Kipp Dawson is correct, working with grassroots groups and such as NPE and BATs, and the unions is important; both have value. NPE and BATs have made the unions start to rethink their positions on CC and other issues. Union members need to engage with their leaders and make sure they know how we feel about losing all of the gains that have been made by our unions in the past 50 years. I think change is coming to NEA-AFT/UFT soon.
@ Michael Brocoum ….You are correct.
But the AFT and the NEA have already sold teachers out. hey took the Gates money. The agreed to Common Core, and all that it entails.
They’ve gone a long, long way with the corporate “reformers,” and it’s very hard now to walk back what they’ve done, though Randi Weingarten keeps trying.
What’s keeping both the NEA and AFT leadership from decoupling themselves from the Common Core, and the testing that goes along with it (including the ACT, SAT and AP tests)?
Perhaps a strong effort on this blog along with NPE, Bats, and any other supporters of public eduction should combine their efforts to vote in new leaders of teacher unions. Diane Ravitch has a following of about 83,000 on Twitter. BATS has over 30,000 followers. A steady unrelenting campaign against the union leaders who sold out teacher’s hard won rules/working environment could result in a real threat to said union leaders.
We’re not all union members for one thing. For another unions seem to have gotten rather in grown. The leadership likes their role and does their utmost to maintain it. I seem to have heard from some NYers that breaking into the hallowed halls of leadership is going to take a long time and a lot of work. I hope some people are talking to Chicago’s union leadership.
Warrior here. No reluctance though.
Good post. For a long time I have thought that the gentleness that makes teachers more effective in the classroom works against them in defending their profession. I came to teaching from the legal profession (paralegal). You wouldn’t catch a bunch of lawyers staying quiet while the government destroyed their jobs and their dignity.
How true. The cut throat nature of corporate reformers must have had them laughing at us in their cigar smoke, single malt backrooms.
They absolutely are counting on our complacency and compliance.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
If the CC punitive test-based reform is allowed to flourish we cannot blame Obama, or Duncan, or Coleman, or Gates, or Randi, or Murdoch, or Rhee, or Tisch, or King, or Cuomo, or Bush.
We will only have ourselves to blame because we failed to act accordingly.
That’s absolutely right. It is time for civil disobedience in classrooms and living rooms across the country. It is time for a groundswell. It is time to show that speech and action do not have to cost millions, or billions, to get attention.
They are also counting on our fear.
When being invaded, one must be fierce and fearless.
Wendy: excellent point.
But before I add a very personal opinion, let me make it clear: as a Bilingual and later SpecEd TA, I walked with teachers in the classroom but not in their shoes. I shared their load but they bore the brunt of the work. I was urged by many of them to pursue a teaching credential but I was already feeling that “something wicked this way comes” and respectfully declined their urgings. So I state the following as my own feelings, however individual and perhaps illogical and unfair, but I hope y’all take it as being at least meant in good faith.
Even in the 1980s I was feeling that somehow teachers [and their organizations, whether union or professional] didn’t quite see themselves as the heart and soul of public education. I felt, and feel, that this is profoundly wrong. So for better or for worse, this is the analogy that I have long carried in my mind and heart.
Take an elementary school in a large urban area. There’s often a small gaggle of fourth and fifth and sixth graders who [for reasons I will not get into] like to bully the much younger children. You know, the ones who steal, e.g., the lunch money and/or lunch of the 1st and 2nd graders. One of the most effective deterrents is the bigger brother and/or bigger sister of the intended victims. This is how it works: when the schoolyard bullies start making their way towards their next victim, a kid their own size or sometimes even a bit smaller—boy or girl, and I must say sometimes it’s the girls who are more assertive—steps in between the tormenters and their targets. Basically what gets said is that no lunch money or anything else is in play because they are going to have to go through [name] first before they put a hand on so-and-so’s little brother or sister.
Bullies are after easy pickings. They move on. If everyone stands up for themselves and others, the bullies end up picking on each other = poetic justice.
Edubullies are no different. I do not discount anyone else—classroom aides or cafeteria workers or maintenance staff or office clerks or administrators or students or parents or concerned members of the community—but in the grand scheme of public schools the first and best bigger sister/bigger brother is a teacher. Does this sound like too much?
Maybe to some it does. But I urge folks to read John Kuhn’s FEAR AND LEARNING IN AMERICA. Teaching isn’t just a paycheck, and I am not saying that on a philosophical level—all the good and excellent teachers I worked with felt it was also a moral commitment.
You didn’t ask to be bashed. You didn’t ask to be on the front lines against abusive practices directed against the children you are teaching. But you are in a position to do something very important: when the edubullies come around, tell them—and mean it!—they have to go through you first before they put a hand on your students for they are your little brothers and little sisters.
This is not the first time people have been put into a difficult and morally charged situation.
“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Martin Niemöller. Google the name and biography.
Everyone has to make a personal decision that is best for their own situation—I am not hectoring anyone, just reminding folks that personal decisions can have big consequences.
Thank you for your comments. And please forgive the long comment.
😎
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RIGHT ON, Krazy TA. Am I just too old for this fight? Where are the others who graduated college in the late ’60’s? Maybe it was a little easier then to see the forest for the trees: the fed gov was, via the Viet Nam draft, diametrically opposed to our futures. By my perspective, down those years, we are at the same sort of crossroads. Despite all our hopes in Obama to the contrary, we have similarly on hand an overweening fed govt determined to override the voting public. First they came for our jobs, now they’re after our kids’ futures!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxs I don’t get this: is it the union membership that makes folks shy? The position in one’s school? I’ve had it easy as a part-time free-lance educator. I totally get it if you’re afraid you might be sacrificing your career. But simply as a taxpayer & parent, one must speak up!
Cody is right, and here are two new books to help in the fight to save public education: Fear and Learning in America: Bad Data, Good Teachers, and the Attack on Public Education, by Texas school supt John Kuhn (Teachers College Press, 2014), and 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools, by David Berliner and Gene Glass (Teachers College Press, 2014). Both are by prominent veteran educators and are superb resources. — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Edd Doerr: I just received both.
Finished FEAR AND LEARNING IN AMERICA and am now on 50 MYTHS.
You call them “superb resources.”
Folks, that’s not hype. Get them, read them, buy them for—and discuss them with—others.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
Never Reluctant – Courtroom to Classroom Teachers moved from the picket lines of the CRM, the Anti-Vietnam War Protests, the Sanctuary Movement, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and more into the democracy-dreaming classrooms of public schools. Deep, creative education meant equality for our nation’s students. We know exactly how to stand tall, stand firm, stand together and stand for the future of our communities.
“. . . they are organizing (as in New York City) to protest the low quality of the tests.”
That’s all well and good but the fact is “protesing the low quality of the tests” only serves to reinforce the edudeformers’ discourse. By definition (as proven by Noel Wilson) these tests are completely invalid due to myriad epistemological and ontologicial errors. If a test is invalid it’s not just “low quality” but NO QUALITY. To understand why read and understand Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted ““Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Glad you’re back, Duane! I wholeheartedly agree with you, & we need to be protesting more than the “low quality” of the tests–they are NO quality, & will NEVER be up to snuff, because–unlike all of the ratings and evaluations and calls for teacher accountability, there ARE NO ratings and evaluations and accountability for Pear$on–there is NO quality control, and there NEVER will be.
I can hear them & their reformer-enablers now–“Oh, they want BETTER tests! Okay, well we’ll just give them “better” tests,” but will continually attempt to fool some of the people (those being some of those ridiculous legislators who gave ridiculous answers to commenters’ letters, as well as administrators, such as state commissioners and superintendents who are simply helping the education money machine happily churn along, having NO idea as to what these tests contain {& not caring, either}) ALL of the time.
Like you, Duane, I say NO! NO “standardized” tests; NO Pear$on money machine sucking up public school funds. As I’d said before, just ONE of those color, quarter-page Pear$on ads for test scorers cost, in just ONE of our Chicago papers, FOUR THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED FORTY DOLLARS for ONE day!
STOP. THE. TESTING. NOW. OPT OUT NOW.
RBMTK,
Hope to be gone for awhile this weekend, getting down to the Eleven Point River in southern Missouri for some more fishin & floatin. You know the “F” words for FUN!
Thanks for the shoutout!
As always, take care!
Duane
“Schools of the poor were the first targets. It was easy to stigmatize schools attended by African Americans and Latinos, by English learners and the children of the disempowered. Use test scores to label them failures, dropout factories, close them down, turn them over to privatizers. But this was just the beginning. And now, as Arne Duncan made clear with his dismissal of “white suburban moms,” they want all the schools, and are prepared to use poor performance on the Common Core tests to fuel the “schools are failing” narrative.”
Sadly, this is true and most of us in the suburbs were guilty of this type of thinking.
We must educate and activate suburban parents outside of New York (thank heavens for the New Yorkers as role models). All parents must unite and stand together as we open our eyes that our kids are all in the same boat, which we should have seen all along.
http://whatsthebigideaschwartzy.blogspot.com/2014/01/people-in-burbs-need-to-worry-about.html
http://whatsthebigideaschwartzy.blogspot.com/2013/10/common-core-disorder-hits-burbs.html
Here is the question I keep asking every educator I know, why are they (the states/government) insisting we implementing CCSS, high stakes testing (PARCC in IL) and VAM (or Charlotte Danielson type evaluations) all at the same time? And this one questions leads to so many more…Who stands to benefit? Are we being set up to fail? How can they expect any one of these to succeed when so much is being shoved down our proverbial throats at once? And don’t even get me started on my questions as a tax payer and parent..these are just my teacher based questions.
We do need a call to action, an occupy type movement. I’ve been saying that for months now but we need to to be involved, we need to have a concrete platform….because you can’t fight a WALL of MONEY without a tower of resoluteness. I’ve already seen the spin trying to split us apart by blaming the tea party or liberals for the resistance to CCSS when it is really just citizens thinking for themselves. Sign me up when something like this comes to fruition and I’ll get the word out to every one I know!
A crucial bit of your arsenal of arguments is this acute observation by a full-fledged, genuine, card-carrying member of the education status quo. An indisputable insider of the “new civil rights movement of our time.”
Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute from a December 2013 posting on his blog, available through the blog of Dr. Mercedes Schneider:
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Remember, this is from a fully committed member of the education establishment.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Maybe we should stop referring to “failing schools” and start referring to failing students. That would beg the question why they fail. Answer is what the wealthy don’t want to discuss: rampant poverty, hunger, family breakdown, etc. Could income/wealth distribution have something to do with that? Should we return to a progressive income tax structure? Should we rely less on property taxes and more on a progressive income tax to pay for education? This is not anything the masters of the universe want to discus. Their solution is as we all know is “blame the teacher”. Great distraction.
Michael,
Maybe we shouldn’t be using the term fail. Maybe, just maybe. . . no, there is no doubt that the labels that we attach to the student and his/her work influence said student, whether “top notch” or “failing”, in both positive and negative ways in a process I call “internalization” and what Foucault calls subjectivization or what Ian Hacking refers to as a “looping effect”. How can one expect a child to be able to counteract/mand what the authorities say about him or her? Is it ethical to judge students in such a fashion? (I argue that it is not.) When did teachers become judges? Or diagnosticians? Or magical apraissers of that invisible process that occurs in the minds of students during the teaching and learning process?
My point is that we can’t let the deformers control the debate by allowing them to use the term “failing schools”. There is no such thing as a failing school in my opinion. If students fail to progress adequately it would be due to factors mostly outside the school. Using the term failing schools is a distraction from the real problems in education. Rampant poverty is the real issue that the billionaire boys club doesn’t want society to think about. Needless to say that brings the issue of scandalous distribution of income and wealth in our society which they definitely don’t want a serious discussion about. So the answer is create a false premise, failing schools, then proceed to replace said schools via privatization to further enrich the already super rich.
Diane,
Please take this one step further and directly encourage active membership in NEA or AFT. I am LPAE/LAE/NEA. I AM THE UNION.
That’s my point about this blog from an earlier post. This blog can have an even greater affect if it dissected the failures of union leaders as thoroughly as it dissects the deformer’s attacks on teachers/public education.
Michael,
Again, you are correct. But If you’ve read this blog for a while, then you know that Diane Ravitch routinely lauds Randi Weingarten here.
And Weingarten has gone all-in on the Common Core.
Ravitch says that if we criticize Randi (as I’ve done multiple times) then we are aiding the enemy, and it’s “dumb.”
You can read more at the link, including the comments:
I totally agree with you. Diane’s support of RW is in my opinion a major hindrance to the effectiveness of this blog.
“Anthony Cody here describes teachers as “reluctant warriors,” as men and women who chose a profession because they wanted to teach, not to engage in political battles over their basic rights as professionals.”
I lost my career before I realized that being political was essential to survival in the classroom. Your first responsibility is to your students and their learning, but if you don’t spend as much time quietly defending your career, you will find yourself out the door. You might still find yourself jobless, but at least go down fighting. If you are too far past 50, your odds of making it too many more years are decreasing depending on where you teach. If hiding in your classroom is not going to save your job or if you plan on retiring anyway, make some noise before you go. So they don’t give you flowers when you retire. They don’t give you flowers when they don’t “rehire” you either, and it’s a bitch. How many jobs do you know of where you are expected to work for several months before your employment ends? Not only that but you are expected to suck it up and smile!
Are there too many Kool-Aide drinkers? Are there too many fearful?
My state has just started threatening our license if we “encourage or facilitate” opting out. There’s a LOT of fear out there.
Did they legally define “encouragement”? or “facilitation”?
IT can be an objective topic of discussion without encouraging or facilitating. I discuss it openly and say that if my 3 kids were of testing age that I would not even think twice about opting them out. this statement cannot be interpreted as encouraging or facilitating.
I have told students and posted on Facebook facts about the length of the tests and the fact that parents can opt out of the testing. And with that, I am being threatened. The words “encourage or facilitate” have not been defined, but as the main wage earner in my family, I don’t dare try the legal definitions. I’m actually completely deleting my Facebook so that I don’t get accused of something.
Oh, and I do opt my children out of the testing. And the school knows it. It’s all over the school and that’s why I’m being threatened. I have also had people get very offended that I dare question the testing regime. It’s weird.
Your actions are understandable, You should contact a lawyer regarding the threats being made to your career and reputation. just for speaking your mind. It is so sad that it has come down to adversarial power plays when all we ever wanted to do was to make a difference in the lives of children.
Any teachers who have been threatened should get together and contact the ACLU. If you have received anything written, hold onto it. As soon as one teacher is disciplined, threatened, fired, etc., using this “encourage or facilitate” rule, ask the ACLU about a class action suit on behalf of threatened teachers. As soon as one person has an active case, others similarly situated can then say that they are in the same danger. The other possibility is asking the ACLU if this rule can be enjoined from being used because of free speech violation.
Louisiana Purchase
Please, please follow the advise of Blind Noise. Do not let your school district or the state of Utah get away with this. This still is America. The ACLU is a great suggestion.
Mosaica is one of the (many!) for-profit charter operators in Michigan.
This is what they have planned for teacher appreciation week. It’s unbelievable:
http://www.eclectablog.com/2014/04/for-profit-charter-group-mosaica-celebrates-teacher-appreciation-week-with-compulsory-teacher-humiliation-activities.html
I think for Principal Williamss’ next birthday party, parents, students, and teachers should line up to give birthday spankings. I also think they should be blindfolded, and play Pin the Tail on the Donkey, with Principal Williams being the donkey. All in good fun, you understand.
TAGO!
I find this so disturbing. What an insult to the teachers in these schools!
Chiara Duggan: you are not exaggerating. Thank you for the link.
Just when you think the rheephormistas have plumbed a new low, they prove, well, what a numbers/stats guy once said:
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” [Albert Einstein]
😎
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass
Teachers must start direct action against the neoliberal corporate bloodsuckers and their paid politicians who are bent on privatizing not only public schools, but everything that is considered the commons of the people.
Follow the lead of our Mexican brother and sister teachers, as they take on the corporate “ed-reformers” in their country.
http://www.france24.com/en/20130914-teachers-clash-riot-police-mexico-city/
Anthony: We’re awake, we see what’s going on — we live it every day at our teaching jobs. But how can we realistically fight back in this job market? You’re right that people who go into teaching aren’t fighters — we’re not streetwise. But if enough teachers knew that they were part of a well-led group that has an effective plan, we’d be all-in. That leader, and that plan haven’t materialized yet. (Diane….?)
Easy to say that you should do all sorts of things to protest, but watch your tail.
James Popham, a critic of current policies, and Margaret DeSander, a lawyer, remind teachers that legal protections for teachers are limited, especially if the policies are uniformly applied to all teachers. Teachers alone have little voice in changing the conditions under which they were hired and work. Popham, W. J. & DeSander, M. K. (2013, September 18). Unfairly fired teachers deserve court protection. Education Week, 33(4), 26-27.
I am not a lawyer, but a fairly recent Ohio case (Evans-Marshall v. Board of Education of Tipp City, 2010) sent chills up my spine. One federal judge characterized the work of teachers as little more than “hired speech.” Teachers are thus required to follow the rules made by school boards on all sorts of matters.
This case involved a high school English teacher who assigned a district-approved book that one parent objected to. A brief about the case that also includes a link to a Supreme Court ruling on teacher speech rights is at http://legalclips.nsba.org/2010/10/28/high-school-teacher-does-not-have-first-amendment-right-to-make-in-class-curricular-decisions-regarding-selection-of-books-and-methods-of-instruction/
See also this case that illustrates how the lines can be drawn on teacher protests so the result is positive. Also this website is a great place to visit for many other reasons (and First Amendment cases) via a key-word search.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/n-y-teacher-had-first-amendment-right-to-protest-in-parked-car
In any case, be an informed protester !
And don’t be timid. The supporters of stupid policies are not timid.
what are they going to do, if MILLIONS of teachers, all around the country, organise and hold mass walk-outs, rolling strikes, worked to rule, refused to test, Occupied, held MASSIVE rallies down the main streets of major cities, as teachers do in so many other countries?
They CANT fire you all… they’d be so tied up in dealing with it that ed reform would come to a stop for a while, maybe long enough for it to be derailed altogether….
AND what would they do when parents join teachers in this? I’m a parent, doing all I can to help push back against ed reform… AND… I cant do the work for you, teachers…. the minute you take action, I’m there in full and unconditional support….
Everyone has told me that they can’t fire us all, but fire a few teachers here and there and it scares the rest to death. And there are enough teachers that have “drunk the kool-aid” and really think that this testing tells them something about students. We will get a lot of resistance from the teaching corps itself, let alone the media, parents and policy makers.
I keep being told that as teachers we have to take the lead, but what a lot of parents don’t realize is that no one listens to us. As teachers, we have been vilified as the bad guys for so long that no one trusts us anymore. Parents would have a much better chance of getting people to listen to what’s happening, but as teachers, we can’t tell the parents what’s happening because we would lose our jobs and even our teaching licenses. That’s what’s being threatened to me because I began telling parents about how to opt out and it’s gotten back to my administrators.
you’re all going to lose your jobs anyway, one way or the other…. you’ll be replaced by #TeachForAwhilers or you’ll be relegated to being classrooms monitors and tech support while your former students sit in front of computers all day long, getting their personalised, ‘adaptive-learning’ educations!
This is the response I received from Senator Schumer regarding my petition to STOP COMMON CORE TESTING. After completing a very close read, I have decided to never vote foe a Republican or Democrat, ever again.
Dear NY Teacher
Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns with the Common Core State Standards Initiative and federal funding. I agree that federal funding plays a vital role in public education in our country, and I will continue to fight to keep these investments for New York and our country.
As you know, in the global ideas economy, we must maintain our knowledge advantage if we are to maintain our place in the world. In addition, without top-notch schools we won’t be able to afford any of the other things that are also critical and we so badly need—a strong defense, better health care, a fair Social Security system. So we need our public education to be the best it can be. Along with our schools, teachers, families, and students, the Department of Education is an integral partner in this effort.
In addition, I am also working with my colleagues on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). As you know, the last reauthorization of ESEA, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), became law in 2001. While the goals of NCLB are admirable, I believe that the law does not provide states, school districts, and educators with the flexibility and support they need to accomplish them. The education of our children cannot wait any longer, and I am pushing for the Senate to continue careful consideration of ESEA as soon as possible. I will continue to work closely with my colleagues to make sure that New York schools, teachers, and students get the resources they need to support a high-quality, well-rounded education.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that established a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics that states voluntarily adopt. The standards are designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared for entry courses in two or four year college programs or enter the workforce. The standards are clear and concise to ensure that parents, teachers, and students have a clear understanding of the expectations in reading, writing, speaking and listening, language and mathematics in school.
The nation’s governors and education commissioners, through their representative organizations the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) led the development of the Common Core State Standards and continue to lead the initiative. Teachers, parents, school administrators and experts from across the country together with state leaders provided input into the development of the standards. Each state independently made the decision to adopt the Common Core State Standards, beginning in 2010. To date, there are 45 states along with our territories and the District of Columbia that have voluntarily adopted to use these standards. Local teachers, principals, and superintendents lead the implementation of the Common Core. The federal government had no role in the development of the Common Core State Standards and will not have a role in their implementation. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort that is not part of No Child Left Behind and adoption of the standards is in no way mandatory.
Again, thank you for contacting me regarding this important issue. Please feel free to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance on this or any other matter.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator
Please do not respond to this email. To send another message please visit my website at https://www.schumer.senate.gov/Contact/contact_chuck.cfm . Thank you.
There was no need to read that closely. A quick skim was enough to tell me the guy had had to be missing a few braincells to send you that carefully crafted response. 😉
Bill Gates tentacles are everywhere
@ NY Teacher
Chuck Schumer’s response, and the fact that he raises the global competitiveness canard, shows just what a tool he is.
Sure, just let Chuck know if you have any other concerns and if he “can be of further assistance,” and he’ll blow you off again with more tripe.
I emailed him back saying that he has not only lost my vote, he has lost my respect, and furthermore I am canceling my registration as a democrat. Frankly, until this neo-liberal plutocracy disappears, I’m done voting altogether..
Vote for ANY other party as I did (Green party). I know at this time it is a lost vote but refusing to vote further strengthens those in power already.
Lost causes deserve lost votes. Hoe can I be sure that Green party candidates aren’t in bed with the others? My cynicism meter is pegged.
So who will sign this White House petition to get rid of the standardised testing plague infecting public ed?
The petition was started by two respected public ed advocates – Victoria Young and Susan Ohanion…
It’s been live for a month, several of us have been pushing it hard on all social media and into various groups and we are nowhere near the 100K signatures needed, by April 16th….
Look at it – a month it’s been circulating and we haven’t even hit 5,000 signatures…. Such a simple thing to do…. and we can’t even make this happen…. we are our own worst enemies… I’m ashamed of us all…. Our kids don’t deserve this…. we are failing them….
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/direct-department-education-congress-remove-annual-standardized-testing-mandates-nclb-and-rttt/1lSSvnYK
Signed!
thank you Michael!
Hi Diane,
I hope you are doing well and your knee is better…
As you know, I fled the madness last October to come to Dubai and work as the SEN Coordinator…although I am blogging as much as I can from afar.
I hope more teachers join together and fight this insanity – I recently posted a letter to my Massachusetts colleagues urging them to give parents the knowledge they need to opt out and stand against this corporate reform machine.
I’ve received quite a bit of flack for doing so, which saddens and disturbs me about teachers in the Commonwealth…anyway, here is a link to the letter:
I can only hope one person took note. I wish there was more I could do!
Take Good Care!
as “A” SEN Coordinator…not “the” SEN coordinator 🙂
It really is time to hold everyone complicit in this education debacle to the fire. That means bold action to replace the leaders of both unions. It also means backing opposition candidates to Andrew Cuomo, to Rahm Emanuel, to Jeb Bush. Obama can’t run again, but the 2016 presidential race must reflect a profound change in which candidates are supported and what teachers will get from that support.
The time for nice is long past.
“Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.” Julius Caesar, 3,1
agreed….
I”ve been trying to find the right place to share what I’ve written about the ridiculous evaluation process that occurs in Palm Beach County, FL. Friends who have read it asked that I share it with you, Diane.
My teacher evaluation rant
I’m about to write out the long, stupidly involved story of the truth behind teacher evaluations, specifically at my school, but likely not too different than everywhere.
Five (or more) times in the school year my principal does classroom observations. There are three different kinds: 1 formal, forty minute lesson observation; 2 5-15 minute informal; 2 30 second-2 minute walkthroughs. She evaluates me using the Robert Marzano Menu of Design Questions There are about 60 specific behaviors within 4 different domains, each with 3-7 components, that she is looking for during those observations.
Each of the 60 behaviors is then graded on a scale of: not using, beginning, developing, applying, and innovating. The evaluator, after marking off the components then decides how to grade the behavior. Comments, if appropriate are also added (as in: All of the students were actively engaged in the lesson) At the end of each observation I get an email directing me to approve the observation.
At the end of the year, the grades for each behavior are calculated to determine if the teacher is: Highly Effective (3.2 – 4.0), Effective (2.1 – 3.1), Developing (1.2 – 2.0) or Unsatisfactory (1.0 – 1.1). Last year I was deemed Highly Effective based on my observations. I didn’t really look at the details because I was overly pleased with the results.
I should note that for my first two years teaching this was a new evaluation system. Our district decided that during the learning curve process ALL teachers would be given the same grade/evaluation level of Effective, so the observations were a tool for us to begin to look at where we could stand to improve and what we were already doing well. The fact that I was evaluated as Highly Effective had no bearing on anything, since ALL teachers were graded as Effective. Also, last year only 2 of the 4 domains were observed. This year only 3 were observed.
The added domain is for our own personal professional development. I mention this because we were instructed at the beginning of the year that ALL teachers had to have the same personal professional development goal: to improve student success through implementation of the Marzano Techniques of Teaching (see a trend?). I didn’t want this to be my goal, but I didn’t have a choice (don’t get me started). (Last year my personal goal was to improve my ELL students’ oral language assessments by 50% – I reached that goal and then some).
This year’s evaluation has come back and I am now graded as Effective with an overall score of 3.0. I was wondering how I dropped from Highly Effective to Effective, so I started looking more closely at the numbers. Here is what I saw:
I was marked as Innovating (4.0) for 12/31 behaviors
I was marked as Applying (3.0)for 19/31 behaviors.
I had no lower marks than that.
Now in my world of calculating scores, I would multiply 4 x 12 = 48 and 3 x19=57, then add them together 48 + 57 = 105, then divide by 31 which equals 3.39. 3.39 is Highly Effective, but I was graded as 3.0 – Effective. Hmm. I called my union rep and she was not sure how that could be. She also, for what it’s worth, had a similar score drop. She remembered that there was some ridiculous way to calculate the previous two years, and thought maybe they are doing the same thing this year. Regardless, neither of us knew how our scores were calculated, so we knew we would have to ask higher ups.
I asked my principal. She wasn’t sure how it is done, either. She suggested that we both call/email the woman at the district who is in charge. So I did. This is what I learned: If 50% or more of your marks are Highly Effective, then you are Highly Effective; if 50% or more are effective than you are effective, and so on.
Then I began to wonder, as has my union rep, how is it that I was more effective last year than I am this year? What am I NOT doing now that I did then? It turns out that I am, in fact doing the same things. I was marked as doing the same exact components of behaviors this year as I was for last year. The difference is, last year I was rated as innovating more times. So, for example let’s say Behavior A has 6 components. Last year when I was checked off as meeting all 6 I was deemed innovating. This year those 6 components checked off are only earning me applying. WHY? HOW? Fortunately, I am friends with a number of people who have some real answers.
The answer isn’t pretty, but it’s been corroborated by more than one source. Here we go…
The principals and assistant principals were told that they were *giving out too many innovatings and that they needed to mark innovating less often*. In other words, the evaluation that is supposed to determine our level of teaching, which in turn determines our merit pay (no, we don’t really get merit pay. we’re supposed to, but that’s a whole different – let’s lie to the people of Florida – nightmare) is being manipulated by the powers that be in an effort to…I don’t know…make it seem like teachers aren’t as good as we are. So they can pay us less and blame us more. The powers that be are doing to the teachers what the high stakes testers are doing to our students: creating a system that is skewed to failure (or mediocrity).
I am outraged. Mostly I am outraged that Principals and ASsistant principals, who know this is wrong and are being asked to downgrade their own teachers, are going along with it and not fighting back. The people who told me are in those leadership positions. They know it’s wrong. But they pooh-pooh saying things like, “Everyone knows those evaluations aren’t right, so what does it matter? *I* know who’s great and doing a great job, so the evaluation doesn’t really matter between you and me and the kids. ”
And I almost buy it. Except for this: my evaluation is public recod. Any parent can go to the district and access my evaluation score. Most parents won’t, it is true. Only parents who have a beef with a teacher would do that, as it so happens. But that’s when the difference between effective and highly effective DOES matter. I AM highly effective. I know it. My administrators know it. My students know it. But when a parent who is already certain I am picking on his/her kid or that I don’t know how to teach his/her kid goes to access my records, they see I am Effective, not Highly Effective. It’s fuel for their fodder, which I do not like.
And if I go to work in another district, all the hiring people will see is Effective. I don’t like it. NOt one little bit.