Paul Bruno, a science teacher in California, assembled a few charts to show that there is no “crisis” in American education.
What we have today was aptly named “a manufactured crisis” by David Berliner and Bruce Biddle, in their book “The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools” in the mid-1990s.
Last year, my book “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools” showed how the phony “crisis” rhetoric is cynically used to undermine public support for public schools and advance privatization through charters, vouchers, and virtual charters.
Chris Lubienski and Sarah Lubienski published “The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools.”
David Berliner and Gene Glass recently published “50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education.”
John Kuhn published “Fear and Learning in America: Bad Data, Good Teachers, and the Attack on Public Education.”
Mercedes Schneider published “A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education.”
So, if you want evidence that the “crisis” in American education is a cynical fiction, that it is used to divert attention from the true social and economic crises of inequality, poverty, and segregation, you have quite a selection of books to read. Arm yourself. Read them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In 1997 John Snobelen,then Minister of Education for the Province of Ontario, declared that he had to manufacture a crisis in education in order to change it. He did .For the last 17 years we have been paying the price for it.
I’m reading “Education and the Crisis of Public Values–Challenging the Assault on Teachers, Students, & Public Education” by Henry A. Giroux.
sounds like a good read; thank you for naming it.
From the Paul Bruno blog: “But next time you hear someone claim – or are yourself tempted to claim – that American education is in a state of “crisis” or is being “destroyed” by education reform, remember these charts.” Wait a sec, American public education is being destroyed by education deform, or I should say that if education reform continues unabated it will have destroyed our public schools. I agree that the crisis is manufactured much as the supposed crisis in Social security is manufactured, too. In the case of New Orleans, the hurricane Katrina created a crisis, a shock, an opportunity to fire all the teachers and to replace the real public schools with privately run charter schools. Poverty, crime and violence in cities like Newark and Camden are used as an excuse to close public schools, fire teachers and replace them with charter schools. There is a crisis, it’s the crisis created by the billionaire boys club.
I’m working my way through A Chronicle of Echoes which I have mistakenly called A Chronicle of Errors. The thing is, deformers do not want to listen or debate their points. They use their media and political connections to perpetuate the myths that education is failing. Their endgame is always the same – profit.
The book that unifies – and explains – them all is Naomi Klein’s THE SHOCK DOCTRINE.
Agree!
Education “reform” is just one of many “shocks”.
Read Klein’s book.
Connect all the dots.
“The only way to resist shock is to know what is happening and why!”
YEP!
Chile here we come!!
Add to the notion of the manufactured “crisis” the even more odious meme: “Our educational system is broken.” It has become standard practice to append the adjective “broken” to large, abstract institutions, which then seems to sanction any radical total overhaul scheme. Interestingly, we would never think to tell our auto mechanic “My car is broken.” He would insist on a more specific set of symptoms before even beginning to work on it.
Mr. Bruno provides important data, as do your and the other books mentioned in your post. The problem is the same one the schools faced over a century ago as you described so well in Left Back, when the progressives and original Robber Barons decided to take over public education. Then as now, the rich can afford to buy unrelenting press coverage, PR campaigns, politicians, and academics to spew intellectual sewage unceassingly. Getting the facts out is very tought.
I’ve begun to notice lately in my work with No Common Core Maine, that many papers here in Maine just ignore CCSS and refuse to print detailed rebuttals of the errors and outright lies that are published in the Op-Eds and editorials. We have been holding public forums to reach out to the public, but this is a tough row to hoe indeed.
Those with money and power–and want more of both–calculate that they can cash in by promoting the crisis narrative.
I’m not ever planning on leaving public education. There are not a lot of other options for educators in Iowa. Our parochial schools have much lower pay in general and not nearly as good of retirement.
My question is, what can we public school teachers do to resist the tide of what many here call “education deform”?
My first post by the way…be kind.
Well, there’s the obvious things like calling/writing to elected officials and/or writing letters to the editor, but that probably won’t get you far. Talk to your fellow teachers and community members and try to get them to understand what’s going on. Read any and all of the above books to hone your argument. Join online groups. Speak up at school board and other community meetings. Look and support for local candidates who support public education.
In the end I fear it’s going to take massive nationwide protests and it’s going to get ugly. But in the meantime do whatever you can along the way.
Scary thing is, I fear for my job if I speak out. This year we started a new professional development model called TAP. Not wanting to rock the boat, I toed the party line and actually showed a bit of support for it, and it earned me some accolades among the higher ups. But here’s the kicker: I took from it what I knew would make me a better teacher and ignored much of the rest. I can play the game, and still give my students a quality education.
Shawn, you are playing it just right if you plan to be in it for the long haul. Learn as much as you can and pose your concerns as disingenuous questions. “Do you have some suggestions on how I can encourage critical thinking in this direct instruction procedure?” You can encourage others to think for themselves by posing provocative questions. Get people thinking without being seen as disruptive. Taking what you can use and ditching the rest is a good time honored strategy. Just don’t announce that you are doing it. It used to be expected that we would adapt strategies to fit our own practice. Now, you had better follow the script when under scrutiny. Good luck.
Hi Shawn.
Welcome!
Read to be sure you have the facts, and counter points.
Then speak up!
Write letters to the editor and post comments on online articles ( the media does need to hear from us. Constantly. ) the lies and distortions cannot go unanswered.
Join the network for public education. Lots of great info, links, articles.
Talk to friends, family, neighbors. Help them ” get it”. Remember we are trying to counter over 30 years of the ” our failing schools “myth and fake crisis. Many folks who would be our allies are clueless.
Focus on local elections, school board, state house, county officials, etc. write to candidates, be very informed about where they stand on Ed policy.
Participate here.
Welcome again and good luck!
Shawn,
you remind me of me two years ago.
Here’s my advice: read a lot about what is going on. Decide for yourself if your personal cause is an education cause or a labor movement cause. My state is a right to work state, so for me I look at everything in terms of the children because that is all we can do in a right to work state. You will get slammed on this blog for “playing the game” (don’t be surprised if someone calls you a GAGAer, which means “going along to get along,”) and still giving your students a quality education, but I do agree that what is going on in public education is more like a disease than a peer pressure thing. And you can’t cure the disease all by yourself and students are still going to show up for school even if a state has been infected with the disease. So you are right. . .keep doing right by the children, tolerate what you can, shield them from what you can AND talk to people in your state. Find others who feel the same way you do. Stay informed. Stay strong. Ask questions.
and I concur with Ang about the Network for Public Education. I proudly support them, even on a school teacher budget.
“Decide for yourself if your personal cause is an education cause or a labor movement cause. ”
Or notice how the two are connected?
Just a thought.
Ang, yes. . .but, again, in a right to work state we have to stay focused on what we can do, not what we can’t.
Joanna and Ang – Thanks for the advice! I will keep on keeping on. I am stretching the knowledge of my students every day. I am adding my school’s first AP Calculus class in 2015. I have rewritten the math curriculum at my school and have earned a measure of respect from my colleagues. I only hope I can find that line that I can step up to and speak out without crossing it and earn the ire of our very young principal (I have 11 years of experience on him). I will look up the Network for Public Education and the books listed above. There are no excuses now; the knowledge is there and I know where to find it.
“. . . if someone calls you a GAGAer. . . ”
If I may correct your statement-ha ha! “if SWACKER calls you a GAGAer. . . “
Shawn,
Tis a fine line between being a GAGAer and not. I can tell you that not being a GAGAer will get you into plenty of trouble, having been in it myself and having been chased out of a district for questioning what we were doing in many areas.
“I am adding my school’s first AP Calculus class in 2015”
AP is part of the GAGA syndrome. You are being sucked in. It’s another part of the standardized testing regime which harms the teaching and learning process. To understand why AP is so harmful (even though AP is never mentioned in the dissertation) read and understand Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
A brief review of “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional 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 the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
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 attempts to measure “’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.
The purpose of adding a calculus course is to increase rigor for students and give those who are college bound in STEM careers a bit of a head start. AP is just one way to offer this material. You act like all tests are evil. I understand the purpose of testing, trust me.
I’ve been a boat-rocker in the past and all that has gotten me is poor reviews and constant administrative scrutiny. THe only reason I haven’t been fired is that when they come in my classroom to do an actual observation they realize I am a damn good teacher. I do what I can to argue against methods I find pointless or irrelevant to what I am teaching, but I am not going to jeopardize my career. If that makes me a GAGA’er, I don’t care. What I will do is continue to give the students who pass through my door a quality education.
“What I will do is continue to give the students who pass through my door a quality education.”
And that right there is the most important thing!!!
What is clear to me is that powers-that-be in both government and private sectors are deliberately manufacturing consent that American education is in crisis, especially when the nation faces downtime to single-out public schools and teachers for economic slump. It’s typical cultural blind spots that deflect the attention away from the fact that these phony crisis manufacturers can make as much profit as they can regardless of national economy.
There is not now nor has there been a “crisis” in public education.
We’ve known that for a long time.
The Sandia Report (Journal of Educational Research, May/June, 1993), published in the wake of A Nation at Risk, concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
* “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
Many critics of public education cite PISA scores to buttress claims of a “crisis.” The late Gerald Bracey, however, wrote this about PISA testing:
“Even if the tests were valuable sources of information, there would be the fact that among 21 developed nations, the U.S. had the highest poverty rate. If we’re number one in poverty, is it reasonable to expect that we would be number one in test scores? But, really, the tests aren’t informative. In fact, if you analyze the test scores by the poverty levels of schools, the top 30 percent of American kids score higher than the highest country in reading. And another 28 percent score high enough that if they constituted a nation, they’d rank fourth in the world (out of 35).”
Clearly, poverty has something to do with academic performance. That’s true for regular state tests, and it’s true for the ACT and the SAT. It also appears to be true at the charter middle school where Paul Bruno teaches.
There is no public education “crisis” in the U.S. But there is widespread poverty, and child poverty.
And it does impact student learning.
I’m not sure what year’s version of PISA Bracey was referring to, or whether he was properly disaggregating the scores–comparing our wealthiest students not to entire nations, but to other nation’s wealthiest students. Viewing the 2012 PISA scores under that lens reveals a more complicated story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/global-education-crisis_n_4557171.html
There are many segregated neighborhoods where there truly is an education crisis. Education didn’t create this situation in and of itself, but because of how we fund and allow access to our schools, it has perpetuated it.
There were significant caveats to the era when income inequality was low, marginal tax rates were high, and untold millions of good, decades-long careers were available to those without a college or even a high school diploma. Women and (especially) minorities were largely shut out of the job market, and the US was in a much different position in terms of geopolitics.
I don’t doubt that there are some who are looking to break unions or to profit off the $600 billion public K-12 “market” (sarcastic quotation marks added because the vast majority of that money goes to pay teacher, administrator, and district employee salaries and benefits). But it’s clear to me that there is considerable room for improvement across the entire socioeconomic spectrum of public schools.
“But it’s clear to me that there is considerable room for improvement across the entire socioeconomic spectrum of public schools.”
Room for improvement does NOT equal an entire system in crisis. Nor does the fact that no system is perfect, including the public schools, support across the board “fixes” the “reformers” have thrust upon all.
Regarding segregated neighborhoods where education is, in your opinion, in crisis…In my experience actually working in such a community…the effects of racism, income inequity, lack of jobs, lack of services, lack of access to health care, well I could go on and on…these are the crisis.
The school may be the one thing that is not in crisis in their lives.
Perfect? No. But not “ourfailingschool”.
Every public school teachers should UNITE and protest across the nation to overthrow Corporate take over of our schools. We should pick a date and time to gather all our public school teachers and REBEL! Enough of the damn LIES! Our schools are “FAILING” because the Big Boys are greedy and hungry for more $.
Teachers make such great scapegoats. When there aren’t enough decent jobs, the oligarchs can turn around and say it’s our fault because we didn’t educate children well enough. We need to create a society where meaningful work is valued, not just maximum profits for people who don’t do the work (aka investors).
For us who are older: When a “Nation at Risk” came out decades ago with all its innuendo and scathing attack on public schools, a psychologist, Gerald Bracey, said something to the effect that that does not sound right, did his own research and wrote the book “The Truth about American Education”. He pointed out that the U. S. was doing quite well thank you but it was hardly noticed. The media continued panning our public schools.
It has only become worse. Money supplants people in importance. WE, the people who indulge in these blogs know that but the general public is overwhelmed with corporate propaganda – on MANY fronts.
Eternal vigilance, the price of liberty.
Our country stands on a crossroads – of our own making – in so very many ways, education being one of them. Do we let propaganda usurp truth? I would point out, look at the pix of “Germany after WWII and see what happens to a country as “well educated” as Germany, the land of Beethoven, Goethe et al who proclaimed liberty who followed the propaganda of Goebels and what happened.
How do we fight? Each of us in our own way probably but it is important to unite and fight intelligently as well as furiously. “Preaching to the choir” such as we do here will probably not get the job done, as important as this is. We ALL need the info posted herein but I believe that to be victorious just maybe we must find other ways too. Dr. Ravitch has done more than her part in writing her books and posting these blogs. Perhaps we can find some other ways to educate the general public on what is going on, the price that will be paid if we continue down this dead end road where “truth” falls victim to propaganda.
So – what do you think?
I would add that the other “forum” for educating the public, as well as parents, is your local school board meetings.
We preach to others, use parent teacher conferences to show parents how testing is misguiding their child’s education and depriving them of enriching experiences the parents remember having. Remind them why arts, music, and drama are minimalized and test prep is pushed. We can also show them sample tests to point out the unrealistic and inappropriate testing regime. Parents are the intangible that can upset the testing apple cart. They may even eventually become our allies with regard to due process, they want their kids to have a stable learning environment. We must also advocate for parents working rights, we and they must become allies to improve our society, we must reach beyond education or we will be lost. Yes, we preach to the choir here, but it serves to keep us in tune as we try to give smaller concerts in our communities. No matter what we can not give up.
We, educators have to make this our fight. Our two national teacher unions are complicit in creating it and the media is not questioning anything. The public has a right to know the effects of the CCSS testing “culture” is having on the classroom and the only people who can do that is those of us on the front lines.
Ways to do this are as previously mentioned, in conferences with parents, and in talking to every friend, neighbor and relative you can. Another way, for those who are bold enough, is to attend your local school board meetings. The public has no clue about what is going on because it isn’t being reported. Therefore, we, educators must educate the public.
Stick to the facts, they speak for themselves. By that I mean share your own evidence: classroom time lost due to testing, # of weeks in the school year lost to the tests themselves, time in classroom lost in preparation for the tests. Time devoted during professional development to testing, and test prep. Any evidence you can share about how the curriculum has changed in response to testing, and how your students responded to these changes.
Some great questions to bring up at a local school board meeting: how much is it costing your local school district to purchase and administer all of these tests? How much is it costing the district to purchase materials to help teachers, help students in preparing for these tests? How much instructional time is being lost to testing? (testing & test prep) How has the classroom environment changed in response to these tests? How have your students responded to those changes? Ask what accommodations are made for students with special needs, or ESL students? Asking these types of questions at a school board meeting is a way of unlocking the gates for administrators and teachers and providing them a forum to share this information with the public.
Also ask: what is the school district doing with the information the tests provide? This gives administration an opportunity to inform the public that; 1) they do not receive the information in time for it to inform their instruction, AND 2) that they are only provided with a students’ score…no opportunity to analyze student results to determine: areas of weakness or strength so as to adjust classroom instruction.
The public does not know what is occurring in classrooms. Teachers and administrators have been told to keep quiet. However, informational questions such as these at a local school board meeting requires them to respond and, in effect, provides the public an opportunity to learn. I believe that those of us who are willing and able to stand up at school board meetings to ask these questions and demand answers, will start nothing short of a revolution.
As soon as I receive my forward and a couple more edits, my new book, Brainstorming >common Core will be out. Suport it as it details not only what is wrong but how to fix it. Something that few are doing.
Don’t sit on your hands, support the solution
Thx
Cap
“Yes, we preach to the choir here, but it serves to keep us in tune as we try to give smaller concerts in our communities.”
Nice turn of a phrase, Old Teacher! TAGO!
Although much of the crises is manufactured, to say that there isn’t a crises with 50% students dropping out in urban schools is blatantly false. The crises, however, has nothing to do with what the reformers are doing. In fact, they are making the crises much worse.
By following the slavery based education system of the 18th century, we are still “raking a few geniuses from the rubbish and throwing what some call rubbish into the streets. NO CHILD IS RUBBISH! It would take a whole book to detail specifics about the fiasco we call education. wait a minute, I wrote that whole book and it will be out soon. Brainstorming Common Core details whats wrong and how to fix it. And it ain’t pretty.
fasten your seatbelts bc you’re in for a bumpy ride as soon as it is released. Keep tabs on progress at http://www.wholechildreform.com
Cap, the dropout rate is high where there are poverty and segregation. The national dropout rates for black and Hispanic students is at its lowest point in history. See my “Reign of Error”
The saddest this that has resulted from the infusion of this false crisis is that it has resulted in broken lives, stressed out children, families, and teachers, as well as a presenting a false narrative that justifies the anti-tax, anti-government attitudes of people who simply think of teachers as babysitters unworthy of a decent salary.
There wasn’t a crisis in education before, but there certainly is NOW, thanks to the deformers. The “cure” is worse than the “disease.”
Be sure to look at the charts from that show no crisis
http://www.paul-bruno.com/2014/06/there-is-probably-no-crisis-in-american-education/
Except for the achievement gap. I believe that most of that is due to poverty. The Atlantic’s recent essay on reparations provides more evidence that most of the achievement gap is due to income. Whites with higher incomes tend to live amongst others with similar incomes. African-Americans with higher incomes tend to live amongst others with lower incomes. Achievement correlates not only with your parents income but also with the income of the people you live and associate with.
The quote from the Atlantic essay is: “Sharkey’s research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. “Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods,” Sharkey writes, “that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children.”
Please see the work of Chris Tenkien. His videos and book are brilliant.
I humbly submit, if you don’t know Dr. Christopher Tenkien’s work, your understanding of school reform and standardization CANNOT be considered complete.
Brilliant! Google Chris Tenkien and get ready to learn!
Please give us links!
My district lost one its best teachers this year. Our art teacher of 34 years, who is National Board Certified and has her Masters Degree, and whose students consistently brought home best in show and 1st place ribbons in the conference art shows, retired in May. Why? Because she was bullied by a couple of administrators because she would not change her teaching style to match our new professional development model. As I tried to say when this model was proposed, we are trying to treat every problem like it is a nail and this model is a hammer. Unfortunately, the art teacher was a monkey wrench…
It is interesting to read what you wrote. You are completely self-conflicted. How can you view your best art Teacher as a monkey wrench? Why should you change or adapt your teaching style from the “best creativity”, the “National Board Certified” and the “credential 1st place ribbon” to “unproven” and new “development” model?
According to the famous author Maya Angelou’s quote: “Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it”, your district does not deserve to have the great art teacher.
Sheepish followers do not deserve to have a lion leader, but rather to be eaten by hyenas. Please watch out for your long term career because you cannot survive by following, adapting and pleasing any bad policy. You will not be the first or the last good educator who is axed by bad policy because not having a strong stand or conviction.
Back2basic
I shouldn’t perhaps have used monkey wrench, although the administration saw her that way, as one who would not change her ways (because she didn’t NEED to). We also became a 1:1 district recently and I made the comment in one meeting “Take Mrs. Art Teacher, for instance. She is national board certified, tried and true art teacher, whose students consistently bring home 1st place and Best in Show from our regional art fair. How is technology supposed to improve that?” My main point of the post is that the district seemed to be treating their professional development model (and technology) as hammers and all problems as if they were nails and we all know all students are not nails.
Do not call me a sheep. I do not willingly follow what is meaningless or worthless to me. I do question new professional development and it has gotten me in trouble over the years. I am too experienced now to get a job at most places as area schools tend to hire a new teacher if they can in order to save money. Another sad truth about our educational system. I am sure our admin were very happy to get rid of our 34 year art teacher and likely replace her with a shiny new teacher for about half the cost.
Our district has had a lot of retirements in the last 4 years. 15+12+10+8 out of a group of less than 230 teachers in 4 buildings. They have saved a lot of money but haven’t reduced class sizes.
I saw on a post that someone was blaming people for not standing up to their unions if the union is not objecting to the edudeform movement. In ourcdistruct, the administration FORBIDS talking negatively to the community or to parents at conferences. My way of dealing with it was to say, “I am forbidden to talk about this, but I d hear you.”. Ridiculous.
“. . . Unfortunately, the art teacher was a monkey wrench…”
As all good teachers tend to be.
“Funny” how we can be expected to produce analytical, critical thinkers when teachers aren’t allowed to BE analytical, critical thinkers themselves.
I see a problem here.
We should find solution while we exchange our ideas. I see that all teachers with 20+ years teaching experiences should recruit all teachers with 10+ years teaching experiences together to form a new affordable public school work force. Particularly, local educational entrepreneurship will definitely win the heart and mind of students and parents. This will be a win-win situation to destroy Charter School effortlessly.
We just legally, but consciously educate the younger generation (parents and students) to appreciate the true democracy in the original American Education through all historical wars in the world. Back2basic