Brian Ford, teacher and author, wrote this letter to the editor of TIME magazine, in response to the demeaning cover about teachers as “Rotten Apples” who cannot be fired. The cover said that “tech millionaires” had figured out how to deal with those teachers.
Ford writes:
To the Editors of Time Magazine:
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” – Malcolm X
I hope Malcolm X was wrong about media controlling ‘the minds of the masses,’ but the Time cover on teacher tenure with the phrase ‘Rotten Apples’ emblazoned across it shows that his other points were spot on. Irresponsible media can accuse with impunity, they can treat as hereos tech millionaires who lambast teachers by not only encouraging the use of, but use the courts to compel the use of techniques such as ‘Value-added measurement.’
Having written extensively on VAMs, I am aware of what a troubled and inaccurate method it is. I am not going to enter into all the reasons –I have a book about that–, but the “flood of new academic research on teacher quality” is dubious at best, deliberately misleading at times, often relying on a single study of a single school in a single year and then generalizing that to all schools everywhere in all years. Furthermore, this research is often miscategorized and misrepresented by advocates for a quick fix. But there is no quick fix – the problems of our schools are rooted in social pathologies, not teacher quality.
It is concentrated poverty, not teacher quality that plagues our system – or, more accurately, those parts of the system which serve the poorest quarter of our population. Even Eric Hanushek of Stanford, who is known for saying we need to “replace the bottom five to eight percent of our teachers in terms of effectiveness,” stresses that “an average teacher is quite good in our schools” and would rate well against teachers anywhere in the world. And almost no one suggests what seems obvious – that tenure draws people into the teaching pool who might go elsewhere, thus very likely making the average teacher significantly better.
On the other side, the so-called fixes would make things worse, much worse. What none of the advocates admit is this: it narrows the curriculum. The ‘value’ measured is not that that of character or creativity, but is based on standardized tests and how students perform on them. It has nothing to do with their dreams or aspirations, on their unique gifts or their personal histories and, as one might expect, since the advent of high stakes tests in the early 1990s, young people have had documented declines in creativity. Administrators and teachers are pressured to teach students to do well on the short list of skills the tests measure, not on how to have a meaningful life.
Those tests are themselves narrow in many ways, but in one way they are not: they are sweeping in their ability to make money. Pearson education has a nearly half a billion dollar contract to provide testing services in Texas. As for venture capitalists, the money has gone up 30-fold, from $13 million in 2005 to $389 million in 2011. As former Massachusetts Governor William Weld said some years ago, the “fundamentals are all aligned for a great number of people to make a whole lot of money in this sector.”
Weld finished his statement, “and do well by doing good.” That is always the claim. Dismantle the public system to serve the students. This is done in the strangest way — teacher autonomy declines and long term professionals are pushed out not because they are ‘bad,’ but because they have higher salaries. The problem is that far too many advocates of this position are trying to make room in the budget for their own payments; ranging from Rupert Murdoch to purveyors of virtual education to TFA to Pearson to the Gates-funded, Michelle Rhee-founded organizations the New Teacher Project, have an interest, financial and professional, in labeling the system as failing.
Add to this those with political interests to do the same, from the Bushes to Chris Christie to Scott Walker to Kevin Johnson, and you have a potent force able to craft messages that are in their own interests, but not those of a democratic nation the most important foundation of which is its public education system.
Sincerely,
Brian Ford
brianford58@yahoo.com
646 713 8285
Sources:
First, my own book, Brian Ford, Respect For Teachers or The Rhetoric Gap and How Research on Schools is Laying the Ground for New Business Models in Education, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475802078
Eric Hanushek speaking, “Class Size and Student Achievement,” Diane Rehm Show, 8 March 2011; accessed June 2011 at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-08/class-size-and-student-achievement.
Luke Quinton & Kate Mcgee, “What’s in Texas’ $500 Million Testing Contract with Pearson?” KUT.ORG News, Austin, Texas, July 16, 2013; accessed October 2014 at http://kut.org/post/what-s-texas-500-million-testing-contract-pearson.
Stephanie Simon,”Private firms eyeing profits from U.S. public schools,” Reuters, New York, 2 August 2012; accessed October 2014 at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/usa-education-investment-idUSL2E8J15FR20120802
Kyung Hee Kim, “The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance
Tests of Creative Thinking,” Creativity Research Journal, 2011, Vol. 23:4, pp. 285-295.
Weld quote was from Walsh, Ed Week, 19 Jan 2000, p. 13
All letters sent to TIME should also be sent to any and all advertisers in that issue with at least the implication, if not the explicit promise, that you won’t be buying their products in the future.
A super researched, cogently written, GREAT post that touches on all critical points. It will make all educators feel better. The letter will never see the light of day. Time will immediately throw the letter into the circular file. A damned shame. A pox on Time. But, there you have it. Repressive tolerance 101.
Well written and to the point. There have been several well written responses to the TIME article that points to the fact there are many knowledgeable people out there that could do a lot towards fixing the problems of education. Until educators that know the reality of what is going are part of solution process it will never change.
http://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/education-a-three-legged-stool/
Not a single rotten apple in the Tech industry. Nope, just perfect benevolent humans…Or should I say Deities? They ALL have the best of intentions and want to improve education first and foremost.
Yes. Or the media industry.
Thanks to Brian for shining the broad light of thorough and experienced analysis upon this topic, not the narrow beam of biased journalism, supported by (and supporting) private market interests of those who are not pedagogues, but view students are a number by which to make a profit upon (“welcome my son, to the machine” P Floyd).
I wish there was a VAM for every person in every corporation, especially the CEO, so that they could not be hypocrites and experience what it is like to be judged by factors outside of one’s control or responsibility.
Imagine a CEO of an air-conditioning company being told they are a bad administrator, a failing person, who needs to be replaced, because less units were sold last quarter because less demand, because of climate change. The CEO would complain they are doing their best, the VAM is flawed, and factors beyond their control are to blame. Firing them would not change anything or improve outcomes. So???
Yet, the same flawed model is applied to education, as if each student was a neutral “widget”, whose empty mind is merely and simply to be filled up with facts that are
“validated meaningful” because they are on a test. If that mind was not filled up sufficiently then apparently it was the teacher’s fault, with no blame going to the student?
Students are not “neutral empty voids” whose minds can just be filled up by learning facts being dispensed by a teacher. They are active learners, who for reasons outside the classroom (ex. poverty, family issues, emotional baggage, internal struggles, etc.) can either readily receive instruction, or resist it to varying degrees.
One thing is for sure: offering curriculum with new “high-tech” “cutting edge” devices (many of which I call “golden hammers” [shiny-flashy presentation devices] is not the solution. How information is presented (ex. old acetate via overhead projector, versus Powerpoints via Promethean board) does not improve learning; better content, better curriculum, better implementation does (all of which can be done with old reliable technology [the “iron hammers” which have a track record of working]).
These private interests want to make us look like failures, because they want to convince the public (who know little of pedagogy) that by making schools purchase more “golden hammers” one can improve outcomes (outcomes being defined and limited to what can be tested on a computer, via a multiple choice test).
But, the real world requires much more than what can be demonstrated on a low-cognitive level knowledge or comprehension test, where little to none creativity, analysis, synthesis and evaluation are done. I’m all for common-core, which is just a new label for what good education has always been; but how does one test on a computer such diverse and divergent skills that are used in the real world? It seems so hypocritical and paradoxical, and oxymoronic: we want higher-level thinking (ex. “rigor” and evaluation), yet we try to prove it with more computer-based testing, which cannot measure these things with software.
Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Brian-Ford-Writes-a-Letter-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch_Education_Fired_Letters-To-The-Editor-141031-100.html#comment517807
with this comment (which contains embedded links at Oped:
This Time Magazine comes out The same week that at The NY Times this weekFrank Bruni touted the book that Joel Kelin just wrote about ‘teaching.” Klein was a businessman who was made chancellor of NYC schools by Bloomberg, where he emptied the schools of the teachers we all remember, the real educators, so the schools would fail, and charter schools would become the magic elixir.
The irony of these major media stories, is so excruciating in the light of observable reality, because it is the deprivation of basic due process that is THE process which is used across the 15,880 school districts in 50 states, to end the careers of wonderful Americans…who just happen to be teachers. It is that division , plus the media’s complicity in subverting the national conversation, that makes it impossible for the average Joe, Jane, Maria, Jose, Shanequa and Leroy, to grasp the complex process that IS the way the human brain acquires skills… what we call learning!
It is so easy for “Time Mag” and “The NY Times” to bamboozle them
I keep looking for “real” news rather than twisted sensationalism in the main press, like TIMES. Sad. Wonder who funded that cover?
Since I’m confident that getting rid of teachers unions won’t improve US public education, will ed reformers be held accountable when it doesn’t?
Or is this yet another issue where they get to argue a counter-factual (public education without teachers unions) and then skate on accountability when it doesn’t produce the desired result?
The thing about getting rid of teachers unions and privatizing public schools is, we won’t be able to reverse it when they succeed. We won’t get these things back, NO MATTER if their various theories are correct or not. We could very well end up with a privatized system, teachers as at-will employees or even “independent contractors” (which is all the rage in the private sector), and WORSE results. Who will pay the price for that? None of the current crop of politicians and pundits, that’s for sure. We’ll pay for it. The public will pay for it.
Ten years from now Arne Duncan will be enjoying his retirement or a lucrative private gig in ed reform and you’ll still be living where you’re living, wondering what happened to your public schools.
This sentence from your post Chiara:
“The thing about getting rid of teachers unions and privatizing public schools is, we won’t be able to reverse it when they succeed. We won’t get these things back, NO MATTER if their various theories are correct or not.”
A statement that has been made many times around my colleagues.
I suppose the money will get these “reformers” exactly what they want: money (not necessarily education). But then what happens when they realize that kids are like any other demographic with varied skills and abilities and interests?
And the public realizes that they’ve been sold a bill of goods. Oh, well, at least they will have gotten rid of those intransigent unions with their high compensation. And they can rejoice.
We all know it really isn’t about education. Hell, even the reformers have largely stopped saying that. Many don’t even bother to pretend any more.
There was one line in the Time article which is the most cogent argument I have ever heard for tenure. When asked how to better the outcomes a “west coast superintendent told the questioner “Give me control of the workforce.” As a superintendent myself, I find that statement chilling–control? Screams autocracy–not leadership; bellows arrogance, not excellence. It creates a workforce that must bend to the will of the boss of the moment. And since superintendents seem to have a shorter shelf life than the instructional workforce, that will could change on a dime–hardly good for the students in our care.