My Review of TIME’s Cover Story on Teacher Tenure
In the past four years, TIME and Newsweek have published three cover stories that were openly hostile to teachers.
On December 8, 2008, TIME published a cover story featuring a photograph of Michelle Rhee, dressed in black and holding a broom, with the implication that she had arrived to sweep out the Augean stables of American education. (Detractors thought she looked like a witch.) The title on the cover was “How to Fix America’s Schools,” suggesting that Rhee knew how to fix the nation’s schools. The subtitle was “Michelle Rhee is the head of Washington, D.C., schools. Her battle against bad teachers has earned her admirers and enemies—and could transform public education.” The story inside was written by Amanda Ripley. We now know that Michelle Rhee did not transform the public schools of the District of Columbia, although she fired hundreds of teachers and principals.
Newsweek had a cover on March 5, 2010, saying “The Key to Saving American Education: We must fire bad teachers,” a phrase that was written again and again on the cover, as if on a chalkboard. The story began with the false claim that “Once upon a time, American students tested better than any other students in the world.” Simply untrue; when the first international assessments were administered in 1964, American seniors scored dead last of 12 nations and in the fifty years that followed, we never outscored the rest of the world. The Newsweek story celebrated the mass firing of high school teachers (without any evaluations) in Central Falls, Rhode Island, a calamitous event that was hailed by Secretary Arne Duncan as a bold stroke forward.
And now TIME has added another cover story to the litany of complaints against “bad teachers.” This one, dated November 3, 2014, has a cover that reads: “Rotten Apples: It’s Nearly Impossible to Fire a Bad Teacher: Some Tech Millionaires May Have Found a Way to Change That.” The cover shows a judge’s gavel about to smash an unblemished, shining apple. The story inside was written by Haley Sweetland Edwards. In addition, the magazine includes a column by Nancy Gibbs, Editor of the magazine, commenting on the story.
The underlying theme of all these covers and stories is that “bad teachers” have ruined and continue to ruin American education, harming children and the nation. They claim that unions and rigid tenure rules are protecting these terrible teachers. Get rid of the “bad teachers” and America’s test scores will fly to the top of the world. That seems to be the assumption behind Arne Duncan’s insistence that teachers must be evaluated to a significant degree by the test scores of their students. Those who get higher scores get extra money, while those with low scores may lose their tenure, lose their job, lose their license.
That seems just to the folks who edit Newsweek and TIME, to the tech millionaires and billionaires, but it seems very unjust to teachers, because they know that their ratings will rise or fall depending on who is in their class. Students are not randomly assigned. If teachers are teaching English-language learners or students with disabilities or even gifted students, they will see small gains; they may not see any gains, even though they are good teachers. Their ratings may fluctuate wildly from year to year. Their ratings may fluctuate because of the formula. Their ratings may fluctuate if the test is changed. To many teachers, this system is a roll of the dice that might end their career. A recent Gallup Poll showed that 89% of teachers oppose test-based evaluations of their quality. This is not because teachers object to evaluations but because they object to unfair evaluations.
The most recent TIME cover and story should be viewed in three pieces, because the pieces don’t fit together snugly.
First is the cover. Someone, my guess would be someone with more authority than the writer, approved a highly insulting cover illustration and accompanying language. Should the perfect apple (the teacher) be crushed by the judge’s gavel? Is the profession filled with “rotten apples”? Is it “nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher”? Nothing in the accompanying story demonstrates the accuracy of this allegation.
Then comes the story itself, written by Haley Sweetland Edwards. Edwards contacted me to ask me to read the story and judge for myself, rather than be swayed by the cover (the implication being that the cover is sensationalized and thus emotional and inaccurate, although she did not use those words). She sent me a pdf. file whose title, interestingly enough, was “shall we let millionaires change education.” Now, THAT would have been an interesting story, and the kernel of it is in Edwards’ article.
She writes about the battle over teacher tenure:
“The reform movement today is led not by grassroots activists or union leaders but by Silicon Valley business types and billionaires. It is fought not through ballot boxes or on the floors of hamstrung state legislatures but in closed-door meetings and at courthouses. And it will not be won incrementally, through painstaking compromise with multiple stakeholders, but through sweeping decisions—judicial and otherwise—made possible by the tactical application of vast personal fortunes.
“It is a reflection of our politics that no one elected these men to take on the knotty problem of fixing our public schools, but here they are anyway, fighting for what they firmly believe is in the public interest.”
Now, think about it. What she has written here is that a handful of extremely wealthy men work behind closed doors to usurp the democratic process. No wasting time with voting or legislative action. They use their vast personal fortunes to change a public school system that few of them have ever utilized as students or parents. True, David Welch, who is bankrolling the legal challenges, attended public schools but it is not clear in the story whether his own children ever went to public school or if he himself has set foot in one since his own school days long ago. Then follows a rather star-struck account of this multi-millionaire as he sets his sights on ending due process for public school teachers, engaging a high-priced public relations team, creating a well-funded organization with a benign name, and hiring a crack legal team. Now, he is repeating his strategy in New York and other states; he is Ahab pursuing the bad teacher. The Vergara decision is presented as a culminating victory, where everyone hugs and kisses at the outcome, even though not a single plaintiff was able to identify a “bad teacher” who had actually caused her any harm.
The story fails to note that Judge Treu, in his Vergara decision, cited a witness for the defense, education scholar David Berliner, who guessed that maybe 1-3% of teachers might be incompetent; when the judge jumped on that number as a “fact” in his decision, Berliner retracted it and said he had not conducted any study of teacher competence in California and it was a “guesstimate” at best. Too late. Berliner’s guesstimate became Judge Treu’s “proof” that the bottom 1-3% should be fired before they do more harm.
Up to this point in the story, David Welch and his fellow millionaire/billionaire reformers are treated heroically. But then comes Edwards’ ending, where she concludes with almost two full columns undercutting value-added assessment and the very idea that tests of students can accurately gauge teacher effectiveness.
Edwards writes about how No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have led most states to create teacher evaluation systems tied to test scores that determine tenure, layoff decisions, and bonuses. She writes: “This two-decade trend has not, of course, been free of controversy. But what began with protests over ‘high-stakes testing’ and cheating scandals in various public-school districts [my note: including Michelle Rhee’s] in the mid-2000s has morphed in the past six months into an outright mutiny, driven in large part by the controversial rollout of Common Core State Standards, which are linked to new state curriculums, more-difficult tests and new teacher evaluations.” She points out that teachers have filed lawsuits in several states. “Many argued that policies focusing on cold, statistical measures fail to take into account the messy, chaotic reality of teaching in communities where kids must content with poverty and violence.”
Edwards then goes on to cite the numerous studies challenging the validity of value-added assessment. She mentions the American Statistical Association’s report on VAM, a review by the American Educational Research Association, even a study published by the U.S. Department of Education finding that “VAM scores varied wildly depending on what time of day tests were administered or whether the kids were distracted.” Had she started the story with this summary, it would have been a very different story indeed. It would have shown that the millionaires and billionaires have no idea how to judge teacher effectiveness and are introducing chaos into the lives of teachers who are doing a hard job for less than the millionaires pay their secretaries.
Edwards wrote, I am guessing, a good story about the invalidity of VAMs and the insistence of the tech millionaires/billionaires that they know more about education than teachers and that they are ready to deploy millions to force their views on a public education system about which they are uninformed. For them, it is a power trip, not reform. Again my guess is that her editor rewrote the story to make the millionaires look heroic, because what they are doing is not heroic. Anyone who has any regular contact with public schools expects it will be harder to recruit good teachers as a result of the Vergara decision. But the millionaires don’t know that.
The third part of the TIME story is the four-paragraph column by Nancy Gibbs, Editor of TIME. She calls it “Honor Thy Teacher,” an ironic title for her piece and for the cover illustration, which Dishonors All Teachers. Gibbs begins by thanking three teachers– Mrs. Flanagan, Miss Raymond, and Mr. Schwartz–who “seeded” her imagination and shaped her character. But she then goes on to say that “one Texas study found that cutting class size by 10 students was not as beneficial as even modest improvement in the teacher.” That is bizarre. I wish she had identified the study or its author. I don’t know of any teacher, even the best, who would not prefer to teach smaller classes; I don’t know of any teacher who thinks he or she can do their best when they have 35 or 45 children in the class. Gibbs then goes on to reiterate the familiar claim that other countries draw their teachers from the top third of graduates while the U.S. draws almost half of its teachers from the bottom third. Again, I would like to see her citation for that datum. Perhaps the three teachers she thanked at the outset—Mrs. Flanagan, Miss Raymond, and Mr. Schwartz—were drawn from the bottom third.
Does Nancy Gibbs know that between 40-50% of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years (perhaps those in the bottom third)? Does she know that education programs are shrinking because young people no longer see teaching as a desirable career, given the contempt that people like Gibbs and legislators in states like North Carolina and Indiana and millionaires like David Welch heap on teachers? Does she know that teachers in California must acquire a liberal arts degree before they can enter education programs? Does she know that many experienced teachers are leaving the profession because of the highly public attacks on teachers by people like Arne Duncan, David Welch, and Michelle Rhee? Which side is she on? Does she side with Mrs. Flanagan, Miss Raymond, and Mr. Schwartz, or with the tech millionaires and billionaires who want to reduce them to data points and fire them? Has the thought occurred that the tech millionaires want to replace teachers with computers? It makes sense to them. The rest of us would like to see greater support for teachers, greater emphasis on recruitment and retention of those who have the responsibility for instructing the nation’s children.
CorporateOwnedMedia.com pushes the story it is paid to push.
Where’s the shocker in that?.
Reblogged this on gailj2 and commented:
The outrage over Time is superseded by new news, but Diane brings back the topic with the wisdom of an education historian. Read her thoughts!
I fail to see how endless discussion of a Time magazine article will assist those of us targeted in the urban trenches. My particular school is nowhere near the fifty percent benchmark for passing standardized tests. Some children are hungry and some are homeless. A minority of the children has regular contact with two parents. There are shootings, gangs and drug dealers in the neighborhood. Our union leadership is in bed with our abusers.
NJ Teacher, we write about it because it is important to correct errors and it is necessary to not allow smears to go U corrected. There is a good possibility that the critique will be read by mainstream journalists, even those at TIME, and will spur them to think twice before slandering an entire profession and bowing to uninformed billionaires.
The days of fact-checking are gone. When the NYTimes published their glory piece on Success, there was not one mention of the fact that none of her middle-school grads were able to pass the tests for specialized high schools!! That proves to me the media hides crucial information from the public. Stories are no longer balanced. Instead this is all out war!! We might not always agree on every matter, but Thank You so much for being our Commander in this fight. And hoping you are getting better!!
School gal, the New York Times magazine knew that not a single graduate of Success Academy passed the city test for specialized high schools. I know because I told both the writer and the editor. They chose not to mention it.
dianeravitch: thank you for this invaluable info.
😎
Rather than be fair and balanced, they choose to be biased sensationalists.
You are correct. It has nothing to do with fact checking. It’s all about “the agenda”!! Journalism needs a new definition because it’s no longer about fair and balanced reporting.
Of course Nancy Gibbs went to a prestigious private school in Manhattan.
The War on teachers escalates! http://www.examiner.com/article/the-war-on-teachers-escalates-2?cid=db_articles
Excellent and fast turnaround on the Time propaganda piece. Journalism with content favorable to advertisers is required by Time for continuation in the job. Posted on this not long after the cover came out. Irony: Time writers are represented by a union.
So, the next exercise that someone should take on is an analysis of the ads in this issue of Time and among these, the corporations that support ALEC and others owned by the bashers of public school teachers. If a free issue comes my way I will take a look at this.
I was my high school valedictorian and chose to become an elementary school teacher. I teach in a small inner-city school district in upstate New York. I have gotten my state score for three years, based on student test scores. They have varied widely. The first year, I was at 15 out of 20. The second year, I was 10 out of 20. This past year, I was 12 out of 20. Would a teacher who graduated Summa Cum Laude from both my undergraduate college and my graduate university have such variations. I try to get 60 from my principal (which with the NYSUT rubric, is very hard) and 20 from my local measures (which is the online NWEA Map testing–which was never designed to test curriculum or evaluate teachers–but that is what we are expecting of it). I feel like I am two years from being fired at any given moment. I really don’t think it matters that I was my top third in high school and college. I am no better off in these evaluations that my peers who didn’t succeed in school. In fact, teachers who have struggled through school are some of the best at differentiating because they understand somewhat of what their students don’t understand. I have a wife and three children to support and, as much as I love teaching, know that I will have to go back to school at some point (after spending a LOT of money on my degrees already). In fact, I will probably have to go back to school for a new degree before I finish paying off my master’s degree (which the state forces teachers to get, even though I don’t think you need a master’s degree to teach elementary school). Sorry for rambling, but I really feel that public school teachers, particularly in high-needs areas, are in a dire predicament.
Don
Not one teacher has been fired as a result of NY’s APPR evaluation system. If it happens, the lawsuit that follows will be a slam dunk for NYSUT. Cuomo, King, Tisch, Silver, and NYSED all know this. Having 700 different APPR agreements across the state weakens the legal footing of this nonsensical, invalid, unreliable, and unfair teacher evaluation system. This is one reason Cuomo is going to push for a single, statewide APPR for ALL 500,000+ teachers. He may even try eliminating all local pre and post testing in favor of tying all teacher evaluations to math and ELA at 40%. His campaign commercial calls for “real teacher evaluations”. This certainly implies that current APPR evaluations are somehow, “unreal”.
How sad that your choice of career is being politicized, but that’s what happens when billionaires monetize your career choice and put a target on your back! I hope you don’t become a casualty of the war and that you can continue to serve our high risk children. You have a lot to offer and should be more than collateral damage, especially with a family depending on you. Maybe your only hope is to send out resumes to more affluent school districts. I can relate to your situation. I too was summa cum laude in high school and college and taught very poor, needy ELLs. I am positive I would be on the “concerned about” list if I still taught due to the population I served. Let’s hope this lawsuit from a Great Neck, LI teacher forces them to toss out the flawed, unscientific data from VAM! Keep your chin up!
Better yet, if VAM is thrown out, every teacher that lost a job due to this junk science should personally sue Bill Gates! What a unique way to pay off student loans.
“How sad that your choice of career is being politicized”
It’s politicized because the Government runs the schools and everything touching the Government is politicized.
I feel for those teachers. I’ve been there. When you have high-achieving teachers who are close to losing their jobs, that just does not make sense.
People are looking in the wrong direction. We must compare apples to apples.
If we compare our scores with other countries, such as Finland, which is at the top on scores, we must look at poverty levels and parent involvement. The US has such terrible poverty. The leaders of the communities are not doing their part to help those in poor areas. They are not preaching family values of mother and father staying together. Therefore, the children are coming to school hungry or dressed in dirty clothes. They come with NO supplies. Every year over my 32 years, I had to stock up on supplies with my own personal money to take care of those who may not have come with even a book sack. Their families felt entitled and knew someone would supply the school needs for their kids.
Look at Finland, and you will see low poverty rates and parent involvement.
Until community leaders finally realize it is up to them to reach out to the poor, things are going to stay the same, no matter how many teachers they fire.
This is not a surprise. Everyone is aware of the shortcomings. But, they are doing nothing because there’s no money in it for them. Pitiful.
One of the keys to unlocking the riddle of mismatched cover and article can be found in comments made by Laura H. Chapman on this blog, 10-23-14, “TIME Magazine Attacks America’s Teachers: Write a Letter to TIME”:
[start quote]
Time Magazine’s circulation is declining.
It has a new policy that stack ranks writers.
One of the rating scores is on writing “content that is beneficial to advertisers.”
The longstanding principal of keeping editorial separate from ads is gone.
Experiments with direct advertising on the cover of Time are underway (also for Sports Illustrated). Given the cover pitch is: the “bad teacher problem” may be solved by “silicon valley,” I would not be surprised it the cover is not functioning as an ad paid for by a foundation or cluster of corporations eager to remain out of view but also eager to rush forward with tech-in-the-answer- for education– so just hand over your taxes for education and let us do the job.
The stack rating for Time writers, including the 2-20 point scale on “content beneficial to advertiser” was revealed in memos set to the newspaper writers union. Those documents included some of management’s ratings of Time writers… (Shades of the teacher ratings published in the LA newspapers for individual teachers.)
One of the commenters on the blog that exposed this policy noted that one writer who scored high on “content of benefit to advertisers” scored low on “quality of writing.”
So there you have what’s really happening at Time, thanks to this website and…. a member of a union.
http://gawker.com/time-inc-rates-writers-on-how-beneficial-they-are-to-1623253026
[end quote]
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” [Ambrose Bierce]
Makes perfect ₵ent¢ when the goal is to smooth the way for $tudent $ucce$$…
😎
P.S. Let me be clear: where the writer of the article did her job, I applaud her.
Stack ranking, turning us into a nation of sychophants, one profession at a time.
Krazy TA,
Thanks for the posting.
If Time was a start-up, and did not rely on its past laurels, I can’t imagine a library that would subscribe to the magazine’s plutocratic bias, which is thinly supported, by tailored research.
We should all advise our librarians about publications that rate writers based on “content beneficial to advertisers”.
A magazine, without a firewall between advertisers and writers/editors,
should send out its publication for free, like those multiple-page car mailings that promote a brand, while describing a couple of travel destinations. No library would pay to subscribe to GM’s advertising. They should review their holdings for similar types of indirect puff pieces for corporations.
“A magazine, without a firewall between advertisers and writers/editors, should send out its publication for free,”
or maybe hand them out at the door like the End TIMES proselytizers.
“The End TIMES”
The End TIMES are coming
Get it quick, before it disappears
Can hear the drumming
There’s no trick — it’s sixty for two years
make that “The End TIME’s coming”
(wordpress needs an edit box, VAMit)
A very powerful article. Would Time have the guts to publish it?
Now THAT would be a story! Any thoughts or suggestions as to how to reverse engineer the apple sauce created by the judge’s gavel smashing that unblemished, shining apple?
It is very likely that the apple may represent all of public education and the gavel the might of the oligarch’s wealth and influence.
It’s not just an attack on “bad” teachers, but an attack on all teachers as working conditions become more and more stressful for all teachers in the name of “reform”. If the concern were really just identifying and eliminating ineffective teachers, why do all teachers undergo an arduous and demoralizing evaluation process annually? I have been teaching almost thirty years now and have had very good ratings every year of my career. Why do I need to spend hours proving my worth as a teacher? (Last year it took me 12 hours to write, execute, and reflect on one hour-long lesson!) I’m off to school in just a few minutes to write my SMART (sic) Goals so I can keep this job that I’m no longer sure I really want.
I think it is important to know that Haley Edwards tweeted this…
“TIME’s Nancy Gibbs comments on Rotten Apples cover on Morning Joe: http://t.co/LEFZYEYpJO ”
As far as I know, she did not tweet anything else on the matter. Certainly not Randi Weingarten’s interview on the same show, on the same topic.
I am shocked over HER shock that this blew up.
Diane,
Just to add to your fact base: almost half the teachers at Central Falls, Rhode Island, were reinterviewed and hired back after that whole calamity occurred. Yet, before they were hired and put back into the system, many power brokers, including the depraved Barack Obama and his call girl Arne Duncan, praised the action of letting these very “incompetent” teachers go.
If what officials hailed was so true and virtuous, then why were they rehired?
It shows clearly that the politicians jumped on this bandwagon before they knew any of the facts simply because, as they say in D.C. “a crisis should NEVER be wasted. Even if there’s only an ounce of it!”
We will continue to fight these injustices, but Lloyd Lofthouse is right when he says that education is but one system that is being restructured to shift power and wealth and that this will lead to revolution if not corrected.
I cringe when I hear that, but he has a point.
But I do think in many ways that we are winning this war.
It’s far from over, however . . . . .
“We now have the best democracy that money can buy.”
Greg Palast
Palast is an investigative reporter and the author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy – The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High Finance Fraudsters”, which was published in 2004!!
Palast’s book would make a good companion to Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”.
I love the “Moby Dick” reference
“Now, he is repeating his strategy in New York and other states; he is Ahab pursuing the bad teacher”
and only hope that his Pequot meets the same fate as Melville’s – sunk by the very object of his obsession.
“Once upon a time, American students tested better than any other students in the world.”
I always think that’s purely political. It’s really, really important that when we bash public schools we CAREFULLY exclude the public schools that the vast majority of adults attended 🙂
The last time public schools were good often coincides with the graduation year of the person bashing public schools, because to say otherwise implies that the vast majority of American adults were not “college and career ready”
Ok. Spot on as usual. What now?
Perhaps Nancy Gibbs has, or will have, grandchildren who may one day be able thank a particular laptop, notebook, or software program for inspiring them or sparking their imaginations.
Very well said, 4equity2…We know that laptop, notebook, or software program will not stay after school to design special lessons or plan that special project coming up. That laptop cannot comfort a crying child or listen to the child share his/her experiences. But, there is a lot of money to be made by eliminating that teacher and replacing that teacher with a program that can be played over and over again.
My daughter took 3 on-line classes throughout high school, and these classes are very challenging. My daughter has a lot of focus and drive, so she worked hours to complete the courses. Unfortunately, most students will not put in the extra time to complete an online course. My daughter said that the student has to read about 20 pages just to get the lesson that the teacher would have shared with the class. Good Luck with test scores…but, actually, once the rich politicians get rid of the teachers and replace the teachers with computer tech programs – – – – – – -THE TESTS WILL MAGICALLY GO AWAY! I would put money on this, and I do not even gamble.
Before Haley Sweetland Edwards wrote about tenure and teachers, she should have spent a week, or preferably a month in one inner city classroom with a tenured teacher. Then her research would have been somewhat valid. “Walk a mile in my shoes…” Teachers are being judged based on people who have no knowledge of today’s classroom. The school environment, the ever changing landscape, the parameters imposed, the money allocated, the necessary materials denied, the home environments, the challenges of the students to name a few factors are unlike anything Edwards or the critics have experienced. Children are not products. The human factor is ignored. Sometimes a teacher’s influence is not readily apparent but may be seen years later when a child is faced with a tough decision and chooses the right one, or draws on prior academic knowledge and makes that connection to solve a difficult life problem. It’s unfortunate that corporations, politicians and the business environment are deciding the course of education instead of those with an intimate understanding of the schools.
The “fire bad teachers” mantra is for simpletons and is cowardly, hiding behind the very teachers being blamed for society’s ills when in fact they are a faction of the population who have tried to deal with the results of unfortunate situations in our country (poverty, racial inequity) while requesting reasonable limits on the extent to which they are expected to uplift the neglected in our culture.
Upon realizing that this neglect is truly a drain on our prosperity as a whole, politicians who seem to want to engage in a good game of dodge ball (not to dodge blame, as blame is counterproductive, but rather to dodge responsibility moving forward), this temptation to hide behind teachers, like a young child hides behind his mother, has crept up and very few seem to have the wisdom or bravery to not succumb to it.
But it is cowardly. And it isn’t even a band aid for the problem; it’s an irritant that still avoids the areas of neglect that have wrought the low performing schools situation to begin with.
(I know I’m preaching to the choir, but the fact that this is cowardly is just not being said out loud enough).
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Kudos to Time for highlighting the fool”s errand known as “blaming public schools for society’s ills.”
Impoverishment, illiteracy and single parenthood were here before clowns such as Pam Cantor at Turnaround for Children Inc. decided they could try to re-craft humanity’s fallibilities.
And they will be with us long after.
Teacher-union leaders are due their share of the blame, but we are all in this together, my friends.
Blaming Time magazine misses the mark.
Rather, let’s resolve instead to follow the money – Cantor’s and the unions’.
FMI, join me at:
http//NewarkSchoolsForSale.WordPress.com
Dean Baker is one economist who sees through the “blame the teacher” narrative that’s bankrolled by Wall Street. Here he responds to Frank Bruni’s New York Times column that touts Joel Klein’s forthcoming book:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-blame-teachers-game-has-anyone-heard-of-the-south
Baker is mainly stating the obvious (the obvious facts the “reformers” choose to ignore), but the piece does a good job of putting the controversy into a larger economic context and reminds the readers of the real history of “education reform” in places like Chicago. Once again Thomas Friedman serves as an accidental whetstone for Baker’s argument:
“The really remarkable story of folks like Joel Klein is that they are continual beneficiaries of affirmative action. The sort of school reform they propose is far from new; it has been the ruling ethic in many areas for more than two decades. Yet, it keeps being presented as a new idea that will change the course of education in the United States.
“Thomas Friedman, Bruni’s colleague at the NYT, gave us a great example of this affirmative action in a piece touting Rahm Emanual’s plans to overhaul Chicago’s schools after being elected mayor in 2011. As Friedman relates the story, Chicago’s schools were a mess, unable to supply the city’s manufacturers with the skilled workers they needed.
“The problem with Friedman’s story is that Chicago’s schools had been run by “reformers” for the prior 15 years, including seven and a half years under the leadership of Arne Duncan, the current Secretary of Education. In short, the reformers have mostly been getting their way for quite some time. If they think there are serious problems in the way our schools are being run, the first place they should look is the mirror.”
Diane nails it! There seems no end to the oligarchs (including corporate news moguls) wanting to tell the world how to improve education. Their “faith” in test-scores and “belief” in public-school-failure borders on fanatical religion! Academia is a poor spokesman for reality outside the ivory-tower, and is usually painted with the same highly paid public relations brush as “union-thugs” and defenders of the status-quo. BUT we must join in with the voices of teachers and their leaders in the field calling for research-based measures for teacher evaluations and pedagogy. Thanks Diane for your clear voice – keep up the good works!
Vandykel@michigan.gov On Nov 2, 2014 11:00 AM, “Diane Ravitch’s blog” wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “My Review of TIME’s Cover Story on Teacher > Tenure In the past four years, TIME and Newsweek have published three > cover stories that were openly hostile to teachers. On December 8, 2008, > TIME published a cover story featuring a ph” Respond to this post by > replying above this line > New post on *Diane Ravitch’s blog* > My Review of the TIME Cover > and Story > by > dianeravitch > > My Review of TIME’s Cover Story on Teacher Tenure > > > > > > In the past four years, TIME and Newsweek have published three cover > stories that were openly hostile to teachers. > > > > On December 8, 2008, TIME published a cover story > featuring > a photograph of Michelle Rhee, dressed in black and holding a broom, with > the implication that she had arrived to sweep out the Augean stables of > American education. (Detractors thought she looked like a witch.) The title > on the cover was “How to Fix America’s Schools,” suggesting that Rhee knew > how to fix the nation’s schools. The subtitle was “Michelle Rhee is the > head of Washington, D.C., schools. Her battle against bad teachers has > earned her admirers and enemies—and could transform public education.” The > story inside was written by Amanda Ripley. We now know that Michelle Rhee > did not transform the public schools of the District of Columbia, although > she fired hundreds of teachers and principals. > > > > > > Newsweek had a cover on March 5, 2010, > saying “The Key to > Saving American Education: We must fire bad teachers,” a phrase that was > written again and again on the cover, as if on a chalkboard. The story > began with > the false claim that “Once upon a time, American students tested better > than any other students in the world.” Simply untrue; when the first > international assessments were administered in 1964, American seniors > scored dead last of 12 nations and in the fifty years that followed, we > never outscored the rest of the world. The Newsweek story celebrated the > mass firing of high school teachers (without any evaluations) in Central > Falls, Rhode Island, a calamitous event that was hailed by Secretary Arne > Duncan as a bold stroke forward. > > > > > > And now TIME has added another cover story to the litany of complaints > against “bad teachers.” This one, dated November 3, 2014, has a cover that > reads: “Rotten Apples: It’s Nearly Impossible to Fire a Bad Teacher: Some > Tech Millionaires May Have Found a Way to Change That.” The cover shows a > judge’s gavel about to smash an unblemished, shining apple. The story > inside was written > by Haley Sweetland Edwards. In addition, the magazine includes a column by > Nancy Gibbs, Editor of the magazine, commenting on the story. > > > > > > The underlying theme of all these covers and stories is that “bad > teachers” have ruined and continue to ruin American education, harming > children and the nation. They claim that unions and rigid tenure rules are > protecting these terrible teachers. Get rid of the “bad teachers” and > America’s test scores will fly to the top of the world. That seems to be > the assumption behind Arne Duncan’s insistence that teachers must be > evaluated to a significant degree by the test scores of their students. > Those who get higher scores get extra money, while those with low scores > may lose their tenure, lose their job, lose their license. > > > > That seems just to the folks who edit Newsweek and TIME, to the tech > millionaires and billionaires, but it seems very unjust to teachers, > because they know that their ratings will rise or fall depending on who is > in their class. Students are not randomly assigned. If they are teaching > English-language learners or students with disabilities or even gifted > students, they will see small gains; they may not see any gains, even > though they are good teachers. Their ratings may fluctuate wildly from year > to year. Their ratings may fluctuate because of the formula. Their ratings > may fluctuate if the test is changed. To many teachers, this system is a > roll of the dice that might end their career. A recent Gallup Poll showed > that 89% of teachers oppose test-based evaluations of their quality. This > is not because teachers object to evaluations but because they object to > unfair evaluations. > > > > The most recent TIME cover and story should be viewed in three pieces, > because the pieces don’t fit together snugly. > > > > First is the cover. Someone, my guess would be someone with more authority > than the writer, approved a highly insulting cover illustration and > accompanying language. Should the perfect apple (the teacher) be crushed by > the judge’s gavel? Is the profession filled with “rotten apples”? Is it > “nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher”? Nothing in the accompanying > story demonstrates the accuracy of this allegation. > > > > Then comes the story itself, written by Haley Sweetland Edwards. Edwards > contacted me to ask me to read the story and judge for myself, rather than > be swayed by the cover (the implication being that the cover is > sensationalized and thus emotional and inaccurate, although she did not use > those words). She sent me a pdf. file whose title, interestingly enough, > was “shall we let millionaires change education.” Now, THAT would have been > an interesting story, and the kernel of it is in Edwards’ article. > > > > She writes about the battle over teacher tenure: > > > *“The reform movement today is led not by grassroots activists or union > leaders but by Silicon Valley business types and billionaires. It is fought > not through ballot boxes or on the floors of hamstrung state legislatures > but in closed-door meetings and at courthouses. And it will not be won > incrementally, through painstaking compromise with multiple stakeholders, > but through sweeping decisions—judicial and otherwise—made possible by the > tactical application of vast personal fortunes.* > > > * “It is a reflection of our politics that no one elected these men to > take on the knotty problem of fixing our public schools, but here they are > anyway, fighting for what they firmly believe is in the public interest.”* > > > > Now, think about it. What she has written here is that a handful of > extremely wealthy men work behind closed doors to usurp the democratic > process. No wasting time with voting or legislative action. They use their > vast personal fortunes to change a public school system that few of them > have ever utilized as students or parents. True, David Welch, who is > bankrolling the legal challenges, attended public schools but it is not > clear in the story whether his own children ever went to public school or > if he himself has set foot in one since his own school days long ago. Then > follows a rather star-struck account of this multi-millionaire as he sets > his sights on ending due process for public school teachers, engaging a > high-priced public relations team, creating a well-funded organization with > a benign name, and hiring a crack legal team. Now, he is repeating his > strategy in New York and other states; he is Ahab pursuing the bad teacher. > The Vergara decision is presented as a culminating victory, where everyone > hugs and kisses at the outcome, even though not a single plaintiff was able > to identify a “bad teacher” who had actually caused her any harm. > > > > > > The story fails to note that Judge Treu, in his Vergara decision, cited a > witness for the defense, education scholar David Berliner, who guessed that > maybe 1-3% of teachers might be incompetent; when the judge jumped on that > number as a “fact” in his decision, Berliner retracted it and said he had > not conducted any study of teacher competence in California and it was a > “guesstimate” at best. Too late. Berliner’s guesstimate became Judge Treu’s > “proof” that the bottom 1-3% should be fired before they do more harm. > > > > Up to this point in the story, David Welch and his fellow > millionaire/billionaire reformers are treated heroically. But then comes > Edwards’ ending, where she concludes with almost two full columns > undercutting value-added assessment and the very idea that tests of > students can accurately gauge teacher effectiveness. > > > > Edwards writes about how No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have led > most states to create teacher evaluation systems tied to test scores th