Stephen Mucher, director of the Bard Master of Arts Teaching program in Los Angeles, warns about the precipitous decline in enrollments in teacher preparation programs.
Teachers are demoralized by scripted curricula and overemphasis on testing. They feel their voice doesn’t count in their workplace. Given the tide of teacher-bashing and mandates, they are right to feel demoralized.
“Career-minded college students are not oblivious to these developments. Since 2008, enrollment in teacher education programs in California is down 53%, and other bellwether states report a similar trend. Nationally, U.S. Department of Education statistics that include both traditional and alternative preparatory programs show that there were nearly 90,000 fewer teachers in training in 2012 than in 2008. Teach for America, which once celebrated 15 consecutive years of expansion, peaked in 2013. It is witnessing as much as a 25% drop in applications this year…..
“Our most promising educators crave work that honors their creativity and intellect. They are suspicious of easy answers. They need to hear more than the cliche that a great teacher can make a difference in a student’s life. They want to know whether this profession will make a difference in their own life.”
The teacher-bashing that has dominated the mainstream media in recent years has undermined the prestige of teaching. The insistence by the Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and many governors that teachers should be judged by student test scores has undermined the profession. What other profession is told how to evaluate its members by state legislators and governors?
Frankly, it is tiresome to hear critics say that teachers are not our “best and brightest.” Neither are our critics. I doubt that most critics would know how to teach a classroom of 30 children of any age, but they feel emboldened to complain about those who do it every day.
As we see the pipeline for new teachers growing smaller, and many veterans taking early retirement, where will we find new teachers? Who will be held accountable for this crisis in the teaching profession?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Teachers are GREAT. We are smart, creative, kind, intelligent, and have a lot of courage and fortitude. We are more than any politician and contribute vastly to the betterment of society. There’s a lot more to ADD about why TEACHERS ROCK. Additions? Let your voice ring, not the DEFORMERS’.
Yvonne Siu-Runyan: I deeply feel that Mother Teresa was referring to (among others, of course) a great many teachers when she said—
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
At least, that’s how I see it.
😎
There is a line at the end of George Eliot’s Middlemarch that I have always loved about the value to society of the many people who never become famous but add immeasurably to other people’s lives: “for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” It reminds me of the good but unheralded work done by so many teachers,
I learned most all I need to know about life and living from Middlemarch, with some help from Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
AND, teachers WANT to be teachers, and want to stay in the profession.
I see this each semester and I hear it week after week from my students. Long-time teacher friends are advising their children NOT to consider teaching as a career. Some of the finest people I have ever known and have the privilege of working with are counting the days until they can bail out and retire. The USDE and politicians (and, yes, Obama, MY President) have, for the short term at least, destroyed education and taken if from a noble helping profession and turned it into a monster. It’s akin to telling the public that nurses are trying to kill you. Yet, the public has swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. It doesn’t bode well for our society. Thank you to our former protectors.
They are not seeking teachers. They are looking for robots,
They call them Technicians. Any surprise –the Techie’s are calling the shots with Gates in the lead.
And sadly, we let them do this to us and our profession. The teachers, the administrators, the academics, and the political arms of our professional organizations and unions.
We need to wake up and remember that the reformists in government must have the consent of the governed to do anything at all. Thomas Jefferson told us that we would need to revolt again and again to prevent tyranny from flourishing.
That time has come.
The question is now: How do you awaken the sleeping giant of kind, rule-following, service-oriented, teaching corps that is so accustomed to coloring within the lines and not rocking the boat?
I have told my own kids run, don’t walk, from teaching as a career. They are both smart and motivated, and can do better elsewhere. I love teaching, but hate education. America does not want great teachers, America wants cheap teachers.
I’ve never had to tell my kids to avoid a career in teaching. I remember the day at the dinner table when they told me they would never want the demands of a job like mine. They weren’t very old at the time. And this was years before “reform”.
Teachers used to be a “family business.” Now parents are telling their children to NOT become teachers; some refuse to pay tuition costs if their child wants to be a teacher. This will create shortages in all schools for the next decade — we are there already.
They told me (Community College) that the three keys to teaching excellence were high instructor ratings, low drop rate and no complaints. They suspended me once telling me that I had set the academic standards too high and the students were complaining. They restricted my teaching which eventually cost me about half a million dollars in lost wages, benefits and retirement. Those who capitulated were praised and rewarded. I retired at the earliest moment and would never go back to teaching again.
The concerns of the Community College hierarchy were definitely NOT for the students but for their bottom line. What a shame.
The state superintendent of Utah, a lawyer, just recently made this statement about a rally that was held at the state capitol to ask for more money for funding: “It (the rally) reminded me of when my kid was 3 years old and they started crying on Christmas morning because they didn’t get one more thing,” Many Utahns are horrified, but they keep voting for the same legislators anyway, who keep underfunding schools. Thankfully, at least the state’s best political cartoonist gets it: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/2299949-155/bagley-cartoon-motivational-floggings
I will retire in seven years- if I last that long. I know I will miss working with children terribly, but I will not miss the micromanagement, endless and trivial paperwork, and trying hard to teach developmentally inappropriate content to children so that they don’t stress out or cry.
With all due respect to the owner of this blog, why is there a question mark at the end of the title of this posting?
And while this may seem harsh to some, understatement and politeness are shortchanging one of the words in the title of this posting—
The tern “Collapse” should not substitute for the word “Destruction.”
Just sayin’…
😎
I actually think this aspect of ed reform is what will kill it. It’s joyless. People simply can’t be driven forward by data and technocratic, grim “fixes” forever. They need more than that to stick with something, particularly people who chose a profession that isn’t lucrative or driven by profit and bonuses and “merit pay”.
They’re running into the same problem with family practice physicians, by the way. The “data based” management methods they’re using have driven every bit of joy and personal fulfillment out of that profession. They are miserable. I think there’s a comparison that could be made because family practice physicians are “front line” workers- less prestigious and less lucrative.
Where did you get this information about family practice physicians? I will be interested in knowing the source.
There’s a lot of discussion around it. Read this and see if it sounds familiar:
“What drives physician satisfaction is also what patients and payers want – delivering good care. And we’re less and less able to do that,” said Christine Sinsky, an internist in Dubuque, Iowa, who is working with the AMA to try to improve physician satisfaction. “You spend less time listening to patients, getting to know them, and thinking more deeply about their care.”
One of the “data driven” reforms was measuring patient satisfaction. But it turns out that “patient satisfaction” isn’t a good measure of a good doctor, because often patients want treatment they don’t need or treatment that won’t help them. A physician who gives in to that patient gets a higher score, but he or she isn’t a “better” doctor.
http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/doctor-burnout/
Thanks, I did not know that even though I have 2 family members who are primary care physicians, but they are in academic medicine, i.e., teaching.
Let me count the ways! I read somewhere that the loss of control over their work environment is the number 1 or 2 reason why people leave their jobs. Well, it certainly has been so in the teaching profession. I’ve been teaching for 23 years and the past 4-5 years have been replete with teacher busywork, work that has been discarded, useless meetings, more and more tests prep and tests (and ridiculous ones at that), unfair evaluation plans, endless forms to fill out, and on and on. We’re told repeatedly that we’re “building the plane in the air.” Of course we are. There’s no vision. Do we even know we’re “building a plane?” Young teachers are overwhelmed with this constant changing course and tough work loads – usually with the most challenging students. All of this in an atmosphere that blames teachers for every societal problem under the sun. I had some of the “best and brightest” students, and most of them wouldn’t touch teaching with a 10 foot pole. Listen to what teachers are saying. They’re in the trenches every day trying to make a difference in an insane system. I don’t think it will take long for this country to see a greater loss of teachers and those who would be teachers.
We just spent two years writing “Common Core-aligned” units, only to have them thrown out because they weren’t “really aligned” with the Common Core! Of course, we spent thousands of dollars on materials to go with these units. It is frustrating. I refuse to work on any more curriculum writing until someone can point us in a direction.
Then those who would be teachers but what Shakespeare’s
It’s easy for reformers to claim that high stakes testing will ferret out the worst teachers and send them packing. However, that’s not really what’s behind the rhetoric.
Just look at Los Angeles. Slowly but surely, charters are draining resources and forcing cuts to programs and services not to mention raising class sizes to balance the budget. All the while, former Superintendent Deasy coerced the board of ed to approve the purchase of iPads for all and the over 800 million it is supposed to cost for the wi-fi infrastructure. The situation can easily lead to the computer as the main delivery system of curriculum. The role of teachers will be minimized and districts will them hire non-educators to oversee classrooms.
The fear is that teaching as we formerly understood it, will no longer exist except in the most expensive and exclusive private schools, the type of schools the reformers send their children to.
We are quite like-minded on this topic. I have been saying this to me colleagues for several years. At first I received a knee-jerk negative response of that’s impossible. Now, colleagues listen more intently as I describe the school system structure that will arise within the next few years.
Yes, family member explained this to me 15 years ago. I said the public would never let it happen. Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpQCEgEfRyc
I have seen this Pearson video on “personalized” science instruction more than once. They hope this is the wave of the future, with no need for science labs and not much savvy in science to monitor a class.
Every subject with a lot of conventional content can be designed to replace a bunch of teachers. The science content, and representations of scientific content, in this video are conventional and “curricularized”–ugly word, means potentially boring.
In this version of “personalized” learning from Pearson, the teacher is almost redundant. The students are barely talking to each other even if they are in “contact” with images on their touch pads, tech tables. and tech boards.
The teacher is making assignments that others have designed and these are fully chunked into curriculum modules with bits of scaffolding from or two that module, or placed within it. The modules can have videos, animated presentations of content and so on.
All of this content is easy to deliver on line, complete with “recommendation systems” that will provide several paths to the same end-point for the module. Some modules must be done in sequence, others require only a few prerequisites, still others may be optional–as challenges, quests, enrichments.
The response times and paths taken by each student are recorded as data. With BIG data analytics, these programs can be tweaked to provide the most “efficient and effective” formats for representing and “covering” content.
I put “efficient and effective” in quotes because the whole ethos of techie instruction is really “learn more and faster,” as in Race to the Top. On the horizon of possibilities are teachers who are little more than skilled managers of bits and pieces of content developed by others–a version of the practice of teaching to the text and test. If “school” is retained, it is likely to be explicitly accepted primarily as a social space and reasonably safe “baby-sitting” environment of choice–two functions it has always had.
Early versions of this this Pearson’s programmed instruction, time management, attendance, and surveillance system were developed for military training, and that is the underlying concept of education. It is training, with not much problem-solving except by well-worn paths to well-defined problems. Programmed instruction does not invite or support much thinking out of the box except when these sleek screen-based interfaces are actually used to construct and play games with unexpected moves from unseen participants or forces.
The alternative to programmed instruction that depends on a screen interface, it to park those screens or eliminate those devices altogether and go” primal,” meaning drag in the aquariums and terrariums; visit a zoo to hear the sounds, register the smells; grow some seeds, walk down any street and see what is throbbing with life, in decay and so on.
I have heard that highly paid techies in California who have children are keeping them away from the pads, and screens, and tidy cans of content that Pearson and others are pushing.
That makes sense, real sense. Think of old-fashioned “sensational” learning as the real deal for the 21st century, especially for memorable, intelligible, and love-worthy learning.
Actually, I wanted to respond to Laura (below, or maybe above) but there was no ‘reply’ option, so I intruded here. I hope she sees this.
The big problem, Laura, is that an education teaches not only by providing content, but also through process (pedagogy).
Sadly, the Pearson model is,’Do as I (your master) say and learn to jump through the hoops I assign’. The pedagogy sends a clear message.
This is the opposite of ‘education’ (coming from ‘eduction’, a drawing out from within). The jerks at Pearson, Gates, Walton, etc. probably don’t even know that, and if they do (being the sociopaths that they are), they don’t care. They consider money to be the ultimate value of human worth and are, in my book, seriously ill (probably need to be institutionalized).
WE CAN TRASH THE WEALTHY “REFORMERS” ALL WE WANT WHO ARE KILLING TEACHING AS A PROFESSION.
THE TRUE CRIMINALS ARE THE HEADS OF THE TEACHERS UNIONS. THEY ARE THE ENABLERS.
In addition to the “reformers,” we have to hold the government accountable for creating a climate that is hostile to public education. The laws are partial to charter school expansion. Corporations are getting tax breaks for entering the “education market,” as well as other advantages.http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/if-you-want-to-know-the-truth-about-charter-schools-follow-the-money/18698-if-you-want-to-know-the-truth-about-charter-schools-follow-the-money?tmpl=component&print=1
Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew deserve jail time for acting like Vichy France.
They should rot in hell for their incompetence. Who sides with Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, George Pataki, Arne Duncan, Andrew Cuomo, Joel Klein and Dennis Wolcott.
Who would ever allow for the disasters that were the 2005, 2007 and 2014 contracts?
They did and for that I agree 100% with you.
Ultimately it is the fault of teachers who refuse to be engaged and vote the bums out. I have never voted for the Unity slate. Very few teachers vote for the election of the union leaders (25-30% participation?). Of course the dues check-off that guarantees the UFT’s survival also guarantees the loyalty of the union leaders to the political leaders and politics that enabled the check-off who in turn are loyal to the billionaire-boys-club.
I know exactly who will teach after the teaching schools dry up. Anyone with a college degree, that’s who. And the death spiral will continue…
Sorry, but I don’t think this is a bad thing at all. Having taken enough education classes to be certified to teach I can say with authority, an education degrees is worthless. The classes are a nightmarish mix up of pop psychology, pseudo-neurology and outdated behavioral theory non-sense. Assignments can be as simple as making a list of rules for your classroom or creating a seating chart. The dumbest students in the school can, and do, easily graduate with this degree. I’d much rather see teachers with degrees in their subject area, even in elementary. A math teacher with a math degree, language arts with that degree, and a science teacher with a science degree makes much more sense. I learned a lot more about classroom management from watching educational videos from Scotland on iTunes than I ever learned in the education classes. I had to take a required “ESOL” class from a teacher who is monolingual and knew jack about learning a foreign language. I have a degree in French and English and speak fluent Spanish as well, but she had all that all-important number of class hours learning silly things like, “Try to speak slowly, Use a lot of visuals, Don’t use slang.” Duh! She’s never done what she’s supposed to be an expert in doing, learning a foreign language! Teachers should be respected and well paid but they should also be an expert in their subject area. If they teach K-2, let them do Early Childhood, degrees, everyone else needs to study are real subject.
A friend of mine got a TA job in Las Vegas, and they asked her if she wanted to be put on the “fast track” to teacher certification. She has a BA in Sociology. It seems they’re hurting for teachers.
They have a similar alternative track to certification in Texas.
With the exception of the aftermath of 2008, Vegas has hired about 1200 teachers per year since at least the 1990s.
I remember the 70’s fiscal crises in NYC that resulted in teacher lay-offs and terrible working conditions for those who remained. When the economy improved NYC was unable to attract new teachers and had a severe shortage. I was called several times and threatened that I would never be called again if I didn’t accept a position. I still refused until many years later after the wall street collapse in the late 80’s. By then the work environment for teachers improved so I with many others decided to return. For 15 or so years I loved my job until Bloomberg became mayor, Gates pushed for the small school movement, and Michelle Rhee was appointed Chancellor of Wash. D.C. schools as the poster child of teacher bashing school “reformers”. Much of this was permitted by the terrible job market after the crash of 2008 and the desires of the billionaire-boys-club. If the economy improves enough to tighten the job market then you will see improved working conditions for teachers.
It may be true that a tightening economy would improve teachers’ lots. But at the rate people are bailing out, much of the institutional knowledge and the long-term experience will be gone too. Who will remain to mentor incoming novices, particularly those without any educational background?
The words: Collapse of the Teaching Profession – hardest words to read.
It hits hard & hurts.
We hurt for the children.
We hurt for the parents.
We hurt for the fabulous dedicated teachers who teach for all the right reasons.
We hurt for the memories of school days, friends, visiting old teachers…
We hurt for our children and grandchildren.
Colony Collapse? Bees dying? Irreparable Harm!
Teaching Profession Collapse! Irreparable Harm!
Deep Sadness
Interesting article from the Mississippi Association of Educators entitled:
“If teaching is a profession, let the professionals do it”
https://www.maetoday.org/index.php/News-Articles/if-teaching-is-a-profession-let-the-professionals-do-it.html
The cartoon by Marshall Ramsey half-way through sums up what new teachers and prospective teachers are experiencing.
Some excerpts:
Opinion by Charlie Mitchell | Tupelo Daily Journal | December 16, 2014
I know what Mississippi teachers want for Christmas. They want Santa to haul politicians who think they know how to teach back with him to the North Pole and feed them to the reindeer or something… anything to keep them out of classrooms.
Seriously.
Do members of the Legislature go over to Highway Patrol headquarters to instruct troopers on how to make a traffic stop? How about the medical center? Do you reckon our state’s elected elite scrub up, waltz into surgery and give doctors pointers on a liver transplant?
But what began as a trickle of officious intermeddling with education has become a torrent.
The gifted cartoonist Marshall Ramsey, whose work appears in The Clarion-Ledger, and another state editorial artist, Ricky Nobile, seized the moment.
This state trains, tests and licenses public school teachers, requires continuing education and allows those trusted to staff classrooms to teach only the subjects for which they have obtained certification. The state refers to teaching as a “profession” and then treats teachers as dolts.
Be clear: There are lousy teachers on the public payroll, probably some crummy state troopers and doctors, too. There are poorly administered districts. But the way to deal with problems such as this is to improve hiring and retention, not to confound effective teachers with gimmickry.
Here is a fact political personages seem so unwilling to grasp: There is no one-size-fits-all approach or method to effectively teach young people.
The process of teaching and learning, however, has not really changed in thousands of years.
Initially, Common Core was embraced by Haley Barbour, by almost all other governors and by Mississippi and other state boards of education as an alternative, a route to independence from federal No Child Left Behind methodologies.
But it really doesn’t matter whether Common Core works or doesn’t work.
The reason is that something else will be along soon. There will be a rush to adopt the next big thing, more specifically the next big Republican thing or the next big Democratic thing.
The next big thing that will line the pockets of big business (and thus politicians) to implement. I love the cartoon. It says it all.
Albert Einstein, to paraphrase him, once said: : “…..when technology outstrips our ability to communicate and to think critically, we will have created a [society] of idiots.” Are we not there already ?? And of the teacher and education he said: “It is the supreme art of teaching to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge !! ”
It is, I think, long since time that teachers, [as well as parents AND children] arise and re-assert the passion and dedication to re-awaken that joy of learning and creative expression….AND logical, critical and intuitive thinking !!!
Is not the treasure of our children too valuable to leave to the technocrats and profiteers who know not of the human development of children, the stages of learning and the awakening of “the joy of learning” ?? Is it not time to arise~~before it is too late ??
My school like so many others is committed to STEM. I have at the little window by my door a little sign that says, “Pallmss practiced here” and a sign on my wall that points out P=Philosophy, A=Art, L=Language, L=Literature, M=Music, and SS=Social Studies or the basics of a “Humanities,” as opposed to a science and math, education. Don’t get me wrong, I think the math and sciences are very important but the Humanities are important for balancing the math and sciences. I have another little poster that says “science” can tell you how to clone a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Humanities can tell you why that may not be a good idea. The math and sciences teach us how to leap, the Humanities teach us to look before we leap.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
The APPOINTED State Board of Eduction in Indiana does not understand what is happening in education. Their choices cause suffering for classroom teachers who are ‘in the trenches’. Board people were chosen because they fit a certain political profile, with ideas that our GOP Congress wants to implement. Poor political choices at the expense of our children is abominable.
I was shocked to learn that many teachers haven’t had a raise in 3-4 years. Most districts don’t have a salary schedule and it is very difficult for a teacher to qualify with enough points to earn an increase. No wonder schools for education are seeing applicant rates down by 60%. Who wants to teach?
I’m a retired teacher and I’d never support anyone going into teaching. I’ve been saying for around 20 years that the only way education will improve is when nobody will enter that profession. When this happens, studies will have to be done to find out why. Any teacher can tell why the job is endlessly stressful but nobody in power listens to teachers.
I am a retired teacher. No online course or interactive online textbook will ever take the place of human interaction. it would mean that ‘one size fits all’ and that never happens in a classroom.
Apple, Microsoft and Pearson Publishers are working to make money off of struggling public schools which have cut arts, librarians, social workers and nurses in schools that are crumbing in order to purchase required high tech products. Children are suffering from services which are no longer available.
There is a backlash against money going to corporations and a backlash against standardized testing. It costs money that districts don’t have. The protest against corporate profit at the expense of a good education is being fought by administrators, teachers and parents. They are the experts and their voices need to be heard.
I find the backgrounds of several members of the Indiana SBOE quite interesting and varied. Three of them work as teachers in public schools and a fourth is an administrator in a public school. One is a teacher at a religious school and one is the president of a relgious university. The SBOE website spells out the qualifications:
Established by the Indiana General Assembly, the State Board of Education oversees state K-12 education policymaking. The bipartisan board is composed of eleven members, including the Superintendent of Public Instruction who is the chairperson (this part was recently amended since the GOP Super-majority was pi$$ed off by the will of Hoosier voters in the 2013 statewide election). The remaining ten members are appointed by the Governor to represent each of the nine congressional districts and one member at-large. No more than six of the members may be from the same political party, and four of the members must be licensed educators currently employed in an Indiana school.
The administrator who is on the board is a principal at a school that’s in the same county where former Indiana Superintendent of Education Tony Bennett was born and raised. Coincidence?
One of the classroom teachers attended BYU. I’ve heard that it’s a great school and all, but non-LDS students must have an ecclesiastical recommendation for consideration and must take 16 credit hours of religious studies prior to graduation.
The teacher at the religious school is a former news journalist who also happens to be adjunct scholar with the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. Sourcewatch @The Center for Media and Democracy describes the Indiana Policy Review Foundation as a right-wing pressure group that is an affiliate of the State Policy Network web of such groups in all 50 states. This organization has as it’s other adjunct scholar, a Koch Bros. – funded professor of economics at Ball State University.
The president of the religious university has education reformer tattooed all over. His school was connected with the conflict of interest case involving…once again…you guessed it – former Indiana Superintendent of Education Tony Bennett and his wife Tina.
This person was previously a teacher; high school principal; superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Wichita in Kansas. Hmmm…Wichita, Kansas is home of the corporate offices of…ta-da – Koch Industries! Isn’t that ironic?Other positions have included Executive Director, Office of Catholic Education for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis; and most recently has served as Executive Director of the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation.
Also this board member has had a questionable political affiliation issue since appointment by former governor Napoleon. According to Indiana Code, no more than six of the 10 members on the governor-appointed board may be from the same political party. The governor’s office claims six Republicans, two Democrats and two independents serve on the panel.
However, a review by The NWI Times has determined that this board member, one of the claimed independents, is likely a Republican.
Voting records show this member cast a ballot in Republican primary elections nine out of 10 times since 1994. the sole exception was voting in the 2000 Democratic primary.
This board member also has donated $10,575 to Republican candidates and business groups supporting Republicans since 2001 — and nothing to Democratic or independent groups, according to state campaign finance records.
Who in their right minds would want to work in a profession where state standards are determined by political and philosophical cronyism, by persons with a penchant for creating a theocracy, and by those who believe that Milton Friedman had an effing clue about public education? Not to mention, the vilification and disrespect that is now part of the title “public school teacher.” Add in the BS corporate-driven testing and no chance of financial advancement…
I’d say that teacher education enrollment being down only 53% is quite miraculous with this kind of climate.
You say Republicans. Obama has enabled all of these programs that Republicans could only have dreamed of until Obama came along with RttT.
Michael,
I was specifically addressing the structure and political affiliation of the Indiana SBOE. Glenda Ritz was the ONLY Democrat elected statewide here in ’13. I’m fully aware that the POTUS and his crony Duncan are as guilty of wrecking public ed. as is Jeb, the Kochs and the rest of the Corporativist cabal.
Indiana is so politically far to the right, that few Demos. even figure into the equation. Hope I clarified my statement.
Are bankers judged by their failing banks? Are doctors judged by cancer survival rates? Are Judges & Lawyers evaluated by recidivism and crime rates? Then why are teachers to be judged by test scores????
Perhaps we are not perceived as professionals. Nor essential.
You think?!?
A few months back that journal of extreme progressive liberalism, Forbes Magazine, printed an article that challenged the current attack on teaching. Their basic conclusion was if you fire all the teachers who are you going to get to replace them with as enrollment in education programs is in decline and what guarantee do you have that those that replace the current teachers will be any better.
I do not really believe in conspiracies but the outcome of ed-reform, that is spearheaded by very wealthy people and the politicians they employ, is to make public education less and less effective and the quality of education public school students receive more and more inadequate to the demands of the workplace, of college, and the development of the intellect. The end result is that the children of the very wealthy and the politicians they employ, that generally go to private schools that are free from ed-reform, will be the only ones adequately prepared to meet the demands of the future and will have a greater and greater edge in competing for meaningful jobs, the most satisfying jobs. They already have advantages with the networks they inherit and the colleges they can afford.
I do not believe the only reason for education is to prepare students for the workplace, but that is an important aspect of it. A love of learning ought also to be cultivated, but this is ever more difficult in an environment dominated by standardized testing that does more than just about anything to stifle any love of learning.
But I think one of my greatest concerns is what if these reform programs result in larger and larger percentages of students going onto and succeeding in college. We currently do not have enough jobs for the 30% or so of high school graduates that go onto college. What is going to happen if 80% were in fact able to go onto and finish college. There would not be enough jobs to go around. We tell students that the reason for going to college is to have a better future. What happens when the better future does not materialize and the debt has been accumulated that the better future was supposed to make manageable. I first taught in the Watts section of Los Angeles and when we would try to encourage students to finish high school because that would make for a better future many would reply my uncle, aunt, mother, or father has a high school diploma and it did not help them. As a result it became more difficult to motivate students to finish high school. What happens when uncle, aunt, mother, or father has a college degree and is still unable to find work, does not have the bright future they were promised. Of course this is probably not a real concern as regardless of the success or lack of success of the ed-reform movement it is not likely that 80% of high school graduates will go onto to finish college. I think there is something wrong with holding out a hope that those holding out the hope know is not likely to be realized. There is also something wrong with preparing students for one kind of employment, that which requires academic success, instead of building a more diverse workplace.
We lie to students in so many ways. We tell them the skills the tests measure are the most important skills for their future when often they are not even the most important skills or acquisitions of a meaningful education. We tell them there will be lucrative employment if they do well on the tests and go on to get a college degree, but at present this is not true (though it is true that college graduates have greater advantages than non-college graduates). We tell them that the primary purpose of education is to provide meaningful employment when it ought to be helping them to mature and understand themselves and their world better. We tell them that being able to accomplish is important without helping them to understand the purpose of those accomplishments or the real value of those accomplishments. We tell them it is more important to act than it is to reflect and then leave them to deal with the consequences of unpremeditated actions. All the very wealthy want is a workforce that will do what they are told without question, that have the skills they (the wealthy) want them to have and will not require much if any training when they do enter the workforce. They want a workforce that is needy and cannot afford to lose the jobs they have. Whether there is a conspiracy or not I do not know, but the end result of what is being done to public education will be to diminish the middle class and increase, not reduce, poverty. I do not know of statistics that prove this, but these seem to me the general destinations of the educational policies we are pursuing. There are few things more transitory than a current skill and nothing more necessary than the ability to adapt and and add to the skills we have as our circumstances and environment change. The current testing model and attacks on schools, regardless of what they do to discourage teaching, are dedicated to developing the skills of today and do not provide much help for cultivating the skills of tomorrow. Of course the reformers say otherwise. Are reformers a bit Orwellian or am I missing something? Perhaps it is a bit of both.
Cordially,
J. D. Wilson, Jr.
There already is a lack of jobs for the 99%. It only get worse. Who will be buying the houses? What will happen when the malls close? There is going to be a glut of real estate, and no one able to purchase anything other than food and afford rent for a studio apartment shared by 5 people. Welcome to my future.
“We lie to students in so many ways.”
And therein lies the essence of many, most, if not all of modern American educational malpractices.
“Who will be held accountable for this crisis in the teaching profession?”
The same people we ALWAYS hold accountable — PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS and their UNIONS!
WORK SMARTER, you bastards!
The ongoing private war on public education demands the destruction of teacher unions b/c teaching is almost 100% unionized, unlike any other profession. This neoliberal age demands disorganized, unprotected, contingent workforces, which will continue to the startling upward concentration of wealth. The 99% are all under attack here, so let’s all fight back together. We parents can stop the assault by refusing all standardized testing for our kids, period. That will be a big blow to Pearson, Gates, Duncan, and their commercial cronies and political agents. Then, we can refuse to vote for ANY politician who supports renewal of ESEA/NCLB/RTTT/CCCSS/PARCC/SBAC–put out the uncompromising word–you vote for Pearson and Gates, we will never vote for you. Then, we can consider targeting boycotts at the goods and services through which the corporate billionaires behind testing, TFA, VAM, and private charters make money. Identify how to boycott all those corporate agents undermining the public sector. They depend on our consumer purchases, and our school taxes for looting, and our school buildings seized for their private charters…stop them. We are many, they are few.
I gave up Netflix, shop much less on Amazon, stopped using PC based products although Apple is also in bed with the “reformers”. I doubt people are willing to stop using services/products of the companies even though same companies are destroying public education and the middle class. My guess is it will have to get much worse before there is even a chance for it to get better.
“b/c teaching is almost 100% unionized”
NO!, Ira, that is nowhere near true. First the NEA is not a union in that the management-administrators have always been a part of the “Association”. What true union allows management to be a part of it?
Around here in Missouri very few teachers are truly “unionized”.
(but I do agree with the rest of your post!)
I do not imagine for one hot minute that, waiting in the wings, will be TFA, TNTP, and other astroturf non-profit-for-profits ready to fill the gap with poorly and quickly “trained” “teachers” who will run their classrooms like dictators, caring only about discipline and spoon feeding rote nonsense to the kids. In Newark, Cami Anderson has endorsed Relay GSE (?) as the premier Masters Degree program, rather than traditional colleges. It is amazing the length and depth to which those thieves will stoop to make a buck. Either that, or Walmart will open up a teachers academy–coming soon to a college town near you. They will not be satisfied until teachers earn $10/hourly.
I began work at 7 a.m. today, writing a unit I’ll begin teaching tomorrow. I enjoy it–curriculum writing is fun–but I also do it out of necessity. We have no textbooks for most subjects, so if I’m to have the content to teach, I must track it down and prepare it myself. I went into work this afternoon for two hours, grading papers to determine what my students understand and what needs reteaching. I also made some photocopies, using the paper I purchased because I long ago ran out of the allotment my school gave me. I still have about two hours of work tonight before I can shut down the computer and say I’m ready for the week.
For this, I am paid no overtime. My salary is a pittance, even with my master’s degree. I struggle to meet my family’s needs. I must count pennies at the supermarket to make sure I don’t overspend. I have purchased no new clothing in nearly five years. And yes, I buy things for my classroom out of my own checking account, such as that paper and the cheap granola bars I keep for the students who show up day after day with no snack.
Why do I do this? Well, it’s the job I accepted. I signed the contract. More importantly, teaching is an essential and meaningful career. My students need someone to care about them and help them as they learn. But I am frustrated too. I am frustrated by parents who don’t give a damn about their children’s education. They cannot or will not read to and with their children at home. They do not supervise or assist with our minimal homework. Their children are tardy to school repeatedly or are frequently absent. And when I mention during conferences that their students are having difficulty with something and I mention my concern, I am told it is my fault. I am frustrated with the lack of essential supplies and the paltry pay scale. I am frustrated with testing. I am frustrated with my state legislators and officials for yanking teachers around while they make a muddle of standards. I am frustrated by hedge fund bigwigs and corporate giants proclaiming that they know exactly how to fix education in the United States when they have never taught a day in their lives.
As a society, we belittle people who are too smart for their own good, and we chortle when they fall. I believe that’s what is happening to educators today. We are the scapegoats for the things that society cannot or will not fix. And because we are teachers, not businesspeople, the attacks will continue, because business reigns supreme in this country. I’d like to hang on for another six years until I can retire. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m advising my own children not to go into teaching. There is no future in it, and it will be a long time–if ever–before that will change.
As to paragraph three: Amen. Amen. Amen. Parents have them for 5 years before they come in the door. We are supposed to start from zero and get them college and career ready by the end of kindergarten. There is no catching up from 5 years of neglect.
I’m reminded of that old saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
A reduction in the number of education majors? Really?
That’s a no-brainer.
No wonder people don’t want to enter the profession. Does someone who is about 25 and in at least $40,000 of college debt want to end up like her:
I suppose it is time for me to send this along again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvYh8ar3tc
This is why I continue teaching. My wife earns three times what I do, and if I lost my job tomorrow, it would be an inconvenience, nothing more. In my classroom, I do what I feel is right. If someone decides to fire me, so be it.
I like to think that, when Common Core and corporate reform have mingled with the dust, I will have quietly made some kind of difference. Maybe even — dare I hope? — helped to bring life to a wasteland.
As a recent graduate of high school, I have come to appreciate the relationships I have built with all my former teachers. They have guided me through my puberty and most tumultuous times at the second most important environment of my K-12 years, school. I am facebook friends with some of my teachers and they are more than teachers now that I am capable of communicating about matters other than tests, grades, and school material. They are my friends, my family, and my mentor. It’s a shame that at a time when teachers’ voice is so needed, it’s growing smaller and smaller. It’s also a shame that future generations of students may not be able to have such valuable connections that my friends and I have experienced.
khjinni, Thank you!
These reformers will never subject themselves to this dehumanizing scheme
Quoting J.D. Wilson Jr. in this thread:
“All the very wealthy want is a workforce that will do what they are told without question, that have the skills they (the wealthy) want them to have and will not require much if any training when they do enter the workforce. They want a workforce that is needy and cannot afford to lose the jobs they have…
The end result [of the current school reform movement] is that the children of the very wealthy and the politicians they employ, that generally go to private schools that are free from ed-reform, will be the only ones adequately prepared to meet the demands of the future and will have a greater and greater edge in competing for meaningful jobs, the most satisfying jobs. They already have advantages with the networks they inherit and the colleges they can afford.”
And a Common Core aligned bottom tier will be putty in the hands of these overlords…
MAY 2012 American Journal of Education
Democratic Education Requires Rejecting the New Corporate Two-Tiered School System
KENNETH J. SALTMAN DePaul University
In his essay “Individuality, Equality, and Creative Democracy—the Task Be-fore Us,” Jim Garrison (2012, in this issue) restates Dewey’s call “to educate individuals capable of criticizing and recreating society—not simply repro-ducing the status quo” (369). Good idea. He writes that under the new structural feudalism, “schools assume the task of standardizing human capital as a commodity suitable for ready exchange that fits docilely into the existing sociopolitical-economic order rather than democratic individuals charged with challenging and changing the status quo” (371).
In what follows here, I briefly suggest that how schools are being reformed and by whom illustrates the formation of a new two-tiered educational system—not just through NCLB (focused on by the author) but also RTTT (Race to the Top), chartering, and other forms of privatization. NCLB requires all schools to meet Adequate Yearly Progress on tests or be subject to a slate of radical reforms, most of which, such as privatization and “turnarounds,” are market based. In its Bush administration version, NCLB set the stage for transforming the public school system into a privatized system by declaring public schools as “failed” and in need of business reforms. In its reauthorized form, opt-out provisions require commitment to the same. Working-class and poor schools will remain subject to the rigid pedagogical approaches, punitive disciplinary models, and scripted lessons that accord with the banking education model promoted by NCLB and RTTT. Professional-class schools will be given more latitude and be less subject to sanctions based on scores, which translates to allowing more dialogue and less drill, more expansive approaches.
http://www.academia.edu/5599096/Democratic_Education_Requires_Rejecting_the_New_Corporate_Two-Tiered_School_System
I blogged about the coming shortage last fall when I realized that there hadn’t been any student teachers in my school lately. I have kept the article up to date as the evidence has poured in. While we argue about whether teachers are the root of all evil, we are driving potential teachers away from this noble profession.
http://qmsteched.edublogs.org/2014/10/15/a-coming-storm-where-have-all-the-student-teachers-gone/