A reader writes in response to the blog about the fraud that teachers are compelled to be complicit in, by passing students who have not done the work, by meeting quotes or face punishment:
Our entire school structure is a compliance-based model, where time is constant and learning is the variable. It is based on handing out penalties to students when they are out of compliance and don’t perform at the same level as their chronological peers. More than anything in the history of American education, NCLB has served to further advance a concept of “do this or we will punish you,” by not only labeling students as failures for not adhering to the compliance model and keeping up with their classmates, but doing the same to teachers and schools. Public education has become a barbaric system of mental whips and chains. Why wouldn’t people be compelled to cheat to get higher scores and inflate to “produce” higher grades when the entire system is based on “do this or we will punish you.”
Instead of focusing on reform efforts that eliminate the outdated structures in K-12 education, including the mountains of useless federal and state regulations that perpetuate a dead system, we’re too focused on taking people to the dungeon and torturing them into improvement or else. “What, you failed 5th grade? On the rack with you! The pain will continue until you start learning!”
We are truly a sick people.
Do you agree?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Deja Poo All Over Again …
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What is the punishment, specifically?
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Enforced TEAdium …
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Being written up or being fired.
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Remediation – pre-test/post-test ad nauseum – no bonus for the bad teacher – re-education via PLC – test prep, test prep, test prep – perhaps your needs would be better met at another school…
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I just saw the movie (based off the old TV series) “21 Jump Street”. The movie is about two cops who go undercover in a public high school to break a drug ring. At the end of the movie, it turns out that the gym coach was at the center of this drug ring. He admits that his motive for getting involved with the drug ring is because his “teacher salary barely pays [his] alimony”. Alongside this, another teacher is frequently distracted by her lessons so that she can flirt with one of the main characters in her class.
Now, I’m a believer that our pop culture reflects our white noise opinions about society. What does it say about how we view teachers today that our popular movies portray teachers as corrupt, selfish, and underpaid?
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If you read Murdoch’s NY Post daily, you might get the impression that most teachers are crooks and sexual predators.
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“Now, I’m a believer that our pop culture reflects our white noise opinions about society.”
Fortunately, no. “Our pop culture” is manufactured, to sell stuff. Education shows and movies are being cranked out by deliberate propagandists, to sell the very ideas you have so astutely discerned.
I wouldn’t recommend that you give up the old-fashioned method of forming your own opinions from actual experience, or at least from the white-noise of the real, live people around you.
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Yes, we have definite problems but, I dunno … what clean, free, happy and prosperous people are we comparing ourselves to? If there is an age in history without authoritarian excess and punishment in children’s lives, I think it must be ahead of us, and not behind. So, lets set our headings that way, and move out.
First, we are a free people and nobody can “make” us punish the children around us, or the adults either. We have a choice. Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness when he was facing the the Nazi occupation of Paris, for God’s sake. Buck up, everybody.
The bad things our commentator describes are real, in our families, schools, workplaces, and city streets; but so are joy and creativity and compassion and laughter. “They” haven’t won yet, after all these thousands of years.
I got a ninth grade “advisory” group this year, and I supposedly can keep them till they graduate. We’re supposed to bond, so there will be “one adult” in the building they trust, and can turn to. I’m extremely fond of them already, after only one year.
I’m supposed to mark them AA if they’re 5 minutes late in the morning, and they’re being threatened with being held back or not graduating if they fail advisory for attendance. We require them to come in 45 minutes early on the three advisory days (which is 45 minutes before the American Academy of Pediatrics says they really should be rolled out of bed in the morning), so I can teach them trust and punctuality.
We joke about it: “Trust me, or I’ll hurt you.” But there are older forces in play, hard-wired into my nervous system and theirs. I’m their teacher; they’re a group of children in my care. Culture is the human adaptation, and love and trust are its instruments, not fear.
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You sound like a wonderful teacher. My daughter was lucky enough to go to a high school that set up an advisory system such as yours.
(Although it was only for 3 years–the school has a separate building for freshman–it is such a popular high school w/so many students
that they had to reopen their other campus, which they had built during a population explosion. The first year, my daughter–who is one who questions authority–was a little rough, but was “won over” by her compassionate mentor. Fortunately, this relationship only strengthened, seeing her through well to the end of senior year. As she also had R’s 2 cousins in advisory previously, we have all gotten together–she remains a dear friend.
&–by the way–this high school, which is one of the top 5 in our state, hasn’t made AYP for at least 2 years
(due to a 2% failure–2% short of “meets” #s–68%, say, rather than the required 70%== of their sp.ed. subgroup).The “choice” letters went out, but not one parent sent his/her child to another school.
Hmm–will there be a state take over, & will it be turned into a charter school if the school fails to make AYP for 3 years? Don’t think so.
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As a teacher of 23 years, I am completely disheartened by the “deform” movement that is currently in place thanks to ALEC. It is time we stood up and said “no more.” Yet, in many respects, I do not see this happening. Teachers are not politicians. The majority of teachers do not choose to be educators to further political ambitions. They are there because they have a God-given gift to serve the students. Most teachers leave the politics to the politicians they elected to represent them in the state houses and in the federal government. And yet, it is the very same politicians who have banded together with ALEC and with our President and Arne Duncan to dismantle public education. They have turned their back on those of us who serve as educators–the ones who will be preparing the next generation of leaders of our great country.
But the most tragic message here is being sent to our students by these sick politicians and our by very own president:
“Your teachers suck and are not worthy of being allowed to teach you. We, the politicians, know what is best for you. We are going to “fix” the problem. You won’t fail anymore because if you do, your principals and teachers will be fired. You don’t have to respect that teacher in the classroom anymore because we don’t. We will take care of you. We are going to test you, teach you, test you and keep that process going until you are an excellent test taker. You will be a successful test-taker despite the best intentions of those individuals they call a teachers who wants you to become critical thinking, problem-solving adults. We really do not want you to become critical thinkers anymore as there are people from out of country that can do that for you. You see, we are outsourcing and importing non-U.S. people to come and be your principals and teachers to replace those who we fire.
Oh, and remember, if the going gets too hard for you, it’s okay. We have lots of socialistic programs available to assist you like health care and free phones. Yep, one of the benefits of relying on the government to subsidize you is you get a free cell phone–paid for by a tax that we levy on all cell phone bills. So, take heart, you precious little one. We are wrapping you in the long arms of the Federal Government and we “promise” (they say with fingers crossed) to hold you, nurture you, and ensure you are taken care of to the best of our ability for the rest of your life.”
Yes, I agree. We are truly a sick people. To allow those who we elected to send the institution of education back to the Dark Ages is an atrocity to the profession, to the country, and most of all, to our students. The future generation does NOT deserve this kind of treatment. It is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
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I agree that teachers do not go into teaching to become politicians. However, it is up to educators to become more involved in politics and know what is happening in education. More involvement and communication with those seeking an elected position needs to be exercised. Know who you are voting for! Know what their stance is on education issues. This is something more educators need to do. Educators don’t have to become politicians. They need to become educated voters.
have
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I couldn’t agree with you more, Kathy. Educators absolutely need to become more involved int he political agenda of the elected officials. We need to stay current on the issues, keep our representatives abreast of the issues we face day in and day out, and we need to get out and vote. Therein lies one of the problems. In the state of Florida we are faced with for the next two years, at minimum, a governor who is bound and determined to privatize our public education system. He won by 50,000+ votes. About five or six times that many teachers statewide, missed the opportunity to have a say in that election.
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In 1977 the educational anthropologist Harry Wolcott published findings from a study in the book “Teachers versus Technocrats.” It was about a university-based center trying to institute a teacher-proof curriculum complete with scripted lesson plans, huge doses of paperwork and data collection in the name of “efficiency” and “accountability.” It’s a complicated study and a cautionary tale we haven’t heeded, but there are two basic findings germane to your post: 1. Teachers are constantly besieged by “soft sell” (let’s try something new) and “hard sell” reforms (do this or else). It’s been like this for a very long time. 2. The way they respond to this basically falls along a continuum with compliance on one end and resistance on the other. Wolcott poses a rhetorical question at the end of the book (and I’m paraphrasing here): “How do we stop this from happening again? We can’t.”
But, we can develop new forms of resistance if we are cognizant of them and intentional in our response. Lobbyists? New kinds of education think tanks or foundations similar to Broad (in a way) but with an advocacy agenda? These could produce the kind of research and policy analysis readers contribute to your blog but in a manner that policy makers would pay attention to. We could also learn a great deal from paying attention to the various forms of soft-selling and hard-selling taking place in our schools, media and political dialogues–there are plenty that demand more innovative and organized forms of resistance. This, I think is the change–the reform dialogue has shifted out of the classroom where teachers can resist in many ways, to the capitol buildings where teachers are out of their element.
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I posted this somewhere not to long ago:
One of the things with all the testing is the fact that these policies, NCLB and RATT, use a carrot and stick approach (mainly stick in the form of “fear” of “losing” monies-these are “fear”-based regimes). So the state fears not getting federal dollars, the states then put pressure on the districts by threatening them with withholding accreditation which can lead to a state takeover. Then the district central office threatens the building administrators with their livelihood if they don’t raise the test scores who in turn threaten the staff with their jobs (especially with idiocies like VAM) if they don’t get the students scores up.
I hope you know where this is going by now! Yes, the students then are cajoled, threatened, disciplined into “doing their best” to “help the team”. Now, maybe it’s not taught in schools of education anymore but I was taught that the best teaching and learning environment is one that is threat-free where the students feel safe and secure. So we have federal, state and district policies that tend to make the teaching and learning environment more “threatening” for the students. And they smell a “RATT”.
The students know that they are caught in a battle amongst the adults and are essentially helpless in defending themselves against the onslaught. “They only test us so they can get more money.” “If I don’t take it, it’s ten percent off my semester grade” (in other districts and states it may be withholding credit or not graduating or moving on). or “The teachers really put pressure on us because they are afraid of losing their jobs”. Yes, I’ve heard all of these multiple times and many more similar comments.
An aphorism: Any public educational practice that is based on threats and using fear as a motivator is dead wrong.
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Oh heck, they did it in the middle ages why not now? We just worship a different god, that of “efficiency” which is supposed to lead to “prosperity”. But the only ones who get the prosperity are the ones who pull the strings. At least the church was honest about when heaven would come. I grew up thinking (well, I was told) that we were the most advanced nation in the world, humph! We apparently were one of the luckiest……and when the luck ran out, well, there are always teachers around to blame.
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In Rhode Island, our professional development is a punishment. If you score a “developing” on your teacher evaluation, you are mandated to attend various PD, which are poorly run, poorly organized, and worse than useless ( some lead by Pearson). It reminds me of Chairman Mao’s re-education camps. The message is, you had better keep in line, focus on test prep, pass everyone, regardless, or you will be sent to re-education activities.
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