Is it possible to be a classic if the thing is only two years old?
Well, this post is a classic. It’s by a teacher who sometimes calls himself a “union thug.”
I met him last year, and he is one smart guy.
He asks a simple question, “In what other profession?”
And his response is a classic.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks! Loved these analogies!
Lately I’ve been saying teachers are in the position of a doctor who diagnoses a patient, is then denied medicine for the patient, and is fired when the patient gets sicker!
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I agree, Diane. this is a classic!
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Anyone just needs to look at the original letter and the comments that follow to see what a loud and horribly misinformed faction of the general public thinks about teachers and their opinions, especially when it comes to the old “protecting teachers’ jobs is bad” argument. It is disheartening to see the amount of effort put forth by people trying to vilify the writer because he is a teacher.
There are even people who teach for a living who are jumping on the band wagon of misinformation. I think the public political discourse is partially the problem here: It’s easier to blame those compensated by the public coffers for all the ills of society than to actually understand how these systems are set up and how their funds are managed.
Anyone who is ignoring the political connections to the opinions of teachers is naive. We must work to separate rhetoric from practical analysis. Due to the nature of “compensation from the public” in our public school system, teachers will always be viewed from a fiscal perspective in connection to a pedagogical one.
The problem with the “arm-chair” teachers in the public is they equate compensation issues with performance issues ignoring the numerous variables that affect overall student success. For teachers to overcome the challenges that these variables often impose, they would need complete control over all of the environments of their students without even the free will of students themselves in the equation. This is, of course, impossible, but to listen to the rants of those who would berate a teacher just for having an opinion about improving education, you would think that the teacher is a Megamind character who sits at a console in “some evil genius laboratory” manipulating each student while sipping lattes and collecting a huge undeserved paycheck to boot.
How do we get out the message that teachers deserve fair and equitable contracts for the work they do without appearing that teachers are asking for something undeserved?
It’s nearly impossible to keep the “performance” discussions about performance and the “compensation” discussions about compensation, but I’m finding the epidemic of misinformation among the populace has even spread to my own public school colleagues.
It’s also clear that this “bad teachers are rampant in education” propaganda is being used on those who might be considered teachers of “alternate systems,” like so many in the charter school microcosm.
Case in point: I took part in the discussion by the TFA teacher with a background in social science who posted that she was questioning some of the TFA philosophies. At one point, in the discussion another poster wrote that TFA teachers were union breakers thus inciting a political turn to the discussion of pedagogy.
She wrote back asking why TFA being non-union is a bad thing, and then questioned whether “unions were necessary” stating that she feels there are far too many “bad” teachers in the profession protected by unions. In response to this comment, I attempted to describe due process to her and asked her to research the history and laws surrounding unionized protections in regard to due process. She thanked me for my points stating that she would indeed do more research from a social science point-of-view.
Why doesn’t the trained social scientist TFA teacher already know about due process? Here is an educated person who thinks for herself admitting that she needs more information about this topic even after she stated that she already has a position, but one would expect that TFA and organizations like it would not support unions since they make their respective livings in the private industry.
For those in the public school profession, ask yourself this: Do YOUR colleagues understand the history and necessity of due process? I’ve been finding that more and more of today’s teachers (public or otherwise) really do not understand the value of “valuing” one’s employees. They themselves have not learned the history and instead are falling victim to the pairing of job protection to performance as if one is directly dependent on the other with no grey area.
The reality is that performance IS tied to one’s job no matter what the job is–but protections regarding compensation and working conditions aside, there is a separate argument within the system to speak to performance issues. One must tread very lightly when trying to over-simplify the arguments.
Performance and compensation are indeed intertwined, but the relationship is far more intricate than many think. You simply cannot play around with the demanding variables of a job and blame the worker for results that are less-than-favorable without having examined the variables to the fullest extent. This process takes time, and unions protect the person by giving investigations the time necessary to be thorough.
That is not to say that anyone who is not doing his or job should be ignored or allowed to continue without taking steps to improve, but to view this intricate relationship without taking into account all the factors that influence performance is to take the easy and misinformed way out. Yet so many teachers themselves do not understand this process, and therefore are not equipped to defend it. It’s far easier to agree that there are “bad teachers” asking to be compensated for poor performance and teacher protections allow for this–a view that is simply absurd. The unfortunate result of that line of thinking is that eventually no teachers will be compensated for doing the job as those with monetary interests in education seek to prove that “students are never successful enough to warrant the fair compensation of their teachers.”
Getting back to the vilification of teachers and their opinions…when will the NEA or FTA take these public character assassinations to task? Like many others in the profession, I’m tired of the rhetoric about “failing” schools and “bad” teachers, and I’m tired of this rhetoric fueling the privatization fire by misleading even those with an honest interest in improving education without trying to profit from it.
Too many in the public are believing the misinformation, and while so many individuals feel they can make a difference, the message needs to be taken up by a masses of educators who know the truth and have the resources to get out there with the correct message.
We as educators must correct the message to reflect reality, no matter what part of the education “food-chain” we find ourselves.
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One way to intervene in a small way is to change one’s langauage. No more “education reform” or “school reform”. We choose to use the term school improvement. No more use of “failing schools”–we make it struggling schools. No more “bad teacher”–we use ineffective teacher. We have found this to be a truer, more honest way of talking about educators vision and goals. Education professionals have always worked to improve their schools. Struggling schools still have lots of good things happening inside their walls. Ineffective teachers can be helped to become ever more effective. We choose to not use the vocabulary of edreform.
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Agreed. Many who would put down educators often use buzzwords to which the public responds. We can begin to change the message by using terminology that better explains reality, but the naysayers in the public would have to suspend the disbelief that teachers are not supposed to be humans who can make mistakes from time to time. I think it has become sport to publicly demean teachers who make mistakes no matter how big or small because teachers are expected to be perfect. The ones who are not must be “ineffective.”
I had a conversation with a distant relative just last week where she commented on how her daughter had some good teachers in her first year in high school, but she also had a few bad ones. The relative voiced her dissent with the fact that “bad teachers” still are allowed to be teaching in this day and age. I asked her to give me an example of what made one of these teachers so bad. She proceeded to explain that the teacher did not post the homework assignments online but all of her daughter’s other teachers did. Then the teacher had the “gall” to tell her that she as the parent was responsible for seeing that her child did her schoolwork. I was able to understand her frustration due to the teacher not doing what she as a parent expected her to do especially since others were posting assignments. However I did ask her what level of responsibility her daughter should have had in keeping track of the assignments. She said, “Well I know she’s supposed to be writing these things down, but she isn’t good at remembering that stuff.” Then the relative admitted to me that not posting the homework online doesn’t necessarily make the person a “bad teacher,” but she felt the person wasn’t helping her daughter to do her best by not putting everything online for the parent to see. Therefore, it was easier to just call the person a “bad teacher.” I asked her to be very careful with those kinds of terms in conversations as minor issues can be solved before they get blown out of proportion–failing to work towards solutions can lead to complaints, enough of which can compromise a person’s livelihood.
I learned that it’s very easy to throw terms around even for relatives who we think understand our profession because they support us.
(Speaking of being careless with terms, I do apologize for my typo stemming from an apparent bout with quasi-dyslexia. I meant “the NEA and the AFT,” not “the NEA and the FTA.” My local association is the FTEA which is probably what was on my mind when I typed that.)
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