Archives for the month of: August, 2012
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Why She Left Teaching

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
35

I don’t think teachers who are passionate about teaching should quit, no matter how awful the circumstances.

I know it’s easy for me to say, because I am not there.

But it is important to keep experience and wisdom in the profession.

Don’t let them push you out.

Do what you love and what you believe in.

Be there the day this war on teachers ends, a victim of its inanity, stupidity, and ignorance.

Be there for your students.

This is a teacher who couldn’t take it anymore.

I retired early with just 20 years because the profession I have been so dedicated to and passionate about my entire life has been trashed by reformers like this idiot who don’t know what they are talking about; by the mayor and his educrats who have taken to vilifying teachers and disrespecting us at every turn; by the principals who haven’t taught long enough to be considered pedagogical experts on anything; by the most micromanaged, scripted, suffocating instructional mandates (everyone teaching the same lesson on the same day at the same time…day1, day2, day 3, day4, day 5, test); by the incessant and overwhelming collection of data that appears to have more value than actual creative planning and professional judgement. We have principals and Network leaders whose english and communication skills are abysmal; superintendents who don’t visit the schools they oversee; and a culture that supports the abusive and punitive treatment of teachers. This is antithetical to everything that made me want to become a teacher. New York City has lost many outstanding and experienced teachers in the past 5 years who left because they refuse to continue working under such conditions. Under the current system of school based budgeting, it’s always a good thing when a senior teacher leaves -they can hire two teachers at half the salary. When you’re looking at numbers and not people, that’s what really matters.
Categories NYC, Teachers and Teaching

A Florida Teacher Describes A Plan That Worked

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
29

In response to another reader, this Florida teacher describes a plan for teacher professionalism that worked very well but was de-funded by the Legislature.

In Florida, we used to have a system in place for such merit: It was pay for National Board Certification. Teachers went through a very rigorous process of evaluations, lesson planning, test-taking, etc. over a year and submitted their work to a national organization to be evaluated. It was a tough process, and not every teacher made it. Some teachers took several years of re-submitting their work before they were considered National Board Certified.

Once teachers earned initial certification, they were expected to become mentor teachers to newer teachers. The idea was to help develop and retain other strong teachers in the field.

Florida used to pay for the costly process of becoming certified. Once teachers were certified, they got an bonus of several thousand dollars- merit pay if you will- each year. They even had to re-certify every few years. Beyond that, NBCT teachers were paid bonus money for the number of hours they put in mentoring.

So what happened to this system of merit pay? It got cut. Completely done away with. The legislature used to fully fund it, but even before the economy tanked (because of course, that would be the argument for doing away with a program that actually improved the teaching profession and retained the best teachers) they cut all funding for the program. The very same legislators who pushed through our ill-conceived current merit pay plan- cut all funding for a merit-pay program that was actually working.

And how much funding is there now for our current merit-pay plan based strictly on test scores? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. How in the world does any businessman propose a merit pay plan with no actual merit?

It’s destined to fail in every capacity. Well, except one: increasing the bottom-line for test companies. As we divert (not come up with new funding, but divert from existing classroom funds) millions of dollars into hundreds of new poorly-written tests meant to “fit” this merit pay plan and determine who the “best” teachers are.

And as others have said, you are trying to quantify something that can’t be measured. Bonuses for coaching, sponsoring clubs, taking on leadership roles, extra tutoring, going through rigourous evaluation systems like National Board, I could buy it- those generally are your best teachers who truly are there for the kids.

But what we are doing with test scores is a complete joke. This WILL fail and I pray in a few years the pendulum starts to swing back towards common sense.

 

 
 
Categories Accountability, Florida, Teachers and Teaching

A Nomination for Florida’s Commissioner

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
3

A reader has a suggestion for the next Comissioner of Education in Florida. I am mentioning this because he made me laugh out loud. More than once.

I actually think that Bill Gates might like this job. He could try his bracelets on the kids, and use Florida as a kind of laboratory for reform. Florida always scores near the bottom with testing anyway, so what the hell. It is all the fault of the unions…oh I forgot, they don’t have unions, sorry. It may be something to do with the heat and optimal temperature for brain function. The kids could wear special helmets that would reduce the temperature of their heads to 72 degrees. He could lower the teaching requirements and start pulling people off the street to come in and try to raise test scores. “Hey you with the surfboard!” “Have you ever thought about being a teacher for two years?” “Put down that board and come with me.” Something like that. The rich people (the people who count/the job creators) already send their kids to private schools, so he wouldn’t get any pesky lawsuits. It sounds like a plan. Maybe he could bring Rhee in with him to fire them after two years. He could bring them in off the street, and Rhee could shout “no excuses for poverty” and fire them. I have some e-mails to write.

Categories Chiefs for Change, Florida, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

This School Took NY Times’ Advice: Carrots & Sticks for All

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
1

The New York Times was late in recommending carrots and sticks for teachers. Here is a school that is doing it already (satire alert!):

http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/08/grin-and-bear-it-teachers-paddled-in.html

Categories Merit pay, Teachers and Teaching

How to Incentivize Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
13

This is what teachers work for: knowing they made a difference in the lives of students.

Have you thanked a teacher lately?

I have every single note that a parent has sent me over the years and every card that my students, once old enough to actually write (i teach pre-) has sent me years later.  I have my entire fridge covered in notes and some of my kitchen cabinets as well, along with class pictures from every year I have been in my current school.
I have one family who send me pictures of the four of their children who have passed through my class.  I have one more coming next year.
No amount of money can give me the feeling that those cards and pictures and notes give me.
When my students come back to my room and tell my current pre-k children what they did when they were in my class and how important it is to listen and pay attention, I want to cry.
The people who think that carrots and sticks are the answer don’t understand that some people have callings and others just get a job.

Categories Merit pay, Teachers and Teaching

Which Metrics Matter in Judging a Teacher?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
10

A reader asks a question, and I ask the teachers who follow this blog to answer him.

I suggest he read the earlier posts on the subject, but please feel free to give him your answer based on your experience:

What if metrics could be established apart from testing? Does anyone have ideas as to how metrics could be gleaned apart from testing? Seems to me the state (and its funding) want to frame teacher improvement within their own understandings of measurement.

If you could somehow assess another teaching aspect on a consistent basis, do you think that would help remove the otherwise normally applied incentive to good, hard work (salary or bonus compensation)?

I don’t mean to be rude, just curious as to your perspectives.
Categories Merit pay, Teachers and Teaching

This Made My Day

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
5

Yesterday I posted a comment by a reader who said that his teachers had saved his life and changed him for the better.

He thanked four of his teachers in the Chicago public schools and he named them.

One of the teachers he thanked just responded and thanked him!

How cool is that?

That is true psychic income!

That’s better than the shekels that the teacher might have been paid for raising test scores.

She changed his life.

Hey, Roland Fryer, what about that as an incentive to teach?

She made a difference.

When I ask myself why I spend so much time on this blog, I’ll remember this.

Categories Merit pay, Teachers and Teaching

Who Should Be Florida’s Next Commissioner?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
12

That was the question I was asked by a reporter from the Tampa Bay Times.

It seemed that his last story on that topic had a list of names such as Michelle Rhee, John White, and Joel Klein.

Someone suggested he contact me, and this is what I told him.

Read the story as it presents an interesting contrast to the list of names approach.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida

Who Are Those “Fools with Sticks?”

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
2

On the topic of carrots and sticks, a reader writes:

Carrots and sticks have nothing to do with what education needs-it’s about honesty-and oh yeah, a good pair of hedge clippers. Policymakers, in collusion with the “reform” industry had been searching for an opening for their attack on public education, and the financial crisis gave that to them.They tried the approach of “we are being outperformed by other nations” since the time of Sputnik and most notably in “A Nation At Risk”. The textbook/workbook/testing and standards industry began to boom, and despite the fact that this nation was built into the greatest nation on the planet without those things-schools became our biggest threat. Over the decades since, standards and testing have been reworked repeatedly,and the results/grading criteria were usually arrived at in a process kept secret from students, teachers and schools. I remember a year when a brand new state writing test was administered to 5th graders. The students did very well! So then they made it a test for 4th graders. After working in a system like this, as mandates and expectations increase and funding is taken away-dangled somewhere or shifted to “regional councils” or training centers to help schools do more with less….Well, it starts to appear as if failure is imposed so the stick can be swung. The testing industry proves how much we need them when kids do poorly on the tests.

Teachers could show how well students can do, the successes we can help them realize, in measures that don’t necessarily involve bubbles/boxes/or a computer monitor (but might, depending on the student) we might help kids get the carrot. Or the apple, or the broccoli-whatever! If this new wave of “reform” was HONESTLY about children, experts that truly understand children and how they develop would be involved and explain much better than I can here: people are not standard, neither are their skills/aptitudes and destinies, parents in conjunction with educators are best able to maximize student potential. Which brings me to the hedge clippers. I sometimes feel like that psycho-dad played by Jack Nicholson in The Shining-chasing that kid foolishly around a hedge-maze someone else created. <<>>He dies from exposure and the kid gets away. Okay, the kid shouldn’t have run into the maze. Jack, if he really wanted to catch the kid, shouldn’t have run in after him.

This is the problem with private interests being allowed to insinuate themselves more and more into the education of children-controlling education and the debate. They will never admit that, for them, it’s about money first. Valid data gathering shows that students with resources allowed to learn in more nurturing supportive settings (NOT TESTED ENDLESSLY) do well.The most powerful know little if anything about kids NOT born into privilege and security, yet they have been allowed to create the hedge maze I have to chase students through-hoping we make it to a predetermined end. They couldn’t guide a roomful of hungry, tired, challenging kids to a place that would be success. I know some people who could. All they need is to be turned loose with their hedge clippers and get protection from the fools with sticks.

Categories Merit pay

A NO to Sticks and Carrots

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
10

Sara Stevenson is the librarian at the O. Henry Middle School in Austin, Texas.

She is an activist for public education.

She is tireless.

She scans the Internet, reads voraciously, and writes letters to the editor to set people straight about the facts.

If every teacher and principal and superintendent and parent and librarian and guidance counselor and school psychologist did what Sara Stevenson does regularly, the national conversation would change.

The American public would be better informed.

The policymakers would change their tune.

The hedge fund managers would go back to dabbling in polo ponies and yachts.

And we could all concentrate on doing what is necessary to make our schools and our society better for all students.

Watch for her letters to the editor in the Wall Street Journal and other national publications.

 

Categories Education Reform, Merit pay
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