Louis Filippelli, a teacher in the Cleveland public schools, writes that all of the most popular nostrums about school reform are wrong.
The governor, the mayor, the teachers’ union, the business community, and elected representatives are on the wrong track, he says.
More money, he writes, won’t solve the fundamental problem in the school, which is the lack of parent and student responsibility.
Filippelli maintains that the leaders are averting their eyes from the real crisis:
“The assumption that large numbers of student failures must be the fault of an incompetent, lazy, burned-out, greedy teacher is a ludicrous proposition. The paradox here is that in the real world of modern inner-city education, the teacher with the higher failure rate may indeed be the superior teacher. Challenging students with high academic standards and rigorous testing will inevitably mean low or failing grades on a grand scale for pupils either unwilling or unable to do the work.
“Standardized test scores tell little or nothing about teacher quality especially when dealing with an unprepared, unmotivated, and severely insubordinate student body.
“Teachers who complain about discipline issues are admonished by the administration as weak in classroom management skills and thus bombarded with never ending “professional development” sessions that tout group work and new “strategies.” In reality no one really knows what to do with the staggering amount of children whose sole purpose seems to be to derail the entire educational process.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A needed reality check.
Twenty percent of my second grade students are on grade level. Nine of them (more than 1/3 of my class) failed vision screening. I am convening student study teams on 8 of them because they appear to have some sort of learning disability. I have 2 students who constantly talk/sing in class. I have a student who brought a lighter to school and tried to set her backpack on fire in class. I am retiring after next year. As for this year? That which does not kill me, makes me stronger!!
It isn’t the teachers it is the families that are at the fundamental core of why low-income kids fail in school.
High Poverty Inner City Teacher here. Known to be a tough teacher and under continual pressure to “just pass” the kids. “See what you can do.” I stick to my guns and guess what often happens? Test scores go up, grades pull out of nosedives in time to pass for the year, and real learning and growth happens. Policy makers all seem to think that because they ATTENDED school that they now somehow UNDERSTAND it better than professional teachers. Real teachers welcome and value the input and efforts of people outside the profession. Why must our input and effort be ignored and impugned? Answer: because the politicians and billionaires pushing RTTT know that their efforts cannot withstand the light of truth. Theirs is to get as much profit out of the urban schools before cutting and running when their policies come crashing down around the community’s ears. The Race To The Toppers will be miles away by then.
I absolutely agree with everything he says about teachers. However, pinning the blame on students and parents isn’t really helpful either. Students and parents are often locked in cycles of generational poverty. They themselves are often the result of teen pregnancy, domestic violence, drug/alcohol fueled couplings, etc. Their parents had few resources, little knowledge and often little desire to raise them. They suffered through childhood hardships and, seeing little future for themselves, turn to many of the same outs that caused the problems in the first place – sex, drugs, alcohol, gangs, etc. And ’round and ’round she goes.
I don’t know exactly what the solution is, but I know it will have to be systemic and will need to have buy-in from the community*, which you’re not going to get by blaming parents. The name of the game is supporting everyone involved, not just passing the blame buck.
Preferably, in fact, it will come from and be designed by the community. Outside help should only play a supporting role.
At an even more fundamental level, there has to be a paradigm shift in our thinking about “family.” In Philadelphia, 73% of children are born to single mothers. While the possibility of raising a whole, school-motivated, teacher-compliant child is possible, it is made much more difficult when a male parent-guardian is not present and involved. You can give as much assistance (financial, food stamps, social programs) as you want but, until we see an increased role of males in our families, we’re just whistlin’ Dixie. Poverty is a problem but, in my opinion, we need to rethink the role of fathers in our families.
This writer’s observations are consistent with the views routinely expressed by inner-city teachers/principals in first-person books, blog comments, and media website comments — that is, that the major obstacle to effective instruction (and the major cause of teacher burnout) is minor but endemic student misbehavior. (Another frequently-cited obstacle to effective instruction is students reading far below grade level.)
It’s amazing that the school reform debate largely ignores the student-misbehavior issue — instead focusing on high-stakes testing/teacher discharge and charters. (Charters do address the student-misbehavior issue, but do so by avoiding rather than solving the problem — charters allow the children of concerned parents to escape from most of the misbehavior while exacerbating the misbehavior problem in the neighborhood schools by siphoning off the better-behaving students.)
Not clear why the school reform debate ignores the student-misbehavior issue. Granted — unlike high-stakes testing and charters — there are no for-profit firms obviously posed to make $ out of student misbehavior solutions. But, for most inner-city elected officials, improving the inner-city schools to the point where middle-class parents will want to send their children to the schools would so enhance their political careers as to overwhelm the entreaties of the for-profit high-stakes testing and charter firms.
Perhaps inner-city elected officials (and teachers/principals/superintendents) are afraid that, if they advocate school reforms to reduce student misbehavior, community leaders will label them racist or, at least, insufficiently sensitive to the disadvantages students suffer who come from low-SES inner-city families. However, given that many/most of these inner-city elected officials are themselves minority group members, it seems unlikely that fear of being labelled racist or even insensitive would be a rational fear.
Diane — what do you think? To what extent is student misbehavior an obstacle to effective instruction in low-SES area schools? Why does this problem receive so little attention in the school reform debate?
I hardly think the rheeform movement is ignoring behavior. Haven’t you heard about these “no excuses” schools that fine kids for every conceivable minor infraction, from not tracking the teacher with your eyes to having the wrong color belt? I think behavior management is a primary focus of charter schools, in much the same way that inmate management is a primary focus in prison.
If Mr. Filippelli is correct that “Irresponsible parents and the children they are failing to raise are the real culprits…”, behavior management would seem to be a necessary first step in improving learning in many schools.
The only person who can “manage” a child’s behavior is the child him/herself. If parents and teachers want a child to properly manage his/her behavior, they have to give him/her (a) reason(s) to do so. Such reasons can be fear-based (i.e., fear of punishment), but that will only last so long as the child is concerned about getting caught and so long as the child really believes the adult(s) can and will followo through. If you want a child to manage his/her own behavior independently (internally), it needs to be developed through a process of adult nurturing and respect for the child and his/her needs.
Fear based incentives may be enough to allow the other students in the classroom to learn.
Not for long, and it’s likely to have more harmful consequences down the line as those kids turn more to gangs.
Reformers pretend that such problems don’t exist, and if they do, it’s the teachers fault for having low expectations. They claim that 100% of kids will be proficient and go to college if the bad teachers are fired. And they point to charters as the solution.
So you disagree with Dienne in the post above saying that “behavior management is a primary focus of charter schools”?
no one really knows what to do with the staggering amount of children whose sole purpose seems to be to derail the entire educational process
So instead of addressing real problems–empowering teachers to address their piece of student misbehavior–Ohio’s State Board of Education (at the direction of the Governor and General Assembly and with help from the Ohio Department of Education) simply piled more on.
2006: “Data shall be used to determine the amount and nature of faculty and staff professional development necessary to implement the school district’s mission and Strategic Plan. Professional development for all faculty and staff shall be continually evaluated and improved to align with school district goals and objectives and to meet the changing needs of students.”
2010: “Data shall be used to determine the amount and nature of faculty and staff professional development necessary to implement the school district’s vision, mission, and strategic plan. Professional development planning may include the identification of observable and measurable staff learning outcomes, the individual or group needs of faculty and staff to develop or improve the knowledge and skills necessary to address personalized and individualized student learning needs, a focus on closing the gap between student performance and the expectations for student performance, and identification of the resources necessary to support the professional learning outcomes, follow-up and evaluation. Professional development for all faculty and staff shall continually be monitored, evaluated, and improved to align with school district goals and objectives and to meet the changing needs of students.”
The additional verbiage comes as part of bold, union-approved, and award-winning education policy endorsed by teachers.
Won’t the public education doomsday clock advance toward midnight until the concerns of teachers like Louis Filippelli are genuinely addressed?
Well said!
Misbehavior is a very serious problem in urban areas, particularly where the classrooms are far too large.
He is correct about money… It does not solve issues in schools as far as students not doing their work or passing tests; however it is a little harsh to put the blame solely on the children and their parents.