As the politicians and bureaucrats debate how to recalibrate their ideas about reforming the nation’s schools, it’s a good time to read what a teacher wrote about what Washington is doing to them. Maybe some thoughtful person could enter this into the record of the NCLB hearings. Is there no one in Congress who hears the voices of educators? Why don’t they invite real teachers, real principals, and real superintendents to testify instead of DC think tanks and state commissioners?
Heather wrote the following:
I am a teacher because of the love I had for school. I loved my teachers. I loved having fun while learning. I loved the interaction with my peers. I felt safe and successful at school…even when I made mistakes.
Politics and non-educators have changed our schools. They have turned them into businesses focused only on numbers and status. They have taken away the human component. Instead of teachers focusing on the well-being of the children, we have teachers forced to shove massive amounts of information down the throats of children who actually need love and nurturing. They have taken away the time to incorporate fun that kids need in order to develop a love for learning. Instead of doing all we can for our kids, we are told not to touch them…They are children. They need hugs and pats on the back. They need to know that it is okay to show affection and that there is an appropriate way to show it.
The kids aren’t the only ones affected by the decisions of these people who have never stepped into a classroom. The teachers are being stifled. They are feeling that their only purpose is to cram as much information into these children as possible. The teachers are beginning to crack under the pressure. They are criticized and made to feel that their opinions and professional knowledge are worth nothing.
These non-educators should step into a classroom. They would see the child who dominates the class time with their rude insolent behavior. They would see the child who crawls on the floor and cowers in the coat cubbies. They would see the kids who come in without breakfast or clean clothes. They would see the kids who crave attention and stand as close to the teacher as possible. They would see the tears and anxiety as the teacher plows through lessons.
Then let’s have these “experts” visit with parents who do not have a moment to spend with their kids but feel that it is all the teacher’s fault when their child misbehaves or earns poor grades. They should see the disrespectful manner in which some parents speak to the teachers…and that the teachers are instructed to “just take it”.
The paperwork and class interruptions should be the next on their list of observations. They should see that while there is a planning time it is often taken away due to parent meetings,team meetings,assemblies,and paperwork.
They should stay with the teachers until the teachers have completely stopped working for the day. This would involve them heading home with the teacher and managing a household while continuing their work for school.
Maybe after a visit with the kids and teachers, they would see that they have it all wrong. Schools are not all about numbers…schools are for the heart of the kids. Schools are meant to instill a love of learning that will last for life.
Until this happens, I fear that our schools will continue their journey of dehumanization.
I totally agree with everything you said. I am a recently retired principal who was a teacher and counselor before that. No one has the slightest clue what it’s like being a teacher unless they’ve been there in the classroom with 30 students or more, especially those bureaucrats making all the decisions for educators. Teaching was the toughest job I ever had! I commend you for your passion and dedication to teaching.
Yes yes..yes! They are treating children like manufactured goods that can have 100% “Standards” it’s appalling.
Heather did a fabulous job with this article! Unfortunately, these non-teachers don’t care about the children. They are chasing the money…
Diane, What do you think of the movie, Road to Nowhere? Thank you for all you do to keep us informed and educated about what’s REALLY going on in the education world!
________________________________
Is it possible that you mean “Race to Nowhere”
Powerful and true, two reasons why reformers sidestep this conversation.
I can’t think of another vocation where a professional is treated and regarded with such disdain. They will either break our schools for good or it will take many, many years to fix.
So many of the privatizers are blinded by their greed and self-importance…the worst and the dumbest.
I read that education is the next Wall Street debacle. I agree. Greed and money are going to be the demise of education. I went into education to give back to society. I am so grateful to be here after two bouts of cancer. The first one at 25. It was sad that I felt I had to retire early due to the way I was being treated by my Principal. The teachers, parents, and students were wonderful and sad that I left. Heather, I hope you can stick it out, but take care of yourself and your health. I got to the point that my face was breaking out at age 61. The dermatologist decided it was stress and encouraged me to retire. Guess what? No more bumps on my face. I am sad and angry because our low income students are not getting the help that they need. Learning should be exciting and fun. Not all drill and kill.
Great job, Heather. As teachers, educators, we all need to speak truth to power and make our voices heard. I don’t know what it will take to stop this madness we impose on children in the U.S. They deserve better and so do all the educators nationwide.
I find this all so disturbing. Manufacturing and choreographing a child’s every move to get them to produce “on demand” without looking into their eyes to listen to what they are telling you. I believe we will have a bubble of sociopathic children who only know how to work the system and mimic empathy on demand, but who will be hollow because that part of their growth was stifled. Where are all the child-development experts speaking out about how so much of this goes against developmental appropriateness! I truly hope I am wrong!
Well said. As a society we know how important a nurturing family is to a child. To negate a child’s emotional growth in the world where a child spends six hours a day is truly neglectful, if not abusive. If teachers are not given a system of support or unstructured time to look into a child’s eyes and know them as unique individuals, I too, worry about the irrepairable damage being done to their fragile hearts and growing souls. This “educational corporate reform” has consequences way beyond what we have already seen or care to imagine.
Modernists. There are parallels in music to education reform. According to Bruce Haynes, scholar of the Historically Informed movement, Humanist/Romantics were more interested in the personal connection to the art form. Modernists were more interested in taking personal attributes out of the music expecting everyone to make literal interpretations of every detail on the page. Whether or not you agree with Haynes, he does bring up food-for-thought. Perhaps one can substitute “the art of education” for “art form.”
The following are excerpts from his book:
As Okakura Kakuzo summed it up,
“The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power. The world is groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity. Knowledge is bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practiced for the sake of utility. (1906:8–9.)”
Modern style is the principal performing protocol presently taught in conservatories all over the world. Its spirit is summarized by a succinct piece of graffiti found in the bathroom of an American conservatory: “Chops, but no soul.” Robert Hill describes the appearance of Modernism like this:
In the period immediately following the First World War, a new spirit seized the imagination of the Western mind. A profound cultural paradigm shift, one that had been gathering momentum for many decades, finally achieved critical mass. . . . Essays, concert and recording reviews, memoirs, textbooks, reference-work entries all mirror the change in attitude. Partisans for both the late-Romantic and the modernist viewpoint engaged in polemical attacks. Actually, on most issues—espousal of fidelity to the text, eschewal of self-aggrandizing performance behaviour, condemnation of expressive exaggeration—the two schools of thought differed only in degree. They differed fundamentally in their attitudes with regard to the acceptable range of interpretive prerogative, and very specifically in their attitudes towards modifications of tempo and agogic accent.
If Romantic protocol was heavy, personal, organic, free, spontaneous, impulsive, irregular, disorganized, and inexact, Modern style is the reverse: light, impersonal, mechanical, literal, correct, deliberate, consistent, metronomic, and regular. Modernists look for discipline and line, while they disparage Romantic performance for its excessive rubato, its bluster, its self-indulgent posturing, and its sentimentality.
Modernism’s concerns are accuracy and good in-tonation, literalism in reading scores, automatic (i.e., predictable) tempos, and limited personal expression. Music reduced to audible mathematics, functioning like an automaton.
From The End of Early Music by Bruce Haynes.
I am not a musician or what would be considered musically literate, but I can follow the argument. It is essentially trying to distill an essence of music or education that we can bottle and sell.
I found Haynes’ words so completely true in terms of the reformist approach to education. To be fair, “Modern” is a catch-all term for the exacting stylistic interpretations in music of the mid-20th to 21st centuries–there are perhaps far too many innovations to fairly classify all the music from this time period under one label–but the attitude of the modern musician is definitely more literal and less personal than the approaches of the pre-Modern period. I see it as the same with education reform.
Pontificating “social equality” within any art (music or teaching) has its drawbacks. We mustn’t ignore that which makes each individual unique yet we still need to operate within the confines of a system. Teaching is a blending of support for the individual and the society, as a whole, and this delicate balance is slowly being tipped toward public “institutionalism” at its worst. Standardization (through practices such as testing and the implementation of CCCS) can be noble in raw, basic philosophy, but standardization can also be an element of oppression if misused as a soul-less approach to preparing humans for societal life independent of their parents.
Indeed the reformers want the masses to be a society of people with “chops, but no soul.” It certainly is easier to control a society like that, isn’t it?
There are various versions of the following: “when you’re a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.” Well, when you’re a bean-counter, other people’s children look like beans that need to be counted.
So it’s no wonder why the educrats and edupreneurs and edubullies are dehumanizing education for everyone else [with the exception of the schools their children attend like Sidwell Friends, Chicago Lab Schools, Cranbrook, Waldorf School of the Pacific and Harpeth Hall].
Simple solution even if very difficult to put into practice: let bean-counters count beans, let teachers teach.
It’s so sad to hear teachers describe such horrible working conditions. As an administrator I often ask myself if there is something I can do differently to support my teachers. I don’t allow parents or students to be disrespectful to teachers. I try to be a go between when problems arise, so teachers can concentrate on teaching. I make parent calls when teachers have tried unsuccessfully to change behavior. I do what I can, but the bottom line is that I can’t remove the mandates from above.
I feel so helpless because I want to create a learning environment like the one I experienced as a student so many years ago. One where learning something new is exciting and fun. One where the black cloud of the high stakes test didnt exist. I try to get teachers to bring the fun back into their classrooms, but they worry about VAM scores and think they have to teach to the test. No matter what I say, this new generation of teachers will never believe that it is ok to just teach and trust that students will learn. There is too much at stake for them, so they continue to focus on the end game of the test and focus on test taking skills.
It is tempting to wonder if opening a charter school wouldn’t be a possible solution. But I refuse to entertain that thought. Public schools should be allowed the same freedoms as charter schools and the federal government should step aside and allow local communities to govern their schools. It is possible to educate our high poverty students if educators were allowed to do what they were trained to do and noneducators would mind their own businesses. How do we take back education and put the decision making back in the hands of educators? I am waiting for the tide to turn. I feel like I am on the Titanic…
You are a wonderful principal if that makes it any better.
Thanks Linda. It makes me so angry to hear teachers describe unsupportive administrators. Their jobs are hard enough without making things worse. When I first came to my school, I saw the chaos and disrespect. I refuse to accept such low standards of behavior. I believe that most people will treat you the way you allow them to, and that we serve as role models in both actions and words for students, parents, teachers. When I interact with others, I always think of my own children, and consider what kind of behavior do I expect of myself. We spend many hours at school. We have a choice to create a supportive and respectful work and learning environment. Education is so much more than the 3 r’s. That’s the part that the Ed Deformers will never understand. Academics is only part of our job to create future citizens.
to “Bridget”
You said a mouthful with, “I do what I can, but the bottom line is that I can’t remove the mandates from above.”
The management structure or hierarchy of our schools is toxic and needs a new model, or nothing will really change.
I still think teacher boards should run the implementation of the curriculum in each individual schools.
This intolerable situation will turn around in an instant.
The current batch of administrators that have rolled in for their 2-4 year rotation are showing their love of the system that loves loves loves VAM. They are all whirling around having dipped too many times from the kool aid the superintendent on up have been pushing. It is so exhausting and demoralizing to listen to ‘leaders’ pontificate about data when everything that they say lowers my regard for them as thinking rationale professionals, The more they extol the virtues of those hard working alt certified teachers, aka tfa, to a room full of loyal to the students-even-through-crazy-making-conditions teachers, the less I can stomach it. Churn of administrators and teachers means that now our ‘loyalty’ is considered a detriment and anyone not willing to put in 12+ hours a day and weekends is not showing the level of determination that our current ‘dear leader’ has stated is necessary to get our data points in the right direction.
This is not hyperbole,
It has made so many people in our school sick with stress that for my mental health and my future health I am looking to leave the classroom. Following the press about pensions being attacked, our salaries lowered, furloughed and even tougher ‘standards’ which are not better just more ridiculously packaged means that I cannot use my skill sets to inspire students to learn for themselves, believe in themselves even in the face of adversity. Each day I swim in the kool aid, is one more day of hypocrisy. I exhort my students to be fascinated by learning, to develop their own ways of viewing the work to question everything in a rigorous and analytical way. I guide them through very challenging material and convince them they can do it- every day. Nothing is assumed that this isn’t an every day need of theirs to have someone to maintain this level of belief in them. I am the person who can beam when do learn something, when a college contacts them- the first in their family to have letters from college and what does that all mean anyway? The one that doesn’t let that inner voice that says- take the easy way, be like the rest of the crabs in the barrel.
But, it is a lie- to inspire them. I have no voice, I have no ability to be challenge or even question. I cannot be authenticate with the administrators who love the kool aid more than they love the kids, They have convinced themselves that is what being a professional is. I say it is the death knell for inspiring teaching as the kids really need it to be. Real, authenticate, rigorous and challenging.
I am no longer setting aside my own worry about my pension, my job, my vam score, the vam score of my fellow colleagues. I am gettiing out so that I can finally scream out against this kool aid, so that my skin no longer shows the ravages of stress, my own children will no longer hear the angry mutterings of someone who loves the process of learning to their very core and is stifled to do little.
I dream of a Carol Burris, a whole staff of Garfield High a whole district of Chicago Public Schools. But, the reality is that I have an in for administration who swims in the kool aid and would go blind if they took off their reform glasses.
I couldn’t agree more. I feel that in my school it is me and the students whom I teach and the teachers who cherish real rather than canned feedback against the Big Brother of Teacher Effectiveness which clouds teaching rather than illuminates it. Yesterday, a teacher told me that my speaking to him about his teaching was the first time an administrator walked into his room to have a conversation about his teaching. Previously it was all email. The school has become a series of mindless directives. I feel that when I go into my classroom and work with students and push their thinking, writing listening, talking I am making a difference, but as soon as I walk into the toxic halls to see the administration which I abhor I have to stop myself from screaming.
Spot on Heather. I would add that those teachers who have chosen the wrong profession or who have lost their passion or purpose and who no longer or never did realize they have one of the most important jobs in the world need to step out of the classroom. And not come back until they are all in for our kids. Most teachers are marginalized and disrespected. Some teachers should never be teaching.
“. . .they have one of the most important jobs in the world. . .” Utter nonsense. No teachers are not semi-gods. There are many other jobs that are way more important than teaching, farmer, sanitation workers, health professionals, police, firefighters, truck drivers, etc. . . without which society would rather quickly devolve. Teaching is the icing on the cake. I hear that phrase repeated over and over and it makes my skin crawl.
“Some teachers should never be teaching.” Do you have any more rheeformer’s talking points to share? Now I may be wrong with my take on what you have written but what you said sure sounds like edudeformer talking points to me.
Seriously, Tom? You think that because I’m afraid to be judged on test scores of children I’ve never taught, because the minutiae of my classroom are being micromanaged in the name of the Almighty Test Score, that I’m tired of having to bend and bend and bend to increasing those scores to the point where my actual curriculum is bordering on meaningless – that I should just pick up and go?
New flash: I’m a damn good music teacher. When I was in the classroom, especially in elementary (assuming I HAD a classroom, anyway, and not a closet or a stage :P), I took kids music-wise and performance-wise that I’ve seen few other teachers match at that level. Kids stuck it out and got good, and they came back the next year and got better. The middle school teachers these kids went to thanked me for teaching their students to tune their own violins, and to read dotted quarter notes, and to follow a conductor, which freed them up to do more in-depth stuff.
But when a job hamstrings me to the point where I’m stressed on a daily basis, no matter how effective I am in the classroom with the kids, I should just “step out of the classroom” for that reason?
Well, I *am* stepping out – but it’s to save my own health and sanity. And as arrogant as it may sound, it’s my school system’s loss, and my potential future students’ loss more than it is mine. NO teacher should EVER be made to feel that way by his or her job, or administrators, or working conditions. No HUMAN should be made to feel that way, to be pounded down till they lose their passion for their jobs – and most teachers I know have thrown themselves into teaching as lifelong career teachers. Do you KNOW what it’s like to have that rug pulled out from under you – to have the career you’ve dreamed about and busted your backside to do and to do WELL yanked out from beneath you? And then to be told if we’ve “lost our passion” we should just “step away from the classroom”….. wow…..there are no words, at least not family-friendly words for that.
I’m fortunate to have found a niche in early childhood music, and to have a growing cadre of private music students, but that doesn’t mean for a moment that I don’t wish again for the thrill of seeing a child “get” how to turn those tiny little screws and make her violin sound GOOD, or seeing 40 little faces shine because they got through a band piece, with all the different parts they used to find so confusing, TOGETHER, and doing it with dynamic shaping and tempo changes, even at 10YO. I miss it, and I miss it BADLY. But I don’t miss it enough to go back to it full-time – not until my school system gets off this train and back to teaching. And I sure as hell don’t need people telling me that because I’ve “lost my passion” (aka had it sucked from me forcibly) I should get out.
Yeah…. you hit a nerve. 😦
Evidently Tom has taught for several years and he knows how important our job is and how much we are respected.
You know who should not be involved in education and should not be telling teachers what to do? Basketball buddies of Obama and the real head honcho of the USDOE…Bill Gates…they should not be teaching any of us.
Enlighten us Tom with all your experience in the classroom. Grades? Subjects? City, suburb, rural? How many years? In the classroom…not the TFA scab to leadership facade.
Have you been reading Rhee’s latest manifesto?
The teachers are so important that the “reformers” must strip us of our dignity, take away our due process rights, control us with test prep and “standards”, demean us with scripted lessons, evaluate us with numbers and check off boxes on an iPad app.
That’s the way to elevate the profession and make sure every child has a great teacher. When teacher churn has been accomplished and the older more experienced teachers are gone or dead, poverty will magically end, test scores will rise, the recession will be over, there will be no more wars, everyone will have jobs.
And pigs will fly.
I am so grateful for this blog. It is rejuvenating to hear the voices of other educators. Thank you Diane and thank you to all the passionate educators who share your experiences here and in your classrooms.
Many kids are “falling through the cracks” because they can’t meet standard. As a result behavior issues arise. If a teacher is experiencing behaviors in one classroom, can you imagine timing that by the numbers of classrooms in that building. How many administrators have the answers to managing behavior in their building successfully? But it still continues to fall on the shoulders of teachers.
Having CCS in place is like teaching to the SAT which if I remember correctly are taken by only a small percentage of high school students–but now required by all students to be able to take it to be “College Ready”. We have taken away students’ rights to choose and to develop to their full potential. We need to teach our students how to protest like the 50s to fight for Student Rights to Choose. They should leave the classroom and walk with signs on testing day.
You are on to something there. Until the students and parents stand up and say “Enough”, this madness will continue. Together we outnumber the deformers who seem to hold the purse strings. Until we figure out how to stand together, we all fall…apart. Can we teach our students how to protest???
If it’s any consolation (?), it’s not just de-humanization of education, it’s de-humanization of humanity. If we’re not connected to each other, then no one cares if we bomb people around the world, if we let poor people die of treatable conditions, if greed runs rampant at the expense of ordinary people. We’ve nearly completed our “evolution” into a purely individualistic, I’ve-got-mine-so-screw-you society. The destruction of education is just one facet of that evolution.
Spot on, Dienne…a cultural de-humanist approach has taken over as the goal of existence. Perhaps this is indicative of how our culture is embedded in technology so much that it permeates our lives several times a day.
Ever wonder why, in the midst of a recession, Apple and other tech companies still do well? Our culture demands electronic communiction. It has invaded our jobs, our shopping habits, our connection to the outside world and even our family lives. The emphasis on “personal connections through electronics” as opposed to “person-to-person living, breathing connections” is difficult to avoid. Emailing, social networking, and texting all can take the human tenor out of communication if we allow them to.
How many of you have witnessed others essentially “harnessed” to their devices? As societies, we are becoming immune to interactive personal responsibility and instead are allowing ourselves to succumb to the kind of emotional detachment that arises fom barren relationships with virtual reality. No matter how hard we try to rely on finding ways to take the time to speak to others with the sounds of our very own voices, we still would rather send off a text-laden message to communicate our thoughts. The convenience factor overrules the depth of building and maintaining nuanced communication in relationships. It appears many of us don’t even understand nuance anymore. This climate is ripe for standardization of human activities such as teaching and learning.
I have a cell phone. It is turned off. I could live without it, but don’t take my computer. What would I do without this blog? I am debating whether to apply for a teaching job where they put technology as one of their priorities. I am a special ed teacher. I know how to locate the necessary resources. I am not afraid to learn what I don’t know. I don’t think that will matter.
My cell phone is one of those flip models where texting takes seemingly forever since I have to press the number pad so many times just to type a “t.” I keep the phone in my purse and use it only once a day to let the old man know I’m on my way home from work. Sometimes, 3-day old text messages are waiting for me. Friends and family have given up texting me or expecting me to be at-the-ready on my cell phone.
I am, however, attached to the iPad they gave me at work. This blog is probably the one thing I attend to several time a day…so I guess I’m guilty of being harnessed as well. Oh, the irony. 😛
I do have hope that children will someday be so “teched out” that they will ache to use pencils and papers or yearn to touch and hold books again. Then we will, no doubt, be giving seminars on using these devices to inform learning. Ha.
Actually, LG, paper and pencil is part of the special ed teacher’s bag of tricks. It adds a kinesthetic factor to learning that seems to help with processing and memory in a way typing does not. Depending on the student and what you want to accomplish with a student it can be very useful. Plus, when a pencil crashes, they don’t lose their document.
P.S. My cell phone is one of the cheap ones, too. Texting? Hah!
But the good news is there are fewer very poor people on the planet, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population and health care continues to improve around the world.
TE..you really should start your own Hallmark line of cards…when life sucks and you feel depressed, just turn to TE for a comforting, cold-hearted statistic. Beats Valium!
Is it so hard to believe that the lives of millions of your fellow human beings is improving?
I love this blog…and the people who comment on it. It’s like a virtual sitcom sometimes. 😀
The unemployment rate is going, too, but there are still lots of unemployed and underemployed people. Just a little off topic. We’re bitching and moaning right now, and worrying about poverty right here and its effects on our students is more than enough.
I’m a Duck. I love my Ducks, but where will the future Ducks be born if Bill Gates turns high schools into computer labs? Where will the football players practice? Who will be the cheerleaders? Homecoming? Fans on a crisp fall day uniting a community , cheering the team on raising local heroes to glory. Oregon football generates millions of dollars to the University and to the community and prepares the likes of LaMichael James for the big show .Furthermore, my university and your university allow persons from all walks of life, from all over the world to exchange ideas and experiences and learn how to live in a multi faceted world. Interpersonal communication builds a total human being ready to take on the challenges of life and by the way builds great football teams. I love my Ducks. I hope you love your school as well and will fight to keep teacher centered learning alive so the tradition of a democratic education will prevail as well as football. Go Ducks. Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2013 14:45:45 +0000 To: rke25@hotmail.com
Amen!
I have often thought that what a student ultimately takes from their time with a teacher is who that teacher is and not what was taught. I came to this realization upon graduating college and having done student teaching. I was thinking about my college profs and how grateful I was to have been a part of such a wonderful history dept and in particular of my thesis mentor who became my intellectual ‘dad.’ Teaching really is so much more than the regurgitation of facts and formulas. We simply must stop the corporatocracy from steamrolling our schools.
Brutus; I couldn’t agree with you more, that is the problem. Who’s your daddy becomes a more interesting question. If your daddy is Bill Gates you have learned to steal innovation from others (except there won’t be others that innovate because you destroyed their businesses to keep them from competing with you), value people by their money or ability to help you make more, and have a purely myopic vision regarding true scholarship.
I am a teacher and a supervisor and have been an educator for 23 years, and things have never been worse. At our school, the principal, barks at teachers, puts a tuidance counselor in charge who is not only corrupt but nasty to the students. The principal let a caring ESL teacher go and now the ESL students, many of whom can barely speak English have no one to advocate for their needs. When the teachers speak to the principal’s AP and mouthpiece, she tells the teachers, “Since I will be retiring, i am vocal in my ciriticsm and I receive disciplinary letters most unfounded at every turn. Neither the Union, the Network or the Superintendency has offered any support. This is the world at my school. I believe the situation is not uncommon.
Reblogged this on 70jamsession and commented:
PARENTS: We need your help! Please educate yourselves about what is happening to our community, Public Schools. If there was ever a time for a contemporary, grassroots movement, it is now. Public Education is a civil right! As both an educator of 16 years and now a parent of a son who is approaching kindergarten age, I implore all Americans to understand the truth of what is being mandated for both teachers and students. It is an abomination of our natural right to free and public education of the highest standard. The whole child is much, much more than a test score.
Thank you Heather! I think being a teacher is one of the most important jobs and I hate that the profession is under siege. Please keep holding your head high and speaking your truth.
I’d like to think parents would be allies if they knew the truth about the motives behind the promotion of high stakes testing.
I’m learning more everyday and it’s a house of smoke and mirrors. I’m so grateful for this blog, it’s good to know we’re not alone
My grandma was my hero. She was also a high-school teacher, and later a counselor. The first time I realized her stature outside our family was at an airport about 20 years ago, when one of her former students recognized her and thanked her and hugged her. That love and gratitude was inspired by her capacity to call out the greatness within the individual students entr
I’ve experienced the numbers game first hand when we were expected to identify a certain percent of our students who were the easiest to move in terms of increasing test scores. Despite this and the related pressure articulated in this post I could still impact students. For example, I helped a student with asperger’s with his science fair project and he won at the school level.
This is a complex issue and there is value to increased accountability. I will offer two examples. First, a parent with a disability shared that because NCLB resulted in her son’s test score being counted the teachers were suddenly more eager to work with him. In general the standards based reform movement has had a profoundly positive impact on special ed. The expectations for outcomes for kids with IEPs has been greatly increased (beyond testing).
It’s a baby and bathwater situation. Accountability is important. We hold our kids accountable and we need to be held more accountable. But, the means of doing this is where the rubber hits the road.
Randy
Sorry, I meant to finish that thought…entrusted to her guidance.
What gain is driving the crusade against equitable, well-rounded public education? I fear, if we allow it to fail, it will only be a privilege of people of means. I want to be wrong here, but will the end game move then be to repeal child labor laws? Then these corporate donors will have created a domestic cheap labor source. That’s pretty dark, I know. ..But you know what? Their “philanthropy is suspect.
Done!
Broken record, but please consider signing.
http://signon.org/sign/repeal-no-child-left-1
Signed!
Thanks Linda. Just signed the petition.
Everyone must read this article…here is an excerpt and the link:
The secret to fixing bad schools….New York Times
What makes Union City remarkable is, paradoxically, the absence of pizazz. It hasn’t followed the herd by closing “underperforming” schools or giving the boot to hordes of teachers. No Teach for America recruits toil in its classrooms, and there are no charter schools.
A quarter-century ago, fear of a state takeover catalyzed a transformation. The district’s best educators were asked to design a curriculum based on evidence, not hunch. Learning by doing replaced learning by rote. Kids who came to school speaking only Spanish became truly bilingual, taught how to read and write in their native tongue before tackling English. Parents were enlisted in the cause. Teachers were urged to work together, the superstars mentoring the stragglers and coaches recruited to add expertise. Principals were expected to become educational leaders, not just disciplinarians and paper-shufflers.
School officials flock to Union City and other districts that have beaten the odds, eager for a quick fix. But they’re on a fool’s errand. These places — and there are a host of them, largely unsung — didn’t become exemplars by behaving like magpies, taking shiny bits and pieces and gluing them together. Instead, each devised a long-term strategy reaching from preschool to high school. Each keeps learning from experience and tinkering with its model. Nationwide, there’s no reason school districts — big or small; predominantly white, Latino or black — cannot construct a system that, like the schools of Union City, bends the arc of children’s lives.
A great article, but I cringed “un pie” meaning a piece of the pie in the third grade classroom. My basic Spanish always taught me that “un pie” was a foot. Duane? I am hoping that I am ignorant or the writer blew it, not the teacher. It’s still a school system in which we could all teach.
What specifically is this person talking about? If she’ referring to measuring school success solely on annual achievement test data, I agree that such practices reduces a broad focus of schools. However, referring to the “push for data” is casting the net too broad – there are many beneficial uses of data, and many ways in which those “hugs” translate into improved data. Ask a teacher who teaches children with difficult lives outside of the classroom if children seem to learn more when being taught in a safe, loving environment.
Well, that pretty much says it all…..
Too many control freaks at the top pushing to micromanage every minute of every day, just to ensure that none of us 99%’ers can step back and actually find the time to stop the dehumanizing of the masses. Now more than ever, we need to “stay the course,” and continue to push back and let these freaks know we won’t give up until they all go away!
Gee, the Florida governor is up for re election soon and decided to visit schools. From what I understand he hand picked the schools he went to and did closed door sessions with select people.
Great comments Heather! I have been teaching for 35 years and thought I’ve seen and experienced it all. I am scared for the future of public education as it appears to be headed. Never have I heard such disdain and disrespect for teachers who are expected to do it all, often without support from parents, administrators and sadly, colleagues.
Well said! This needs to be said over and over and over until “they” get it.
Diane, I applaud this teacher’s essay and also your wish to have REAL teachers testify to what we all know, all too well are the destructive “isms” and political parties who never saw a teacher worth praise, but facetiously heap unmerited praise on the inquisitorial, corporate sponsored shills to “education reform” whose true motives are hidden by the knowing media, talking heads who only do what the corporate, greedy “experts” want: trash public school teachers, next in line, public schools themselves and extol undeserved praise on the shock troopers of destruction, namely Gate, Rhee and the Bush clan now headed by Jeb who charades as a public spirited citizen, driven NOT by filthy lucre, but saintly, patriotic motives! That alone is a colossal scam the 4th estate will NEVER dispel because they reside in the pocket of the corporate driven greedy “reformers!” I dearly wish we could have another, cell phone bartender at one of Bush/Gate/Rhee celebrations of destruction that could tape the thoughts if these “educational pirates”
as they gloat over their victims much like Romney did in that revelatory, “private” meeting “of his corporate backers that cost him the election. These types scurry from any illumination of their motives just like reptiles scurry from equally from sunlight.!