An administrator in Louisiana writes about how the Jindal administration tries to strike fear in the hearts of all educators while boasting of their great success.
Dear Bridget, here is my advice: “Illegitimi non carborundum.”
Be there when their pathetic regime is toppled by the good and great citizens of Louisiana.
Bridget writes:
It definitely is getting more and more difficult for teachers to stay. As an administrator, I see the panic on their faces as the date of the state test looms closer each day. Here in Louisiana, our jobs are tied directly to their VAM score, which over-rides any evaluation score given to them by our team. As administrators, we do our best to help to empower them with information and resources, but it will never be enough. Our governor has set us up for failure. I often think about returning to my special education classroom to finish out my last five years before retiring. Then I realize there may not be a retirement system left in five years. The joke is on me. After dedicating my life to teaching, I will probably not have anything to show for it except memories and/ or nightmares. My starting salary years ago was around $13,000 a year. I definitely didn’t get into this career for the money. Thanks to this blog I stick it out. I now have a place to stay abreast of what is happening across our nation. Don’t know how long I can last… one day at a time. I agree with Jesse that it is unfair to leave in the middle of the school year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m also a teacher in Louisiana and go through the help wanted ads almost daily. Shortly thereafter I think of my kids. I can’t leave, not now. I owe it to them. When summer comes, I make no promises.
The other sad part of this mess is that quality administrators are going to flee. I’m working for the best building principal I’ve ever had in 27 years, and she is just getting killed by the implementation of APPR/Common Core here in NY. We have around 50 teachers in our building. She’s supposed to evaluate the non-tenured teacher 2 or 3 times a year and the tenured once a year. Pre-conference, evaluation,post conference. Do the math, it isn’t possible. She’s trying to get it done, but I worry for health because of the stress.
Tuppercooks, could you please provide more details about how much time is expected for each eval?
Some teachers have argued (fairly) that administrators not doing their jobs is part of the reason that some ineffective teachers remain in their job, along with many effective ones. So I’d like to understand if there is a certain amount of time expected for each observation, and how many non-tenured teachers your school has.
Thanks.
This principal obviously believes in doing a fair and credible job of evaluation that is meant to improve teaching practice. I would be willing to bet that the classroom evaluations are not ten minute walk throughs and that the pre- and post conferences actually are used to inform both the principal and teacher and to help them both reflect on what is best practice. In plain English, There is no quick and easy way to do quality evaluations.
Joe, I cannot speak for others but it takes considerable time to complete an evaluation here in Louisiana, called COMPASS. It requires a 30 minute preconference, followed by a lesson observation, which must be an entire lesson cycle (60-90 min.), and a 30 minute post conference. I have had some preconferences take 2-3 sessions due to a teacher requiring more assistance, as well as post conferences that last an hour with follow ups as necessary. Then the cycle begins again for a second unannounced observation. This doesn’t count the time it takes to log in the information on the state data system. Multiply this times 35-40 teachers, twice each at our school and you can imagine it is not easy to run the daily details of a busy school, including discipline. It is not easy, but we take our responsibility seriously. Teachers often judge their administrators, but our plates are as full as theirs. You calculate the time required. I spent my winter break getting mine finalized so I can start the next cycle.
Bridget, thanks for helping clarify the time it takes for evaluations. It does sound a very significant, demanding use of your time.
Having said that, and I mean this with respect (having been an inner city teacher and administrator, and a parent of 3 kids who all attended and graduated from urban public schools), isn’t spending a significant amount of time observing and helping improve the work of teachers one of the top priorities for principals?
For years, I have heard from many teachers that it is the principal’s job to review teachers’ work and if necessary, provide correction, and if necessary, recommend removal. Isn’t this a fair description of a major (not the only, but a major) priority for principals?
Perhaps you feel that the La teacher observation system takes more time than is required. I’m not sure, and I am trying to understand. Thanks for your insights. And thanks for being a principal in these challenging times.
In NJ at our high school, our Danielson TEACHNJ model has us observing tenured teachers 4 times per year and non tenured teachers 5 times. Each of the supervisors for math, English, SS and Science are taking on other departments and, along with the Principal and VP’s, each taken on 65 observations, each with a pre and post conference. So despite the fact that I, one of the supervisors, will have a preobservation or observation or post observation every day of the school year, I am also expected to do my best job as a supervisor for my department. There’s your time commitment.
Hang in there. The students and teachers would miss your compassion and wisdom. While I understand the pressure of that type of climate, we have to remember our personal mission. Mine is to do “it” until it’s over.
Thanks Diane, Having a supportive community here definitely helps keep me going. I am so thankful that I found this blog just as I was considering throwing in the towel. I hope you know how much your commitment to our collective cause has made a difference. We needed a leader like you to bring us together. I have committed myself to stay and fight. Mostly because of the students. Over 93% of my students live in poverty. I don’t under stand why their plight has been abandoned by our president and I wonder where our civil rights leaders are hiding??? Each day these students remind me that they are worth fighting for. They have much to offer society. I don’t want to grow old in a society with no diversity. I want them to have a voice in our democracy.
I recently watched Justice Sotomayer (sp?) on Charlie Rose and wondered if one of my 600 students had the potential to fill such shoes. One never knows…
Many thanks to my friends here.
Bridget
Bridget – become part of a growing group of educators and parents speaking out against Jindal’s determination to sell our public schools. Join SaveOur Schools National http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org and participate in our actions. Follow my blog http://www.geauxteacher.net or http://www.louisianavoice.com and others. We can take back public education but we must fight.
I won’t say “hang in there” because it’s not my place to tell you what your personal limits are. I will say that we here in Florida have the same problems you have in Louisiana and I’ve watched a mass exodus of the most talented, experienced teachers walking out the door, one by one, as they reach retirement eligibility.
Those of us who still have a few years to go are taking it one day at a time but when you have to face an impossible task day in and day out and know that you are contributing to your own destruction it becomes an exercise in masochism and I doubt that’s helpful to the kids to see their teachers go through psychological intimidation and destruction.
For those among us who are not yet dealing with these laws I urge you to pay attention and plan ahead for your life and the life of your family if you have one. At least in the right-to-work states, we have no legal way to fight the laws that make us unwillingly imitators of Sisyphus, rolling an impossibly large stone up an ever higher and steeper hill only to watch it roll back down again and again, other than political advocacy. The gerrymandering of the states districts and the corporate/federal hegemony against us makes any action very dangerous to one’s livelihood and well being.
The emotional, psychological, and physical tolls are high indeed and no one can tell another person that should keep at it and sacrifice themselves to a job. A job is not a life although many of us who teach have made our jobs our lives. That is why the price we are paying is so high and so dangerous. Some, maybe many, will not survive this insane destructive regime. Careers are being ended now. Lives are being destroyed now. Finances are being ruined now.
We need more than encouragement at this point. We need to figure out ways to support people financially and with finding alternative employment if we can. We need to provide mental health supports and job counseling. We are way beyond the “grit your teeth and ride it out” stage in many places. I too believe that this will eventually pass but let’s not pretend that there won’t be many serious casualties along the way. There already are many casualties, most of whom suffer in silence and obscurity.
Agreed, Brian. Teaching in Florida gets worse by the week. I’m also seeing those teachers who are within three or four years of retirement exercising deliberate, peaceful noncompliance in spite of admin’s best urging. They are excellent teachers who realize that they are better off spending their remaining time in the classroom actually educating children rather than jumping through the hoops set in front of them.
As for finances, we are carefully considering our options, one of which is to take our teaching expertise elsewhere, perhaps overseas, where we can enjoy working where our profession is respected.
thehullabaloo.com/views/article_…
Sent from my iPhone
I agree Brian, the casualties will be a whole generation of children in poverty who are the pawns in this game of Ed Deform. The children of upper SES will be Ok bc they are insulated somewhat from the harsh effects. Even if we hang in there, I wonder if the damage done will be irreparable and felt far into our future. Only time will tell. I do have faith in our resiliency… I refuse to think otherwise.
Teach your children well. Diane says wait until the good people of Louisiana get rid of your crazy Governor. Teach the children so well as that they will never again allow such a governor to be seated. Public schools, all schools, must understand that they educate the people and the people they educate are the people who either accept what comes at them or do something to change things when things are not good. Tragically, too many of those educated in American schools are not capable of deliberating in such a way as to arrive at conclusions that lead to principles that allow them to act more or less consistently in a manner that is for the common good. Do not for a minute think that schools have served the public well. If they had, the very problems you face in Louisiana would not be the problems that they are. We have taught students to prepare them for “the job market” just as we have been told to do. And in doing this, we have deprived them of their right to participate in the decision making processes of a democratic society. Schools have not been the bastion of real patriotism in a society that is supposed to be by and for and of the people. Instead, they have done everything possible to indoctrinate people into a “paradise” that only fools would tolerate. They have made football and cheerleading and memorization of someone’s idea of facts the good diet and turned heads away from what is really good about being human, having the ability to think well for oneself and to participate in a thought-fest on a daily basis with other thoughtful human beings. We have educated to sell cars and incur debt, to use the local Walmart because things there are cheap, so cheap as to screw good numbers of people out of livelihoods. We have taught people to accept as fact the notion that globalization and technological sophistication have to lead to greater unemployment when what should happen is that people, all of the people, should be working less at a job for better pay with time left over to participate in governance of their societies. Instead our graduates are easily convinced that the problems they face are because something built into globalization and technology, some natural and essential component of these aspects of modern life is there to bit them in their asses. They are not taught that in a democracy it is the people who control globalization, have the right and obligation to understand it well, all facets of it, to make it work for the betterment of the people and not their undermining. Same with technology. It should not be harming people and making lives miserable because technology can do the jobs people once had to do. It should be freeing them up to do other things, TO EXERCISE THE RIGHTS THAT COME WITH DEMOCRACY, TO INFORM THEMSELVES AND TO CONVERSE WITH OTHERS TO DETERMINE THE BETTER FUTURE AND FIND WAYS TO WORK TOWARD IT. The determinism the schools have caused generations to believe is the very think that makes the platitudes of their education in America not only meaningful but harmful to America as a democratic nation.
So do place blame where blame is deserved but do not scorn those who innocently and ignorantly went through the system that they then became a part of. But don’t ignore the real cause of problems because of whom it is that might be implicated. Implicate! Take responsibility so that you recognize what it is that needs to be changed so change can be made, good change, humane change, change that unshackles the human spirit, that drives us to a more humane society that helps to build a more humane world. And if it takes getting rid of things that work against such outcomes, then get rid of them. Rethink the textbook and the spelling test and the football team and cheerleaders. Rethink seating arrangements in the classroom and find the best place for the teacher to sit. Rethink what it means to be a truly effective thinker and accept the words that come out of students’ mouths that may sting as ring truthful. Stop controlling and start teaching for real growth and development of INDIVIDUALS that our educational psychology always misses. Get rid of a research paradigm that as easily produces lies as it does truth. Begin the rebel conversation that really does give good service to the words “we shall overcome.” Rethink the role of schools and consider the possibility that they can be about rebelliousness rather than conformity and that the first should be the preference and not the latter.
Steven, here is a column that tries to describe some of the things that teachers in various public schools are doing to help promote “can do” attitudes among young people:
http://hometownsource.com/2013/02/06/student-engagement-declining-dramatically-and-what-schools-can-do/
Here are a few examples from the column.
• In Little Falls, students in a combined Biology/English/Social Studies class read and wrote about the history of the Mississippi. They also did water quality testing on the river discovering at one point that there was an unacceptably high level of bacteria in the water.
• In Houston, students interviewed local residents for an area history. They discovered one elderly woman who had been a member of the French Resistance during World War II, causing them to do a lot of reflection about her and their high school years.
• In St. Paul, students researched, planned and then built a playground with a zero budget. It was a very big day in the life of the seven-year old co-chairs of the “sand committee” when six truck loads of sand, that they had arranged for, arrived.
I completely agree that we should have public schools where students are learning to be active, involved citizens. This is one of the things John Dewey promoted. Not all agreed with him, and some vigorously criticized and criticize this approach.
But some of us believe schools can and should learn to be active, involved citizens.
Your post gives us food for thought. I have been thinking about such things lately. What went wrong? How did we get to this point? What can we do to change the tide? I am beginning to understand that we have been complicent in our own downfall and continue to be. I agree that we are no longer educating future citizens, but have fallen for the hype of teaching to a fatally flawed test. I am trying to get fellow teacher’s to go back to the basics, but many don’t even know what I am talking about. They have never had the experience of not having a high stakes test hanging over their heads. How do we undo what has been done for way too long??? How do we teach students to be “thinkers” in this age of information overload? How do we educate them to be productive citizens capable of participating on a democratic society? Until teachers are allowed to take back their profession, and stop being dictated to by corporate talking heads with money, then our public education system is doomed. We are teachers, we have the power to take back our profession if we really want to. We need to use our platform of the classroom to educate our students about their future and their own power. Let’s fight this battle on our own turf! The classroom.
Bridget, I applaud you for being a wonderful and caring principal in these crazy days and especially in the maniacally governed state of LA. Your one sentence just hits the nail on the head, “They have never had the experience of not having a high stakes test hang above their heads.” And that, friend, is the crux of the problem. Many teachers who write in to Diane say–in answer to “teaching to the test”–no–I will close my door and continue to teach in the best way that I can and as long as I can. Stephen says, “Teach your children well.” Dr. Karran Harper-Royal, if you are reading this, PLEASE urge parents to OPT THEIR KIDS OUT. Go on Oprah with the rest of the Journey for Justice group and tell American parents to STOP THIS TESTING. Retired teachers, do the sub rosa work that the actives are unable to do, and do whatever you have to do to help save those schools and children you’ve loved and continued to love, as well as acting as an enormous support system for your colleagues, many of whom you have worked with when you were active. In Rockford, IL, a group of retired teachers started a group called WEE (Watchdogs for Ethical Education), and, in doing the research, the attending of school board meetings, the taking of notes and the contacting of the press, they were able to help the community (or–visa versa–the community rose up and helped THEM)) get rid of their destructive Broad superintendent.
Whoever in LA who is reading this–S.O.S. (and isn’t there an S.O.S. chapter in LA? If not, start one!)–HELP NOW!!!!
Bridget, this website might be useful to you and your colleagues:
http://www.whatkidscando.org
Thanks Nathan. I passed this on to my teachers. Hope it inspires them.
And this is the Professional New World they are talking about? Is this what we want to educate our children for the future? How will they be able to deal with the problems of a complicated science and society without any tools or thinking capabilities? This is impossible.
The most difficult thing is that this is happening under a Democratic administration.
In many ways this is much worse than President Obama’s position on budgetary issues, where, whatever one’s misgivings, he is facing a recalcitrant Republican majority in the House and must make adjustments.
In the case of education, however, the Obama administration has huge discretionary power and they are using it for all the wrong purposes.
This mystifies even me, whose first instinct is to be skeptical. Is it that our money-driven political system has been pushed so far away from considerations of the common good?
I feel betrayed by President Obama.
I eventually did write the White House
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments]
writing to both President Obama and Vice-President Biden
___________________________________________________
Dear President Obama:
I wanted to express my extreme disappointment and grave concern regarding your administration’s policies on education.
Since taking office, the Dept of Education under Sec. Duncan have been pursuing policies that are not only counter-productive, but threaten our Democratic system.
I do not overstate the threat. The test-driven deformation of our education system is hurting our children, narrowing the curriculum and moving schools away from the practices that encourage creativity and critical thinking. But it is worse than even that.
The irony is that a program that is meant to make the US more competitive is doing the opposite.
Beyond irony, however, is an underlying tragedy and this betrayal of the nation’s children is the threat to Democracy, both in the US and across the globe. These policies put at risk the public education system which is the lynchpin of our Democracy and suggest to others we do the same.
I feel bewildered and betrayed. First, we are the midst of a paradox. Following a questionable logic that sees education principally as a means to economic ends, the US has focused on how to reform the education system in order to keep it from slipping in international economic competition. Relying on testing as a standard, in the end we have actually done the opposite — decreased our human potential and made the US less competitive economically.
Our system seems to have gotten worse at its core, in its philosophical tenets and in its ultimate effect on children and young adults, by placing unwonted pressure on them and in stifling their creativity. According to Prof. Kyung-Hee Kim, presently at William and Mary, creativity is in decline and has been for the last 20 years — the same period as high-stakes testing has been in place. Creativity is being curtailed by the very data-driven policies that equate achievement with the constant measurement of student performance on standardized tests. As for critical thinking, it is only given lip service. And then there are the stories you read occasionally in newspapers about how this school or that has cut out recess for third graders to make room for extra test preparation.
And why? Because, it is said, the schools are failing. That is what Sec. Duncan claims – that we are being ‘out-educated.’ But we are not – it is a canard, a fabrication that would do PT Barnum proud.
(end of Part 1)
Part 2 —
it is said, the schools are failing. That is what Sec. Duncan claims – that we are being ‘out-educated.’ But we are not – it is a canard, a fabrication that would do PT Barnum proud.
Private interests, working as if from a common script, have presented a false picture by building on what seems to be systematic misreporting of education research and the enormous gap between rhetoric and research.
H.L. Mencken wrote 90 years ago that the aim of public education is not “to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim . . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.” This, I fear, is the direction we have embraced.
You administration has embraced the business-oriented goals of advancing pay-for-performance, using Value-Added Measures for teacher evaluation and increasing the number of charter schools. On the economic side, markets increasingly dictate which are the allowable forms of democratic education. Intentionally or not, the administration may be setting the stage for rapid privatization of the public system.
As this endangers both the egalitarian basis of democracy and broad-based forms of learning which promote creative and critical thinking, it reminds us that schooling is big business – many trillions of dollars world-wide. Joseph Schumpeter once said, “No bourgeoisie ever disliked war profits.” I suppose no bourgeoisie ever disliked the spoils of school reform, either.
Despite this, we must push past the rhetoric and understand what our schools are doing right, and how to support them. I hope you will do so, starting with your State of the Union message. Please discontinue the failed policies that are dismantling the public education system and disassociate your administration from those who see the education of our children as a way to make a buck.
Sincerely,
Brian Ford
How to Write or Call the White House
PHONE NUMBERS
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
TTY/TTD
Comments: 202-456-6213
Visitor’s Office: 202-456-2121
Write a letter to the President
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
or put a stamp on it
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Brian, thanks for that link. I shall begin composing and send something this week. If enough people put pressure, I would think something should change.
You would think . . . but I would have thought we would have seen much different things from this administration.
Thanks Brian, I too will send a letter. I don’t expect much. But I can’t complain if I don’t speak out.