The corporate reform movement has been bashing teachers and public education without let-up for the past several years. The bashing became super-charged after the introduction of Race to the Top in 2009, because it explicitly blames teachers for low test scores despite evidence to the contrary.
The “reformers” claim they want “great teachers” in every classroom, and the way to do it is to fire teachers whose students get low scores, to close schools with low scores, and to deny teachers the right to due process. This is their formula, and they are sticking to it even though no other nation in the world has launched a vendetta against the teaching profession and public schools.
Now the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing reports a sharp decline in the number of people who want to teach.
Teresa Watanabe writes that:
” Interest in teaching is steadily dropping in California, with the number of educators earning a teaching credential dipping by 12% last year — marking the eighth straight annual decline.
“The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing reported this month that 16,450 educators earned their credential in 2011-12, compared with 23,320 in 2007-08.
“The number of students enrolling in teacher preparation programs has also decreased, to 34,838 in 2010-11 from 51,744 in 2006-07.”
This fraudulent reform movement is not going to achieve any of its stated goals. It will not lead to a great teacher in every classroom. Left unchecked, it will turn teaching into a temp job and dismantle public education. This will benefit the haves, not the have-nots. And that may explain why the haves are dumping millions of dollars into state and local school board races, to elect candidates who share their contempt for career educators and democratic control of public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
All of the Teachers need to go back to college and get a degree in TESTING..cause that is all that this profession offers to the students.
Parents…jump in….you are the only way out of this total mess.
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While parents are trying to make a living or find a living they leave their children at the school house door thinking all is right with the education world of their munchkin. They walk away distracted and
concerned but not motivated or encouraged to look further into
the day they think their child is having. No! The tests are are part of the normal routine and accepted by them because there is no one. including the teachers or administrators, alerting them that this is
now the norm. Teach to the test and give the test. Teach to the test and give the test….teach to the test and give the test………….teacher and child being measured!
As a friend of mine from Taiwan reminded me, she had a minimum
of three tests a day while she was growing up. But she adds that she
does not consider this to be the right way or only way to prepare children for life. She is now living in the U.S. and is a
ESL teacher and her world view is good preparation for life long
learning and skills, not just tests. She is a great teacher who thinks of the whole child and their future not just as a person to serve and obey a robotic society.
The World School in NYC, tuition $43,000.00 per student with every bell and whistle at their disposal (I call it the Whittle Way) is worth
finding on the internet and compare to the schools of the masses
and look at the demands of the elite parents of these children. I think you will find it of interest and probably frost your brain at the same time. All children should be so lucky.
Instead, the children of the masses and their teachers will be tested until the masses are Rheformed and the cast system has been firmly put in place. Special Education will be an after thought and nothing
will be as we would like to envision it.
Somehow we find the approximately $38,000.00 paid per prisoner
price tag for our privitized prison system which houses and retrains (manufacturing in prison is thriving) restrains and constrains human
societal throw aways. The smallest number of prisoners are psychopaths and sociopaths, while the others in massive numbers
are push through, hopeless and desperate people who have found a way to survive at the risk of incarceration. I am not saying this is right or good but desperate people will often do desperate things.
The hopeless, powerless, aimless, and illiterate, and often the mentally ill (their services are gone) may have had a different outcome with a proactive and purpose filled system.
We are back to push through, drop out, net up, constrain and reframe, for the children of the masses. Mandarin classes and tofu are not provided for the tuition paid by the public for prisoners. How about one roll of toilet paper a month as I was told was the case in
one of our government prisons. There is equity and hypocrisy.
The wealthy are entitled to the best of whatever they are able to afford, I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with throwing people away with little to no choice of their own from birth.
Their contributions could be of value if respect for their worth, well being, intelligence and creativity, could be tapped for personal and societal growth. Just sayin!!!!!
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Excellent analysis!
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If there is a class in knowing how to take daily insults without it affecting one’s morale, that would be necessary course requirement. Also, a class for how NOT to object to ridiculous top-down mandates. Classes on how to take the blame for everything wrong would also be required. And finally, classes on how change professions when they close your school. Sound like these would be classes for the degree of “TESTING?”
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*how to*
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Also a class on
HOW TO COVER all of the 500,000,000 standards in TWO NINE WEEKS……..
None of anything has anything to do with the OLD PROFESSION they called TEACHING..
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There was a Principal at a southern school that paid for his PHD from a warehouse in Gulfport ,MS.
He was later asked to resign on April 5 in a moment’s notice…..no reason as to why…finally found out that he took money ($19,000)for a move to another state and put it in his own pocket…via a fake moving company that he created…
He has retirement in two states.
They should have fired him instead of letting him resign but the county that he worked in said anyone can resign before they fire you…No one understands this as this county shoves every scandal under the rug and treats its teacher the worst of any system in the south..
There will be lawsuits.
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This is the logical result of educational policies. As a teacher of 16 years, one of the first thoughts in my head was that policymakers speak from both sides of their mouths. Both Dems and Repubs.
Endlessly bashing a profession that requires a college degree doesn’t inspire the best and brightest to pursue that profession. They look elsewhere. I live in Michigan where it would be a terrible time to start a teaching career. We have an unfriendly governor and legislature. We just passed right-to-work (shadily) which will cripple salaries. More for-profit charters on a percentage basis than anywhere in the nation.
If a close friend came to me and asked me if they should pursue a teaching career, I’d tell them that the job can be very emotionally rewarding but you’d better love it. Otherwise, there is no other incentive for the job.
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Is it still possible to get a BA in Education these days? I thought all teacher ed programs these days, at least in Michigan, required a major in a standard liberal arts field, Math, or English, or History, or Chemistry, or something like that. In the old days the canard was that education majors knew how to teach anything, but didn’t know anything to teach.
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That same “canard” has been used to describe people who have an EdD instead of a PhD, like you.
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And it might even be true. Would you care to test me?
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It might also be just a fabrication. I don’t happen to agree with that perception, which is rooted in a disrespect for the field of education. However, seeing how often my colleagues who have an EdD have had to put up with eye rolls at the mention of a doctorate in education and prove themselves to those who have no respect for education, I decided to pursue a PhD instead, so I wouldn’t have to go through that.
Most states require a BA in education for early childhood and elementary teachers. Some of the most effective teachers I’ve known have only bachelor’s degrees in education, and some of the worst have advanced degrees in only content knowledge. Content knowledge is critical, but it’s not enough. Teachers need to know about child and adolescent development, pedagogy,pedagogical content knowledge, etc.,too.
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No surprise there. Who wants to spend thousands of dollars and years in college training to become the nation’s punching bag?
Perceptions of teachers have gotten progressively worse over the years, but ever since teachers were chastised for not being Superman, the insults have persisted and now it’s quite acceptable for teachers to be daily fodder for public humiliation and castigation.
They really ought to add professions to the list of people protected against being targets of discrimination and hate, starting with teaching.
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My own children have watched my stress level increase over the years and have vowed that they would never become teachers. In the past I had student teachers whose parents were teachers, so it seemed the thing to do. I wonder if the number of children of teachers who want to become teachers is also on the decline.
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Wow, maybe we can start supplying CA with some teachers. Oh wait, MI numbers are dropping also. You know I find it interesting that our overall numbers for next year haven’t dropped. This is something we should talk about and see if there is anything we can use for recruitment.
Jim Powell, Ph.D., Director School of Education Ferris State University Bishop 421E Big Rapids, MI 49307 231-591-3512 powelj20@ferris.edu
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Another reason that this drop occured is that there are no jobs available. For many years, the state required smaller class sizes, which meant more teachers were needed. When the budget crisis hit, the state changed this policy and allowed districts to raise class sizes. Some classes in elementary schools are close to 40 students! My daughter’s 5th grade class had 39 students. This meant fewer teachers were needed and many were laid off. Our school lost 5 teachers that year, and the positions have yet to be restored. No one wants to pay for a college degree in a subject where you can’t get a job after all your hard work
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What makes a great teacher? Not every college graduate is cut out to teach, regardless of his or her innate intelligence, G.P.A. or previous career success. Only those with specific talents and training become gifted teachers who, working with a talented mentor teacher and a variety of tools and learned techniques, can motivate students to want to learn.
As a former mentor to Teach for America corps members, I have seen their tears, anxieties, heartaches, successes and achievements. Unfortunately, the latter are far fewer. I have seen novices train novices to follow simple, formulaic scripts. They can do so much more if better prepared.
Corps members should intern for a year under the supervision of a talented mentor teacher, then teach for at least four years, not two. That may discourage some. Good. We want career teachers. A “temp” work force does not improve education or erase the achievement gap. Rather it helps to create havoc in schools desperately trying to gain stability, a key factor in any school’s success.
Teach for America has changed since its inception as a Peace Corps for American education. Then, I was in support of its efforts. Not now. Today’s Teach for America has morphed into more of a leadership institute. It describes itself as a “growing movement of leaders, nearly 28,000 strong, [that] works at every level of education, policy and other professions, to ensure that all children can receive an excellent education.”
Seasoned professionals know what works: being creative, independent, spontaneous, practical and rule bending. Often it is the least orthodox teacher who most engages and excites students. Scripts and rules and models strictly followed cannot replace what the best teachers have: practical wisdom. In our anti-teacher world and scripted teaching climate perpetuated by corporate reformers, what room is there for the teachers we want for our kids?
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David Greene: thank you for sharing this with us.
🙂
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“. . . erase the achievement gap.”
Couldn’t care less about any supposed “achievement gap”. That’s the language of the edudeformers
I do care about the teaching and learning process gap that exists mainly due to unequal and unjust funding of the public schools where the wealthy districts spend 2-3 times what the poor districts spend per pupil resulting in gaps of pupil/teacher ratio, class size differences, course offerings, etc. . . .
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One of the best recruiters for organizations large and small, public and private, profit and non-profit, is a satisfied employee. I have seen this all my life. But the opposite is happening in education.
One of the most pernicious effects of the “corporate reform movement” and TFA in particular, has been in creating a huge number of career educators who are urging family members and friends not to enter the teaching profession. The reasons are powerful, including the increasing pressure to make it financially, morally and emotionally difficult [sometimes impossible] to invest the time, money and effort into a McJob that provides only the guarantee of public abuse and humiliation.
CAVEAT: I am not counseling anyone to either get in, stay out, continue, or take early retirement. Those are very personal decisions.
“They have sown the wind, and are making us reap the whirlwind” [my riff off Hosea 8:7], i.e., the edubullies and their accountabully underlings have created an increasingly bad situation that will have very serious consequences for almost all of us.
I am not writing about unintended consequences or unexpected collateral damage. It is by design. But it is not inevitable.
🙂
Which is why this blog is critically important. Two days shy of one year of existence, it reached four million hits. Today, a little more than a week after that milestone, it has added almost a quarter million more hits.
This is not merely astounding. It will forever make it impossible in the future for anyone to truthfully declare “I didn’t know what I was doing, if only there had been someone who had the right information or some place I could have gone to find out what was really happening.”
Keep posting, keep reading, keep discussing, keep organizing.
Remember that in ancient times those who spoke the truth about what was coming were called crazy. Later they were praised for their foresight. Thank you to one KrazyHistoryLady who started this blog with zero hits and went on to earn kerfuffle after kerfuffle after kerfuffle.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” [Mahatma Gandhi]
🙂
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My best friend was a teacher for TFA in the beginning and it was like a Peace Corps when there was a serious lack of teachers. Now it has morphed into the “Evil Empire.”
Why would anyone want to be a teacher anymore? A friend has a data base of only LAUSD of over 600 teachers either/or falsely accused of a crime like child abuse and/or illegally terminated. I started investigation of this in 1995 at the final decision in Federal Court of the special education Chanda Smith case. In 1997 it was audited by the California State Auditor with the help of two republican committee chairs. The democrats fought this and I am a “Real Democrat.” The Audit ended with LAUSD agreeing that they would not do this anymore and now it is worse than in 1997.
Who wants a job wherein your life, career and family will be at total risk if someone says boo without any proof and you are ruined. Especially pre-K and elementary teachers are not mentally prepared by their nature for the combat which happens to them. I have had too many tragic calls from teachers who called just before they jumped over the cliff. It is so sad. It is disgusting what they do to these teachers and in the end to their students.
I tell people now “Do not work for LAUSD, think about where you might want to work, if you are not ready for what will happen choose another career as this is what could happen to you and here are a lot of cases. Even the State of California’s Auditor found this to be for real. I don’t want to do this but when you know what I know and have taken vast quantities of these calls and my friend has over 600 in only one school district what should you do? We are ready now to put the heat on the D.A. Jackey Lacey to do what she said she would do and that is prosecute those who violate the child abuse laws and put them in jail. Then this will stop and teachers can once again teach instead of being in constant jeopardy. They have left no other choice.
After all didn’t Deasy tell the Miramonte staff to not talk to the investigators? Each time he did that it was a misdemeanor criminal violation of the California Child Abuse laws (California Penal Codes 11163-11174.3) with penalties if convicted beyond a reasonable doubt of up to 6 months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine. Fair for one, fair for all. Criminals are criminals especially concerning child abuse and false police reports which have a potential of 18 months in jail.
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Ceased recommending teaching as a profession a decade ago. Too much is expected, too little is supported, too many seek to gain privately.
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Me too. And when my cute junior high kids come to me all excited that they want to be teachers, I die a little inside. These kids would make great teachers, and I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.
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Such a sorry waste of talented potential. All because a bunch of business types want to make big bucks by supplanting public schools with their own for-profit version.
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This is not surprising. Is there any data from other states in this regard? This country will be facing a profound teacher shortage within 10 years, if not sooner. At some point, all those who have been furloughed or let go will have re-entered the profession to fill openings if they wish to do so and there will NOT be enough teachers graduating to fill the available positions. Then what? I’m curious about enrollment in teacher preparation programs in other states—-not just in ‘education’ but in music ed, art ed, etc. Yikes……
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In our teacher ed program (large Midwestern system school), numbers are way down, particularly in secondary. Where I had twenty-five in my content-area methods class five years ago, I now have eight. And elementary is trending much lower, too.
We see the decline in secondary primarily because these are not folks who have wanted to teach since they lined up their stuffed animals after their first day of Kindergarten. The secondary majors are people who were influenced by a middle or high school teacher, but they’re now seeing the stress and lack of agency that go with the career. So far this year, we’ve had more than a dozen students graduate “non-licensure,” meaning that they got so far in the program that they couldn’t switch majors.
The biggest impact is that their family and relatives–who are teachers–are counseling them to avoid teaching.
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“The biggest impact is that their family and relatives–who are teachers–are counseling them to avoid teaching.”
This is true across teacher groups. Where in many families, generation after generation had been encouraged to pursue teaching, a lot of educators today are now discouraging their family members from following them into the field.
I think that “reformers” are kidding themselves if they think that what they have done to the profession is an improvement, or that it encourages “the best and the brightest” to pursue teaching. If anything, school districts across the country are likely to face a very serious teacher shortage soon, and no 5 week TFA type training programs will ever be able to meet the needs of an entire nation bereft of veteran career teachers who have been trained in child development, pedagogy, content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, etc.
And, BTW, as with any fad, when a craze becomes the only choice around, it is no longer seen as special, so the “elite” status of TFA is very likely to rapidly diminish.
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Law school applications are also down sharply, presumably because of all the lawyer bashing.
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The problem with low numbers getting education degrees is that people who teach the education courses will start losing their jobs. So not only are we losing good teachers but we will lose the people who teach people to be good teachers.
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The “no excuses” military style charters are training people in their own “graduate” schools to become drill sergeant type teachers, such as at Relay and Match.
It was just reported that a Colorado charter school teacher taped the mouths of her 2nd Grade students shut, just as Michelle Rhee did to her 2nd Grade students when she taught in Teach for America: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/05/03/606182usstudentsmouthstaped_ap.html?
When I worked at a private school where a teacher did this to her students, she was fired immediately, and rightly so, I believe. Why does no one seem to care that someone who admitted to doing this very same thing is the poster child for corporate education “reform” and charter school expansion and continues to be supported by Obama, Duncan et al, and despite indicators that she was also involved in a cover-up of wide-scale cheating in DC?
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Don’t forget to mention the lawyer infestation and making teachers legally liable for the bad behavior of others.
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