In this thoughtful article, Charles Taylor Kerchner of Claremont Graduate University explains that Michelle Rhee’s belief in using test scores to reward and punish teachers is guaranteed to produce adverse consequences like cheating.
Her reliance on test scores plus her “fear-based management style” is the Achilles’ heel of reform policy, he says.
“This is the lesson of organizational history, not an isolated “bad judgment” aberration. It’s about more than school test scores in the District of Columbia, Atlanta, Texas or even Rhee’s possibly outsized claims of how well her students did during the three years she taught school in Baltimore. The policies Rhee endorses create bad incentives. Bad incentives lead to disastrous results. They certainly played a part in the largest business collapses in recent history: Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.”
There is a way to build better schools: “What motivates teachers most? Student success: If an organizational system of curriculum, pedagogy, professional training and school organization helps students experience success, then teachers are highly motivated. Teachers are motivated by being part of a winning team, a school that does well at its own mission, which most often is not test score maximization. Teachers are motivated by being part of an occupation that is honored and trusted. These are the lessons from a century of study.”
This is worth reading and pondering.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Incentive pay as a policy represents a fundamental misunderstanding of teachers and their motivations, it is crass and insulting. To assume that throwing money at a teacher will motivate that teacher to work harder than they already do is demeaning. A teacher finds motivation in seeing students overcome difficult challenges. A teacher is motivated by helping students learn and grow. The only additional funds that should be awarded should come in the effort to support teachers realize student success. Teaching is not about the money.
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What’s most telling about their character is that I think they really believe everyone is motivated strictly by financial incentives because they can’t conceive of a person who’s not. They don’t search for cheaters because they don’t believe in the concept of “cheating” they see it as “gaming” or creative achievement, but as something to be rewarded and admired. The reason they never investigate or audit data is because they want people to “cheat” because it makes them look good, thus improving their prestige and rewards. That’s exactly how wall street acts with subprime mortgages, credit default swaps, LIBOR manipulation, etc. They want the “appearance ” of success and could care less if it creates a test inflation bubble or bankrupt education policies. The they simply see the expected ensuing education “crash” as a buying opportunity to start the Reform process over.
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crazycrawfish: you are exactly right that we need to constantly do an “English-to-English” translation of what the edubullies and their accountabully underlings say because they literally redefine what we assume are commonly held definitions of words and terms.
For example, when they say “parent empowerment” they mean “parent disembowelment”—and not just for this generation but for generations to come, e.g., in CA when a school targeted by parent trigger goes charter it can’t [at present] go back to being public. When they say “Student Success” they mean “$tudent $ucce$$” [will swell the bank accounts of edupreneurs]. When they say “no excuses” they mean “no responsibility” for excluding and counseling out so many students from many of the new charters because they are too difficult and/or too expensive to teach in order to achieve the primary goal of $tudent $ucce$$.
And you hit the nail on the head when you said that they confuse the appearance of success with its reality. And they keep wondering why we just don’t submit to their Rheeality even when real life keeps contradicting their every word and act.
😦
Please keep blogging. You have much to say.
Krazy props to crazycrawfish.
🙂
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First teachers cannot properly teach in a condition of “Fear.” When there is an ax over your head you think about the ax not teaching. This condition exists in D.C. and LAUSD. At LAUSD teachers are commonly falsely accused and illegally terminated. I even had this issue audited by the California State Auditor in 1997. It was for teachers being falsely accused of child abuse for whistle blowing and for principals stealing student impress funds. Today the false charges are worse than then in spite of an agreement with the state to cease and desist and the OIG spends a lot of time auditing schools when a new principal takes over for financial misdeeds so that the new principal is not mixed up in the former principals potential misdeeds. This audit is on the Calif. State Auditors website and is Oct. 1997, 96121. Rhee’s group is really “Students Last” in reality as that is their real agenda if you are not a “True Believer.” King Tony, mayor Villaraigosa, is a total failure in education and transportation which are the areas he has made his national reputation on. I have the documented proof of this failure at Roosevelt High School which is under PLAS and one of his schools. I also have documented from the “Subway to the Sea” EIR a $10 billion overrun on that project which has been verified by two city council people and has been stated in public multiple times at MTA Board meetings with no contradiction. And yet King Tony and his hacks at MTA will not help the Crenshaw Community with tunneling underground for that “Corridor” and will ruin the last large African-American business community on the West Coast. To stop the $90 billion Measure J the black, brown and all other communities joined, with can you believe Beverly Hills, to help them stop tunneling under Beverly Hills High School. This group believes all communities deserve the same respect and their students also do not deserve to be put at risk. MTA and King Tony have shown time after time that they do not care about anything except their contractor friends. When they put the train through East L.A., Boyle Heights, they destroyed 95% of the business’s in that corridor. Nice guys right? Never believe these crooks as the truth is almost always something other than they state just like Rhee, Villaraigosa and Romero. All jokers who cannot tell the truth to save their lives and are paid to do so. Corruption reigns in America.
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When Villaraigosa and Deasy were interviewed recently on campus by the Chair of Public Policy, I was in attendance, the Mayor bragged in telling the auditorium filled with about 300 people, that he “would never have gotten into UCLA as an undergrad except for affirmative action, since his high school record was so bad.” This is all on film. And this is the man who is “in favor of shutting down as many schools as he can (with Deasy) while he is still in office” . Also stated on film. His lobbying of the billionaires to support his charter school candidates for school board has made our election so distorted by this big anti union, anti public schools, and anti teacher, money.
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There is at the root of all these pathologies a fundamental cognitive or “semiotic” disease — a tendency to fix on the sign instead of the object. It is a mental disorder that fixates on the symbols of what we hold dear — like a flag, a gold star, a test grade — in a brand of destructive preference to the realities of what we hold dear. To our great misfortune, this is one mental disease that is both contagious and viral.
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There is a way to build better schools
An annotated bibliography would be a big help with this. Are there case studies? How are teachers’ unions disseminating ways “to build better schools?” Is anyone listening? Even union-endorsed elected officials?
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That is a fantastic idea, Eric.
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AFT did this years ago in their “It’s Union Work” series–identifying what works. I suspect it became a victim of politics, but at what level?
At this point, unions have the politically attractive option of defending teachers from Rhee & Co.
I fear the risk-taking necessary to do what’s best for kids is not an attractive option.
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During the time Rhee spent in DCPS, never once did she put on a workshop or demonstration of how to raise test scores. Not once. I always asked why? I never received a response. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. I mean, if she could do it with her inexperience, then surely most DC teachers with many more years of experience could have duplicated her tremendous gains and strides. Now, I wonder if her secret was a few erasers back in the 90’s? Yup. I wonder.
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never once did she put on a workshop or demonstration of how to raise test scores
Meanwhile, up the road in Baltimore…
“Ms. Eberhart has received numerous awards and recognition for her accomplishments, including being named the 2002 Maryland Teacher of the year — the first and only teacher from Baltimore City to get that statewide recognition. …. James Evans summed it up best when he said, ‘My daughter entered Mt. Royal with relatively low math scores. After leaving (Ms. Eberhart’s class), she was tested through a program at Hopkins — scoring within the top 6 percent in the nation in math.'”
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A few years ago, a local school system offered annual $15,000 bonuses for veteran teachers who would transfer to these high-poverty schools and show a statistical increase in performance. Nobody took the bait. So, the superintendent at the time decided to force veteran teachers to go to these schools, under the guise of “strategic staffing.”
“Strategic staffing is Superintendent ***********’s effort to improve student success at low-performing, high-poverty schools by enticing top principals with bonuses and giving them money and freedom to bring in teams of teachers with a track record of success.”
Guess what? No statistical differences! http://media.charlotteobserver.com/images/pdf/StrategicStaffEval.pdf
So, money was the overall incentive for school improvement, and IT DIDN’T WORK. This just reinforces the notion that what works is good leadership, cooperation, feeling appreciated, etc…quality intrinsic motivation.
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This is a good article!
The other thing about school teachers historically is that we aren’t a sexy breed—we don’t have money to dress in the latest name-brand threads (although I have always promised myself I would never wear turtlenecks with apples on them or denim jumpers)–our pursuit is not anything sparkly or shiny—it’s just about helping people become knowledgeable and spark a sense of wonder about the world before they move on to the next step in their education. I understand reformers thinking they need to shine us up a bit (and maybe make a buck while doing so)–and they get the endorsements of celebrities who have not ever lived the life of a teacher (not that they haven’t taught or been taught, but to actually live the life of a teacher–a high energy job full of utilizing every minute thoughtfully, meeting every child where they are and meanwhile maintaining one’s own disposition and stamina). Becoming a teacher used to be choosing a life (one of comfortable shoes and a strong understanding of group dynamics). Now there is a push to be more like those who do two-year military service and then get out. I wonder if there is a way to have both mentalities balance one another, rather than a war between the two approaches.
The notion of standardizing shows an attempt to, ironically, unionize–a way to say here is how we are homogenous, or here is how we need to be homogenous and this company will publish the tools to teach it and publish the tests to see if the teachers are teaching it and we won’t pay them if they don’t because otherwise our money is being wasted and the potential of our students is being risked–but surely education is not supposed to be a way to homogenize. The education reform movement is fascinating from a sociological perspective. How can we unite in thought, language, priorities and thinking, get the most out of our dollar, and be shiny and sexy at the same time? Well, maybe we can’t. Maybe we’re not supposed to. Maybe that misses the point of educating and being a teacher. Maybe that misses the point of being a society.
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If Rhee’s and other so-called reformers’ purpose is to improve education (which it is not), then of course their policies are a failure.
If their purpose is to intimidate and demoralize teachers, softening them up for taking over the schools, then it has been all too successful.
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Yesterday, while bike riding, this fable popped into my head:
Michelle, Bill and Michael were lecturing Miss Jones, a first grade teacher.
“Teach hard or go home,” said Michelle.
“Get feedback,” said Bill.
“Raise those scores,” said Michael.
Just then, a six-year-old boy named Anthony came along.
“Who will be my teacher?” he asked.
“Not I,” said Michelle, “Not enough attention.”
“Not I,” said Bill, “Not enough money.”
“Not I,” said Michael, “Not enough power.”
“I will,” said Miss Jones. And she did.
Moral: The person who puts the student first is the one who wants to teach him.
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Say it, sister. Teachers are motivated when their students do well. Our motivation is intrinsic, not extrinsic which is what you want to get to with behavior modification. Remember the old pictures of the auststic child riding the tricycle. At first his motivation was a spoonful of jam that was kept just out of his reach until he was rewarded. Eventually, he no longer needed the jam. Riding was its own reward.
Politicians, pundits, and Teach for America does not seem to comprehend the idea that our work is our motivation. We teach because we are teachers and we would teach even if we had to do something else to pay the bills.
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