I reported a few minutes ago that the extremist North Carolina legislature agreed to end teacher tenure. I pointed out that academic freedom will disappear. Joan Baratz Snowden, who has studied and written about the teaching profession for many years, says the consequences are even worse than loss of academic freedom.
She writes:
“Seems to me the more critical issue is not so much academic freedom (though that is important) but how no tenure will discourage talented individuals from going into teaching with such low salaries, large class sizes, no job security and the likelihood that when teachers have taught for several years and make more than beginning teachers they can just be let go so that a cheaper workforce can be employed.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And that’s actually the objective…..churn, churn, churn….it will not longer be a profession.
Thanks to Arne, Bill and Barack….it’s all working as planned.
Eventually everyone will be a teacher http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2013/07/replaceable-you.html
Well, 15 year olds “teach” younger children in third world countries, so why not here?
It’s just outrageous what is happening. Next will be medicine and law.
I suspect that the end of teacher tenure (I am surprised to see that word used instead of the more usual due process rights) will actually increase the salary of teachers. Tenure is a nonpecuniary benefit of teaching, so lowering it is likely to require an increase in pecuniary benefits.
TE,
Bullshit! Lowering it will likely lead to a decrease in pecuniary benefits. Yea, we all have a$$holes!
Although you are correct to state that tenure at the K-12 level is not the same as tenure at the post secondary level and should be called due process rights, how the hell can you conclude that a lowering of nonpecuniary benefits will lead to an increase in pecuniary ones???
Makes absolutely no sense to me. But then again I ain’t an economist just an older fart Spanish teacher.
Duane
Do you think people will choose to become teachers if the job becomes increasingly unattractive relative to other possible professions? Having “due process rights” is part of what makes teaching attractive to potential teachers. If you get rid of them, you will have to do something else to make it attractive.
No, TE, “having due process rights” probably has absolutely nothing to due with someone choosing to become a teacher. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of someone say, “Oh, I get due process rights, what a great job!” Nonsense!
Your “economic” way of thinking blinds you to many other ways of viewing human interaction.
Sure it does. Teaching is a relatively low risk occupation compared to, say, becoming a musical performer. Some of the more prolific posters here are music teachers. Perhaps they can offer some insight.
@teachingeconomist – No one I know has ever entered the teaching profession because it’s a “relatively low risk occupation”.
Do you realize what the teacher attrition rate is? We lose 50% of our teachers after 5 years in suburbia, and it is even worse in urban areas. After researching this matter for some time, I can only find one profession that is worse in terms of attrition and that is nursing.
How in the freakin’ world is teaching a “low risk occupation”?
I know of the attrition rate, but it is not evidence that teaching is not low risk. There is a difference between being fired from a job and leaving a job.
It is interesting that folks here don’t see that tenure is not valuable to a teacher, or more precisely that tenure and income are not related. Would you be willing to be in my position ( and almost everyone else’s position) as an at will employee in exchange for a tripling of your salary?
It’s hard to say, TE, when one vindictive parent with clout can get you fired because Johnny doesn’t like you. I have seen talented tenured teachers nearly destroyed by helicopter parents. Of course, in Illinois it is already like not having due process rights for nontenured teachers. You teach in a district for four years before you are either given or denied tenure. My last district kept their staff costs down by letting 3rd and 4th year teachers go. In education the assumption is that your teaching is flawed not that the district is “downsizing” or balancing their budget when they let you go after several years. It is an interesting question. With the level of abuse teachers are experiencing, it is amazing that anyone stays. Having never had the protection of due process, I taught because I loved to teach. As it has become clear that my age is a barrier to teaching again, I am relieved at not being subject to any more abuse and yet still saddened by not being able to teach.
I don’t think you are arguing against my point. All jobs have a bundle of attributes, some pleasant, some unpleasant, some that are inherent in the job, and some that are under the control of the employer and the employee. If the employer makes a job less pleasant in one dimension, the potential number of employees will shrink as those with other options will go to those other options. If the employer wants to maintain the same pool of potential employees, the employer will have to make the job more pleasant in other dimensions.
@teachingeconomist – “There is a difference between being fired from a job and leaving a job. ”
I get your point, even though I would still argue that teachers are not choosing the profession because they get due process. Maybe what you are intending to mean is that teachers choose their profession because they will more than likely be guaranteed employment as a trade-in for low pay. Now that, I would think, may be more accurate. Having said that, I still don’t think that teachers are choosing their profession because they will be guaranteed jobs although it may be a perk of some sort.
“Would you be willing to be in my position ( and almost everyone else’s position) as an at will employee in exchange for a tripling of your salary?”
No. Teaching is too complex. I could be fired for any number of things simply because an administrator doesn’t like something I do. There is no bottom line from which to judge a teacher so at-will judgments would be completely based upon artificial prejudices and bias. I would not want to be part of that system.
I worked in the private sector for many years, and it was very easy to figure out who to fire. It was the employee that did not meet his/her quota.
No such quota exists in teaching.
Your statement in the second paragraph is exactly what I am saying.
“Do you think people will choose to become teachers if the job becomes increasingly unattractive relative to other possible professions?”
What other professions? Are you aware of the number of college and graduate educated people who are currently out of work? Are you aware that other professions are being de-professionalized just like teaching?
The most recent monthly unemployment figure (June 2013) for college graduates is 3.9%.
Somewhere around 4.5 million new hires take place every month. The employment possibilities are certainly there, but much depends on the individual’s set of skills.
“The most recent monthly unemployment figure (June 2013) for college graduates is 3.9%. ”
Now let’s examine how many recent hires who are college graduates are working in jobs far below their former positions. Let’s talk about those who have given up and settled. I wonder how many college educated coffee baristas there are in this country. Has the former D.C. principal who was forced out by Rhee been able to re-enter the education field or is she still selling cupcakes (which I hear are very good)? The word was she hoped to return to education. I know my information is anecdotal, but your statistics may hide a lot of raw emotion and hardship.
I think you can probably find that number on the BLS web site, at least unemployment broken out by age and education.
In states like mine (Utah) where there already is no tenure, salaries are pathetic. We’re about 44th in the nation. And let’s not forget the nation’s largest class sizes (I routinely have 32-36 in 8th and 9th grade history and geography) and the smallest per-pupil expenditure (about $6500 per student).
I think that Utah pays what it thinks it has to in order to get people to teach. If those salaries were offered in New York or Chicago, few would take the jobs because there are so many alternatives that would provide for a better life for the families of the potential teachers.
It is worse here in Vegas. English classes in urban schools often at 40 or more.
To TE, already there are shortages of good teachers in math, science, English and special ed teachers here in Vegas. Does that mean our salaries increase? No, this year we got a pay cut. Classes just get bigger, we use more long term subs. My own kids were at a highly rated middle school with 40 kids a class, and one had a long term sub in math with zero math background, another had one in honors English and spent the year doing zero homework and zero writing. I let that one go because I am an English teacher and I knew I could catch him up, but I don’t see how market forces really work in eduction. That is why the TFA program worries me. The profession is being diluted into McJobs, I think someone on here phrased it, because it is cheaper. The job is becoming less and less attractive, and losing due process/ tenure makes it even worse.
It means that if your local government wants to address this shortage it needs to attract teachers to the district. I don’t know any other way to do that then to make teaching in your district better than alternatives available to the teachers you want to attract.
Some who post here regularly say that there is no shortage of STEM teachers in the country, except perhaps in rural areas. Is that consistent with your experience?
We do have shortages of good teachers in core subjects here. For awhile, the district gave 1/5 of a year extra for each year worked towards retirement in high needs subjects and let retired math teachers double dip if they came back to classroom, but not now with the budget cuts. We have first year teachers teaching AP, Algebra teachers in 8th grade classes who last a year, then get out or get pushed out. Lots of long term subs, as I mentioned, who are in that math class or whatever the whole year. They do not even have to have a degree.
Ya think so, I doubt it! Instead there will be low salaries, no tenure, and a frightened staff.
For me the importance of tenure is as Joan Snowden states, a creative teacher will push the creative envelope, and experiment. To experiment is to take risks, and without tenure those risks will never again be taken nor will new ideas or alternative ideas be tolerated.
Soon all older, higher salaried teachers will be out of a job. The creative independent teachers will be out of a job and no longer hired and the only ones left as teachers will be clones of which ever corporation is currently running the show.
Disagree…again the leading economist of creative destruction, Shumpeter, would point out that the wages will go down, and as the profession is crushed, disrespected, it will become only a job, not a profession, until is gone and forgotten. TFA kids will instruct students on the use of technology, they are doing this already, and the computer will be the teacher of last resort.
This however, is already being proven a failure. No one and nothing can take the place of a creative teacher.
Tenure is the safety factor that keeps teachers creative.
I think you are mixing causes and effects here. If teaching becomes no more than pressing buttons, the compensation will certainly go down because no special training and talent is required. If teaching requires special training and talent, compensation will not decrease.
It is the job requirements that drive compensation, not compensation driving the job requirements.
TE are you kidding me???
“If teaching requires special training and talent, compensation will not decrease.”
This is the way things are now – what planet are you living on? So called budeget cuts have left me earning less than a few years back and here in NC we have had our salaries frozen so long we could be mistaken for TV dinners.
For those of you younger folks, a TV dinner is the old name for frozen meals now microwaveable.
I am perhaps taking a longer term view about compensation. If teaching is less attractive an occupation, potential teachers who have other options will take the other options. If a school district wants to draw those people back into teaching it will have to make the job more attractive.
Teaching economist,
Stick to Spanish for you know little about economics, which I teach in higher ed.
If you think teaching is a low risk profession, perhaps you need to spend some time in inner city schools where a teacher often fears for his/her life. Getting shot, or having kids accuse you of sexual assault when they are mad at you for making them behave or do school work, and a plethora of other problems makes teaching the riskiest.
You must be in Grosse Point or Beverly HIlls.
Ellen,
Perhaps you have me confused with another poster. I do not teach Spanish.
When referring to low risk, I am speaking about the risk of being fired, not the physical riskiness of the job. The existence of a risk premium in wage structures is an interesting issue. Are you a labor economist?
Ellen,
I think you’re confusing TE and me. I’m the older fart Spanish high school teacher (although I was an “adjunct professor” for 12 years-ha ha).
Duane
Grosse Pointe? Grosse pointe has laid off 56 teachers in the past three years. This year the layoffs were based on evaluations, not seniority (no more tenure in MI). Yet the teachers laid off were all rated effective, so how we’re they selected? I’m guessing they were near the top of the pay scale.
Ah, the old, miserably failed for 2 generations trickle down, voodoo theory of economics applied to public education. Now that union membership in the US of A has shrunk to about 11.3% how have real wages fared? They certainly have not gone up, have they? Same goes for that old chestnut about increasing productivity increases wages. We are the most productive workforce in history and real wages have been stagnate for well over a generation. Rainbows and ponies for everyone though, because Friedman economics is a zombie that will never, ever die.
Some real wages have gone up, some have gone down, probably having more to do with integrating China into the world economy in the short run and technological change in the long run.
A good simple example is the job of grocery checkout clerk. In my youth this was a very important skilled position that paid a premium over other jobs in the store. The checkout clerk needed to memorize thousands of prices and enter them accurately every time. A poor checkout clerk might cost the store many thousands of dollars in inaccurate entries or in lost business from customer dissatisfaction.
Today, thanks to bar code scanners, this position does not require the special skills of the past, so these positions do not get paid the premiums of the past.
The problem is that good teaching has always been labor intensive and probably increased productivity cannot be attained through technology as it has been in a number of other industries.
You don’t even know what you are talking about. Why do you continue to post far-right propaganda here?
Note that haven’t taken away “due process rights” from police and fire. That’s because those are MALE-dominated fields. They also have a lot of control over society, if you know what I mean.
Maybe you don’t: Them who has the guns has the power.
The word “they” should be put in the second paragraph.
Teachers never have had “tenure.”
Who is to judge who is a “good teacher”? The principal, and favoritism is rampant in education.
That is reason for step systems, pay for education, and “due process” rights. It’s to reduce cronyism, although the REAL reason for the “right to a hearing” is actually to save SCHOOL DISTRICTS money on lawsuits (after all, if teachers don’t resign in lieu of dismissals, they have the right to UI, a hearing, and to sue the districts for wrongful termination).
I agree that job segregation is a large issue in K-12 employment and that local school districts have not adjusted to a market where women have many more choices.
I want you to advocate for the abolition of civil service protections for federal, state, and local employees, especially for police and fire. This libertarian garbage you spew needs to be tossed in the trash can where it belongs.
I don’t know anybody bothers to “feed” you. You’d have left here a long time ago.
Ignore, delete, empty trash
Did I say anything about abolishing tenure or due process rights? What I said was that generally people are willing to trade off higher income for job security and job security of higher income.
Don’t forget how important tenure is to emboldening teachers to whistle blow. Tenured teachers are more likely to speak out against IEP violations, cheating scandals, misuse of data etc. Those who are not so protected just sit there and let it happen. In some communities, families are not organized, educated or empowered enough to complain to the district, write letters to editors or even call 311. They need teachers to speak up. Eliminating tenure is another way to shut us up.
Exactly.
Yup! Speducators in meetings will be saying ” No you don’t qualify for ot, sw, speech, pt, special ed or reading support!” As you leave the meeting you write down how many times your supervisor said “Good Job” to you because you’re saving him money!!!!
Yes, of course. Thirteen years ago when I was a rookie teacher, an older (seasoned) educator pulled me aside and told me that this would happen. Teachers will be churned. With test scores on the table, and many old scores to settle, this is already happening. This will kill two birds with one stone. No one will ever get paid much, as young teachers will continuously get cycled through the system. Other teachers will be let go for test scores, or having the wrong politics (whatever). It won’t take much in the future. Also, no one will reach a pension, and as we know, pensions are a big “problem” for many states now. The elites don’t want to pay these obligations or have the broke masses look at them for money. If a principal doesn’t like you or you had an argument with him or her years ago, then get ready for an exciting new career. A principal who wants to make it seem legal could just assign you a few lower-level Algebra or English classes, and presto- you’re gone! The test scores won’t show improvement, believe me. Also, with increasing class sizes and cutting of programs, you will most likely never teach again. One former teacher I know now is trying to be a stand up comedian, and the other is digging graves – quite literally. That is the only job he could find. They can also just bring TFA types who will teach 1-4 years whether they want to or not, and then they can bring in more. There are millions of college graduates with no jobs. That is why the elites want to do away with teacher certification. They want to be able to shuffle people in and out quickly. All seasoned teachers all over the country have seen this coming.
exactly…again.
I totally agree!!!!
With the coming and going of teachers, student learning will also be affected. I’m going in to my 17th year of teaching when school starts back in August. I have changed grades several times; even just changing grades is a challenge. Or curriculums for that matter. I get better with experience, be it another year of teaching, another year in a particular grade or another year with a particular curriculum. Also, children do better when they have security. Having a lot of new teachers in a school year after year does not promote that.
Hmm! Let’s sum this all up: low pay, no respect, overcrowded classes, diminishing and disappearing pension, and no job security. Wow! Where I can sign up? I hope that all the best and brightest from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton don’t get there first. What a dream job!
Watch out. TFA is breathing down your back.
As a principal, I am really tired of fighting the battle about tenure. Can we just move on to the business of teaching kids? Look, every politician is looking to get rid of it so you know how you fix it? Allow for every teacher upon hire to be given a “due process” hearing, put rules in place that allow for that process to take place for every teacher, and just get rid of the language of tenure. That way, teachers are still protected, administrators will have to make sure to document poor performance and we can move forward focusing on our students. Also, with the TFA, I don’t agree in a washed out system of teachers jumping on board for a small amount of time. TFA in our state is mainly on reservations where it is much needed and poverty is a problem, but if we don’t look at making incentives for great teachers to go there, we are just kicking the can down the road. That is why we are fighting the good fight, keep up the good work everyone….our country needs us.
Actually, tenure in NC was sissified. It was really only “due process”.
So from what I’m hearing and reading, we don’t even have the right to demand a hearing with an Administrative Law Judge, or some other agent of the state, in order to bring forth our case.
Seems to me another critical issue is favoritism. The end of tenure means a threat to academic freedom and the ability to get rid of experienced (more expensive) teachers. But it also means principals can fire veteran teachers to hire the son of a buddy, or a more attractive younger woman, or someone who won’t rock the boat, or someone without a disability or illness.
There are private schools that do not have tenure. Are they filled with inexperienced teachers?
I do think that some of the rules governing public school teachers arise to protect the local government from harm. The public school is often the single largest employer in a town, region, or city. Giving a politician unregulated control over that many employees is a poor idea.
@teachingeconomist – “Are they filled with inexperienced teachers? ”
Yep…and teachers without certification too.
But their kids come out on top anyways (see NAEP) because the kids all come from wealthier homes, which is the key to education in the first place.
I had thought the Lab Schools, Sidwell Friends, and Phillips Exeter had experienced teachers dispite the added cost. I will have to look into it.
I am not sure about those particular schools. But I have a long history with private schools having been a product of one (my wife was too).
I will also be sending my children to a private school because the reformers have ruined public schools. I will not have my child’s information sold to 3rd parties for a profit motive, and I will not have my child be judged based on a test score nor his teachers.
The private schools in our area, and the ones we graduated from, did not require teachers to have education degrees or be certified by the state. The private schools you mentioned are elite private schools, and they may play by different rules.
I believe all private schools play by the same rules, but it may be that those schools find that they have to hire well qualified faculty in order to attract students.
“I believe all private schools play by the same rules, but it may be that those schools find that they have to hire well qualified faculty in order to attract students.”
TE, I reiterate, what planet are you on?
Private schools can be startedby any number of fools or groups with agendas. You can choose to believe whatever you want but I believe you have a profound case fo tunnelvision.
My post was connected to the issue of teacher certification and tenure in private schools. I was responding to another posters statement that the Lab School and other well known private schools play by different rules than the local private schools. I apologize for being unclear.
You are such a liar. REAL tenure exists in private colleges and universities.
Private K-12 “tenure” doesn’t exist because they aren’t public employees.
BTW, private schools by and large pay crap.
I think that tenure is breaking down in institutions of higher education. When there was mandatory retirement, a decision to tenure a faculty member would have been maybe a 30 year commitment. Now there are a number of faculty at my institution that teach into their 80’s with mixed results. Institutions are thinking about tenure as a 50 year commitment now, and I think that leads them to hesitate to make such a long term commitment.
The schools of the hoity-toity elite aren’t typical private schools, and you know it. Teachers are lucky if they make half in a private school what they make in public.
Private schools aren’t better, by the way, and there is no evidence they are. As long as they control who enters those schools in the first place, their test scores, if they have them, look better.
I did not say they were typical, just that they were subject to the same regulations as other private schools.
Middle school teacher you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ve a physical disability and I’m not a cute as I once was, but my imagination, creativity, and ability as a teacher is greater today than it was 25 years ago because I know myself, my strengths and my weaknesses and how to use them best in my 2nd grade classroom.
Hi Elin,
The self-awareness you talk about is such a valuable asset in the classroom. I agree with you that it has a positive effect on creativity and imagination. I think what you’re saying is that experience counts in teaching, just as it does in medicine or law or engineering or any other field.
What tenure does is provide a bit of due process protection for those of us who might be underrated due to factors such as appearance or age. At 62 I am also not what society considers “cute”. Although I don’t give a hoot about that, some do. It is foolish to ignore the reality that that a large percentage of teachers are women and women are judged by some (including some principals) on the basis of appearance. We do not live in a post-sexist society.
P.S. It sounds like your 2nd graders are lucky to have you!
Sorry for the mistakes: repetition of the word “that” and failure to add a comma after the coordinating conjunction “and” in the 2nd paragraph.
MST, I too am 62 and believe that the Granny Factor can be a real plus with my younger students, I tell them I’m old all the time but I exude love and a lot of humor and they give it back to me in spades. Being the relic that I am also allows them to hear first hand about events and conventions of the past and how they relate to the students’ world.
As things change in the country, state, county and my school I am beginning to feel like a candidate hoping for “4 more years!” If I can last that long, I will have done my job and been blessed with being a part of the lives of my students.
Hi Ms. Cartwheel Librarian,
What you said resonated with me. I love what you call the “Granny Factor”. I had one of my 8th graders call me his “in-school grandma”, and I took it as a great compliment.
You are right that being a “relic” has advantages. I can tell my students about sitting in my 8th grade classroom and learning that President Kennedy had been killed. I have also told them about seeing a computer for the first time: It filled a room and had a catwalk around the outside. I also shared what it was like to see my male classmates get their draft numbers by lottery during the Vietnam War. Sometimes the funniest little details amaze them, such as the fact that girls were not allowed to wear jeans or slacks to my high school. One day I brought in an old rotary phone and passed it around; my students loved it and wanted to know how to use it!
Good luck completing your “four more years.” I’m hoping to do three more myself. 🙂
I still have a rotary phone! I don’t know if I can call out on it, but I receive calls just fine. We have gone through several touch tone phones. I don’t think we ever had a rotary phone go bad. This one is at least 34 years old. It was here (in the basement laundry room) when we moved in. We still used rotary phones upstairs, too. The phone company was charging a premium for touch tone. No way was I going to pay extra to be able to punch a button. Even then, our children’s friends could not operate the dial. I frequently had to dial their numbers for them.
Our experiences as relics sound very similar. (I was home from school, eighth grade, in bed with double pneumonia watching Kennedy get shot.) High school students like to hear about the olden days, too. Alas, I don’t get to do my last three years. Even two years ago when I was laid off, an effective rating made no difference. You hit that sixty mark and you are dead meat especially without due process rights.
Wow! It really sounds like some awful principals exist out there. Thank goodness the administration doesn’t have tenure, too!
I’ve often wondered what the consequences would be if administrators served at the behest of their teachers. Under one such system, faculty would have the ability to remove an administrator via a two-thirds vote of no confidence, school boards would be able to veto such a vote, and faculty would be able to override the veto via a vote approaching unanimity.
Despite the “reformer” propaganda, our schools are very good as measured by international test scores weighted for socioeconomic level. But we could have better schools if we started paying teachers more and giving them more autonomy and authority.
What about the autonomy and authority due our principals? These are educated, licensed people – just like teachers, most of whom come from the teaching ranks. Instead of bashing and making blanket accusations, how about considering that they have the capacity, and should have the ability, to make the appropriate staffing decisions in the best interest of the school and, most importantly, the children.
A good teacher should be celebrated and looked upon by others as a role model. This should be earned by demonstrated example, not because one has been teaching for 20 years. Those that aren’t meeting standards, I would expect – although we all should really demand – are addressed by our principals. I am the last person to try and define what those standards are or should be. But, much as I trust our teachers really do have the best interests of our children at heart, I believe the same in our principals.
In NYC principals can earn tenure as well…
You raise good points, Concerned Parent. And this is why I prefaced my remarks with “I’ve often wondered. . . .” Most of all, I would like to see the return of site-based management.
If only someone had tried this theory out to see if it actually works . . . .
Let’s see.
In NYC principals have been given total authority over hiring and firing and they are able to choose whatever programs they deem best for their schools with little to no meaningful input from teachers, students, or parents.
If your theory were correct then we should see several stellar examples of success. Yet test scores have remained stagnant or dropped system wide, veteran teachers are floating around the city as permanent short-term subs without a permanent classroom, teachers have lost any and all ability to innovate or maintain proven excellence in teaching, and there is massive, constant churn.
While your theory may sound good in practice it falls far short of your expectations. NYC isn’t the only place this has been and is being tried. As with all free market theories the ideas sound appealing and sensible but the reality creates monstrous consequences.
Harlem Music Teacher,
Principals in NY City public schools do not get tenure any more. Only the APs do. This has been true for at least 3 to 5 years.
Dear Concerned Parent,
It’s amazing how many really bad principals there are…and by “bad” I mean individuals who are bullies, who bully chosen teachers, and even children they dislike, who have no vision for the school, no creativity, no original ideas, take a soft line with discipline and who greatly dislike working.
Can it be so difficult to make clones of the “GREAT” principals? Those individuals who are team players, who are respectful, have their own ideas and value the ideas of others, get along well with the parents, can take a hardline with discipline, work hard and have vision for the school.
Over the past 10 years I’ve been teaching in the same school. For the first 9 years we had 3 different, but all were “bullying” principals. It was only last year we were fortunate enough to have a “GREAT” principal …and I’m hoping she returns again this year. The differences are amazing, making it so much easier to be a creative and happy teacher with this kind of principal.
NC teachers: start
dying your grays, losing your love handles, getting contacts, wearing high heals/suits/ ties/ mini skirts, wearing medals of saints, putting posters of Arnie Duncan/Bill Gates on your wall, dropping snarky comments about your colleagues, yessing your supervisors. abandoning your former selves, and look just like a TFA’er coming on board.
Smile and nod.
To all those who read TE:
He begins quite a few posts with “I believe” and “I think”. . . and then finishes the phrase with someting interesting and attention getting.
Please know that fact is fact and speculation is speculation.
TE’s ability to engage his audience: A+ !!!!!!
TE’s ability to persuade using in-depth data and facts and comprehensive approaches to fact finding and reporting: F- !!!!!
Also understand that TE did not teach in a public school under NCLB or RTTT, the way most of us here have. That’s not his fault, but he has decided to use his non-experiences to advocate for our current and future professions. I guess foot surgeons, in TE’s world, can perform heart surgery.
TE is not an evil thinker, nor is he a bad person.
But I posit that he is among the three most meaningless on this blog.
A narcissistic, self centered child cannot garner any more steam from adults when they decide to no longer pay attention to him . . . .
My recollection is that TE tends to use “I think” and “I believe” to identify what he thinks and believes. And I’ve never seen him insult another commenter, even mildly. Also, my memory may fail me, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any commenter here “persuade using in-depth data and facts and comprehensive approaches to fact finding and reporting.” But I’m probably the single most meaningless commenter on this blog, so take all that with a grain of salt.
Do I have the honor of being the second member of that trinity? Who’s the third?
With all due respect, Harlan, I’m far more irrelevant than you or TE. My teaching credentials consist of solely of a couple years of teaching freshman composition while in graduate school. I’m just an irrelevant public school parent.
Not true at all Flerp. Not true! I do worry about Harlan’s health though.
Now that’s not fair, Harlan.
I have always and sincerely admired how much of an interesting writer you are. Being interesting does not mean you have to be significant.
The fact that you’ve been warned about your impusivity on this blog and yet still have developed a fan base says something about you, I think. What your fans’ motivations are is another story, something I personally don’t care to delve into.
Keep on commenting, Harlan. Just avoid insulting the host . . .
You have it in you. I know you do.
Fan base????? I don’t know to whom you refer, unless you are being ironic. Truly, I was WAY out of line insulting the host. In future, I plan to make only constructive contributions, even though they are merely anecdotal.
I look forward to reading your posts….I hope you feel better also.
I was being ironic.
FLERP,
I never have commented directly or implicatively that your thinking is insignificant. I would hate to think that you have even the slightest notion of it about yourself.
No one, at least not me, has said you are irrelevant. I don’t know where you are coming from . . . .
Alabama teacher, none of this has anything to do with education or making it better – nothing! This is all about destroying the unions (mostly in the North) and making teaching a minimum wage job. The elite don’t want a literate, critical thinking populace. Come on now. It benefits the elites when the masses are stupid, insecure (economically and physically). When people are desperate they will work for next to nothing and won’t complain. You couldn’t play this game in Europe where people demand decent wages (even at McDonalds) and a properly funded educational system. Once they have beaten down teaching to babysitting level and very low wages, they will mysteriously leave it alone again. (I think) However, the whole purpose could be just to destroy public education and make people pay for private schools, etc. I don’t think the government wants to be involved with education anymore. This is why college is so expensive. The government is pulling all its funding from higher learning as well. Think about it. If the government really wanted to improve education, it would be building up public education and making teaching a desirable profession. They wouldn’t be ripping everything down and destroying the profession.
Yes, teaching in an urban school is high risk. BUT THE RISK DOES NOT COME FROM THE STUDENTS AND THEIR PARENTS. As a recently retired Bronx high school mathematics, I see it as important that people understand that the high risk comes from the administration, NOT from the students and their parents. The administrators, the politicians and the big business CEOs are the ones attacking teachers, and attacking the students in urban areas, as well as in poor working class rural areas. They work hard to get students and teachers to see each each others as enemies. They want students and parents to blame teachers. They also want teachers to blame students and parents. These same big business owners and CEOs are scared to death that teachers and students will recognize that we must be on the same side. The fact is that I was able to keep my job teaching because my students and their parents stood up for me in the face of attacks by administrators. I am still in touch with many of my students and their families
, some of whom graduated over twenty years ago and others who graduate fairly recently.
Exactly.
I teach in a Catholic school. There are lots of Catholic schools in my city/Archdiocese. We do not have tenure and we do not have equal pay between the schools. Schools that do not have as much money as the bigger ones in my city frequently turn to the ACE Program sponsored by Notre Dame. I’m in a small, inner city school. We’ve had mostly good ACE teachers in my school, but not all of them have been good and many of them get out of education or at least the classroom as soon as their two years are up.
Tenure is gone in Illinois. The new evaluation system gives you some points for seniority but can doc you for any sick days you take, even if you have many saved. Many teachers getting close to retirement are not offered the newest trainings and some are forced out because they are relocated to other positions, and the new evaluation system makes it almost impossible to get top ratings if you have a new position. Many teachers nearing retirement are seeing the results of the new evaluation system in Illinois.
I am curios about your reference to teachers near retirement. In higher education the lack of mandatory retirement has meant that tenure is literally lifetime employment as faculty teaching into their seventies and eighties are becoming increasingly more common.
I have a friend who ‘un-retired’ when that happened. Teaching load is possibly a factor. Two sections. For we elementary and secondary teachers, on campus all day, busy every hour (I tutored during lunch), with five sections, physical age does become a factor—at least it did for me: heart attack, CHF, gout. It’s not as much fun dancing all day with painful feet and shortness of breath. The mind and spirit are willing, and ABLE, but the flesh is weak.
Who needs experienced teachers if “teacher” is redefined to mean
a. someone who can ensure that the students’ computers are booted up so that they can do their worksheets on a screen from Pearson and K12
b. someone who will follow the script that tells what question to pose, what the correct answer is, and what sort of response (seal clap, great grate) to ask the class to give when the correct response is forthcoming
Of course, all you old teachers are not going to get with the program. You are too expensive and unruly anyway. We have new programs for producing the do-bots we’ll need to prepare the obedient 21st-century workforce, and we can churn these out in a few weeks of summer camp.
What if teacher is redefined to mean the staff at Art of Problem Solving? I think one of the teachers there has a degree from a school of education.
Here is a link if folks are interested:http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/index.php?page=school.instructors
Wow! What an impressive group! It would be a treat to work with such people!
You don’t have to sell me, TE, on the possibilities for online education. I see enormous potential there. But I’ve also spent a LOT of time studying the current K-12 online programs. They are a sad lot. Really dreadful.
My middle son took a k12 online AP US Government class (sorry Linda) and was not very impressed. On the other hand, US government is a required class for all students and my youngest son took it the traditional way in the school. Also not a very Impressive class.
Damn it, TE. I started watching the Art of Problem Solving videos. They are WONDERFUL!
Thanks for sharing this.
There are so many complaints and emotions on this post. How about solutions?
As teachers, you are among the most educated of groups. As such, what are some of the solutions you propose? These challenges you speak of exist, and have existed, within the business world for some time now.
I certainly don’t agree with all the changes – proposed or implemented – within our educational system. My wife is a teacher and I support her fully. I know things have been challenging. However, perhaps you need to think that a voice of reason and solutions might be heard over the complaining and defense. Ultimately, you may chart your own course or standby defiantly while others define it. One thing we do agree on… Our children will suffer for it.
In case you haven’t noticed, Concerned Parent, teachers have not exactly been included in the “reform” discussion. The reform is being done to us as well as the students. No one is soliciting our input. Are you not aware that we are supposed to be most of the problem?
As long as we are talking about THE PROBLEM, teachers would contend that you have missed the boat. The data does not suggest that the U.S. had A PROBLEM with its public education system. Up until the reform movement took hold, we had shown a slow and steady improvement trend in a system that was already recognized for producing creative and innovative thinkers.
While you cannot miss the angst on this blog, can you honestly deny that we have a right to feel this way? However, if you read carefully, I am sure that you will find an understanding among teachers of what makes for good teaching. Dig a little.
Oh dear Concerned Parent, please read up on the past several months of blog posts here and you’ll see we’ve moved beyond Pollyanna thinking.
It’s bad, a war on public education right here in the good ole US of A.
I wonder where your wife works where you can even have the luxury of thinking that we can “chart our own course”. We’re a movement now, pleas catch up.
By the way, I’m a concerned parent too.
Hi, Concerned Parent!
Solutions:
1. Stand with your teachers! When your child comes home and reports to you about all of the time spent in testing and/or test prep, and their teacher(s) can only confirm this, please complain. Complain from the principal to the superintendent to the school board to the state DOE. And don’t stop complaining and raising a ruckus.
2. Refuse to have your child participate in the testing cycle, and encourage other parents who are fed up to do the same.
3. Speak loudly and proudly of all of the good things that happen at your local school. Remember (and remind your friends and neighbors) that bad things are reported over and over, even if they’re in isolation, but all of the good is not so exciting to focus on by the media.
4. When something goes wrong, don’t assume the solution is to take your child out of school. School choice is bad for communities because it encourages people to react and leave instead of communicate and compromise.
5. Respect your community’s teachers’ time. They aren’t supposed to work 10+ hour days, 7 day weeks (but many do). Expect that they are human with families and lives, just like you.
6. Speak out against the corporatization of your public school Get the pop machines out (no more “Coke” or “Pepsi” in the halls); stop participating in “boxtops for schools” or other programs which just encourage the group think that it is right for our schools to have to beg for handouts from corporations.
7. Complain to and make demands of your elected officials (yes, all the way to the president) because they have gutted and continue to gut the public trust of free public K-12 education system in our country.
You asked.
This is terrible… And I fear something similar will happen next year in California because of the Vergara vs. CA lawsuit. I found out about the case since I’m still on the SFER-USC email list and tried my best to persuade SFER members (you can find those letters and more info here: http://inspireducation.wordpress.com/?s=vergara+vs.+california&submit=) to have a more balanced dialogue about the case and not to immediately jump on board with the plaintiffs, who are aiming to eliminate teacher tenure, seniority, and reform the dismissal process (and who are heavily funded by a corp ed reform org called StudentsMatter.)
How do you suggest that we stop this madness, Diane?
Many teachers will soon be leaving the profession. When this “Braintrust” that is there departs, we will see how important tenured teachers are. Most teachers I know went into teaching because they wanted to make a difference, and many have, over and over and over again. Any teacher who will be at retirement age is leaving. We used to stay beyond that because we saw success; because we liked our jobs; because we cared too much to leave. Even my daughter, who is starting her fourth year of teaching this year, is starting to look for jobs outside of education. I have not been able to try to convince her it’s a wrong move. I don’t think it is in these times.
As negative as that sounds, I still am out there telling the truth about education and ‘reform’. I am retired. I can do that now. Where I taught, if you voiced your opinion, the administration harassed you in legal ways. Tenure doesn’t protect you from all the bullies.
If our younger teachers leave the profession and use the many skills they learned in college and on the job to infiltrate the private sector, then what will be the outcry? These teachers have stolen our jobs?
On a side note, “teachingeconomist” speaks of what s/he does not know. I challenge him/her to spend one grading period fully responsible for a classroom of children in a public school. It doesn’t have to be one in a big city. People like that often forget there are many different kinds of public schools, suburban, rural, small city- take your pick.
Absolutely, Nancy. Until one has actually experienced the “tenure” process firsthand, he or she simply doesn’t know what he or she is even talking about.
“teachingeconomist” is a hack, a troll, whose posts should be ignored. Private schools aren’t “better” than public anyway, but in his/her world, private is always better because it is private. You can’t reason with somebody who is brainwashed.
As for Sidwell Friends and other schools of the rich and powerful–they aren’t better, but they provide advantages because of the connections, the same thing as with the Ivy league. WRT Sidwell, it is only four blocks from the White House, so the location is vastly important for security reasons. The media are also prohibited from setting foot there.
What are you talking about? Where in this thread did TE assert that private schools are better than public schools?
If you are going to call me names, perhaps you could get the reasons correct. I never said private schools were better than public schools. Is there some other reason to call me names?
I think we may get frustrated by your comments on occasion. You can be very numbers oriented without demonstrating any ability to interpret those numbers beyond an economic viewpoint. Teachers are certainly more than aware of the methods of misusing statistics in education. You would be much more helpful if you were able to explain the possible limitations of your stats. Because of your familiarity with economic statistics, you can probably identify the possible limitations much more definitively than we can.
I don’t know that it matters what I say. Susannunes makes up things to berate me about.
I don’t agree with teachingeconomist, but I’m not going to call names or go back and forth. Let’s be respectful of one another’s opinions.
Elections matter, people! If the public, including many teachers, would stop voting for the fools who are dismantling public education (as well as much other aspects of American life), then we wouldn’t have these issues. Unfortunately, we get the school system that we want and deserve.
The fools are democrats and republicans: mayors, governors, senators, congressmen and women, state reps, the president and his appointees.
I just want to make it clear that although I have stated that I teach in a Catholic school, I do not necessarily believe that private scholls are better than public schools. My school may well be better than a particular public school but a different public school may well be better than my school. I just happened to get my first job offer from a Cathoilc school and was relieved to be signing a contract in May rather than two weeks after school had started and to not have to jump through the hoops to keep a job long enough to gain tenure in my city’s public school system. Also, since I happen to be Catholic, I like being able to teach my faith.
Alabama teacher…I agree, “when in Rome do as the Romans do” As a Catholic and wanting to teach in a Catholic school sounds like a good idea, and your thoughts that some schools are better or worse is sound…just as I show my students using a line on the board:
dumb_______________you_______________smart
You can always find some who are dumber and some who are smarter, so it’s best that you only compare yourself to yourself and become the best student you can be.
Public Education is the foundational cornerstone of Democratic Governance.
Public Education is mandated by the Government.
Public Education creates and maintains a culture.
Public Education’s work speaks for itself.