Nancy Flanagan taught music in Michigan for many years. She now blogs at Edweek.
In this post, she dissects a new reformy idea called “the opportunity culture.” The bottom line is that if you are in the top 25% of teachers, determined by test scores, then you should teach larger classes and get paid more. This is Bill Gates’ and Michael Bloomberg’s dream.
Nancy is at her best in this column. You deserve a break today. Read it and enjoy the absurdity of this latest gambit.
Here is a small sample of Nancy’s post:
“How did this exciting window of opportunity emerge? Public Impact explains:
“Only 25 percent of classes are taught by excellent teachers. With an excellent teacher versus an average teacher, students make about an extra half-year of progress every year–closing achievement gaps fast, leaping ahead to become honors students, and surging forward like top international peers.”
“That’s a whole lot of leaping and surging. Unfortunately, it’s based on a faux statistic, sitting triumphantly on a pyramid of dubious research, prettied up with some post-modern infographics. Like other overhyped blah-blah of “reform”–the “three great teachers in a row” myth, for example, or nearly every “fact” in Waiting for Superman–it’s a triumph of slick media slogans over substance. A quick look at the Opportunity Culture Advisory Team tells you what the real purpose of the OC is: cutting teachers, privatizing services, plugging charters and cultivating a little astroturf to cover the scars.
“The Opportunity Culture’s bold plan begins with a policy recommendation: Schools should be required by law to identify the top 25% of their teachers. Then, once that simple task is completed, OC suggests ten exciting new models for staffing schools, beginning with giving these excellent teachers a lot more students (plus a merit pay carrot) and ending with enlisting “accountable remote teachers down the street or across the nation” who would “provide live, but not in-person instruction while on-site teammates manage administrative duties and develop the whole child.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reformers: go away.
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Thanks for today’s first big belly laugh for me! This is just too funny to be taken seriously. Sadly, I can so see it happening. Teachers…reject this nonsense once and for all to help put the deformers on alert that you’re not going to accept their uber control strategies any longer. I can only imagine the huge distraction all this implementation of corporate crap is from your teaching. At this time of year, I am especially holding each of you in my heart for a joyful year ahead, despite all the drama trauma going on around you. Stay strong. YOU are the professionals!
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Read Michael P. Goldenberg’s comment. It begins oh, so cleverly:
“Let’s see: if we could only get every child to have nothing but excellent teachers. . . then every child would have an . . . average teacher.”
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I think everything Michael P. Goldenberg writes is quite clever throughout. I wish he had a louder voice. And that more people had learned their math from teachers like him. It would be a lot more difficult for the reformers (among others) to fool the average American if they had great numerical skills.
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I couldn’t agree with you more. As a 7th grade math teacher those are big but necessary footprints to follow.
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Leave you comment here:
http://opportunityculture.org/our-initiative/feedback/
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Stupid, stupid, stupid. The bigger the class, the less effective the teacher will be.
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Thereby reducing the % of “great teachers” determined solely by test scores.
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I notice these sites (escholar/Bobby, Shared learning collaborate now inbloom and this one, opportunity culture) have cheesy graphics with avatars vs. real people. They all have varying shades of beige skin and there are rarely more than five kids in a pix with the cartoon teacher. The model teacher is young and smiling. The ordinary teacher is older and has grey hair. It looks like how NOT to set up a web page to peddle your eduscheme.
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What i’ve noticed is that the explainatory videos all seem to be populated by poorly animated cartoon teachers & students. It’s sort of like South Park without the irony or humor. One wonders why they can’t use actual people in them; perhaps it’s because the videos are noting more than animated infographics.
The lady doing the voice over for Public Impact’s video sounds just so nice, concerned, earnest, and sure she has the answer.Even my sleeping dog perked up her ears when the video started. (I kid you not.)
It’d be fun to see the PI video with a different text for the voice over, but the same perky narration style.
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Sally (and others), if you would like to see some (high school student) produced You-Tube, 90 second videos, please look here:
These student produced videos in 7 languages encourage youngsters to consider taking Dual (high school/college) credit courses while still in high school. Most feature youngsters from district public schools. Some feature youngsters n charters.
The “music” videos near the top are especially nice examples of youth creativity. And I know that regardless of other disagreements, many people on this list-serve agree on the value of encouraging youth creativity.
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Yes, we know that Joe…we are creative teachers who also work with children who complete projects that involve the use technology, software and hardware.
We are critiquing the lame videos put together by adult groups funded to promote Bill’s idea of “reform”….they always have cartoon teachers with 4-5 students max, so far from reality it is laughable.
Many of us could send you videos created by students as well. We live it. We breathe it. We are it. You missed the point for some odd reason.
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Always glad to see the work that you or others are proud of, Linda.
Yes, I understand the conversation was about the Public Impact Videos. But that could lead to videos that other people have produced with young people.
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Ms. Flanagan is a National Board Certified Teacher, which suggests that she has some strong skills and talent for working with youngsters in her chosen field, music. I’ve asked how she thinks she would use NBCT such as herself, to help more youngsters.
There’s an interesting exchange between Brian Hassel of Public Impact and Ms. Flanagan at the Ed Week website.
I’m not endorsing Public Impact’s approach. But I know that many people have gained (including me) from being mentored by a veteran educator. In talking with some National Board Certified Teachers, (not a scientific study), I’ve heard that they feel underused.
When we surveyed 20 Minnesota state teachers of the year, we definitely heard that the vast majority felt under-used by their district and by colleges of education.
Again, I am not endorsing the specific suggestions of Public Impact but I do think some schools could be making better use of their strongest teachers. It would be interesting to hear of examples of how some of you felt this was done wisely.
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Unfortunately, in many schools the NBCT is a stepping stone up the ladder and out of the classroom, either for more money or for advancement. I am sure the gates people know that increasing class size will drive down teacher ratings, but the real point of their programs is to promote and implement online education. Take the teacher out of the picture all together. An expert teacher would prepare course materials, supplements, etc and deliver the course online–thus available to all at anytime and place. The student would have teacher aides available locally for help. This is already being done with AP and other courses in small schools that cannot afford to hire or provide teachers for physics, etc. This online provision is just the next logical step. It will work with many students–but research finds that online and or computer based courses do not work well with less motivated students or those who lack time-management skills or self motivation. And I cannot see this working with the first-4th grade students being targeted in Indiana and elsewhere for online public charter schools that are free!! Do we need to better use our teacher resources in our neediest schools? Yes–but these ed reformers do not yet have any valid suggestions.
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“An expert teacher would prepare course materials, supplements, etc and deliver the course online.”
No teacher, yes I said no teacher, who “delivers the course online” can be an “expert teacher”. That’s a plain and simple truth. If you can’t figure out why that is true then you certainly can’t be considered an “expert teacher”.
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Surprise, surprise!
Home / The Opportunity Culture Initiative / Our Funders
The work of the Opportunity Culture initiative is made possible by funding from The Joyce Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
http://opportunityculture.org/our-initiative/our-funders/
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I’m SHOCKED! 😮
😛
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That is a business model that aims to destroy our nation’s most important asset.
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I suggest we apply this model to the Medical and Legal professions and perhaps even the public/political profession. After all shouldn’t we be testing the ongoing competence of all these groups and having the top 25% do most of the work and relagate the rest of the Drs, Lawyers, and Political chiefs to their respective scrap heaps?
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I might have found Bryan Hassel’s argument that Public Impact wasn’t all about supporting charter schools and privatizing services:
“Perhaps she thought they might sound a little too attractive to accomplished teachers. Or that when you see this whole package, it’s obvious our proposals have nothing to do with Ms. Flanagan’s bugaboos, like “privatizing services” or “plugging charters.” Huh?”
if I hadn’t noticed the sidebar beside his post highlighting the “OC News and Views” where the four articles listed include 2 touting the success of, wow, charter schools, one about Opportunity Culture Appearances, which, again, lists how charter schools are using the program, and the last about how Charlotte (NC) Zone Planned Opportunity Culture Schools have utilized technology and “expert” teachers to increase “achievement” (higher test scores and graduation rates).
While some of the ideas presented are interesting and warrant discussion there is an underlying current of subterfuge that is hard to overlook. While claiming to support schools and teachers in experimenting with innovation there is the underlying mandate that any of those innovations must align to the 5 predetermined tenets of Public Impact, no exceptions.
This type of hobbling the ideas is not allowing for true innovation but rather confining innovation to a preset ideology funded by the usual corporate suspects, which makes me cautious and suspect myself.
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Thanks for making me laugh this otherwise unfunny Chicago morning. Around here, the best way to become one of the “best” teachers is to get as far as possible away from the hard core segregated impoverished inner city schools (where I had the privilege of teaching for decades before being purged and blacklisted by Paul Vallas & Co). Step one in the “Two Step” is to transfer from a “bad” school to a “good” school within the city. That trick has been done regularly here in Chicago. I remember two decent English teachers who transferred from Chicago’s Collins High School (in the North Lawndale community) to Lane Tech High School (selective enrollment forever), and suddenly they were relieved of all the worries about having their school subjected to “turnaround” etc., etc., etc.
The Big Step then is to wrangle a job in the suburbs — say at New Trier High School, where Rahm Emanuel and his brothers went to school. (I know: Rahm’s a Chicago guy — not). If you become a New Trier teacher, as two people I knew in Chicago did, then you become one of the best teachers in the USA.
Forever.
The only downside is that you have to teach bratty kids like a young Rahm Emanuel, and deal with parents who will remind you in a pinch (say, when their kid gets an “F”) that they are smarter than you and that if you had any brains, ambition or talent you would be in business and not teaching…
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This idea will sell to the general public because most people still believe that teaching is the same as telling. With this model of teaching at the forefront, it totally makes sense to have the best explainers explaining to a huge classroom or from a remote site, while the lesser explainers take care of the (presumably less important) relationship and classroom management stuff.
Unfortunately, everyone who has actually been a successful teacher knows that the explaining part (lecture) is a pretty minor bit of what makes kids successful. Lots of research backs this up. The body of work known as Physics Ed. Research (PER) is an excellent example that leads even the strongest proponents of the “sage on the stage” model to question their paradigm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WwslBPj8GgI
The sad part of this PI initiative is that it goes 180 degrees off-course. Their flawed model of learning will put the best teachers in settings where they cannot possibly succeed, because the relationships and classroom dynamics that have largely contributed to their success will not be possible when they are teaching much larger numbers of children.
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