Brock Cohen taught for a dozen years in the public
schools and is now pursuing a graduate degree. Here
he tries to explain the madness of local, state, and
federal mandates that crush teachers, principals and schools as
they labor under the burden of being labeled a “failing school.”
Here is a sample of how these mandates destroy schools instead of
helping them: “Most of my 12-plus years as a high school teacher
have been spent in a Title I Los Angeles-area public high school
that is perennially labeled with Program Improvement (P.I.)
probationary status. Being branded as such means continually having
to grapple with a host of federal, state, and local sanctions that,
at best, cast pall of shame over the entire school and at worst
cause direct harm to student learning outcomes. “Program
Improvement,” incidentally, is bureaucratic vernacular for
“failing,” which is ironic, since many of the California schools
designated with this term have actually been meeting or exceeding
their school-wide Academic Performance Index (API) goals for years.
I know: I don’t get it either. So what gives? “Here’s a hint: the
fundamental problem of “failing” schools isn’t lurking within the
decaying brick and mortar of dilapidated school walls. It does,
however, lurk within a dilapidated system that stubbornly refuses
to transform itself into what it should – or could – be. This
autocratic paradigm tries to paper over outdated or incoherent
curricula, abysmally low organizational capacity and scripted
“test-best” instructional mandates with a new generation of
high-stakes tests and massive rollouts of iPads. It also includes
the cynical but rosy rhetoric of school leaders and media pundits
who call for teachers and principals to work their way through this
manufactured crisis – to Teach Like a Champion! – as if balling
one’s fists and punching a concrete wall harder, harder, HARDER!
could ever serve as a template for reconstituting a building’s
framework. “The problem also lurks within an ethos that continually
fails to realize that our hallowed learning and achievement targets
actually descend into an abysmal rabbit hole. Without delving too
deeply into this abyss, let’s just say that data collection isn’t
inherently a bad thing. But the performance indicators on which
we’ve chosen to fixate have rendered the whole process pointless
and fantastically detrimental to the cognitive growth of a
generation of students. That leaders and practitioners have been
somehow coerced into believing that learning indicators are
something that can be reflected in the crudeness of high-stakes
standardized test scores reveals the extent to which intellectual
atrophy has devolved into an institutionalized norm.” Read it all
and weep for the children and those who are trying their best to
educate them.