Rachel Fairbank is a first-year teacher in Houston. She
always wanted to be a teacher. She was inspired by her own
teachers. But
she is drowning in paperwork, busywork, mandates, and
directives. She doesn’t know if she will make it. The
district does nothing to support her as a new teacher. Houston was
honored by the Broad Foundation as the most improved urban district
in the nation (reprising its Broad award from a decade ago–HISD
seems to have improved, then stopped improving, and is now
improving again). Houston is everything that Broad admires: it
gives performance pay; it fires teachers. It believes in carrots
and sticks. But the story Rachel tells is of a district that
disrespects teachers. Across the nation, teachers are leaving the
profession. Veteran teachers are leaving, new teachers are leaving.
How much longer can this continue without seriously damaging the
education profession and hurting children? She writes:
Every morning, as I gear up for another day, I wonder if
this will be the day that I become another one of the teachers who
burns out and quits. Sometimes I feel like I am running a race
against time, waiting to see what will happen first – adapt to the
demands of the job or burn out? I went into
teaching because I know – in a very tangible fashion – just how
much of a difference teachers can make. My teachers pushed me to
realize my potential. I am the youngest of
seven children, born into a family with few resources. I worked my
way through college, graduating without my parents’ financial
assistance, without taking out loans and while maintaining a
cumulative 3.6 average at Cornell University, a top-tier university
well-known for its rigor, and later receiving a fistful of
acceptances from top graduate programs….The truth is that there simply aren’t
enough hours in the day to do everything that is required of me.
There is always something, whether it’s a training requirement or
writing tests or preparing my lessons or grading papers or
counseling struggling students. Some things get finished. Most
things do not. My working life is an uneasy
calculation between the most pressing need and the requirements
that I hope can remain unfinished. Sometimes I feel like I am
always on the verge of failure, one tiny slip or miscalculation
away from either being fired or failing my students.
I find myself longing for fewer students or fewer classes
or fewer training requirements, all in the hopes that I can hunker
down and concentrate on becoming a good teacher. An effective
teacher. In the recent report issued by the
Broad Foundation, which honored the district in the fall as the
nation’s top urban school system, the foundation makes the
following observation about HISD:
“High-performing personnel are rewarded through
performance pay, and ineffective personnel are exited. The district
links teacher evaluations to student performance, providing bonuses
to top performers. Every teacher in the district is placed into one
of four performance tiers. Before 2009, the district did not
differentiate its teachers, and only 4 percent of teachers had
growth plans. Today, all teachers in the bottom quartile are on
growth plans and top teachers mentor others.”
I look around me and I see teachers who are overworked
and stressed. To be given a staggering workload – and then to work
at a job that is increasingly more insecure – is to work in an
environment that callously churns through employees.
HISD makes a point of noting that ineffective teachers
are forced to leave the district. What I wonder is how many of
these teachers who leave are truly ineffective and how many are
made ineffective simply due to the overwhelming
workload? When I think back to the teachers
who made the greatest impact on me, very few were the new teachers.
Most of them were veteran educators who had the experience and
skill necessary to make a lasting impact. Will I make
it?
I live and work in Pittsburgh, PA, yet this writer nailed my feelings and thoughts about teaching dead on. My job is sucking the life out of me. It has become a toxic place to be. Sad…really.
Can’t we all just get with the program? I say let’s all have our brains downloaded onto Microsoft hard drives, attach electronic leashes to our ankles and gulp down loads of SOMA every day so as to maintain productivity and efficiency. This must all be closely monitored by 24/7 on call data testing systems in which we are all prepared to confirm our allegiance to high-stakes testing and performance evaluations. All naysayers must be eradicated from the system.
BTW all the teachers resignations are not exactly that as it is more a form of coercion where they are beat down to the point of departure. Replacing these experienced educators will be “coaches” who work with data analysis and computer systems in the “new field” of “performance education.” Those coaches will receive meager pay and no benefits. Profits will be increased for the Educational-Industrial Complex and the teacher’s unions will be destroyed.
Unless we rebel in mass solidarity.
Sounds like what is actually happening at WalMart and Amazon. Those Taylorized efficiencies are frightening in the extreme and they are well on their way to overtaking our classrooms.
If we don’t rise up and rebel very soon it will be too late.
I agree with the last sentence. They have no idea how many teachers there are in this country. Probably one for every 20 students (0r many more if you count specialists). Our buying power is great, stop buying PCs (only mac…though I’m not too sure about that company’s intents either), stop going to Walmart. Do the research and STOP supporting any of the major players’ companies for a start. There is so much more we could be doing but until we get our heads out of the sand and realized that this isn’t just happening in some other school district, that is will soon be OUR school district, OUR children’s school district, nothing will happen. We need to stand together because right now, we are the ants supporting some very foolish grasshopper’s ideas!
Everyone in the country should read the Broad Foundation twitter feed. It is a pure positive feedback loop. No new information gets in there. They and their narrow version of ed reform are always excellent, always winning. The thing is ruthlessly purged of all negative news on ed reform.
Every once in while there’s a broad indictment of “public schools” but we ALL know who that means, don’t we? “Public schools” who don’t follow The Broad Recipe.
It’s a well-funded cheerleading squad for charter schools and market-based ed reform. They spend 24/7 telling one another how great they are:
ATR @ATR_updates 17h
#FF @BroadFoundation, strengthening America’s public schools by creating environments that allow students & teachers to succeed.
That the schools who adopt this mantra, this system, are so punishing and brutal on teachers is amusing.
The Management- the pundits and policy and marketing people- aren’t real hard on themselves, I’ll tell ya 🙂
It’s like how Arne Duncan visits only those public schools that have followed his Recipe For Success. No information that would challenge his managerial status quo is permitted to enter The Excellence Zone.
Retweeted by The Broad Foundation
Success Academy @SuccessCharters Mar 19
If you want to close the achievement gap, invest in charters. @Ninacharters on new study that shows #ChartersWork. http://ar.gy/5h~4
“. . . and ineffective personnel are exited.”
Are exited???
Speak English TROOPS!*
*Quote from: Firesign Theatre
Retweeted by The Broad Foundation
John Manahan @John_P_Manahan Mar 18
Check out @RocketshipEd ‘s new blog! http://blog.rsed.org
Can you imagine if public schools had this well-funded machine promoting them?
I guess it wouldn’t work as well because they’re not national or regional chains with “brands” so we couldn’t tweet conclusory statements like “Lincoln Elementary in Sandusky, Ohio Creates Excellence!” and get a whole lot of traction 🙂
Rachel,
Realize that the first year of teaching is always the hardest (or at least it seems so). Any new position worth its salt is difficult, but none as difficult as first year teaching. There is a reason that almost 50% of new teachers leave by the fifth year. If it was easy, anyone could do it without any training.
Take care and survive. More likely than not it will be better next year.
Duane
I disagree. Get out and get out now while you are young and have the energy and ability to move into a new profession!
Don’t do like I did and wait until you are close to retirement because like me you will feel trapped in a nightmare scenario of constant abuse and bullying at work with no recourse but to close your mouth and take it because you have bills that must be paid and you’ve never made enough money to provide yourself a cushion for transitioning.
Chris in Florida,
I always enjoy your posts. I am nearing retirement and suffering from the entrapment you describe. I second your advice on entering the teaching field. It gets worse every day. I used to love my job when I had an opportunity to use my creativity in planning and teaching lessons. I have no interest in data driven instruction. I hate reading strategies and I never want to do a close reading of anything.
Chris, your story makes me sad. I’m sure you have worked hard over the years and have seen the teaching profession take an absolute nosedive. It’s funny how these poor urban areas with public and charter schools all seem to have the same environment: bullying and fear and intimidation of staff. This is happening all over the country. It’s as if bullying teachers makes students work harder. I think the reform movement has created so much damage to teachers and students. You’ve described parents that want to blame and threaten. I’ve seen many parents who do this yet, don’t follow through with their responsibility with raising their children to respect education and own their behavior choices. Your super. sounds like a total sell-out idiot. I can’t believe this has happened in America. I do wish all of the teachers in your district would just walk out.
In the print article published last week in the Houston Chronicle, it posted Rachel Fairbank has already resigned.
Texas has not adopted Common Core but we have our own version called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and are captive to Pearson testing like so many others. The passive aggressive management of teachers and students takes its toll as witnessed by Fairbank’s letter.
Dear Overwhelmed,
Do like the rest of us. Ignore the BS, and do what you know is right. Most administrative paperwork is never followed up on.
Go to the minimum of training you can get away with, most of it is worthless.
They can’t fire all of us…
“They can’t fire all of us…”
Remember Ronald Reagan and the Air Traffic Controllers? What some have called the beginning of the end of the labor movement in the USA?
I wouldn’t be so sure. . . .
Chris in Florida,
I never yet heard of a school district that fired all its teachers. Garfield High School teachers refused to give the MAP test and no one was fired. The only mass firings are Duncan-Bloomberg style turnarounds. When teachers stand together on behalf of kids, united with parents, they win.
You may be historically correct Diane but I can’t see any other outcome here in Florida with the law that requires districts to fire any teacher who receives two years of low evaluations under VAM. The same law prevents any other public school in the state from hiring teaches that are fired under VAM.
My own principal was told last year by our district and the state Differentiated Accountability crew that controls everything we do now that she could not give any teacher a “highly effective” or “effective” rating since we received an “F” as our school grade and the same will hold true this year is we don’t raise our overall FCAT grade by at least 30%.
The other 12 Title I schools that received an “F” grade were told the same thing. So we all now have 1 bad rating.
If our children do not score substantially higher this year, a highly unlikely if not impossible scenario, that will be our second low score and we will automatically be fired and stripped of our certification.
I’m talking about over 75 teachers per school times 13 schools. This will be mirrored in all the “F” and “D” schools throughout the state over the summer.
The current commissioner of education has stripped away the school “safety net” in calculating school grades so even more schools should be rated as failing this year. It has the potential to be a tidal wave.
The law has not yet been tested this way because this is just the second year it has been in effect but this should be the year that we see massive firings under the law. How the state will handle this is anyone’s guess. They are not exactly famous for making good decisions or basing their decisions in research or reality.
7th grade Teacher
The best advice EVER on this topic. We work under the fear of mostly empty threats.
I have been informed that Rachel, the author of this article, resigned as a teacher in HISD.
Come down to my district where over 300 veteran teachers and district employees were let go last June by our new superintendent who is a big fan of Paul Vallas. Not exactly an empty threat here.
He used the excuse of a budgetary crisis, which got him the job as a “tough, no-nonsense” army guy to get rid of nearly every employee that had any institutional memory or experience. Most all have been replaced with people having less than 5 years experience, TFA “veterans”, and people who cut their teeth under the worst of the worst reform programs.
Our district is hell on earth for teachers. Not fear of empty threats but reality. May not be the case everywhere or even anywhere else but it happened here and could happen anywhere.
Chris in Florida,
A terrifying district to work in. How do parents feel about the loss of all veteran teachers? Clearly, he ants young teachers to cut cost and reduce fixture pension obligations. Do you mind naming your district?
Its still the best advice even if the threats are real. Unfortunately if there is a true vendetta being carried out, compliance and complacency will not save anyone. Clearly compliance and complacency didn’t save any veteran teachers down Florida. Under the working conditions you describe (hell on earth), getting laid off may not be such a bad career move. Here in NY 7th grade teacher’s advice works well for veteran teachers.
I need to say that not all veteran teachers in the district were fired, to clarify what I wrote earlier – sorry I was unclear but I was doing two things at once.
Nearly all district personnel who were veteran teachers were let go, including the entire curriculum dept., the professional development dept., the ESE dept., the IT dept., the assistant superintendents, Title I, the heads of elementary, middle, and high schools, many of the learning coaches, and a few others. Some were “allowed” to re-enter the classroom as a Kindergarten teacher after having been an administrator for 20+ years, a couple were allowed to take an assistant principal job. Many just retired early or quit.
All new teachers were let go at the end of the year under RIF and about 63% were rehired when school started due to the budget crisis.
A years-long curriculum project to roll out the CCSS using roadmaps was abandoned midyear this year when the heads of the program were moved to other positions and not replaced. The professional learning communities and teacher leader programs were dropped without explanation midyear.
Our superintendent is very fond of quoting the latest business self-help books and he is running our district as a business. We were told by the new director of school improvement that we could do whatever she tells us to do or we could be replaced next year with teachers who are “capable of teaching” Title I kids. We were even accused of being abusive to the children if we fail to raise their test scores.
Ours is a high poverty district with a large population of immigrant children and poor children of color. The “A” and “B” schools are all majority white, middle and upper middle class. The “F” and “D” schools are all majority poor, ELL, ESE, and minority children.
I’m not comfortable naming the district publicly for many reasons, the main being swift retaliation, a huge problem in the district under all circumstances for any who speak out. I will say that we are a Gulf Coast resort community with rural agricultural and tourism economic bases.
Diane, one of the things that has made me the most sad is the loss of cooperation with my parents. I attribute it to the constant barrage of charter school advertisement and negative media coverage of public schools and teachers in this Fox-dominated market.
I once prided myself on the relationships I built with parents but my colleagues and I have noticed that the parents have begun to challenge us on nearly everything we do where once they supported us and helped us learn how to meet the needs of their children. We frequently hear “I’ll move my child to a Choice school!” from parents whenever there is the slightest disagreement about a grade, an assignment, or a disciplinary issue. They know that their children carry a dollar value that goes with them to any school they choose and they don’t hesitate to use that as a bargaining chip.
A small positive is that our local paper published an editorial attacking the VAM program and school grades because they are so unreliable and clearly meant to demonize teachers and public schools. It was quite surprising in this very conservative, Republican, tea party district where editorials have historically had nothing but positive things to say about Bush and his reforms.
We were told by the new director of school improvement that we could do whatever she tells us to do or we could be replaced next year with teachers who are “capable of teaching” Title I kids.
That’s an empty threat from a no-nothing know-it-all if I ever heard one. That’s typical defensive talk from management when they are in over their heads or frightened by their own inexperience.
Chris
For your students sake, try to make your program an oasis of sanity, a little slice of heaven on earth. And if that gets you fired, youre better off gone.
NY Teacher, actually she can do just that under NCLB and she made that very clear in her threat.
But I am taking your advice and I just completed a couple of months of counseling to deal with the job stress. My counselor helped me see that I need to do what I feel is best and just be prepared for the consequences.
So my students and I made model volcanoes and erupted them with baking soda and colored vinegar. We produced a wall-sized rainforest model complete with a wide variety of life-sized animal life pictures. We use clay. We color. We listen to stories and watch videos.
I refuse to spend my time doing test prep with 6 and 7 year olds. I fully accept that I will be downrated when my kids’ test scores are used for 50% of my VAM score this year.
I’m actively seeking employment outside of education. It’s not easy to find work at my age and with my history of teaching 1st grade but I’m not giving up. I’m also not going to sit and be abused and bullied any more.
Props to you Chris. You get a highly effective from me.
I have lined my birdcage with my Marzano rubric too.
No parent will ever criticize you for treating their children like the young, developing learners that they are. Tell your supervisor to spend 20 – 30 years in the trenches and get back to you then.
I disagree. At least right now, there aren’t enough teachers that realize what is happening to get everyone on board. I talk and sometimes argue all the time with teachers who have bought into the mechanization of teaching, the Common Core, standardized testing being the gold standard, and all the rest. I mean, even our unions have sold us down the river. When there are only a few willing or able to step forward, those who can and will step forward are sitting ducks. Keep educating, everyone, but I wouldn’t hold my breath that we teachers will be able to solve this as a group.
Too late, she already resigned!
If good people are struggling in your organization you can do one of three things: look to the person to get with the program, look at the manager and see what he or she is doing wrong, or look at the system and organization you’ve created.
Why am I not surprised ed reformers look at only one of those three things? It lets the manager and the system creator off the hook. It protects the top people, at the expense of the people on the “front lines”. The recipe can’t fail, it can only BE failed, by teachers.
That’s VERY nice for the managers, I’ll tell ya. Not so great for teachers, though.
Reblogged this on McBlog.
Rachel is speaking of “Triage Teaching”, a term I thought up at work one day (I too teach). I am sure others have thought of the term. Triage, in the medical model, is used when an overwhelming number of injured patients come into a facility for treatment…usually following some sort of disaster. Medical personnel sort and treat the most needy and make others wait who would otherwise receive treatment in a speedier manner. Facilities cannot sustain in triage mode for long without loss of resources or increasing numbers of casualties. In education we have a national disaster, an overwhelming number of patients(students) that need treatment, and personnel (educators/administrators/support staff) that are struggling to sustain in a highly stressed and resource depleted situation with no end in sight. How long before we hit a critical mass that we cannot ignore? How many resources will education lose (like Rachel, or myself) before the infrastructure comes to blatant collapse? I will continue to work to sustain what I can. I am able to continue to do this because I fear what will happen if we all leave the scene of this disaster–though I do believe there is already evidence of looting. Rachel, I wish you and all the rest of luck!
Triage, I thought of that too. The deformers like to use the metaphor of “Superman” as their model. I’ve always thought the best metaphor for what teachers do is the opening shot from the TV show/film, MASH. The show opens with doctors and nurses, racing to the choppers to deal with the worst, first. They have no control over the number of soldiers they need to help and little control of their environment.
Triage means three (tri) levels. In disaster medicine the levels are.
Group 1) patients that will survive without immediate attention;
Group 2) patients that will NOT survive, even with immediate attention.
Group 3) patients who can only be saved with immediate attention.
The doctors ignore groups 1 and 2.
NCLB has created an equivalent model.
Teachers and AIS programs have concentrated on “high 2s”
in an attempt to get them to be “low 3s.
NYS Board of Regents has recently decided to lend a hand by voting to make all 2s into de-facto 3s.
This is sadly what education in America has come down to.
Just don’t hear the anyone utter the old catch phrases in the CCSS era (The Duncan Revolution):
The whole child
Life-long learners
I think that’s a concept that’s been around a little while; I heard it from the head of the math department during a meltdown I had in our small learning community during my first year of teaching high school. As I sat there sobbing in frustration, she said, “Triage — you have to think of it as triage. Do what you can; you can’t do everything.”
I work for an online charter now; I would never have thought I’d long for those days when the main cause of my frustration was students…
(o) threatening to hurt each other
(o) threatening to hurt me
(o) refusing to come prepared to class
(o) disrupting class
I had no strategies. I’d started as an intern hired through my university as part of my program. Can you imagine walking into a classroom of fifty angry, inner-city sophomores without one single day of training? And yet, compared to what happens now over the course of my “day” (because the “day” never ends — when you work online, you’re like Lucy and Ethel on the chocolate line), I miss those days. That is crazy, surely?
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2014/03/orleans_parish_school_board_co_10.html
Why is the Miracle of New Orleans having so much trouble attracting good candidates for superintendent? I thought it was all shangri la and kumbaya down there? I thought that since they’re exporting the model and plunking it down all over the country.
They’re interviewing people from Bermuda. Seems like they’re having to cast quite the wide net.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/controversial-state-reading-exam-revealed-article-1.1333768
If Common Core salespeople were really serious, they’d put “skin in the game”.
They should hold a media event and take the tests themselves, and reveal their scores. I’m perfectly serious. People would love it, so they’d be reaching the goal of selling the CC and it would show that they’re truly committed and wholeheartedly endorse this thing. It would also put it in a proper framework and context for when the results for the kids (and teachers) come out.
We could create a “data wall” for lawmakers, billionaires, media people and the various heads of lobbying groups! Post their scores, publicly:
“If you think you’re smarter than a fifth-grader, consider yourself lucky you don’t have to take this exam.
A concerned educator leaked the Daily News a copy of a new, more challenging state reading exam for fifth-graders, and it’s as much of a doozy as it is controversial.
It’s full of long, dense, off-the-wall nonfiction passages on making wind tunnels, soil formation and studying whales. There are two short stories, both set overseas. And there’s a vague selection from a poem about loneliness that students must interpret before choosing among four answers that contain two arguably correct selections.
Students got 90 minutes to complete the 32-page test, which contained 42 questions based on six written passages.
The News asked testing experts, teachers and parents to analyze the test, which state and city education officials have kept under lock and key. Everyone who saw it was left dumbfounded by the killer questions.”
I have seen this over and over. Reformers see teachers as a commodity to be purchased, used, abused, and finally discarded. Teachers are not matches to be lit and thrown away when their fire goes out, collateral damage in the war against ignorance. I have watched my own school’s board members write in the local paper that we should lower wages because so many young idealistic teachers apply.
Certainly the overzealous loose cannon of a teacher I was 30 years ago had some successes through blind luck and super human effort, but I wouldn’t trade that for the skills I have now after a career of learning what does and doesn’t work. What will schools do when they have plenty of energy and none of the wisdom that comes with age?
Time will tell VT. Experience in our field is grossly under appreciated except by veteran principals who get it. Running a school with a 20 something staff probably affects administrators more directly than anyone else. Students suffer in much less conspicuous ways.
Chris in Florida – The cause of the achievement gap is the difference in average cognitive levels between whites, mestizos and blacks. The gap between white and mestizos is about two-thirds of a standard deviation and between whites and blacks about one standard deviation. In addition because of out-migration of the more able from the inner cities the average cognitive level there is even lower.
For ideological reasons we cannot deal with this reality so we need scapegoats to blame for the existence of these gaps. Unfortunately teachers have become these scapegoats. I agree with you that there is little chance of any change in this situation in the foreseeable future.
There is a difference in average cognitive level between whites and East Asians of about one-third of a standard deviation. However the resulting
achievement gap in this case does not seem to arouse much concern.
When ideology collides with reality the consequences can be tragic.
NOT AGAIN!!!! Your insistence that only certain races are intelligent is an insult. Do us a favor–don’t comment.
Hi Louisiana Purchase!
I argue with other teachers all the time too. I tell them this is happening all over the country. They refuse to look beyond our district and our problems.
I couldn’t disagree more with your racist explanation. Race is an artificial construct, a fact easily proven in my own school where the top scoring students on last year’s FCAT (they were as high or higher than any student in the district) were a Mexican girl whose parents are seasonal farm workers and an African American boy whose parents moved here from Haiti after the earthquake.
One of my most admired colleagues holds a PhD and works as an administrator in our district. She has been featured over and over again as and educational hero by Harry and Rosemary Wong for rising up from her status as an immigrant tomato picker in deep poverty to an outstanding educational leader. She is not white nor Asian but Hispanic.
Your theories are repugnant to me.
Nobody uses the term “meztizos” anymore. I don’t think racist remarks should be allowed here.
Sasannunes – The term “mestizos” refers to individuals of mixed European-Amerindian descent. The term “Hispanic” is sometime used in this sense in the US but the usage of this term is rather poorly-defined. So I prefer the term mestizo as more precise.
Louisiana Purchase – The average cognitive level of different races and ethnic groups varies over a very wide range from about 55 for Mbuti pygmies to about 115 for Ashkenazi Jews.
You are correct…I was one of those teachers who dedicated my time from 7:45 to 7 pm. I was there for 17 years and never missed a day of work and was placed on a growth plan….the year before I was placed on a growth plan I was teacher of the year teaching Kinder. Once my Stanford scores came back of course my principal wanted to move me to second and then stated he really needed me. I reminded him of the hell he gave me all year and turned him down and told him that I couldn’t work for him and have decided to take a Kinder position in another district. Most people with experience are kicked to the curve and forced to leave by intimating, harrasing, and creating a hostile environment…under Grier….I have left the district and I am appreciated and have a cohesive work environment…my principal values my opinion and I once again am a highly effective teacher…