Russ Walsh writes that corporate reformers have no idea what motivates teachers so they impose their own flawed ideas. Few have ever taught. They listen to economists, most of whom see education as an economic activity, not a humanistic activity.
First, they decided that the teacher is the most important determinant of student test scores (not true, the best predictor of student scores is family income and education). Then they decide that the best way to motivate teachers to work harder is to devise a system of rewards and punishments. Scores will rise, they reason, if teachers are threatened with loss of their careers.
But this is all wrong. Teachers are not motivated by carrots and sticks.
What motivates teachers?
Teachers are motivated by students.
“Nothing can motivate a teacher to be well-prepared and perform at peak ability more than the simple fact their will be 25 or so faces looking at you in the morning, waiting for you to teach them. When students have a moment of insight, teachers feel empowered. When a student is struggling to understand, the teacher is motivated to find a way to get through.”
Teachers are motivated by teaching.
“Teaching is intrinsically rewarding. For those of us who chose to go into the profession, teaching is fun. It is energizing. I have had many times in my life when I didn’t feel particularly well or when I was tired and then I began to teach and I felt better, more energized. I can teach myself awake and I have seen many other teachers who do the same thing.”
Teachers are motivated by good working conditions.
“While a reasonable living wage is certainly important to every teacher, in my experience in hiring teachers, I have found them to be more interested in the working conditions they will find in the school where they will work. What working conditions matter? Reasonable class sizes. Adequate resources to do the job. Adequate planning time. A clean building in good repair. Supportive administrators. Suportive and engaged parents. Friendly and supportive colleagues.”
Please, reformers, read the whole post and learn what motivates teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ohio reform continues to spiral downward, and our lobbyist-captured lawmakers do nothing. I don’t think we can blame “the media” anymore. This stuff is being reported.
“With profits on the line, private charter school companies are advertising on television, radio, billboards, handbills and even automated telephone messages to entice students away from public schools.
And with words such as free, flexible, one-on-one and find your future — and taking opportunities to play on fear — the privately run, publicly funded schools are being quite successful.
Enrollment in Ohio charter schools now stands at more than 120,000 in nearly 400 schools, with seven more schools expected to open next year. These quasi-public schools enroll less than 7 percent of Ohio’s students and receive $912 million in state tax dollars, about 11 percent of all state funds set aside for primary and secondary education.
State audits suggest that some Ohio charter schools spend more than $400 in public money per student to attract them away from public schools, and now public school districts are retaliating by spending their own money in an effort to keep the kids.”
At the link you’ll find another great series of articles, with a focus on Ohio’s for-profit chains of online “drop out recovery schools” which are an unmitigated disaster yet get more public funding every year.
Now THIS is a public/private partnership that is actually working in the public interest:
“The News Outlet, a student journalism lab based at Youngstown State University working with the Beacon Journal, asked marketing experts to view some of the advertisements and offer their impressions.”
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/charter-school-operators-use-key-words-to-entice-families-away-from-public-schools-1.491420
LikeLike
Reblogged this on .
LikeLike
It’s not just teachers – humans are not motivated by rewards or punishments. In fact, rewards and punishments remove any intrinsic motivation someone might have for whatever activities they’re being rewarded or punished for. Read anything by Alfie Kohn. BTW, this is something that teachers (and administrators) themselves should keep in mind when they try to bribe their students with rewards or threaten them with punishments – something I’m seeing more and more of, even in affluent districts.
LikeLike
Dienne,
Your comment on teacher use of rewards and threats is right on the mark, but I don’t know that I am seeing more of this than when I started teaching 45 years ago. It is true that as more performance pressure is put on one group, they often pass that pressure down to the next level. Hence administrators pressure teachers, teachers pressure students. Humans are generally not motivateded by carrots and sticks and teachers are certainly not.
LikeLike
It’s a reflection of the private sector norms and culture that completely dominate ed reform, and THAT’S a reflection of both the political coalition around ed reform and the relative power and influence of the various players in that coalition.
The money people dominate. They run the show. The rest of them seem to have absolutely no influence. They might have some influence if they pushed back, but they don’t, because without the money people the whole thing grinds to a halt.
The belief in bonuses as an incentive in business is an article of faith. It doesn’t matter that it was an absolute disaster in the banking and finance sector, and led to a worldwide crash. Partly that’s self-interest. If you’re a winner in the bonus win/lose game, you want that game to continue and you’re also personally invested in the idea that how much you make is a measure of your value. It has to be. That’s “merit” right? If it’s not merit then you can’t take credit for it.
LikeLike
“humans are not motivated by rewards or punishments.”
So Stalin’s ability to rule the Soviet Union for a quarter-century had nothing to do with reward and punishment.
Try to avoid making self-evidently idiotic statements.
LikeLike
Oh, gee, an ad hominem attack. Now that’s convincing.
Diane – this troll has already demonstrated his racist stripes many times. Now he’s taking to insulting commenters. Could he perhaps be put on notice?
LikeLike
BTW, to answer your point, the Soviet Union functioned, to the extend it did, largely because people worked around the rules, rewards, punishments, etc. People are motivated to be human and will pursue that even in the face of punishment.
LikeLike
Perhaps the legendary corruption that was seen under the Soviet regime was a sign that people were motivated to work around the system that was based on reward and punishment. By the way, how did it all work out for Stalin?
LikeLike
You statement about humans not being motivated by reward or punishment is accurately described as “self-evidently idiotic”,
By the way “ad hominen” does not mean what you think it means.
LikeLike
As for Stalin personally it worked out extremely well as he became among the most powerful individuals in all of history.
LikeLike
Coming from a racist who believes in Eugenics, that’s pretty funny, Jim. Talk about “self-evidently idiotic”.
LikeLike
And, BTW, Jim, you clearly have no idea what motivation is. Hint, it’s internal, not external.
LikeLike
JIM:
LikeLike
What she meant to say, I think, is that extrinsic punishment and reward is actually demotivating for cognitive tasks, which is precisely the problem that totalitarian regimes like Stalin’s ran into. People seek ways to game such systems.
LikeLike
They lead, for a while, to people behaving as the tyrant wants them to but not to people being MOTIVATED to behave in those ways. In fact their MOTIVATIONS run precisely counter to the coercions, even if those coercions are positive, interestingly enough. That’s just the way we people are made. Skinner had it wrong, wrong, wrong. Tyrants have it wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, you can force people into doing stuff, and they will hate you for it, and one fine day, they will hang you on a meat hook for doing so.
LikeLike
Hope everyone takes the time to view the 10 minute Daniel Pink presentation that Bob Shepherd posted here. Gets right to the point I was trying to make in the posting.
LikeLike
The VA SCANDAL is another example of
Campbell’s Law as is
MERIT PAY and High Stakes Testing in Education!
When will the “reformers” wake up?
LikeLike
I agree, as is the system they came up with to measure the value-added of physicians and health care providers within the health care law.
It’s a little scary how entrenched this thinking is, because a LOT of really powerful people have backed this, and it will be like pulling teeth to get them to admit error.
The best we’ll get is a quiet recognition that it was horribly misguided and a very quiet pulling away from it. That’s best case, and it assumes everyone involved is both well-intended and has no financial interest, which is probably a naive assumption.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
LikeLike
I am blessed with friends who read good books and then call me to discuss them. Interestingly, none of our conversations about these books run like this:
So, Bob, what are two themes that the author developed over the course of the text and how are those themes related?
So, Anna, tell me, what method of exposition did the author use in paragraph 27 of Chapter 3? Please give evidence from the text to support your answer.
But, Tom, what I’m really wondering about is how the author’s use of figurative language affected her tone.
Sometimes, the folks who write Common [sic] Core [sic] lessons and assessments should just stop for a moment and listen to themselves. They sound ridiculous.
What they ask students to do completely skips over any authentic interaction with a text–anything remotely resembling what people actually do when they actually read in the real world as though the experience of the work and what the author was writing about or conveying WAS OF NO IMPORTANCE WHATSOEVER.
Think: Literature instruction that SKIPS OVER THE LITERATURE; instruction in the reading of nonfiction texts that SKIPS OVER THE CONTENT.
What the Common Coring of instruction in reading literature and other texts does is reduce that instruction to a series of exercises of about as much meaning and value as say, this:
Do a close reading of Chapter 12 of Madame Bovary and count the number of each of the following that are used: colons, semi-colons, parentheses, and dashes.
Nothing that is done on either of the two new national assessments of reading and writing EVEN REMOTELY resembles what people do when they actually read and write in the real world.
And so those assessments, ipso facto, are not assessments of authentic reading and writing.
And they encourage encourage curricula and pedagogical approaches that completely skip over actual, normal, authentic engagement with texts.
One looks at one of these Common Core lessons (and at this point, I have looked at thousands of them) and says, what on Earth does this have to do with what Emerson was saying in “Brahma?” And the answer is
almost nothing.
This is what happens when technocratic philistines start dictating how to teach reading and writing. Breathtaking narrowing and distortion that misses the whole point of both.
Reading and writing are a means of cultural transmission. Someone speaks to you across that ontological gap between subjectivities–your mind, your experience over there–my mind, my experience, over here. These things are done for a reason: because people have something to say.
And that is what we should MOST be attending to when reading and writing with students. All this other crap–most of the junk on the CCSS bullet list–is completely incidental, pales in significance. And not to understand that is not to understand, at all, what reading and writing are about.
LikeLike
Right on target, Bob, yes, technocratic philistines, and also salespeople whose pedagogy is ideal for workbook and digital testing revenues.
LikeLike
Yup, look for the coming age of worksheets on a screen, preK through college.
LikeLike
Here are some screen based “worksheets” that I am thinking about including in my classes: http://www.moblab.com
LikeLike
In those moments when I haven’t been paralyzed with terror about the future, I’ve always been very excited about the possibilities for technology to teach through simulations. So far it hasn’t happened — we’ve seen increasingly good examples of rich simulations geared toward a mass audience, but they remain few and far between and very expensive to develop. I’m hoping that sim-gaming/instruction will see advances over the next two decades similar to what we’ve seen with speech recognition technology.
LikeLike
The multiplayer online fantasy games my kids used to play are in large part economic simulations. Players would arbitrage across markets on different worlds and at least one game ran into a huge problem with inflation as an endless supply of money (obtained by lolling dragons) chased a finite supply of goods.
LikeLike
these look interesting and valuable. of course, economics lends itself to these scenarios. great application.
LikeLike
Tend to agree with this: “Literature instruction that SKIPS OVER THE LITERATURE”
Further, I recall that as being my experience in middle school and high school more than 20 years ago. And somewhat the same in college.
LikeLike
I’m hoping that sim-gaming/instruction will see advances over the next two decades similar to what we’ve seen with speech recognition technology.
Me, too. I think that this has enormous potential for instruction. Really breathtaking potential.
A lot of learning is about taking students into the unfamiliar–shoving them down the rabbit hole, through the wardrobe, through that “leak” or portal or wormhole into some place they haven’t imagined before. I try to do that when I teach. Such technologies present the potential of enabling kids to have experiences that they could not otherwise have, memorable, strange, challenging experiences. I try to get kids to read that way. This book is a SIM. Ready, player, go.
LikeLike
Economics, logic, game theory, your own field of law, FLERP–these are all natural applications for this. But the same is very much true of literature. I would love to team with a game designer to do history of lit modules. I think that I could do a lot with these to develop in students a visceral feel for, sensitivity to, understanding of a lot of otherwise dry literary material, stuff like prosody and literary tropes and forms. I imagine, for example, putting them through something like a school for Welsh bards where they might, if successful, win the red cloak. LOL.
I am very serious about that.
LikeLike
How about having students follow an old song like whiskey in the jar from its origins to Metallica? Add a performance aspect to the assignment as well.
LikeLike
But you should see the deadly Common Core crap that is being produced. Just awful. Dumbed down powerpoint with popups. Skill drill. Reductionist. Ignorant. Philistine.
LikeLike
I like that one, TE. The kids would, too. But the education thought policed wouldn’t let us mention whiskey.
LikeLike
Is that a common core problem or a state and district issue?
LikeLike
I know this will come as a surprise, but there are problems in the world not related to the Common Core.
Excessive censorship existed before the CCSS. However, education deform in general and the CCSS in particular have created a climate of fear in schools around the country, a climate in which teacher dare not speak any word of opposition to Deformish Policy, and so we have our Common Core Thought Police, certainly.
LikeLike
I call the Common Core literature strand “New Criticism for Dummies.”
LikeLike
Many states, TE, many districts, and all educational publishers I have worked for (which is almost all of them, at one time or another) have content guidelines what would forbid mentioning whiskey. Hearing a traditional Irish folk song would doubtless turn teenagers into substance abusers. BTW, the bomb mentioned the title of one of those economics games that you linked to are forbidden in curricula in most adoption states.
LikeLike
In high school, I learned that calling a book a good story just didn’t cut it. I was amazed by the insights that teachers provided about various works of fiction…until I learned that there were actually books devoted to dissecting these literary masterpieces and the motivations of their authors. Here we sat in class stumbling through our novice observations culminating in a masterful exposition by the teacher of the “truth.” It took me years to recover from those classes. I worked my tail off, but I remember very little other than how adequate I felt. I was in honors English.
LikeLike
Exceptions are made for curricula that require the mention. So, for example, you can sell in California a U.S. history textbook that mentions the Haymarket bombing, though many educational publishers today would use some circumlocution to avoid mentioning the topic.
LikeLike
Bob, I’m not sure whether you will be pleased or not but I actually agree with you here. This kind of emphasis on “close reading” turns what should be a pleasant experience into a disagreeable chore.
LikeLike
Thank you, Jim. I appreciate that. I really do.
LikeLike
It would be interesting to assign students one novel to read. Give them a month or maybe more. Then give them an oral examination that basically resembles a qualifying examination: the student gives an opening statement that essentially contains the student’s “take” on the novel, which could be expressed however the student wants (and perhaps with some guidance and examples from the teacher), and then the student engages in a “defense” of his statement in response to questions from the teacher. The student would be expected to be able to talk about any character and anything that happens in the book. The goal would ultimately be to get students to engage in a sustained, deep conversation that demonstrates that they have made that book “their own.” That’s what I think real reading and analysis looks like.
LikeLike
That is BEAUTIFULLY said, FLERP!
Yes. That’s is indeed what real reading and analysis look like.
LikeLike
Bob,
Great insight as always. Because you have read the actual recommended lessons, as have I, you have discovered the fallacious approach to literature being advocated by those “close reading” reformers. I found that Beers and Probst, in their book Notice and Note, have discovered the same thing and have recommended lessons that are a fine antidote to David Coleman and his “close reading>” It is telling that Beers and Probst dedicate their book to the hero of student transaction with text, Louise Rosenblatt.
I discussed the book and its approach to close reading here: http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-blue-guitar-towards-reader-response.html
By the way, could it be that the Common Core approach to literature is driven by what can be measured on a bubble test?
LikeLike
could it be?
LOL
That’s funny!!!!
LikeLike
Your blog post really resonated with me. I will have to wrestle with myself as to whether I can justify purchasing the book since I am no longer in the classroom. Teaching is addictive; I can’t turn the persona off.
LikeLike
2old2teach,
Glad you liked the post. The book is worth the read to any of us who care about kids and literature
LikeLike
One of the best criticisms of the ELA Common Core that I’ve read,
LikeLike
These ridiculous exercises also make kids hate reading. I detest close reading. I love to read and discuss what I have read. I trade books back and forth with a friend. We only talk over the parts that had meaning for us. We share our points of agreement and disagreement. We refer to other books we have read. That is the end of the story.
LikeLike
You look at something closely if you have reason to and if you care to. If you are doing the former without the latter, well, that’s just a chore. It’s painful and awful and you just want it to stop.
David Coleman doing New Criticism is not a pretty thing to see.
For one thing, he’s not very good at it.
For another, it’s not how you engage anyone, but especially children, with literature because that’s just not how or why people read. It’s a certain recipe for turning kids off to literature altogether, of course–a pedagogical approach guaranteed to keep children and teenagers and young adults from ever developing any interest in looking under the hood of a poem, novel, essay, or play they’ve come to love to see it works.
LikeLike
cx: to see how it works
LikeLike
Bob Shepherd: with all due respect to those weighing in on the ed debates all over the www, once in a great while someone writes something that is a pure gem.
For example, in characterizing the charter/privatization crowd’s mantra for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN of “choice” there is Chiara Duggan’s unforgettable “choice not voice.”
And honor compels me to give credit where credit due. So much said in one word: Rahm Emanuel’s “uneducables” and Michael J Petrilli’s “non-strivers.” Sometimes a few more words are needed. A world class example is an excerpt from a posting by Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute on the ‘joined at the spinal column since birth’ link between CCSS and high-stakes standardized testing and its attendant ills and abuses. Courtesy of an ethnical numbers/stats person, Dr. Mercedes Schneider—
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
To the Money Quotes Hall of Fame [hey, I didn’t come up with that all by myself; it was compiled with a grant by the Gates Foundation—their language not mine] I add the following, another jewel in the crown of quotes we should never forget:
“Think: Literature instruction that SKIPS OVER THE LITERATURE; instruction in the reading of nonfiction texts that SKIPS OVER THE CONTENT.” [your words, not mine]
Or as an old dead Greek guy said over two thousand years ago:
“The difficulty lies not in squeezing the joy of learning out of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN in order to extract as much $tudent $ucce$$ as possible, but in finding enough of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN in order to get a maximum Return On Profit.”
¿? Homer. Ok, ok, so I kinda changed the words a little and decontextualized it and made it boring. But what the hey!?!?! It’s difficult to keep things straight when you’re in a locked confined space doing closet reading…
Is that supposed to be “close” reading? Did they miss sending me the memo? I need more PD…
The original, just so you can get off my case:
“The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.”
Now be honest: which do the think most people would prefer—the English version that is closest to the original or a more practical college-and-career ready version that will help you pass your next computer-adaptive test?
¿? Let’s solve this the easy way. Which quote do you think Maya Angelou would have preferred?
My bad. You’re right.
R.I.P. beautiful lady.
😎
LikeLike
And, they CANNOT be FIXED!
CC = Cast in Concrete
LikeLike
Russ Walch summarized it beautifully.
Since Gates/Obama/Duncan & Co. want it their way, along with legislators who, like lemmings, follow along or lead such nonsense, the CorpEdReformers will get their way…once they replace ALL Real Teachers.
They are making progress by planting TFAs strategically in key positions and fire or run off Real Teachers. They have done enough damage already. We are tired of fighting! Parents are exhausted! Children need a break and a safer setting!
Since the $$$ will NEVER run out, they could outlast the last standing Real Teacher and 22 year olds will respond beautifully to their greed-driven Reform.
What kids?
Who cares about parents?
Their kids are in private schools!
Job Done!
LikeLike
True, Hurley.
LikeLike
Excellent post, as usual. But, to assume reformers read them is foolhearty. Preaching to the choir. Frustrating but inspirational for teachers…and they need all the support and encouragement they can get in today’s toxic assault coming from the deformers.
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
LikeLike
Joe1150,
I agree that posts like this one are preaching to the choir. The idea is to first build the choir into one strong voice and then maybe others will begin to hear. A place to start.
LikeLike
I made a commitment to myself that each time I added a comment at this site, I would engage in one outreach activity.
LikeLike
Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, man
Share the stuff you like. Ask others to do the same. There’s a growing awareness. When the national tests hit, the parents will ALL be interested. That’s when they grab the pitchforks and shovels and track the Ed Deform monster to its lair.
LikeLike
NC trying again—
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/05/28/4937805/nc-senate-rolls-out-teacher-pay.html#.U4cya9q9KSN
LikeLike
Who thought that teachers were the “most important determine of student test scores”. My impression is that reformers think that teachers are one determinant of student learning that is measured by student test scores and that education policy has a much larger impact on teachers than on other determinants like household income parental involvement.
In this thread teachers will pay little attention to income. In other threads teachers will leave teaching because they can earn more for their family, teachers will stop cooperating Ito improve student learning if they are not paid a uniform wage that does not depend on individual efforts, and teachers will falsify standardized exams if higher scores lead to bonuses and low scores lead to dismissal.
All jobs are a collection of attributes, some easy to determine, some not. Salary is one of the easier things to determine about a job. Candidates have a much harder time learning about these other aspects of a job, hence the questions about those aspects.
LikeLike
I wouldn’t ever tell my boss that I liked my job so much that I didn’t care what I was paid, even if that were true.
LikeLike
That’s the employee whom I would promote and trust.
LikeLike
Then one who, when he or she said that, I believed it.
LikeLike
cx: The one, of course
Tired here
LikeLike
“With profits on the line, private charter school companies are advertising on television, radio, billboards, handbills and even automated telephone messages to entice students away from public schools.
And with words such as free, flexible, one-on-one and find your future — and taking opportunities to play on fear — the privately run, publicly funded schools are being quite successful.”
It seems the successful advertising of the private charter school companies reveals
the extent of the “Dufass Factor”. Predictive programming and diversion claims the
“Dufass”. Something is wrong when “Tribal Talking Points” create a blind spot. It’s as
though people can’t see it or they refuse to leave denial. The ease of the “Myth Narrative”
trumping analytical ability and logically valid reasoning makes NO sense, considering
the “Educational Prowess” indicated by NEAP/PISA metrics. The generations NOT
exposed to the “Magic” of NCLB or other “Improvements” seem to be swayed by
“Tribal Talking Points” as well.
How does the method relate to the result? For all of our doctrines centered around
Democracy, Rule of Law, Freedom, and even Public Education, is the existing
“Equilibrium Position” proof of the strategies?
LikeLike
This is always an interesting point. The relation between wages and class sizes is inherently hostile. Funding that goes to one is always funding that could have gone to the other. In NYC, the UFT contract has a maximum class size of 32 or 34 (I can’t remember which). The union bargained for that eons ago — I don’t know precisely when, but it may have been the late 60s. So it may be that the union hasn’t bargained for a reduction in class sizes in the last 45 years. Perhaps an old-timer like Norm Scott, or a union historian like Michael F. can weigh in on that.
LikeLike
When I was negotiating contracts for my local union back in the seventies, class size was a more contentious issue than salary. The Board representatives viewed class size as a management prerogative, we teachers viewed it as “working conditions.” I once had a Board member come across the table at me, jabbing his finger in my face, yelling, “There were 67 kids in my first grade class in Catholic school and I turned out ok.” Whether or not he turned out OK could be debated, but not his passion on the subject. I think, though that the class size – salary debate is a false dichotomy. The real discussion should be around “class size/student learning.
LikeLike
It’s a very real dichotomy in contract negotiations and budgets, though. Lowering class sizes costs money. Raising salaries costs money. A dollar you spend on one is a dollar that you could have spent on the other.
LikeLike
Yes, I understand, FLERP!, but it not not be an either or. For example, money spent on testing and accountability could be diverted to reducing class size. Salaries are a major part of the budget, but class size issues should be viewed as a part of the whole budget under the label, “How do we best serve the children?”
LikeLike
Imagine, FLERP, trying to do you novel-reading assessment, above, with 45 kids in five classes.
LikeLike
“25 or so faces looking at you in the morning, waiting for you to teach them”? Try almost doubling that number in an urban high school; I am an English/Language Arts teacher with special education students who are fully included in the general education classroom along with “credit deficient” students. I worry less about salary and more about class size and other related matters.
LikeLike