In a truly wonderful article in Sunday’s New York Times, David Kirp of the University of California at Berkeley lays waste the underpinnings of the current “education reform” movement. Kirp not only shows what doesn’t work, he gives numerous examples of what does work to help students.
Kirp explains in plain language why teaching can never be replaced by a machine. Although the article just appeared, I have already heard about angry grumbling from reformers, because their ultimate goal (which they prefer to hide) is to replace teachers with low-cost machines. Imagine a “classroom” with 100 students sitting in front of a monitor, overseen by a low-wage aide. Think of the savings. Think of the advantages that a machine has over a human being: they can be easily programmed; they don’t get a salary or a pension; they don’t complain when they are abused; and when a better, cheaper model comes along, the old one can be tossed into the garbage.
David Kirp dashes cold water on the reformy dream. Today’s reformers devoutly believe that schools can be transformed by market mechanisms, either by competition or technology. Kirp, author of “Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools,” says that the tools for the improvement are not out of reach and do not depend on either the market or technology. His common-sense formulation of what is needed is within our reach, does not require mass firings or mass school closings, privatization, or a multi-billion dollar investment in technology.
But Kirp writes:
“It’s impossible to improve education by doing an end run around inherently complicated and messy human relationships. All youngsters need to believe that they have a stake in the future, a goal worth striving for, if they’re going to make it in school. They need a champion, someone who believes in them, and that’s where teachers enter the picture. The most effective approaches foster bonds of caring between teachers and their students.”
Reformers have made test scores “the single metric of success, the counterpart to the business bottom line.” The teacher whose students get high scores get a bonus, while those whose students get low scores get fired, just like business, where low-performers are laid-off. And, just like business, where low-profit stores are closed, and new ones are opened “in more promising territory, failing schools are closed and so-called turnaround model schools, with new teachers and administrators, take their place.”
Kirp says bluntly:
“This approach might sound plausible in a think tank, but in practice it has been a flop. Firing teachers, rather than giving them the coaching they need, undermines morale. In some cases it may well discourage undergraduates from pursuing careers in teaching, and with a looming teacher shortage as baby boomers retire, that’s a recipe for disaster. Merit pay invites rivalries among teachers, when what’s needed is collaboration. Closing schools treats everyone there as guilty of causing low test scores, ignoring the difficult lives of the children in these schools — “no excuses,” say the reformers, as if poverty were an excuse.”
Kirp throws cold water on the reformers’ favorite remedy: “Charter schools,” he writes, “have been promoted as improving education by creating competition. But charter students do about the same, over all, as their public school counterparts, and the worst charters, like the online K-12 schools that have proliferated in several states, don’t deserve to be called schools. Vouchers are also supposed to increase competition by giving parents direct say over the schools their children attend, but the students haven’t benefited.”
As we have frequently noted, Milwaukee should be the poster child for both voucher schools and charter schools, which have operated there for nearly 25 years. Yet Milwaukee is one of the nation’s lowest performing cities in the nation on the federal NAEP tests. Milwaukee has had plenty of competition but no success.
What’s the alternative? It is obvious: “talented teachers, engaged students and a challenging curriculum.”
Kirp points to the management ideas of W. Edwards Deming, who believed in the importance of creating successful systems in which workers were chosen carefully, supported, encouraged, and enabled to succeed by the organization’s culture. The best organizations flourish by supporting their employees, not by threatening them.
Kirp identifies a number of models in education that have succeeded by “strengthening personal bonds by building strong systems of support in the schools.” He refers to preschools, to a reading and math program called Success for All model, to another called Diplomas Now, which “love-bombs middle school students who are prime candidates for dropping out. They receive one-on-one mentoring, while those who have deeper problems are matched with professionals.”
Kirp cites “An extensive study of Chicago’s public schools, Organizing Schools for Improvement, identified 100 elementary schools that had substantially improved and 100 that had not. The presence or absence of social trust among students, teachers, parents and school leaders was a key explanation.”
Similarly, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, “has had a substantial impact on millions of adolescents. The explanation isn’t what adolescents and their “big sibling” mentors do together, whether it’s mountaineering or museum-going. What counts, the research shows, is the forging of a relationship based on mutual respect and caring.
Despite the success of programs cited by Kirp, which are built on personal relationships, “public schools have been spending billions of dollars on technology which they envision as the wave of the future. Despite the hyped claims, the results have been disappointing.”
Kirp concludes that “technology can be put to good use by talented teachers,” but it is the teachers who “must take the lead. The process of teaching and learning is an intimate act that neither computers nor markets can hope to replicate. Small wonder, then, that the business model hasn’t worked in reforming the schools — there is simply no substitute for the personal element.”
David L. Kirp is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools.”
Kirp’s opinion was one of the first things I read in today’s NY Times…and I agree with much of the sentiment…I completely agree with the importance of personal relationships in teaching…I think Kirp also, indirectly, speaks against the idea that teachers can be “built” (see Elizabeth Green’s new book). Teaching is as much an art as it is a science.
That said, to simply say that the answer is “talented teachers, engaged students and a challenging curriculum” isn’t enough….how do we get that? How do we ensure this? For every good teacher who builds relationships, there is one that is simply handing out worksheets for curriculum, watching the clock go by and running out of the school at 3:00 pm…
I disagree it is a 1:1 ratio of good teacher to bad teacher. That is reformy talk meant to demonize and undermine teachers. Simply unfair. My personal observations, far from scientific, reveal a vast majority of teachers WANT to succeed, be recognized as having an impact, and leaving a legacy of learning. But too many outside influences and restrictions are preventing classroom success.
MathVale – I certainly have not been to every classroom in every district…and I think that you are right that the ratio is not 1:1…still, it begs the question – what do we do about the poor teachers???
Maybe there are “bad” teachers because nobody ever bothered to train or mentor them. I don’t think any teacher sets out to be a “bad” teacher or wants to remain a “bad” teacher. Districts are happy to waste teachers time in meetings and bad professional development. If they offered teachers quality professional development which they were paid like a professional to attend, a mentor, some sort of support group I bet there would be far fewer “bad” teachers. This would certainly be a more effective strategy at improving the teaching profession than getting rid of tenure.
So I would agree with you that no one really wants to be a “bad teacher”..However, I do think that there are a decent number who entered the profession when the mindset was “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”
But kafkateach, all of those things cost money – and we aren’t allowed to take money from corporations, right? So, how do we do that?
In addition, I have seen teachers who sit on their phones throughout PD. I have been at schools where we have wanted to create a PLC, but teachers throw up their union handbooks which state that they cannot be observed (even informally as colleague support) by a fellow teacher…
you, and others here, believe that everyone in the teaching profession wants to get better, and that it’s the fault of others (poor PD, etc) that is the reason it’s not improving. That’s like the student who does poorly in a class and blames the teacher for his or her grade, when the student didn’t do anything to try and study…When I taught, one of my rules for my students was “Do your part in learning” If they did their part, I would do whatever I had to do to make sure they succeeded – including before or after school help, etc. But what about the teachers who get the paychecks and don’t want to do anything??
I will add – the solution is not simple. Michelle Rhee in DC had a massive RIF of poor teachers in the middle of the school year…Sure, some of the teachers she let go were not that great. But it left classrooms with no teachers, or long term substitutes, etc. That’s not the solution either.
So again, I ask (with some modifications)…what do we do about poor teachers who refuse to engage in PD, who seemingly don’t want to change, who simply shut their classroom doors??
Fair question. First, what is a “bad” teacher? What one parent or student sees as terrible, another finds excellence. How many now successful teachers were judged as failures in their first 1-3 years? This obsession over testing, VAM, and rank-and-yank will not reveal “bad” teachers. I have seen those and they can be very adept at gaming or quickly move into administration. But they are a minority. Most teachers and administrators WANT to succeed and are very capable, given the chance.
Reformers are selling a simple minded, stats based system that has little basis in reality. They want easy answers when there are none. I think back to the many great teachers I had that would not survive metrics.
So there is no easy answer. Where to start? Well, if you want to know what makes a “good” teacher, you ask another successful teacher. We know who they are. The apprenticeship/mentoring/residence approach has been used successfully for centuries in all organizations at all levels – trades, executives, professionals. Why not start with developing that approach to its fullest potential? Isn’t it better to focus on the positive and building up, rather than the negative and tearing down? It is a start.
Sorry, things are being posted too fast..
MathVale you say, “Reformers are selling a simple minded, stats based system that has little basis in reality. They want easy answers when there are none” I completely agree with your second part – there are no easy answers. But I don’t think it’s just the reformers that are seeking the answers. Look at the posts on this blog – often times I hear folks that say, “Let the teachers decide things” “Keep tenure”
So that’s why I push back – if the teachers decided everything, there could be cases of great things, but there could also be cases where teachers took the easy way out….I think that tenure (or more likely due process) is a good thing…but in keeping tenure, are you allowing some teachers to stay in the classroom that shouldn’t be there?
I believe that both sides need to stop shouting to each other with these catch phrases, like “Keep tenure” or “Do away with tenure” or “Keep the Common Core” or “Down with Common Core”…such phrases and the rallies around them build up lots of emotion but honestly there is often little action behind done behind them…And none of these catch phrases are enough to solve everything.
we need to stop shouting at one another and instead work for more out of the box solutions (like the one I mentioned of having teachers also be administrators in the same building)…Would one union try and go for that? Please??
Maybe teachers refuse to engage in PD because the delivery sucks. Just like students misbehave in class because the delivery sucks. Some person standing in front of a powerpoint lecturing and reading slides to people who are capable of reading themselves is not very engaging. At my school they would make us sit through the same PD six times in one year by the same person. No wonder teachers tune out. That’s why I am excited about transforming the learning experience through wireless devices. It really does revolutionize the learning experience and create a more equitable and engaged classroom.
jlsteach, PLCs can be wonderful or horrible. If engaging in a PLC means you have to give up your planning period to sit in a meeting room with two admin monitoring everything you have to say, making sure you don’t leave early, and everybody is just sitting there watching the clock, then PLCs are something unions should resist. If however, you create an opportunity for online discussion and sharing of resources at the teacher’s own convenience then a PLC can be wonderful. Edmodo or My Big Campus are wonderful platforms for PLCs.
Yes. Seeking continuous improvement is good. But notice my distinction between simple minded, easy answers from Reformers and success based, evolutionary pursuit of excellence. Reformers are focused on the negative – identifying and purging “bad” teachers. The concept is relative and ambiguous. There are management ideas that indentify some percentage of employees as poor in perpetuity. If you seek perfection, maybe you would be in favor of redundant or a team based approach? If one teacher is having a bad day, the other can compensate and vice versa? You would maybe see a more consistent level of quality. The billions going into mind numbing testing could be redirected.
It’s total drivel. It is laughably easy for principals to force teachers out–thousands are driven out every year, and the majority of them have done nothing to deserve it. If you want to talk about staff almost impossible to fire, look at principals. Many if not most of them are unionized, which should be ILLEGAL because they are management. They should not have an extra layer of protection.
jlsteach,
What to do about the clock watchers?In my experience, the clock watchers are really teachers who have completely given up on the system due to lack of support in an untenable environment. So, get rid of toxicity and insane environments, create positive collaborative, or at least down-up, environments and there should be no more clock watchers other than perhaps a few posers or misplaced personnel, far fewer than one would find in most other fields, as it is performance based and involves kids, and it’s becoming increasingly complex and demanding.
Akademos, you make it sound so simple…one of the problems that I faced is that these teachers did have some positive traits – they may have been the senior class sponsors who helped make a great prom…so they did deal with the personal attributes that Kirp mentions in their article. As others have pointed out, some of these clock watchers do love kids. But as one of my early mentors noted when I jumped into coaching or helping with lots of other clubs to get to know the students at my school, my FIRST job at the school was to be a teacher.
Not sure if you saw my other post, but how do you get rid of the toxicity when some of these teachers are causing it, when you are accused of being racist simply because you are a different color?
The solution is NOT so simple…
I don’t even believe the person is actually a teacher at all or is one of those charter school “teachers” or TFA types. Nobody writes such garbage and calls himself or herself an educator.
God, and I hardly ever capitalize that word, to have jlsteach and TE going at it makes my head spin.
Good luck to all of you trying to make any sense whatsoever of their points.
Take your “bad teacher” nonsense elsewhere. There are those of us who were illegally dumped by school districts, and were not “bad teachers” but merely got in the way of an administrator who wanted to CYA.
It is laughably easy for school districts to get rid of teachers. I know this subject firsthand–you do NOT.
For every good teacher who builds relationships, there is one that is simply handing out worksheets for curriculum, watching the clock go by and running out of the school at 3:00 pm…
Bullshit!!!
“I have seen teachers who sit on their phones throughout PD.”
That’s because the PD is so thoroughly bullshit that one has to attempt to do something that is mentally stimulating-and I don’t own one but have thought it might be good to have one so that I can do something productive with “my” PD time.
I always brought a huge stack of papers to grade during meetings and bad PD. Sure, some people probably thought I was rude but the only way I can do my job and have time for my three young children is to use my time efficiently.
Kafkateach…You have a point about the quality of the PD, and I think that your grading papers was a good use of your time. During the opening week of teacher training, when, sometimes, our PD consisted of watching a video created by Central Office, I would plan out the first quarter of the year in terms of activities, lessons, etc…
So, again, I should clarify…I saw teachers on their phones during PD when the PD tried to be more interactive, when the goal was to get other teachers into groups, to work on forming a PLC, etc. Certainly the quality of the PD does matter
jlsteach,
Who are you and where and what do you teach? How long have you been a teacher?
Duane
Duane,
I believe that poster has taught for ten years in public and private schools in Washington, D.C.. A different place than rural Missouri, though I hear the blue catfish are large in the Potomac river.
Duane, I have mentioned this before… I work in higher education helping train teachers…I most recently taught in DC Public Schools for five years…who are you? And if you notice in previous posts, when people asked me about the 1:1 ratio, I admitted that was probably not true…
Why the need for cursing Duane? Why the need to be so defensive? I am guessing at your school all of the teachers are amazing and that you have never seen a poor teacher before ever?
Look, I backtracked on the 1:1 ratio…there are plenty of teachers doing great things….but do you think that there are any teachers out there that are simply handing out worksheets or watching the clock??
jlsteach,
Five years isn’t squat (is that better, I didn’t curse). Define “cursing”.
If you “help train teaches” god, if there were one, help us.
I’m not defensive, I see someone who’s on a high horse and what she? proposes is a crock.
And you guess wrong about my school.
And to answer your last question, NO! That’s an effin (is that okay instead of saying fucking?) strawman.
Basta contigo.
Oh, but does the mighty jlsteach know a second language?
Duane, the nice thing about this blog is that one can chose or not chose to identify themselves…
Sorry that you feel that I am on a “high horse”…And no, I did not do Teach for America.
y por favor, cuando esta hablando con otra persona, no necesita usar malas palabras como mierda…
Bueno, entonces quizas tenemos algo en comun.
But I say, write things the way I see em and that does include “malas palabras”.
Duane – it’s your choice to “write things as I see them”…but how to me all that does is cause more division in education as opposed to try and bring people together. Guess what – not all TFA alumni are bad people or bad teachers..yet you automatically asked me if I were TFA…
I personally think that “writing things as I see them” will shut down possible dialogue…
jlsteach,
If you don’t mind my asking, what kind of teacher prep are you involved with?
Sure, I work in higher education…it’s a traditional teacher preparation…
What do you do exactly?
sorry duane, I am not sure what I do exactly has to do with my opinions on this blog…
Okay, so you’re not willing to say what you do.
Since you asked about me, and I’ve put it out here many, many times before. I’m in my 21st year of teaching high school Spanish. I’m 59 years old and did many, many other things before teaching, although I must say that teaching has been the best job I’ve ever had. Prior, I’ve been in production/scheduling in a manufacturing business, I’ve been in customer service management, I’ve been in inventory control in a hospital pharmacy, and I’m a master upholsterer. I’ve failed in one business attempt as I should have found a sales person, thought I could do it all myself.
What you do has a shitload, oops another curse word, to do with your opinions. If you don’t have enough balls, oops again another profanity perhaps, to say who the hell you are and what you do, then I’m done with you.
Thanks for the information Duane…but I will chose not to share more about it. If you think that someone has to reveal their name to be able to have a conversation, well, that is your choice. But there were others on this list, including MathVale, kafkateach, teachingeconomist who were willing to engage in meaningful dialogue without using curse words and without attacking me…
And what institution are involved with?
Lo siento Duane, pero no creo que es importante donde yo trabajo…
I was on a school visitation showcasing the integration of technology. In on e instance, I watched as eight students entered a room, jacked in their headphones, then worked on their individualized tasks…part of a pricy package. I saw the printout that a teacher would eventually get. To an excited Asst. Superintendant, I turned and asked, “in three twenty minute rotations! did you notice the complete and utter lack of communication, creative thought, or human interaction!” Terrifying. Conversely, in a Vo-Ed class, students were working in small groups setting up and trouble shooting a process for using CAD-CAM stations to produce wooden switch and wall plates…one, or four switches, or two or four plugs. A process with a tangible end product encouraging creative thinking and problem solving…..guided by a circulating, skilled educator. Oh, and the result was a marketable life skill to boot…..
Kids today are being trained on phones, computers, etc. The switch to all computers in schools will be quiet and complete in the future.
Why do so many people love Facebook? Because it gives them a sense of community, a place to connect with friends and express themselves. What do most people do when they first get on Facebook? They search for their old high school friends. Because they miss that sense of community and belonging they had in high school. Through the use of technology we can make that sense of community we feel from our public schools that much stronger by breaking down time and space. I’m going to be using tablet computers in my classroom for the first time and I made sure to turn the desks facing each other in small groups because I don’t want them to lose that human interaction. Will I only use the tablets? No. But there are fun ways to use the tablets in a classroom that can create a sense of community as well. If we merge technology in a traditional public school setting, we can create an even stronger sense of community.
I loved Mr. Kirp’s article. As a teacher in Miami Dade County, I am seeing first hand the danger of investing all of your resources in technology without investing in the staff. The District spent millions in investing in some wonderful technology but never bothered to train the teachers who are on the front lines. I actually do see how all of this technology can improve education and help close the achievement gap and the Digital Divide. That’s why I proposed a challenge to Bill Gates to donate a wireless device to every student in Miami Dade County. If he was serious and sincere about education reform and closing the achievement gap, he could surely afford to take me up on my challenge. You can read more about it here http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/a-challenge-to-bill-gates/.
jlsteach:
One of my favorite bits of wisdom, which I think I picked up from poet Gary Snyder, is that doing nothing is often far better than doing something, since so often our Doing Something is based on unwise ideas and causes harm. This quasi-Buddhist idea doesn’t play well in America’s business-saturated culture where Getting Things Done is the manic imperative. The Nazis sure were good at getting things done; would that they had done nothing.
One thing we can do that might reduce the number of time-serving worksheet peddlers (whose number, I think, you greatly exaggerate) is to ensure that all prospective teachers get an intellectually-rich liberal arts education. Such folk are unlikely to be content with dispensing worksheets.
Ponderosa – So, I agree with you about getting a liberal arts education, or having teachers trained in pedagogy skills…And no, I have not been to every single school in the nation and seen every single teacher in action – I am guessing you haven’t as well. All I know is that in my 10 years of teaching, including five in a DC public school that was supposed to be one of the best schools in the area, I saw plenty of teachers who simply did hand out worksheets, who taught material that was below the grade level (i.e teaching Algebra II kids Algebra I)…I also have heard from other colleagues at different schools in the DC area that there are teachers in their schools doing the same thing…
My concern with “doing nothing” is that there are lots of teachers in schools, getting paychecks, that are really not teaching…If we simply sit back and “do nothing” then there are hundreds of students who will get poor teachers…I can see you point about the overreaction…but my question still remains…what do we do??
I will share one idea that I have always floated to others…we need to tear down the wall between teachers and administrators (which in some states is due to separate unions) and allow strong teachers to both stay in the classroom AND take on administrative duties…
People on this site and others have often talked about how private schools don’t require standardized tests, etc. I can share one experience that I had in one private school – everyone (the principal, the headmaster, etc) taught at least one class. Doing so kept those who were supposed to be assessing others constantly having to hone their own craft. It helped the administrators better understand if a teacher was complaining about software that didn’t work or other issue when they too had the same problem as teachers.
The reason, from what I can see, in most public schools with this as a solution lies in the unions…There is a teacher union and a admin union and never the two shall meet. Teachers are not allowed to observe other teachers who are at their same level…So, what happens – well, in most cases a very strong teacher is asked (recommended) to either go into administration or, maybe, become a consulting or master teacher. In those roles, they are asked to LEAVE THE CLASSROOM…Doing so is supposed to improve other teachers…But who takes the place of the great teacher who just left??
This is the outside of the box thinking that I think needs to happen…
I totally agree. As soon as they see a teacher who is smart and talented, they try to recruit them for an administration position or a position downtown. In both cases they leave the classroom. I would love to see teacher leader positions open up where a teacher could stay in the classroom but also serve in leadership roles for the district.
Kafkateach,
I think that more flexibility in salary might be helpful in getting outstanding teachers to stay in the classroom. As it stands now some teachers have to choose between earning more for the family and doing the classroom teaching that they love.
Teaching economist. It’s easy. Just pay the teacher a supplement for extra responsibilities and give them more relief time. My school is considering paying me a supplement for being a technology liaison. I’m taking on a leadership roll and getting extra pay without leaving the classroom. That would be a true and fair form of “merit pay” instead of “merit pay” based on some BS VAM score.
Kafkateach,
If you have new duties that take your time, you will be fractionally leaving the classroom.
I was thinking more along the lines of paying outstanding teachers to keep them in the classroom rather than choosing a higher paying position in or out of education.
I do think that faculty governance of a school is a good thing, but it is I. Tension with the drive for uniformity across schools that dominates traditional school districts.
“All I know is that in my 10 years of teaching, including five in a DC public school that was supposed to be one of the best schools in the area…”
I don’t think that ten years of teaching – some in private school – is a long enough time to make generalizations about “lots of teachers in schools, getting paychecks, that are really not teaching…” and I certainly do not think that schools in DC, particularly in the last decade, are representative of schools across the nation. DC’s system was dysfunctional both pre- and post-Rhee.
Yes, there are bad teachers and poor ones, but the unions are not those portrayed in “On the Waterfront”. Unions do not hire or evaluate teachers, management does. Current tenure law in most states allow management 3 years to determine whether a teacher should be given what in Massachusetts is referred to as professional status. This should be why few “bad” teachers become career employees – they can be winnowed out by attentive supervisors.
To me “poor” teachers are another category – they were doing ok until something changed professionally – imposition of another curriculum, a new administration with a whole different set of expectations, or personally – a chronic illness, substance abuse, divorce. Perhaps that is what you saw in teachers in DC who were just getting by, professional PTSD caused by having no agency over their own lives.
Christine, you are right…DC was a mess pre-Michelle Rhee and is a bit of a mess post-Michelle Rhee…and it probably is not representative of the entire nation. My point in bringing up places like DC is to point out that the answer to solving the situation is not a simple one…
As far as the comment about poor teachers being winnowed out by attentive supervisors, there have been discussions on other posts about administrators who wanted to remove poor teachers but faced numerous road blocks…So even administrators who are attentive sometimes cannot remove poor teachers. And I applaud states for having a three year window before providing teachers “professional status”…I think more states need to have similar laws (I know that MA has seemingly been on the leading edge of education reforms, some of which have been better than others)
Christine,
I think your comment points to the difficulty in having a national conversation about K-12 education when there are huge differences in practice and performance across the different jurisdictions in the country. You point out that education in The District was a mess before Rhee and after Rhee. Given the poor state of education there, one might expect alternatives to the traditional schools to be more reasonable than in a place where schools were well run to begin with. While tenure law in most states require 3 years, in California it is 18 months, a period that most agree is too short and likely leads to poor teachers being offered perm infant employment and people who would have grown into strong teachers being dismissed.
Thank you teachingeconomist…this has been my point all along…the conversation around K-12 education reform is not an easy one with no easy solutions.
teachingeconomist. “Leaving the classroom” means closing the classroom door and never opening it again. I would never do that. What I’m talking about is being given an extra planning period and extra money to take on a leadership role but being a classroom teacher the majority of the time so you don’t become out of touch with the plight of the average teacher.
Kafkateach,
I am thinking of it more incrementally, one less class taught by a master teacher is a loss to the students in the school.
teachingeconomist, if the teacher is only teaching one less class but still helping to bring up the overall quality of instruction at the school, I don’t think it’s much of a loss.
Kafkateach,
A agree that there are trade offs.
Let’s see, if you were worth anything as a teacher, you wouldn’t be sticking your nose in other teachers’ business. I don’t believe one word you are writing.
Kafkateach,
I think this comment by Susannunes (https://dianeravitch.net/2014/08/17/david-kirp-why-teaching-is-not-a-business/comment-page-1/#comment-2224239) illustrates a not uncommon view that teachers have no business thinking about what is going on in any classroom but their own. Other posters, like LG, have also expressed this opinion. This view creates some substantial barriers to implementing faculty governance in the K-12 setting.
I should have been more clear: the “doing nothing” I was thinking about was in regards to the corporate education movement, not teachers’ actions in the classroom (although I do think a lot of what happens in classrooms amounts to fruitless, compulsive, visible Doing for the sake of Doing, when we should be eliciting the invisible Doing of listening and thinking).
Wow, a lot written here in the last few moments…and I feel that I should address most of it in a swan song of sorts.
First to Dr. Ravitch – again my apologies for your feeling that I was trying to take this conversation hostage – that was never my intent and I would hate for you to think that of me…
To MathVale, kafkateach, teachingeconomist, thank you for your comments and engaging in thoughtful dialogue to try and come up with solutions (BTW, I agree that there is some compromise and if a teacher were to get extra pay to fill two roles (but have to leave one class) that is a decent compromise…better to leave just one class then to leave them all..
My point in bringing up “bad” teachers was to simply note that often times columnists (or even authors) seem to way to solve issues with public school education as simple solutions. And yet, rarely is the solution very simple..
Bringing this back to the Kirp article for a minute – I completely agree with the sentiment of the article – relationships are such an important part of teaching and we need to do more to focus on that side of teaching as opposed to relying solely on data. I taught AP Calculus for two years and by the data none of my students “passed” the test…and yet, I believe that I made a difference in the lives of some of those students..But at the same time, I am not sure that saying “teachers need to have good relationships with their students” is enough…
susannunes – from your posts, it seems as if you may have been unjustly let go from a teaching position. For that, I am sorry…I have been called many things on these posts (a communist in a couple of posts, and now a TFA alumni or a charter school “teacher”)…
For the record, I have a BS in mathematics, got my masters from a university teacher prep program, taught for five years in private schools and five years at a DC public school. Never did TFA, etc.
During my last year of teaching, I was harassed by my principal, constantly observed and eventually I chose to leave the classroom (mainly to take care of my own children)…the experience skewed me so much that I have been hesitant to return…
Let me talk a little bit about that public school…it was an application school focused on STEM….the founding principal is one of my mentors in education…When creating the first staff of the school, he aimed for a balance of newer and older teachers, of teachers who were white and teachers who were of color…he taught me that education is about relationships (Kirp would be pleased) and many other things…He also had a philosophy that as an application school his school was not only for the top students, but also for those who were C students who needed something different from their home school in DCPS…during his time we helped take students who had scores of basic on their standardized tests and get them into college (where they then became college graduates)
My mentor left his position after three years to join the central office in DC (this was right before Rhee came…when she came, he was pushed out as being old guard)…his replacement was a NLNS principal…that principal is the one who pushed me out of the classroom…That principal changed the philosophy of the admissions process – to one where only proficient students were accepted. Then he bragged about raising test scores…it was recognized as a Blue Ribbon school for being a 90-90 school…That principal is now an instructional superintendent…
So susannunes, I have seen multiple sides of education…And I will come back to one of the things I have said often on this blog…education is about dialogue … it’s not about screaming or shutting people down or out…As someone else already noted, you claimed in a post that I shouldn’t be so nosy worried about what other teachers were doing…That person tended to disagree with you…now you may have had a poor experience that led you to this belief…and again, I am sorry about that…
Finally, to address MathValve’s final question to me: “I’d conjecture 95-98% of teachers are 95-98% effective in the classroom with the necessary, but not sufficient, condition that a set of non-academic needs be met (food, shelter, stability, safety, security, health). Therefore, in D.C. and similar districts, either kids are not in the classroom (both physically and mentally) and/or prerequisite needs are not being net. Am I wrong?”
MathValve I would say that you were right in that non-academic needs need to be met…And you are right that kids need to be in the class mentally (or physically) or both…Would that be enough? I think it would take a few more things…as you (or someone else) noted, it would take all teachers to let down their defensive guard and be open to change…it would take a teacher to be willing to hear, “Hey, you could do this differently” and not feel accused…
It would take the creation of some type of assessment system that were to be fair to all, but one that ideally would not simply be a standardized test which students were trained to do…
In essence, it would take a miracle… but most of all it would take conversation…
Time for me to get dinner ready for my children…but I do hope that all of you hear will consider anyone’s comment with an open mind or at least be willing to think about the other side. We all have personal experiences that shape our belief system…To those of you who rightfully pointed out when I may have exaggerated (such as saying that for every strong teacher there was a poor teacher)…thank you for forcing me to clarify…
I hope that we can continue to have thoughtful conversations…
jlsteach, Thank you for your eloquent response. Reasoned debate can be hard to come by in education. Probably because most people who get into education are passionate about education, it’s certainly not for the money. I know what it’s like to teach AP classes and feel like you have performed miracles if a student gets a two or a three but an administrator feels that you have failed. My first year as an AP teacher I had the highest pass rates because the course was only offered to three sections of the highest tier students. Then they started basing the school grade on AP enrollment and my number of students taking the course skyrocketed but my pass rates plummeted. Then came the AVID program where they take nontraditional AP students and put them in the course. My pass rates plummeted some more. If you looked at the decline in my pass rates from year to year, you would think I was becoming a terrible teacher. I can assure you I am I much better teacher now than my first year teaching even though my pass rates would never show it. Ironically, I was removed from the AP program this year because my replacement while on maternity leave had amazing pass rates (he only had three classes of the top tier students). Now the district wants to evaluate AP teachers on pass rates (they can’t use VAM because they can’t pretest). They are going to be comparing situations where one teacher is allowed to cherry pick their students to situations where 200 Freshmen are dumped into the course to boost the school grade. It’s a disaster. I also appreciate your comments about how hard it can be to create change. When people feel threatened by change, when they feel they are going to lose their position of power, they can react very negatively as recently happened to me when I tried to introduce the My Big Campus LMS platform that the district preferred to Edmodo which my school had decided over the summer to use. The power grab was pretty ugly and in the end it was the teachers who lost out because they missed out on a great professional development lesson. The beauty of the Internet and personalized learning on the computer is that it’s stored on the web and teachers can access the information on their own time without the drama of teachers jostling for power.
“My concern with “doing nothing” is that there are lots of teachers in schools, getting paychecks, that are really not teaching. . . ”
Again, Bullshit!!
Well, I guess we all know what your favorite word is Duane…I will again revise…take out the word a lot and replace it with some…there are “some” teachers who do nothing and get a paycheck..
Again, jlsteach, who are you!
Why are you afraid to identify yourself?
I’ve found that most people in public and private organizations WANT to succeed. Giving employees a rewarding reason is often all it takes. Employees who feel part of a team, have control over their environment and outcomes, are properly rewarded and respected, and see basic needs met in order to focus in the job – those employees perform well.
Amen. This is exactly what is missing from the teaching profession.
If a teacher wants to stay in the classroom and not be tool for admin, is she still an effective leader?
Yes, she or he sure can be.
Budget constraints (which result in large class sizes), standardized tests, and media disinterest in our children’s academic success (as compared to their athletic success) are the driving forces that have eroded education for the past 30 years (or longer). Serious media (and subsequent community) support of student academic success, especially academic competetive events,would provide recognition for students, teachers, and parents and help disadvantaged children get some of the recognition they crave.
Competetion between schools using standardized tests as the measure is the worst type of competetion there is. It bullies kids and teachers and destroys the importance of individuals; it cannot get students excited about learning because they get no effective feedback from the results. Who thought up this crazy stuff???
TAGO!, Al
MathVale, in response to your comment: “My personal observations, far from scientific, reveal a vast majority of teachers WANT to succeed, be recognized as having an impact”
I taught in a DC public school for five years. I was a different race than many of my fellow teachers. I was stereotyped because of that…If I ever brought up anything about my colleagues teaching, I was chastised…The message to me was, “Leave my teaching alone” These were colleagues who were teaching Algebra I to students who were in Algebra II (and I then got those students in Pre-calculus)…
So, while my comment about 1:1 isn’t scientific, I would say neither is yours that the majority want to succeed…
you mention mentoring, etc. I completely agree with you…And ironically, it seems that many of the younger teachers (including those from TFA, an organization I would think many of you are not fans of) are more open to mentoring, and getting that advice.
What do you do about the teachers who have been in the classroom for 20 years and refuse to change anything?
My union has had a Peer Assistance Review program since 2000. Is it perfect? No, there are still teachers who are discouraged by the constantly changing demands made by the district. But to claim that this is all prevented by unions simply s not true.
TFA tends to be a temporary position. Mentoring focuses on positive development long term. Hey, I’m relatively aged and more open to change than a fair number of younger colleagues. My experience is that resistance to change may have a slight age component (we grow more conservative as we get grayer), but far more of an influence is personality and the sense of security. There are 20 year olds that find change very uncomfortable. Perhaps younger teachers do not have the confidence or courage to speak up – qualities that can grow with age and wisdom. Or maybe they do not feel as secure in their job or are intimidated. It takes time and experience to play “the game”.
So what to do about employees resistant to change? First, recognize if people feel threatened, they with be cornered and dig in. Forcing change breeds mistrust, fear, and unleases the forces of passive agressive demons. Sometimes, it is inevitable. But I do believe if people are a part of change, see positive outcomes, and are reasoned with, they will respond. A complete opposite of the reform movement in teaching. The Reformers did not even make an effort to include teachers and are paying for their hubris and contempt. Good.
“I taught in a DC public school for five years. I was a different race than many of my fellow teachers. I was stereotyped because of that…If I ever brought up anything about my colleagues teaching, I was chastised…”
If you commented on any teacher’s teaching without being invited, you would not be well received. The racial divides in this country should have clued you in that your “advice” might not be taken as that of a respected colleague but as a bigoted outsider who ignored the prevalent culture. I imagine your direction would be resented, and rightfully so. You have to earn your stripes and be asked for your opinion. If you marched in with the answers, I would imagine that you were not immediately accepted as a valued colleague. Yes, in some cases, there would be nothing you could say or do that would be accepted any way but grudgingly at best. You deal with it. Racism is not a one way street.
In teaching in both high and low SES communities, I found the level of curriculum to be significantly lower in the low SES community, not because the teachers were dumbing down the curriculum but because the students were not ready for the same level of instruction. They were just as bright but did not have the same rich background nor did they have access to the same rich resources. As a special ed teacher, I had reading classes that required a dedicated “workbook’ for each student. The school could not afford them. You know how I had to deal with that problem. In the general education classes, only those in the college track had their own textbooks. Everyone else shared class sets that could not be taken home.
If I am misinterpreting what you are trying to say and/or coming across as an “obnoxious know it all” feel free to put me straight. Conversation by email loses a lot in translation.
2old2teach….Thank you for giving me the chance to set things straight…I will try and explain some of my comments.
First, I certainly did not march in thinking that I had all of the answers…I am talking about trying to get all of the teachers in one subject to come together and agree on what we were teaching, so that all students were on the same page…some of the veteran teachers refused to do this simple task..
As far as your comment, “Yes, in some cases, there would be nothing you could say or do that would be accepted any way but grudgingly at best. You deal with it. Racism is not a one way street.”…Well, I really believe that was the case…Teachers would comment on the college I went to (one that is in the top 10 in the US news ranking – that is only to give a frame of reference)….and it’s not as if i had my diploma on my classroom wall…I often invited others teachers of color into my classroom to offer me advice…I would turn to those teachers when I was having challenges with particular students because I knew they had better relationships with them…
As for your second comment, I have never been in special education so I cannot comment on how one would handle the different levels of curriculum…But a typical comment from a student in a class may be, “I don’t get that…or “I never learned that” Let’s say that happens in an Algebra I class. Teacher A could re-teach what was missed in one lesson then get back to the curriculum. Teacher B could chose to drill and kill and spend two weeks on the topic (and similar topics) spending a quarter, or semester on old material…Teacher B ends up setting the students back, so that when they get to the next course, they are behind, and thus, the cycle of being behind is set up…Teacher B blames the teacher in the previous class, who blames the teacher int he previous class, etc..
I don’t think that this was a case where my students couldn’t handle the material, but rather that the teacher, for one reason or another, didn’t want to address the current curriculum…
jlsteach,
Were you a TFAer?
Duane,
If you read the posts you will find out that the poster has a BS in mathematics from a university and an MA from a school of education. A pretty conventional, actually I would think laudable, path to teaching.
Thanks for the info TE!
jlsteach:
If it is not broken, DO NOT fix.
If the change does not make existing situation better, DO NOT change.
Meaningful conversation cannot happen whenever one speaker is blunt and beats around the bush
All of the true professional people have one thing in common – they admire others within their own profession, and different profession.
Conscientious professional people ONLY offer or share their experiences as requested, and NEVER criticize their colleagues.
ALL SNOBBISH professional people have one thing in common – they do their best to find others’ mistakes and to exaggerate others’ weakness in order to feel that they are superior to others.
It is very ignorant for those snobbish people in business field. However, it is outrageously pitiful for those snobbish people in educational field.
In this particular thread, jlsteach, TE, and Ponderosa take turn to smear your FAKE teaching profession. How pitiful all of you are!
Please show your courtesy and decency if you are truly educators.
Again, if all of you are who you say you are, then please cultivate yourselves and share/explore Dr. Berger’s tenets of education with all minted educators.
Please remember that you are, and will be LOSER, if you call/label me whatever. Back2basic
m4potw, a couple of thoughts:
If we had a perfect democracy in education, then I would agree with theses tenants. However I will respond to a couple of things:
“We have a proven system of certification and competence. Educators are constantly evaluated by parents, administrators, peers, and students. This is the reason there are very few “bad” teachers” – the fact is that its administrators who often do the evaluating, some much better than others…
Dr. Ravitch asked me why I was “obsessed” with bad teachers in another posting…I will go ahead and share it here again:
“Dr. Ravitch, if I may let me share one anecdote that may help you understand my perspective. When I taught, there was a teacher in the math department who nearly everyone in the school knew was a poor teacher. The teacher would regularly let his students do whatever they wanted to do. This teacher was the union rep in our building and he made sure that he knew the union rulebook backwards and forwards. Years after I left, he is still at the school…I recently was talking to the math dept chair about him, and she said that last year he gave a final exam that was essentially a year below grade level…and was allowed to get away with it. She mentioned that this teacher, instead of focusing on the union rulebook, decided to study IMPACT (the DC Teacher Evaluation system) to find a way to get the minimum passing score…”
Such teachers do exist. They may be few, but they do exist…And the assumption that someone is not doing their job to get rid of such teachers is a false assumption…
Second, you write, “Meaningful conversation cannot happen whenever one speaker is blunt and beats around the bush”
So, when someone says, “The Common Core hurts children, and it’s authors only wrote it for profit” – how is that not blunt? How does that not simply shut down conversation?
This is my point, when anyone makes comments such as that, it represents extremes. It doesn’t take into the account at all that the authors of the CC were doing so with good intentions. As Dr. Ravitch noted in the strand “Julie Cavanaugh” – “I agree with you that some or most or maybe even all of those who created CCSS had good motives, not money motives”…She goes on to note that they were not field tested AND that the cut scores chosen were out of reach…On those two things, I agree…But the poor implementation of something does not mean that the original policy is completely bad. This is my frustration – many simply say that the entire thing is bad…Is is great that in some states they are saying “throw out CC but lets write our own standards?”
You also write, “Conscientious professional people ONLY offer or share their experiences as requested, and NEVER criticize their colleagues.”
So m4ptow, what would you do with a situation like the teacher that I described above – a real teacher that is still teaching…I am simply to sit back and not criticize his or her poor teaching?
How does the comment “Conscientious professional people ONLY offer or share their experiences as requested, and NEVER criticize their colleagues”. allow things like a true PLC, where a community is working together to improve occur?
Jlsteach – Students are best served when people are honest and respectful with each other. Every school and community has some similarities & some differences.
Part of the value of this list serve (or whatever we should call it) is to learn about experiences and research that others know about. That can help inform us, and make us more effective in our work with students, families and the broader community.
Apparently some of the things I say anger others. My goal is not anger anyone. I think we share, even though we sometimes disagree, deep commitments to young people and families.
It ought to be possible for folks to disagree without name-calling or swearing at each other.
Thanks for encouraging this.
JLSteach, you give an example of a bad teacher. Who gave that teacher tenure? Not himself. Not the union. Who elected him chapter chair? Not himself. Why doesn’t the principal file charges? The problem, if he is a bad teacher, is weak administration.
Furthermore, as a wise old superintendent said to me last year, “You don’t burn down the entire barn to get rid of a couple of rats.”
I still wonder why you are obsessed with “bad” teachers when our biggest problem is teacher retention. Multiple surveys show that 40% of teachers leave in their first five years of teaching. Maybe they were bad teachers. Maybe they were good teachers who found the working conditions and lack of support intolerable.
Why not worry about structural problems (start by reading Deming) instead of ranting about a “bad” teacher you know about?
Agreed that administrators have responsibility to remove ineffective teachers. Some places, unions have been deeply involved in helping evaluate and helping improve skills of their members.
Also agreed that teacher retention is a big issue – and the working environment and school leader has a huge impact on that, according to several national polls of teachers. Here’s a link to a poll of 20,000 teachers.
http://www.scholastic.com/primarysources/download-the-full-report.htm
Yes it was paid for by Gates. I think it contains some useful questions and responses.
As to the comment by jlsteach, it seemed like a description of a bad teacher, not a rant.
Dr. Ravitch, thank you for your thoughts…
I agree with you that the problem partially lies with a weak administration – in this case the principal targeted teachers he philosophically disagreed with (including myself) and kept those that were his “yes men”…So yes, I would agree that the administration was weak. Who elected the teacher union rep? Fellow teachers, who, in some cases, felt that this teacher would stand up to an administration who tried to abuse his or her powers…But, such abuse would include things like encouraging having fellow teachers observe one another and offer feedback (i.e trying to create a PLC)
However, in terms of “who gave the teacher tenure”…someone, sometime long ago gave this teacher acceptable for three years…after that, it becomes challenging to remove this teacher from the classroom…Yes, there were weaknesses in the system in the past that are causing these results in the future.
One other thing…while the superintendent is right, you don’t burn down the barn to get rid of a few rats….but one would call an exterminator to try and get rid of the rats…they wouldn’t let them stick around, right?
In terms of teacher retention…actually I agree that this is an issue. Organizations like Teach for America, with their two year minimum commitment, don’t help. In terms of what am I trying to do…at my institution of higher education we are working with partnering with local districts on induction to help support teachers during those first few years..
Another way to try and improve teacher retention is making sure that teachers are prepared coming from whatever teacher preparation program they completed (TFA, traditional teacher program, resident teacher program). My institution has recently begun working with the edTPA, having our candidates complete this assessment. Our goal in doing so was to help make sure our candidates were ready for the classroom, to help with retention (having teachers better understand areas of their strengths and areas they could work on)…On this blog, many have been very outspoken against this assessment for multiple reasons (it’s connection to Pearson as an operational partner, not having local control of evacuation, etc)…Yet in my mind assessments like edTPA are trying to address problems like retention…
We cannot have it both ways…we want to improve retention, yet many programs don’t want to be assessed? (yes, I know, the assessment, like any assessment, is still in the process of being improved)
what are the causes of the high retention rate? Some of it is probably poor working conditions? Some of it could they were ill prepared. The point you make, and that I have tried to make, is that there are multiple possible reasons AND multiple things that need to be done…
It’s not enough to simply say, “It’s the administrators fault, it’s the working conditions fault”…
Finally, I apologize if you thought that my description was a rant about a poor teacher…that was not the case at all…In the earlier post, you asked me why I was worried about poor teachers…I tried to answer the question as if you and I were sitting down sharing a meal and chatting together about ways to support teachers…
Which leads to me one last thought – I recognize that we are all shaped by our own experiences. A teacher who was improperly fired by a principal would rightly be angry; similarly my experience with the teacher I have described shapes my viewpoint. Neither, in my opinion, is “right” or “wrong” – rather they represent two sides of a story…and they demonstrate the complications involved in the process of ensuring that all of our students have great teachers in the classroom working to help prepare them for higher education and/or a career.
As a young teacher in 1971, I worked in an innovative, k-12 district open school that promoted strong relationships between adults, students and faculty, with every student selecting an advisor. The school used the entire continent as a place for learning; used various forms of technology to help accomplish its goals.
This school was relentlessly attacked by some university faculty who mis-represented and distorted what we tried to do.
Kirp has been writing articles for many years that over-simplify and distort the great work of many inner city teachers who are making a big difference with youngsters. This is only the latest example.
Many urban educators see the value of relationships and technology. It’s not one or the other. Providing options is not just about the marketplace; it’s recognizing some youngsters thrive in a Montessori program, others in a more traditional program. Some high school youngsters thrive by taking courses on a college campus, some prefer and do better by taking advanced courses in high school. Some love more applied programs in auto mechanics or home building; others prefer more traditional courses.
As usual, Joe is great. All who associate and agree with Joe are also great. Those who do agree are simple, do not understand and are for the “status quo” because back to the first point, it’s about
Joe and Joe is great.
Kirp did not say there wasn’t value in technology. Read more closely please. You read with a filter.
JLSteach, you hijacked the conversation into a discussion of “bad” teachers, of which there are very few. State after state has used Duncan’s mandate only to discover that 95-98% of teachers were effective or highly effective. You sound like Rhee-Johnson. Please stop demonizing teachers. That is not the subject of this post. It is your obsession.
Dr. Ravitch…I certainly did not mean to make this discussion about bad teachers. And I would hate to be compared to Rhee-Johnson…..Once after meeting with her for earning a national teaching award and seeking ways to support other DC teachers, she told me that the one thing I could do was to get other teachers to support her contract. That completely turned me off..
My only reason for mentioning “bad” teachers was to make a point that the solution to solving the education situation is not an easy one. Too often I think that solutions such as what Kirp mention in his column are considered easy solutions…
I would like to raise one question…if state after state have applied Duncan’s mandate and found that 95-98% were effective or highly effective, then is the only reason we have districts like DC (where 60% graduate from HS and then only 10% graduate from college in six years) poverty? I know, I know…as with the teaching situation the real answer is much more complicated…
Again, my sincere apologies…
Yes, someone needs to do a close reading in all of this reform, and it’s not us.
jlsteach, I’d conjecture 95-98% of teachers are 95-98% effective in the classroom with the necessary, but not sufficient, condition that a set of non-academic needs be met (food, shelter, stability, safety, security, health). Therefore, in D.C. and similar districts, either kids are not in the classroom (both physically and mentally) and/or prerequisite needs are not being net. Am I wrong?
*met
Time to move on…..
Teachers who believe they can make a difference, do. Schools with teachers who believe they can make a difference, do.
They don’t solve every youngsters every problem.
But teachers can and in many cases do transform lives. I hope each teacher who posts here has had the experience of youngsters returning years after you taught them to say “thanks” and describe the huge positive impact you’ve had.
Why do you think we don’t know that? Do you think that’s news to career teachers?
Are you ever aware you come off as condescending?
Mr. Nathan, That all sounds great. But in this climate, that concerned teacher better get the test scores to prove it.
My administrators over the years, and I’ve had many, routinely praise my ability to build confidence among my students. But with the new teacher evaluation systems there is NO category that rates building relationships. Because that can’t be quantified.
Many of the groups that you support and policies that you endorse fly in the face of what you just posted.
Steve, I agree that in some states, there is far too much reliance on test scores in evaluating teachers.
I worked in a urban district public school where the parents, students and teachers collaborated to produce a questionnaire given to students about several things related to the teachers’ relationships with students. It was a k-12 school where we developed several different questionnaires, based on students’ age. And we had some outside people come in to read & record responses for students who could not read.
The survey asked questions about whether students thought teachers were fair, provided helpful feedback, treated students of different races equally, and several other things. We found that well over 90% of the student were very serious and helpful in their feedback.
I do think feedback from students should be part of a teacher’s evaluation. I agree this can be hijacked by students. But I’ve known other schools that have done this and found it equally valuable.
Linda, Joseph can never think that he condescends. He’s too full of his I, me, my, and myself, and he hardly ever ever talks about the system that puts children into poverty before they are born or enter the school system.
He will never allude to income distribution. He has vested pecuniary interests in school choice. And of course, his wife was a teacher, his children went to public school, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he does this because, don’t you know, excellent effective teachers will solve the problem of poverty . . . . . Only them, mainly them. . . . Who needs to look at the whole gestalt when you can look at choice, tenure, pensions, pay scale, unions?
Robert – I’ve spend decades working with a variety of organizations to help reduce poverty, reduce homelessness, help people find jobs, etc.
So have many others who are relentlessly ridiculed here.
So have thousands and thousands of other Americans besides you Joe. Please stop promoting yourself. Aren’t you embarrassed ever? It’s always me, I, my. Were you ignored as a child?
Actually Joe if you re read you are being ridiculed because all you do is post relentlessly about yourself and your greatness.
Newly named National teacher of the year has a few comments describing the huge impact that teachers can have:
http://hometownsource.com/2014/07/09/joe-nathan-column-award-winning-teacher-says-teachers-are-the-decisive-element-in-schools/
You’ve posted it before Joe and it’s not revolutionary. You are communicating with educators who read, write, think, research, investigate…..just in case you thought we were all incompetent.
Skip the organizations, Joseph. Focus on D.C., the elected officials and their crony capitalism as well. Look beyond your backyard, Joseph and your feel-good local partnerships. There’s more to the country than your corner.
Where have you been? What have you done to advocate for income redistribution and fair taxation?
Worked on successful campaigns for state legislators, members of Congress and state governors. Worked with a variety of governors in various states.
Please tell us about your work.
Robert, he thinks because he left out the I, me, my we won’t know that he is STILL bragging. Disregard. I’m done.
Nope, answering a question.
Joe, you did NOT answer about what you worked on in precise terms of the areas I mentioned.
Please put down the advertisements about how wonderful you really are, and tell us what you actually did in those areas. That’s what I’m asking you. . . .. redistribution of income and taxation reform to restore corporate and individual income tax levels to their 1950, 1960 and 1970 levels. . . . .
Otherwise, your informing us about what you did here and there, with this one and that one are the equivalent of a literary selfie, and really, who do you intend to send it to? You are behaving like the ANthony Weiner of self aggrandizement, and we need much more from someone we expect more from. You’re beginning to sound a lot like Oprah. . . . “Oh, yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about because I too went through and did XY and Z and now look at me . . . .”
So, you were saying. . . . . .
There’s a 40 year record that’s accessible via internet.
Also interested in what you have done.
But this is not really about me…it’s about what schools and educators can accomplish. I stand with those who think that we need to work simultaneously on problems outside schools and inside schools…. people like Rosa Parks, Marian Wright Edelman, and Maya Angelou. They worked hard on problems outside of schools…and see/saw the value of creating new options for youngsters and families.
FYI, Maya, who I’ve met twice, was against Obama’s reform policies because she felt they stifled education and the spirit of curiosity and creativity.
Please don’t disgrace her good name and embarrass yourself at the same time. It’s unbecoming for someone of your great stature . . . . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maya-angelou-inspired-students-at-dc-schools-that-bear-her-name/2014/06/08/0edeb2d0-ece0-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html
Jospeh Nathan,
Maya was inspired by children learning with joy and creativity, not the reform politics that created polarization. She has succinctly stated that a nation of test prep culture does not produce great artists, but in fact diminishes them. Of course, she was not going to reject children and a school named after her. She loved children and was always gracious, even when she was furious about the policies surrounding them.
She spoke out vehmently against RttT and Obama’s policies. Witnessing her visiting a school named after her in her good graces has nothing to do with her politiics about education.
Good try, Joseph, but once again, you’ve made a buffoon of yourself, although I have to credit you by saying you’re a sort of high gloss, polished buffoon.
And at the same time, who but you would be so wildly creative to conjure up your version of the imagery of the deceased, and play with the their good name and reputation in such a skewered way so that your own personal, non-factual agenda can be pushed.
I at least have to apologize to you by recognizing that this time, you did not use yourself and your Macy’s day float-sized narcissism – on display for all to see – to push your ideas.
This time, you used the memory of someone beloved, cherished, pure, and no longer with us on earth.
And how perfect for you, Joseph, as Maya is not here – in this plane of reality at least – to defend herself against your slander.
Wow, Joe. YOU’RE such a great man. . . . a man of letters. There HAS to be a life sized statue of you somewhere in some public square in some town or city. If not, please let me know, and I’ll advocate to have it built.
The local birds and squirrels need something solid to poop on.
Joseph, before you shoot your PhD mouth off in public like this, please consider doing the scholarly thing and reading everything about a person before you use them post-humously as a bayonnet to bash unions, public schools, anti-privatization movements, and most of all, before you use them to inflate your already exploded, mushroom cloud atomic ego . . . . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/30/maya-angelou-standardized-testing_n_5418898.html
Robert,
It would appear that Maya Angelou was against some changes in education but happy enough with a charter schools to allow one to naming itself for her to take the considerable effort it required her to visit the school.
Outside of the most orthodox posters on this blog, I think you will find that most people would fail the ideological purity test of holding the “right” opinion on every single issue discussed here.
Robert – are you the Robert Rendo who is a Nationally Board Certified Teacher?
As to my comments about Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou and Marian Wright Edelman, I wrote that “They worked hard on problems outside of schools…and see/saw the value of creating new options for youngsters and families.” That was true of Rosa Parks and Maya Angelou, and is true of Marian Wright Edelman.
I’m sorry, TE, what did you say?
I’m not understanding your point.
Robert,
Basically I said folks can be against excess testing and in favor of allowing students to choose schools without their head exploding.
That’s not so basic or deeply explained, TE. What does that mean?
Joe, you run out of ways to communicate without bragging about yourself. Now you drag out dead people to support your one sided theories. We can all make our own decisions without you telling us what Maya or Rosa would think today.
Can you get more shameful and self absorbed? One would think not.
Maybe you should get busy teaching and doing rather than finding ways to bolster your fragile, but overinflated ego. Back to school soon, so get busy DOING.
Reblogged this on onewomansjournal.
The problem is the neoliberals promoting the privatization mantra do not care if their ideas work or not. It’s their belief that virtually all government functions are illegitimate. You cannot reason with these people because they are slaves to a ruinous cult.
The worst thing about neoliberalism is they have bought off almost all of D.C. politicians and most of the state-level politicians. That is why no matter how much sense you try to tell people, it goes through one ear and out the other from our elected officials.
Another note that no one seems to comment on is about curriculum. We should have a challenging curriculum. I disagree! We should have a just right curriculum. What is challenging for one may be too easy for another or devastating difficult for a third. We need to look at how we judge children based on developmental issues. We don’t all mature or grow on the same schedule. We need to match our curriculum to student needs and stop demonizing teachers who have students who struggle. Two years ago, I had a class that showed a 300% increase in their Dibels scores. However 50% of the class scored non proficient on the end of levels test. They made remarkable growth, but the curriculum and testing was beyond their developmental area as a group. They are capable of learning all of the prescribed curriculum, but they needed a bit more time!
Firstgrademonkey,
I agree that it is important to match the curriculum to each student, that is why I think that it is a good idea, where density allows, to allow the student to be matched to the school based on the curriculum offered rather than street address.
Differentiation in teaching is undoubtedly one of the top skills for a teacher to posses. It can even be morally conflicting–do I spend as much time for two children as I do for 18? Do I spend time off the clock building a personal relationship with the family? It is a discipline all its own but the reality is that fictive kinship works up through the grades, in every school, in every state.
Can technology differentiate? No, but it can track and label. Because differentiation is an art, just like it was in the one room school house, when teachers were pillars in the community and it was highly competitive to go to teacher college.
So, in terms of meeting each student where they are at, this is where support staff are indispensable…guidance counselors, ped. chairs, even parent guilds, partnering community groups with work and mentoring programs. We are losing a sense of community that prepares children SOCIALLY to deal with the concept of learning and thinking differently as well as having the ability to HEAR and process different perspectives. The online high schools in my school district market not as an academic elixir but as a social one…”Tired of being bullied, ignored by the teacher, having no self-confidence or voice, etc.” ‘Eliminate the problem’ is part of the war machine propaganda currently blanketing our great nation. (So is blaming.)
However, at what point and how do we start preparing students who might want to continue education and their only option is the pipeline to classes of 300 at State, where no attendance is taken, where you can buy class notes for a fair price, where no one gives you encouragement, and where your identity is reduced to 5 scantrons? The inherent absurdity of helicopter parents demanding conversations with college professors has been a reality for what, a decade, now? Can we argue that this transition begins in K? I believe it does.
The bad teachers/bad schools/bad curriculum/bad/bad/bad is totally irrelevant, really, if you look at the big picture: an environment of utter fragmentation and disconnect with the other and the self over what it is to be human, to struggle, and to succeed. It’s the social that even defines success, isn’t it?
Pedagogy,
I think you are overly pessimistic about classes at “State”. In my department at “State” the introductory classes are large (200+), but in my large classes the students do not see a scantron sheet and every exam carries half its points in a free response question where the students must construct an answer on a blank sheet of paper. Above the introductory level, classes are around 33 students.
At my institution (and many others, it has become very fashionable) there are freshman seminars. These classes are restricted to 19 students and only tenure stream faculty are allowed to teach them.
I read David’s article this morning in the NY times and was impressed with his understanding of the value and necessity for relationships in education. I taught at-risk students for 21 years and I can unequivocally say the progress I made was always preceded by development of trust and respect between the student and myself. There is no merit pay that could match this teaching relationship. David is right on.
Some people, here, it just isn’t worth the time to argue with. You will never change their minds, and they enjoy the arguing. No thank you, and I’m not impressed with the rhetoric.
As for the saying “those who can do, those who can’t teach” its a disgusting saying and really makes no sense. What is it that he/she can’t “do”? What is the “doing” that the teacher failed at? Is an English teacher meant to write books? Is a science or biology teacher meant to cure aids? Is a music teacher meant to be a pop star or a virtuoso? Is a P.E. teacher meant to be a football/basketball or olympic hero? What was a Pre-K or K teacher meant to do that was a failure? Teachers help to further shape and form human beings and give them necessary skills. Is it not worthwhile for an elementary to teach someone the alphabet, reading, writing, everyday math? Many teachers have a love of learning. My daughter is a teacher, and knew she’d teach since she was 2 years old. I’m happy for her she is living her dream, but it comes at a time when some people paint teachers as the scourge of the earth. You have to look to their agenda, and then you have the answer.
Donna, please see note above about what teachers can do.
Here’s a link to a brief newspaper column about a great book, Teaching with Heart. It has stirring short essays by teachers, describing some of the challenges & joys of working with young people:
http://hometownsource.com/2014/06/04/joe-nathan-column-teaching-with-heart-a-great-summer-book-for-educators-families/
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
The concept of an “effective” teacher has been hi-jacked and placed into the orbit of circular reasoning where the production of test scores and gains in these– at a RATE that exceeds some norm–means you are effective.
Here are official RttT definitions that have contaminated discussions of “teacher quality.” Some were circulating befort RttT and they have contributed to thr misepresentation of what education entails and conflated education with training.
“Effective teacher means a teacher whose students achieve acceptable rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice).
“Highly effective teacher means a teacher whose students achieve high rates (e.g., one and one-half grade levels in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice)” (Fed.Reg., 2009, p. 59804).
And here is the definition of “growth, totally stripped of educational meaning in favor of metrics, and the preferred metrics are truncated proxies for achievement–tests.
“Student growth means the change in student achievement for an individual student between two or more points in time.”
“Student achievement means (a)
For tested grades and subjects: (1) A student’s score on the State’s assessments under the ESEA; and, as appropriate, (2) other measures of student learning, such as those described in paragraph (b) of this definition, provided they are rigorous and comparable across classrooms.
(b) For non-tested grades and subjects: Alternative measures of student learning and performance such as student scores on pre-tests and end-of-course tests; student performance on English language proficiency assessments; and other measures of student achievement that are rigorous and comparable across classrooms” (Fed. Reg., 2009, p. 59806).
There is no definition of “rigorous,” but subcontractors who have received a $43 million four-year grant from USDE to market this nonsense have defined rigor to mean “statistically rigorous” which puts some person’s initial judgment into a formula. And then you end up with the junk science of “text complexity” formulas as indicators of “rigor,” and cut scores set a level that guarantees failure and the failure rate is an indicator of “rigor.”
The quest for standardization has morphed into systems for micro-managing the work of teachers as seen in the recent “Maryland Compact” requiring every teacher to construct “rigorous” student learning objectives–SLOs–a version of Drucker’s 1954 management-by-objectives (MBO). Teachers in 29 states are required to set “targets” for the production of gains in test scores pre-test to post-test, or year-to-year, and rewards go to teachers who meet the targets and surpass their peers in the rates of increase they produce. In 15 states the federallly defined “growth measures” count fo 50% of a teacher’s evaluation.
Students are necessary as producers of the test scores that make the system work.
The favored observation schedule from Danielson and the student survey from the Tripod project, and the whole process of doing the SLO thing are weighted to reward teachers who comply with top down protocols, procedures, and rating schemes poured from the same underlying assumptions about lazy teachers who are not pushing students hard enough, assigning enough homework, managing time on task, and getting kids to pass their interim and summative tests at rates fast enough to win a race to the top–of tests. And the tests are designed with “sufficient stretch” to guarantee failure rates that will satisfy what G. E. West called a pathological concern for accountability.
Successful corporations dropped MBO within two decades after it had taken root. Why?
The title of this critique of MBO by G.E. West says all: Bureupathology and the failure of MBO. Human Resource Management, 1977. 16(2), 33-40.
Now that Kirp and Ratner have chimed in with resounding gongs, I wonder what Wu, another Berkeley prof (math, and one involved in shaping Common Core), has to say.
Actually, it seems Wu is just a major proponent, not a direct shaper.
And he’ll probably say again, wait until 2017 to pass judgment, unless it’s an immediate disaster.
But it may well qualify as just that.
Don’t miss this, the NY Post exposes the cut score shifts:
http://nypost.com/2014/08/17/dept-of-ed-officials-adjust-proficiency-thresholds-for-common-core/
Yes and King lied and said they didn’t adjust the cut offs, so how much longer can he last? Lace to the top dads put this out last week.
And Diane picked it up here. Now it’s in the Post.
King promised not to change the cut scores that his scoring committee advises. Did he really promise the cut scores wouldn’t change from last year?
Statement in newspaper by SDE cut offs were not changed, but I’m sure it was just semantics and now this:
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-evidence-accumulates-not-to-trust.html
Amazing! I love Leonie Haimson!
All of these NYSED data people and honchos need to be investigated by a totally, truly, really, really independent office or commission with no ties to the Feds, state gov or billionaires.
Most NYSED employees are not funded by NYS; they are funded by Tisch (her fellows) or Gates. So it is no wonder that we have the Orwellian shifting of cut scores and the doublespeak from King et. al. New Yorkers need to speak by voting against Cuomo and his reform agenda. Voting against all incumbents also would send a message. king still has a job because he hopes to be the next Arne Duncan in a Cuomo administration; he serves Cuomo and Gates, not the students and taxpayers of NY. Plus it can’t hurt his aspirations to put a Bill Gates passage on a state graduation exam as Anthony Cody has pointed out.
This is an excellent piece. Well said, Diane. You are all aware that this is an international movement. You might check out this piece Five Trends that Jeopardize Public Education in the World as a way to extend the conversation. https://theconversation.com/five-trends-that-jeopardise-public-education-around-the-world-28969
“They need a champion, someone who believes in them…” I can’t think of a better reason why cyber education and the “industrialization” of our public education system won’t work.
The Feducator,
I think that depends on what you mean by “cyber education”. The internet is, above all else, a tool for communication between people. That is especially important in states like mine where there tend to be few people in physical proximity (the median high school in my state has 250 students, for example).
Ah, I see your point. I tend to believe that there’s no substitute for tangible human presence in education, but I’m very big on cyber components. I love ed tech. An exclusively cyber program certainly has its advantages in terms of location and communication, bringing together students and teachers across distances. I worry that a sense of community and professional, personal relationships that are critical to students’ development will suffer.
The Feducator,
I think that “cyber education” might well increase the sense of community for students who find themselves isolated in their academic interests. Consider this exchange I ran across on a web site called Mathematics Stack Exchange: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/167294/am-i-too-young-to-learn-more-advanced-math-and-get-a-teacher
This student’s mathematical talent isolated him/her from other students in the physical world, but the virtual world provided the very community that your are rightly concerned with preserving.
This thread is in some ways a repeat of so many others on this blog.
For example, a few commenters that stubbornly refuse to deal with so-called Professional Development (aka PD) as something usually done TO teachers rather than something done WITH and FOR and IN SUPPORT OF actual teachers in actual classrooms with actual students. That is, the latter want a type of PD that is not part of the carefully staged pageantry of educrats that simply want to make themselves look good without doing anything good.
Then when actual educators break in with substantive comments grounded in the reality—not Rheeality—of PD, there are calls by the few for both/all sides to quit being extreme and trying to shut each other up and so on.
Get real. Not Rheeal, er, Johnsonally speaking… [thank you, Duane Swacker!]
And consider just a very small drama playing out before us. Michelle Rhee-Johnson may be many things to many people, but when it comes to selling her line of eduproducts she has found herself forced to—literally, not figuratively—rebrand herself. To borrow a phrase from the “best and brightest” of yesteryear that are the spiritual predecessors of today’s “education reformers,” to destroy the village [herself] in order to save the village [herself].
That ought to tell anyone paying any attention at all that such things as VAM and merit pay and one-size-fits-all teaching & learning and the rest of the putative innovative disruptions being visited on public education, are a farce and a failure.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
krazyta…I think that you have a pretty good handle on what the conversation does look like…except I’ll throw in a couple other things…As I mentioned in another post, there are lots of types of PD…I have been in lots of horrible professional development where things were done TO ME as opposed to having the teachers involved.
But when you say, “Then when actual educators break in with substantive comments grounded in the reality—not Rheeality—of PD” I don’t think that is fair…I will not repeat my experiences, and saying things like “teachers are on their phone during PD” is probably my frustration coming out as opposed to focusing on the type of PD…
My concern, which I will repeat, is that when someone raises a question, they are branded as not being a “real educator,” for being part of “TFA”, of being a “communist” (yes, I have been called that on another post)…see my other posts about my own personal experience with Michelle Rhee. So no, just because I raise the question does not make me someone in the Rhee-Johnson camp.
So, raising the question is not trying to shut down your points…your points are actually quite valid…rather, it’s about seeing another side.. Also, the difference between me and others is that I try and see other perspectives…The logic model of Bad PD leads to teachers on their phones/grading papers/planning lessons/doing other things may hold true. However, the converse (if teachers are on their phone, etc then the PD is bad) is not necessarily true. And that is where you and I would disagree…
One point missed in “the conversation” above: the number of Times articles championing market-based solutions to education, the use of business practices in public education, charters, vouchers, disruptive technology, and “turnaround schools” FAR outnumber the articles like Kirp’s. While we squabble among ourselves about the merits of PD most readers of the editorial page are reading about cheap, fast and simple “miracle” solutions that don’t cost the taxpayers anything… and believing every word of it.
I find it interesting David Kirp attacks private education when he has two degrees from private universities… the old good enough for me, but not for thee?
Jody, that is silly. There is no conflict between respecting the importance of K-12 public education and going to a private university.
Jody,
In fact, there’s no conflict either of respecting the importance of public education and going to a private school. One can advocate against school choice and still send their kids to a private school.
This is about social mores and societal values and collectivism, not individual needs and rugged individualism.
I went to a private university only because the public ones did not offer the program I needed or anything like it. I went to a public university also for my mastsers and received a superb, top notch education.
Public trusts are public trusts, and they should never be harmed, weakened, or dismantled by privatization and choice. Instead, they should be strengthened so that all children get their needs met, as poverty is expanding and the way our society is set up only facilitates inequality.
Were you thinking critically Jody, or did your fingers type faster than your cerebrum?
Robert, agreed about the public-private issue. You can send your kids to private school, pay for it yourself, don’t expect taxpayers to underwrite your choice. We all have an obligation to support public education, just as we have a civic obligation to support other public services, even if we don’t use them ourselves. I pay for the public library and buy my own books. I pay for highways I will never drive on. I pay for fire protection for the community and hope I will never need it.
Jody was talking about post secondary education, where taxpayers routinely underwrite the cost of attending a private school like NYU. Perhaps that should change.
Wonder if you write this statement without thinking about the difference between “private education” eroding the core of K-12 system and “private universities.”
I too have suspected that about wanting to just replace teachers with ipads, and thinking that would work… people don’t think things through (if they think that’s possible/good).
Like what happens when you reduce human police officers walking the beat with tools & machinery instead.