Chris in Florida, who teaches young children, writes:
“My district has become program driven. We have a program to teach reading but there are now 3 reading blocks in our day since we are a D school. The state mandates a program for Tier II intervention and another program for extra reading instruction. There is no correlation between the fragmented programs. We have a program for math and another for math intervention. We have a science program but no social studies program and both are given a meager 20 minutes a day. Several programs are online only and kids hate them and say they are boring and too hard.
“We are no longer allowed to teach with good books or to have classrooms humming with excitement over a praying mantis or a bag of apples. That is not in the programs. We are threatened with discipline if we are caught doing things the old way during random walk throughs using the nefarious Danielson rubric.
“I sneak what I can as far as read alouds and living things in when I can but our discipline problems are skyrocketing and the kids are bored and overwhelmed much of the day with recess no longer allowed either.
“This is the result of Jeb Bush, NCLB, RTTT, CCSS, and all the reformist mess.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Stop whining and do are you are TOLD, prole! You should be THANKFUL that your betters have deigned to provide you with the structure you so desperately need! Your young charges are acting up when finally exposed to some much-needed, you say? Why, that’s nothing more than PROOF of what we already knew — you people are INFERIOR!”
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING. PLEASE TELL ME THIS WAS IN SARCASM…IF NOT, YOU CLEARLY HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
This is sad. Much of the learning process occurs when children are fully engaged. I know many families who visit museums, travel, play games together, and go to parks. These children are enveloped in rich experiences that develop vocabulary and cognitive processes, as well as prior knowledge which is crucial in making connections to readings.
It used to be that children from high poverty who did not get these rich experiences at home would get them at school. No more. Now they sit….and sit….and sit…..and are forced to read……and read….and read….and get measured….and measured…and measured….
The problem is, rich experiences and the benefits they provide cannot be easily measured and placed on a data point or a silly Danielson rubric. Our generation of kids are losing, but many people are making a lot of money.
What else would you expect from a Reform School?
To steal a line from others here….TAGO. Tho this is serious business, I read your line and immediately thought of the movie Boy’s Town and then Little Orphan Annie. What WOULD we expect from reform school? Kids to be treated as less than; and that is what we’re getting.
The sad part is that teachers from every state in the country are reading this and feeling as if he is describing their region. This is what our national “education” policy has led to. And let us not forget the high frustration level in the constant changing of curriculum and best practices AND IT IS CONSTANT. For teachers it is like trying to learn to ride a bike (a broken one I might add) and being told 5 easy steps which you learn only to then be told no this is not right try these 10 easy steps and a bit later scrapping the bike and being asked to learn a motorcycle (a broken one at that) in the same routine. Meanwhile there are an awful lot of bicycle and motorcycle salesman getting rich as well as the “trainers” for each new “5 easy step” model.
Now imagine how it feels to be a student on the receiving end? Each year it is something new – no constant. The only constant is that with each new curriculum, students know there will be a high stakes test attached. If they are old enough and in a title one school, they know they are likely to receive poor results. Esteem is low, risk-taking is unheard of. These are the “givens” for students. They also know that they will not get a lot of recess or exploration time but they will get a lot of reading and math for the purpose of passing tests. THEY ARE DEFINITELY AS CHRIS MENTIONS BORED OUT OF THEIR MINDS.
I LOVED your analogies. Sad Teacher could not have said it better! It is all insane.
I didn’t know that there were any public schools in America where students love learning, at least, once students reach a grade level with RTTT, NCLB high stakes testing. I thought that RTTT, NCLB had killed the joy of learning for all. At Art says, Florida’s situation is nationwide.
Dear Chris, Sad Teacher in Ohio feels your pain. Our school districts are losing local control and must march in step with Ohio politicians in order to get funding for their school districts. As teachers, it is so painful to watch the demise right before your eyes and be able to do nothing about it. Everyone is scared that their job will be eliminated next.
Educators in Ohio have been told for years WHAT we will teach, but we were always respected as educators to create and plan HOW we would best teach our students. Now, we are at the sad point that the state of Ohio, through walkthroughs and teacher evaluations, are dictating HOW we will teach our children (Marzano model in Ohio.) We all know that this is part of a sick plan to finally destroy and take over the public schools.
I would love to invite the Ohio politicians into my classroom and watch them try to use the Marzano model while you have 27 twelve year olds, several with learning and behavior challenges. It is next to impossible. If I followed the Marzano model, I would have complete chaos in my classroom this year. I have to use my professional judgment to use direct instruction to best meet the needs of my students this year. My students are the most important thing to me, and I know they would learn nothing this year if I followed the Marzano rubric. If that means I get marked down for it, I know how my students this school year learn best. The rich politicians cannot take away my professional judgment, my intelligence, and the love I have for my students. At the end of this school year, I have peace in my heart knowing that my students received effective instruction.
However, I can easily say all of this because I am close to retirement. What in the world are our young educators going to do to survive and not burn out? That is the sad question. I have never observed a more discouraging era in public education in my lifetime.
Sad Teacher: forgive me if this seems presumptuous or untoward, but I would rephrase your excellent observations this way—
Genuine teaching that leads to genuine learning is subversive.
The War for Independence. The abolitionist movement. The women’s right-to-vote movement. The civil rights movement. To mention only a few.
You find yourself in one of the best American traditions.
And just what could be the results of what you do?
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
Perhaps some of your students will someday realize that you helped make them unfit in the way that an American hero above described.
Until they thank you, I thank you.
😎
The true tragedy of testing–children will come to hate schools because they won’t experience the joy of learning.
this insanity will only stop when teachers band together for change, and present a real physical threat to the system of corporate controlled education
Mexico Teachers Attack PRI Party Offices In Guerrero State Over Education Reform
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/mexico-teachers-attack-pri-party-offices_n_3154986.html
It’s creeping in in NC too. Our first school letter grades are just now coming out. We did get the legislature to agree to a 15 point scale, which helped somewhat.
We used to say “If the kids don’t eat your lesson, check your cooking.”
If something wasn’t working you changed the approach, the strategies or the materials we were using. Not doing so was viewed as instructional malpractice.
Now the administrative bobble heads who evaluate us are saying “Here’s the menu. Here’s the recipe. You serve it to these kids no matter what and you better do it with “fidelity.”
It is a fake poem and no poem at all if the best of it is thought of first and saved for last.
Save us from the micromanagers.
This is so sad. It sounds like Chris teaches young children. They should be learning that school and learning are fun, that being kind to your friends is important, and that you can trust your teacher to help you stay safe and happy. The awful part is that no one who has thought seriously about how schools can meet students’ and society’s needs believes it should look like this. Those in the conservative tradition, like E.D. Hirsch, want a content-rich curriculum, with children acquiring knowledge in history, the sciences, and literature. Those in the progressive tradition, like Howard Gardner, emphasize the processes of disciplinary learning more than the specific content: they would have children investigating history, doing science experiments, writing and discussing narratives. Either way, children are envisioned as exploring and learning about the world — they are not confined to the bubble of the online reading program and its “comprehension” questions about a text no one cares about. Ugh.
yes yes yes
The foundation for Jeb Bush, NCLB, RTTT, CCSS and the rest of the corporate driven fake education reform movement is based on “A Nation at Risk” and the U.S. ranking of the OECD’s international PISA test, and both are based on lies, misinformation and deliberate coverups and fraud.
I wrote about that here where the valid, reputable researched evidence that exposes those two frauds is revealed with links to the sources:
Makes me want to cry. When I came to East Side Middle school, inn1990 it was a new magnet school with NO curricula. The principal gave me a room… PERIOD. I had taught since 1963, and created the writing/reading curricula called Communicaiton Arts…(Middle school English in the olden days). I chose stories and books that were engaging, that showed human behavior as it was during the time periods that the social studies teacher (my humanities colleague was studying.) I used films and videos to engage them with ideas and words so they could write, and I created a letter-writing curriula so I could see how they could hang words on thoughts on paper…. I never gave a test, albeit a few quizzes to ensure certain skills, like spelling were progressing.
When Harvard studied my practice and matched them to the principles of learning, they said that I met the second principle (Rewards for Achievements) and it was the motivation to learn that made the difference.
In 1999, they ignored my award from the State as Educator of Excellence, ignored all the success of my students by every measure (the aced every NYC test and were accepted to top high schools) and charged me with a variety of things, including incompetence.
THAT is the only way they could replace real teaching with test-prep.
My students, not in their 20s and 30s write to me to tell me the difference that I made in their lives.
I am gone… THAT is the story of the ‘reform’ movement that labeled the schools as failing (inventing failure)
and then converted them to a profit making business… to hell with the future citizens.
“I chose stories and books that were engaging, that showed human behavior as it was during the time periods that the social studies teacher (my humanities colleague was studying.)”
This loss was not unique to your school, and it is one of my pet peeves about the Common Core. The loss of what you are talking about is one thing that educators must hammer Common Core advocates on, unrelentingly.
Yes, I know. I wrote several essays about learning on Oped, as th national conversation was subverted and it became all about teaching and not learning.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
As I have said here often, I was a cohort for the genuine Pew funded National Standards research, which was all about finding teachers like I was, and observing what they did to FACILITATE, AND ENABLE learning.
The research was major, and it showed what learning looks like, and thus, it is GONE! Evaporated.
Click to access polv3_3.pdf
This is a vast conspiracy. I was caught in the war on teachers, in 1998.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
Thus, I have seen how deadly the silence has been, as the media, totally owned by the very folks who have engineered the failure of public education keeps the truth from the public, and counts on the numbers…. 15,880 districts in 50 states, ensure the secrecy. No one knows how huge the conspiracy is.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/have-reporters-become-poli-ticks–the-media-parasites-of-the-body-politic.html
Since I became aware of the lawlessness, tens of thousands of veteran teachers who did what I did, what YOU did, are GONE! The replacements follow the top-down mandates.
Everyone loses.
This is NOT just about schools but about the future of our nation. When children learn to hate learning, and it IS prevalent, what does that say about our future as a nation. When the “blind” try to lead, they do indeed lead – into catastrophe. “Truth”: the first victim.
AND
it is not only in our schools. Politics over reason, politics over scholarly research. In my view, the cataclysm engendered by so many ignorant, stupid, political decisions has led us into becoming an endangered species.
You got it right.
The oligarchs who control everything know this. They know democracy depends on shared knowledge of our real history,. They know that the road to opportunity can be closed if the schools are shuttered, and made available only to their scions.
This is so much more than simply giving Rupert Murdoch’ share in Pearson a boost.
It is Kochs chance to choose what kids learn about history, to shape their beliefs sot hey resemble their own.
Right on Gordon.
have you ever been to my author’s page. My articles are there, but if you click on th commentary button, you can see my comments often stay this.
Kids (and adults) don’t “hate learning” naturally. Notice how easily they learn to use their phones, lap tops, and vidoe games–all of which are too difficult for me. Human beings and animals easily learn what is useful and interesting to them. They skip around a lot and come back to things left incomplete.
I don’t know much about math or science–I’ve forgotten almost everything I learned in high school and college–but I do remember the books, plays, and poems I studied and the evolution of the English language. I can still read Chaucer in Middle English, and I remember the date of the Norman Invasion of England: 1066. Commenters may be interested in reading my essay on learning to write through reading, posted this past Thursday in Valerie Strauss’ “The Answer Sheet.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/16/the-best-way-for-students-to-become-writers/
Hating school in the early childhood years is truly sad. If I had a child in Florida, I think I would organize a stay home from school and learn by play boycott for students and their parents until the powers that be made changes to what is happening to school curriculum thanks to ridiculous reliance on testing. I teach 1st grade and am sad to see this happening to our young students.
Once upon a time we felt it necessary to ignite children’s curiosity and foster their love of learning through engaging lessons. We knew that if we could hook them we would have “life-long learners.” Now our focus is on getting them “college and career ready”, which is laughable when I look out at my six and seven year-old students. In the name of reform we have killed their curiosity and have turned young children into drudges. It saddens me when I hear my second-graders tell me that they don’t like school, but I don’t blame them in the least. I would not have liked school either if I grew up in these times.
I agree.
When will we learn?