A principal in a Midwestern state wrote this to me offline. She asked that I remove her name, her school, her state, and I did. a few weeks ago, she told me she was looking for a dissertation topic, and I suggested she read my next to last book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Then she wrote me the following comment. I expect what she relates will sound familiar to many readers who are teachers or principals. Everything she describes is so mechanical, so inert, so lacking in spirit or vivacity. What madness has been loosed upon our schools in the name of “reform”?
She wrote:
‘The Death and Life’ hit so close to home it made me a bit sick.
I am living in the midst of a district desperate for reform glory. The last 2 years have been fever paced implementation of a multitude of last minute initiatives (a pacing guide for the common core, several new assessments, new reading text, new writing requirements, workshop model in all subjects, student self evaluation, new digital learning system, new teacher evaluation system, competency based grading, new lesson plan and unit plan requirements, new handwriting curriculum, new building plan process, new data teaming requirements…those are off the top of my head).
Thankfully, so far, we have escaped most of the Charter aspects of reform because we are rural enough, but we are full speed ahead on top-down initiatives to micromanage, narrow, and limit the professionalism of teachers.
Upper administration walks through the building looking to see if teachers are on the correct week of the balanced literacy pacing guide, comment on the writing samples that are required to be outside every classroom, and question students to see if they can use the correct vocabulary about their learning. Just this week a member of the leadership team suggested a conference happen with a K teacher because displayed K writing only had pictures, there were no words (day 11 of school for those children- they’ve been holding pencils for 8)… We march to a rhythm of accountability, keep score, and model our structure after corporate America.
Our curriculum IS the Common Core and nothing else. We use Scholastic reading to teach science and social studies to at-risk testers, students get 50 minutes of art, PE, and music each week, and ‘library’ is now ‘media’ which is really just typing plus other skills required for Smarter Balanced assessments.
Our building principals are serving as middle management and teaching isn’t fun anymore – neither is learning.
I am not drinking the Kool-aid, but must do modules, so I am doing those and then giving the kids love of learning by integrating what David Coleman thinks isn’t important. This is how kids will learn by doing-life long skills. Evaluate that Sir Coleman!
Frankly it sounds like something a demented totalitarian regime would come up with. I am simply appalled. I have taught K and the joy remains with me to this day. And to think they could produce writing in the first week just scares me to death. It’ like the brain dead have made the choices for education. Thanks Diane for continuing to put this out there. I send it to friends and family to let them know what is really happening. My sincere gratitude to you and my prayers to those dear teachers struggling with this horror.
These same things this principal is talking about were going on in my district, which is rural, and where the parents pulled the trigger for the first time in the nation. Can we really blame them?
Yes, this craziness is discrediting our schools. There was a piece on KQED this week about how some Bay Area parents are preferring to send their kindergarteners to “forest school” –basically, daily nature field trips –rather than grim Common Core kindergarten.
“Upper administration. . . ”
Who the hell are these folks (I include all levels of administration) that have no critical thinking skills, lack ethical thought and who only know how to kiss the ass of those above. Where the hell do these folks come from??? (my apologies to the maybe couple of dozen or so admins in the country who do not fit that description-but without those overseers the system wouldn’t work. F’em all).
Duane,
They are multiplying at a rapid pace in my district.
“multiplying”
Good description. Makes me think of bacteria. Or viruses.
Any “education evaluator” who needs the the feeble training wheels of clipboards, rubrics, and charts displayed to be able to tell what is going on in a classroom obviously doesn’t know how to do his or her job and should be booed/laughed out of the building.
You got that right!
“Desperate for reform glory” –yes, this is a perfect description of the attitude in my district too –probably most. The reformers have tapped into some primal human emotions: the desire for glory and the fear of shame. The grown-ups’ version of middle schoolers’ desire to be popular and their horror at the prospect of being labeled a loser.
Ponderosa,
Your comment is right on! DC is filled with them and may I add, Gates and the OLIGARCHY is ALL for themselves and their pocketbooks and no one else…period. What a travesty.
Yeah, and those “grown-ups”, i.e., the administrators and GAGA teachers unfortunately haven’t grown out of that middle school phase much to the detriment of those who chronologically are in that phase (and before and after) of life-the students.
“the desire for glory and the fear of shame.”
if these reformers have a fear of shame, they are very good at hiding it.
“Blameless and Shameless”
Some folks know no shame
So shaming won’t succeed
They won’t accept the blame
For doing the dirty deed
Good way of putting it.
Well, it certainly wasn’t the Grinch.
Data is not destiny! What happens to all the purplicious kids? Back in the day, some of us went on the earn Ph.D.s, become professors, and express our concerns about current education reform and the privatization of public education!! Now, purplicious kids can be deemed “at risk” and lose confidence in the own creativity!
http://publicschoolscentral.com/2014/11/02/data-is-not-destiny-confessions-of-a-totally-purplicious-former-kindergartner-and-why-our-obsession-with-data-is-dangerous/
And then there’s “that kid.” Thank you, Valerie Strauss!
http://publicschoolscentral.com/2014/11/15/that-kid/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/11/14/teacher-to-parents-about-that-kid-the-one-who-hits-disrupts-and-influences-your-kid/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
A must read for parents and teachers!
Who stole the joy of learning? The merchants of data.
As a K-8 sub working in my previous district, I see similar things … writing in the hallways in plastic sleeves (which I introduced to the building 8 years ago for replacing white boards — stick a paper inside and then use a dry erase marker). Scholastic News is taught each week as the social studies/science piece. Math program is still under development (can’t use previous program because they won’t let the teachers use it for free, so they have some samples to use a month and share with the other school as pilot curricula). Principal walks around, pops in, and who knows what he is looking for with the subs. Common Core “we can” statements in every room, even K, where they can’t yet read. ETC. But, as a sub, we can just TEACH because we aren’t worried about our jargon. That is true freedom. But, the kids … are just enjoying us.
I am probably overstating the case a bit since I have decreased dramatically the amount of subbing I am doing, but I am about to quit even that. The district in which I have been subbing is attempting to go paperless. The kids all have computers on which they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time when there is a sub in the room. Since subs do not have access to computers, we are reduced to computer monitors. As a certified special ed teacher, I am totally bored and frustrated. I hope the younger grades have not followed suit, but it makes planning at the middle school much easier for the teachers. Since the amount of teaching I get to do is limited, I am ready to call it quits.
My own home district is beginning to see push back against the Board’s data obsession. While they see the value of experiential learning, they are seduced by numbers. Pretest, benchmark, posttest,… is getting very old especially with the added “unpacking” of the CCSS by curriculum committees. We are actually beginning to see parents some of whose children went through most of elementary school under the old progressive model pushing back as their younger children are losing all love of learning under the present data driven regime.
I feel a profound sadness for what we have lost.
I agree in many ways. I think that our district tries to do the old AND the new. Teachers are worn out. There are tons of “unpacking” meetings, requiring lots of subs. Half days aren’t popular with subs since they pay terribly for whole days, and the subs have to drive so far for a half day meeting. I live close so I go in to many of the jobs, since my husband is job hunting and we need every penny I can get. But, I enjoy seeing my former students.
In some ways, if there were a way for the experienced teachers to hang on to their principles, there might be a way to keep what was good and ride the wave as this “experiment” fails. I don’t know that I will live that long. It could take 30 years. Hard to imagine, though.
Schools have become a catch all for everything that ails society, and we get the blame when things go wrong for the adults. Personal student initiative is often lacking. But, again, that is something the teachers must do.
As a student, I was motivated by what I wanted to be motivated by. If I thought something was uninteresting, no matter how interesting the teacher was, I just didn’t put my all into it. I would imagine most people are that way. Some are motivated by grades. I was, too, but I wasn’t going to go into despair if I didn’t try that hard in a class. I am not interested, for example, in wars. So, my attention in history class was lacking. I didn’t take political science or economics (wish now that I had) but I did take sociology. The point: maybe teachers could have lured me into some other topics, maybe not. When you are 16, you aren’t easily molded unless you want to be.
I am trying to work on a plan locally to start a non-profit field experience entrepreneurial idea. We will see how the business incubator innovators like my ideas.
I’ve been teaching elementary school for twenty-four years and am sorry to say this principal basically described my district as well. #phoenixaz
Sent from lcastiglione’s iPad
>
As someone in my school aptly stated: “here we have an environment of fear, not education.”
I am moving to another state next year. Wherever I go will have a supportive sup and a supportive educational climate.
Where can those elements be found TOTT?
I am hoping Vermont? That is my plan…
I live in Texas and have a Kindergartner and a second grader. I’m not sure I want them raised in this state but as I look around there are not any states that look like their in a much better shape. This whole country’s education system is a mess. My wife has even mentioned moving out of the country. Sad that this option is even being brought up. The best looking options are in the midwest (KS & NE) but I grew up dealing with the winters and not ready to do that any more.
It sounds like brain washing from The Cultural Revolution. Keep in mind there were lots of casualties there too.
Yup. This is what happens when you create a centralized curriculum commissariat.
Hope you can find an institution that will honor your desire to construct a dissertation treating some aspect of your experience. The volume and quality writing about this era, now being called the lost decades in education, will give you plenty of reference materials. The propaganda machinery put together by Bill Gates et. al continues to astound me.
Laura… instead of the “lost generation” how about calling this never-ending time period, “the GATES of hell”????
Wordsmiths, and I am not one, can have a field day. Your suggestion invites a pictorial version… Maybe spiffy for the cover of Time. That is a fantasy but would complement Time’s gavel about to smash an apple.
The same is true here in rural Florida. According to the state’s standards, our county ranks 5oth out of 66 counties. Children in five schools (and their teachers) must endure an extra hour of school to improve reading scores. So they use part of this time, not in individualized reading instruction, but plunking low readers in front of computers running a number of Pearson reading programs. Year after year, it produces nothing, no gains. Why not pay reading teachers across the county to come to these 5 schools and individualize instruction for the lowest readers, one to one, and build a challenging reading/math/science program for those few high readers?
Why do the powers that be forget that if 66 counties are ranked, some county will be 50th or 66th?
Just think about it … with class rankings. If all the students are working above average or at a high level, then there has to be a lowest of the high. Should that person feel terrible?
I used to have classes in which all of us got As or B+s …. should the person with a 90% score feel dumb? I think not. I am not sure what all this ranking does to help anything. I never did agree with it.
Don’t you know that we live in Lake Wobegone, where all of the children are above average?
child abuse
“Student self evaluation” What a joke. In some twisted way, the rephormers think they’re being progressive because they steal an idea here or there from progressive education. But without understanding the whole package, it’s just a cruel joke. Do everything we tell you, do it exactly the way we tell you and then tell us how you think you’re doing on that. But then, that’s exactly what a performance review in the “real world” (at least, the corporate world) involves, so at least they’re getting well trained for future abuse. As Alfie Kohn would say – BGUTI – better get used to it.
I encourage you all to get some copies of Bill Bennett’s great books on building character in students. Heck, if you can get into the high roller’s room at some casino in Vegas, you can even get him to sign a copy for you.
Yeah, he probably needs people to be buying those books about now. I reckon his gambling stash is getting a bit low these days.
Bill says that he’s given it up, these days. Good for him. And, I am regretting having posted this, for I suspect he learned a lesson from the experience of being outed about all this.
What is happening with CCSS isn’t new. What’s different is that it is being managed from Washington DC out of Arne Duncan’s office with a sledge hammer hitting teachers and children in almost every state across the country.
During the thirty years I was in the classroom (1975-2005) similar scripted magic bullets seemed to arrive on schedule ever few years and then fail after a few year before the next promised magic bullet arrived and teachers were forced to follow them by administrators walking from class to class making sure teachers were doing what the autocrats wanted.
Eventually the administrative gestapo would vanish without warning and teachers would get a breather for a year or more, before the next wave arrived and washed over us bringing the gestapo back.
“Who stole the joy of learning?”
Who stole the joy of learning?
I think that it was Gates
To standardize the students
And monetize their fates
Who stole the joy of learning?
I think that it was Coleman
Who gave us Common Core
And endless hours of boredom
Whole stole the joy of learning?
I think that it was Arne
Who lured us in with billions
For test and VAM balarney
Who stole the joy of learning?
I think it was Obama
Who played us all for chumps
With speeches and with drama
I think this poem rises above the waves and takes flight into orbit. Now, if we could just share this with everyone on the Internet across the world.
:o)
Every Who down in Schoolville liked Learning a lot
But the Grinch who lived just North of Schoolville did not!
The Grinch hated Learning! He didn’t get the real reason!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.
But, whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes,
He stood there in disbelief, hating the Schools,
Staring down from his (ivory) tower with a sour, Grinchy frown
At the warm lighted classrooms below in their town,
For he knew every Who down in Schoolville beneath
Was sleeping peacefully now – not expecting a thief.
“And they’re reading their novels,” he snarled with a sneer.
“Not a single close reader skipping context I fear”
Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming,
“I must find some way to stop their interest in learning!
For, tomorrow, I know all the school girls and guys
Will wake bright and curious, not yet traumatized
And then! Oh, then they’ll start asking why. Why, why, why, why
There’s one thing I hate, its kids asking why!
So sorry you have to go through this. A large concern of mine is the silence and either the passive or active complicity of so many educators. How to wake them up? How to shake them up? A friend and colleague says we don’t need more STEM education in the United States, we need more social science and humanities. We’ve forgotten how to reason, how to think morally and ethically, how to define and take a principled stand. How to find the courage to do what’s right regardless of what the majority think or do. People who live in societies where there is real danger (totalitarian regimes, authoritarian regimes, the danger of imprisonment, torture, death) are often more courageous than many Americans. Perhaps freedom has made us complacent. Or has capitalism made us complacent??? I don’t know but I am, increasingly, inclined to agree with my friends.
Very true, NY Educator. The lack of pushback has been deeply troubling though I try to focus on to those rays of hope…those people who have stepped up.
Of course, It’s difficult to find anything good to say about the debacle otherwise known as common core. But I guess one positive thing is that if I were part of a search committee tasked with interviewing potential administrators or teachers it would give me a very easy way to winnow out the people I would NOT want to have working with children. I’d just ask the question, “So what do you think about the common core?” and then sit back and wait, my b.s. meter on and fully calibrated. Candidate #1: “Oh, my, yes, I’ve fully embraced the common core. I love the common core. I named my second child Arne because I love the common core so much….blah, blah, blah…. Nope. Next! Retch.
Though, as the common core becomes an increasingly toxic brand name I’m sure more and more applicants will learn to be cagier, saying just enough to give the impression to search committees that they allegedly “care” about kids and their teachers. I guess I’d be looking for that one person who has enough backbone to say, “No, common core is a rolling ball of madness, that’s exactly why I’m looking for another job. Are you kidding me…..let’s get the shop teachers to make lots of wooden stakes so we can kill this sucka curriculum for good.”
Wow. Hire ’em! Immediately. If anything, I guess this disaster has let us see what true leaders are like…people like Carol Burris as well as those superintendents in New York’s lower Hudson Valley who have taken on state ed. And, you know how many really great leaders have there been in history? As always, the real test is whether the rest of us can and will follow them. And, IT….IS….NOT….EASY…..for many of us, including me.
Thank you, principal out in some “Midwestern state” wherever you are who wrote this blog entry. At least you are trying to have some integrity and speak out for your students and staff. I’d certainly buy you some flowers or a drink or maybe even some electric socks to keep your tootsies warm. Boy, you people out there are getting slammed by winter early! You’re making Upstate New York feel like Miami….and that really ain’t easy. Take care.
John Ogozalek.. I liken the lack of teacher pushback as akin to a choke collar on a dog… no dog is going to disobey because it knows that one “move” and the choke collar is going to painfully tighten.
I did your CCSS interview litmus test in reverse when I was seeking a new job last year. Alarm bells would go off when they discussed things like data or when buzzwords got bandied about. I liked to ask interviewers what they were most proud of in their schools. If they said anything but “the kids,” I’d get wary. One school actually said “our test scores.” Next!
At the school I hired on with, I openly mocked and criticized data mongering and CCSS when it came up in the interview, and they hired me anyway. They have a healthy attitude about it here, if not an openly rebellious one.
I’m probably going to get flamed for this, but I think in many ways there is more joy in learning than there was in earlier decades.
Flamethrower is turned off and over in the corner of my living room. And, your evidence and argument is……??? How do you describe “joy”? (Define would be an odd way to put it, right?)
concerned mom… elementary school students are sitting in seats all day on end focusing on subjects that are high stakes tested in order to pass the tests. They are not getting proper movement ALL DAY LONG. More and more “information” is being packed into their brains like an overstuffed suitcase and at a faster and faster pace due to RTTT. No digestion time. Understandable that normally high energy young children are antsy and distracted. They read in order to pick apart every aspect of a book beyond the actual meaning of the content to the point that reading is arduous not joyful. They learn math one way one year and the next have to relearn it in a totally “new and improved” way the next and the following year brings about yet more “new and improved” ways. Would you be confused learning this way? They are too! They cannot play outside during the day because recess does not exist. If you are a creative student, you are out of luck because creativity is non existent despite “powers that be” singing the praises of creativity! Soon this too will be high stakes tested! Really! Art and music??? Music teachers are stuck behind unused theater stage curtains teaching choral or instrumental while kids below are noisy and eating lunch. Ever try to listen to an iconic piece of music with the constant but sporadic sound of chairs being pushed into tables in the background? Art teachers have no art room and no supplies and wander around like minstrels from class to class. Ever try unloading painting supplies for a 30 minute “art class”???? Do the math and figure out how much of that is actually class time spent painting as opposed to unpacking, cleaning up and then repacking. So I agree with you in that you are going to get flak for your comment, but am glad if your child is indeed able to have a joyful learning experience in this “ed reform” period. I have seen joyful parts to the day but it is generally when a teacher flagrantly defies what they are supposed to be following.
Art, what you describe is not my kid’s reality. I am comparing my experience (and those describe to me by my relatives and older siblings) to what my children are experiencing in school. There is much more kindness in my children’s school. Art and music have dedicated classrooms, they have 30 min of recess a day (required by law) and they are allowed to be more creative than I was. I attended a solidly middle class school in the 1970s. My children attend a Title 1 school.
I had a wonderful experience through my public school years (K-12), but I do see many improvements in how children are taught.
My point is I think we tend to look back at the past as some kind of utopia and at least for me and my personal experiences, I see many improvements in education and how people treat each other.
My children attend an elementary school and so far, I think the way they are teaching math is a great improvement over how I was taught math.
artseagal builds a strong case. I am VERY glad, concerned mom, that your children are not suffering. The fact that there are islands of sanity out there (“kindness” no less!) is encouraging. But if you don’t believe the anecdotal evidence that’s been accumulated on this blog for years now, the statistical data and logical arguments concerning what is happening in so many school districts across the nation are well documented now, too, here and elsewhere. Untested, mechanical, wrong-headed “madness” as Diane describes it above, has been “loosed” up so many schools.
If there are teachers in any school in the country who are feeling like they are restrained by a “choke collar” like a dog, as artseagal described above, then that is one school too many. Some people might not care about teachers…..but if that sort of thing is happening to adults then that kind of treatment can and probably is happening to CHILDREN, too, in that building. It is not a healthy culture for anyone to learn…..it is not a healthy place for our kids. It is toxic. It is unethical.
As a history teacher I’m always reminding myself (along with my students) that the “good ole days” weren’t always so good -in MANY ways. But for most my life I have also known people who have a blind, unthinking belief that anything that is new, anything involving improved technology is better. End of argument.
Ever since I started doing a lot of learning about the philosophy of technology and history of science 30+ years ago I’ve believed that a blind faith in “progress” can be very dangerous. Witness the madness of thousands of nuclear warheads that we still have at the ready. Our answer since the Cold War? Give our keepers of those doomsday devices standardized tests! The recent, widespread cheating scandal involving our nation’s nuclear missile crews should be a wake up call for all of us. High stakes standardized testing not only doesn’t work….it is dangerous.
I admire your willingness, concerned mom, to wade into this blog and risk being “flamed”. Though having been put in any number of symbolic headlocks over the years while arguing with moms of all ages, I have no doubt you can probably hold your own in any fight. LOL. You moms are the people, after all, who lift up cars when kids are trapped underneath.
What I find particularly interesting in this blog, in this discussion, is this idea of joy in learning. Do you think our culture’s shared sense of what it means to experience joy is shifting -due to technology and other factors? What IS joy now??
CM, you are indeed fortunate that your children’s school is as you described. I think in my district we have a bit of that magic going on too, but in the ten years I’ve been teaching, and comparing it to my now adult daughter’s school experience, I see that magic bleeding away, diminishing in its effect.
I hope your school stays that way, and that you work to preserve it as a concerned parent. Your experience however, is very different from others. Learn from that so as to identify the creeping reform that WILL come your way.
“Midwestern principal” (Nov. 15. 2014) suggestion for dissertation subject:
Please forward this email to the principal and suggest that she read Jill Lepore’s essay in the New Yorker concerning
the normative studies that pass for empirical work of Clayton Christensen at Harvard.
His mindless theories are destroying public education as you know so well.
Maybe her dissertation would be one
of the first that points out that his theories are bankrupt in other applications he has studied; and it would follow that
his ideas applied to education are not having positive outcomes except for hedge funds.
This is not for publication, just pass it on to her and thank her for being so clear.
Don
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine?currentPage=all
Bravo Don. Clayton Christensen’s “Disruptive Theory” put into public school education is a dangerous precedent which prevents genuine learning from taking place. In the early childhood years students have to learn to make sense of the world by hands-on exploring and having routines. When every part of learning is subject to change with the notion that drastic change produces “good”… little ones become anxiety-ridden and adverse to their “perception” of learning. Teachers with experience used to build and improve on particular lessons over time. Nowadays, there is no building and improving… there is only the realization as a teacher that you are “going to yet another PD to be trained in the newest “latest and greatest” lesson planning strategy (only to be replaced with another at any given time. This does not produce a productive learning environment and anyone who believes it does should be banned from education!
reminds me of when we had the first Wang computers and when something would go wrong the IT tech would come in and do some “Frantic drive swapping”…..
Has anyone seen a cost-effiiciency study of how trial and error learning can be so expensive? (trial and error — up with everything that’s down and down with everything that’s up)…..
concerned mom I could see potential for joy…. I just wonder if it is limited to the very few who can experience it today….. I know I had a reasonably moderate/average school experience that provided some inspiration ; my friends my age who went to the parochial schools in the city still hate to walk by the schools today and some of my friends remember being hit with rulers…. It’s hard to draw a line between “earlier decades” and “today” and make things either/or… but I do imagine there are many who benefit joyfully with the experiences they are able to obtain in some places today.