Let us be thankful. A hopeful thought from the reader who comments as NY Teacher:
“I understand your pessimism, but this too shall pass. The Obama/Duncan regime are closing up shop soon. Their policy attacks are simply not scalable nor will they withstand the legal challenges that are sure to follow. The teaching profession will survive this onslaught and one day Arne, RTT, CC, VAM, and the test-and-punish reform will be smoldering on the ash heap of failed and discredited ideas.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hating to burst your bubble on this Thanksgiving Eve and all, but I fear the Master Race To The Top mindset will be with us for as long as it’s already been with us — Obama and Duncan are just its latest puppets, as will be the next WHO (White House Occupant).
I wish I could take heart from this optimistic message. However, it’ll take years to undo the damage that has been done to our schools. The creators of RTTT may be leaving office, but we don’t know who will be taking over, and what their education policies may be. Meanwhile, in New York, we have a choice between a Democratic governor who appears to be sitting in the pocket of the reform movement, while all the Republican lawmakers in the state appear to be…sitting right there with him. How many years of being underfunded and over-tested will our schools–and our children-/have to endure?
As a wise person once said: “bad things don’t last”
The bubble can’t burst until NCLB does….remember it is not Congress doing this but the appointed secretary who has power because Congress has abdicated it. New presidents didn’t solve the NCLB crisis – because while the Executive is responsible for the direction, it is only because our other elected officials are not using their legislative power to adjust their own broken law.
I hope this proves prophetic but we had better stay very noisy. Too many people are still in a fog. Politicians will ignore us if our numbers don’t continue to grow. Many still need to be educated; the rest need to know we are watching.
The Obama / Duncan regime will most certainly pass, but regrettably that is no guarantee that the toxic policies they have overseen will go with them as our politicians are but sock puppets for G.E.R.M. aka the corporate reformers. Unless we get someone who believes in the existance of facts sitting in the presidents chair, someone who puts their full faith and trust in teachers and the teaching profession and leads the country in that direction while simultaneously dismantling all vestiges of deform, our fight will continue where it left off the day before the inauguration. No matter how tired and disgusted we are, we must be prepared to endure the disappointment of nothing changing for the better just because a new sock puppet takes center stage in the purposely banal theater that is the political reality in America. We must not settle for hope, rather we must continue the fight till our victory grants us a respite. And a respite is all it will be since according to some guy named Patrick Henry, the price of liberty is vigilance. We will never have peace until teachers are viewed here as they are in Finland and the ghouls on Wall St. Are forever prevented from converting our public education system into a private profit generation machine.
Unfortunately, it will continue until the entire public sector, save for the police and military, is abolished and/or turned to private hands. It’s almost too late to turn the clock back. The real problem was that the Democratic Party has been infiltrated by the same interests that have polluted and destroyed the GOP. It’s only that the GOP sounds more crazy, but believe me, the goals of the two parties are virtually identical now.
The time to have fought this nonsense was back in 1983 with the fraudulent “A Nation at Risk.” Now the country is pretty far gone.
Think Chile under Pinochet. That’s what the neolibs want for the United States.
Never fear. There will always be injustices to battle. Let’s hope the new ones are easier to overcome. I look forward to that day.
Ellen T Klock
Somewhat good news from Missouri.
from Missouri Case Net:
14AC-CC00477 – FRED N SAUER ET AL V JEREMIAH W. (JAY) NIXON ET AL (E-CASE)
11/25/2014 Order
Temporary Restraining Order The Court Orders that until further order, decree, or judgment of the Court, Defendants, and each of them, and all those in active concert or participation with them are enjoined and restrained from making any payments in the form of membership fees to the Smarter Balace Assessment Consortium, the University of California, or the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, whether directly or indirectly, including but not limited to disbursements pursuant to “Invoice #1” issued to the State by “Smarter Balanced at UCLA” and dated September 29, 2014. Unless otherwise provided by this Court, this temporary restraining order will expire fifteen days from the date on which it it entered. Plaintiff to post Bond in the amount of $100.00.
Starve the testing machinery. Interesting to see this looking like a legal move, not just a parent opt out.
Policy wonks always think that there is a centralized, top-down fix to whatever it is that they have decided that they don’t like. But think about that for a moment.
Every few years, for the past hundred or so years now, someone writes a big piece about how we’re witnessing “the death of the novel.” Well, imagine this insane scenario: Some wealthy tycoons decide that the novel is in decline. They put together a committee to make a list of “new, higher, more rigorous standards” for novelists. The committee is staffed by people who never wrote any novels and, for that matter, haven’t read any either, but hey, they can read. Then our tycoons purchase a lot of bureaucrats and politicians to issue regulations requiring that publishing houses and booksellers publishing only those novelists who follow these “new, higher standards” for novel-writing. Suppose that those publishers and booksellers face onerous sanctions, like hefty fines and having their licenses to publish and sell revoked if they fail to comply. Raids are conducted against online collaborative fiction and flash fiction sites that don’t follow the rules.
Do you think we would end up with better novels as a result?
If so, there is a job for you in Washington.
Imagine a centralized commissariat deciding that henceforth, all paintings have to be paint-by-number. The commissariat issues canvases with outlines one them–new, higher, rigorous outlines–and painters are free to fill these in “using whatever colors they wish to use” (as long as each number corresponds to one and only one color as per standard CCSS.Art.Painting.666.4b).
Crazy, huh?
Well, we’ve had just about enough of Bushobama-style paint-by-number education. It’s time to get the Philistines out of our classrooms, to close down the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat, to end the testing mania, and to put teachers back in charge of teaching.
Ecologies are healthier than are monocultures, and within those ecologies, forms most beautiful evolve.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.”
— Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post interview, 10/26/1929
“There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.”
— Edward Tufte, “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint”
Well said, Robert. My laugh for the day.
Ellen T Klock
Funny and thought provoking. Paint by number education, I like that. I think you have coined a new descriptor, Robert.
Bob Shephard…spot on with the art analogy and so worth repeating…
“Imagine a centralized commissariat deciding that henceforth, all paintings have to be paint-by-number. The commissariat issues canvases with outlines one them–new, higher, rigorous outlines–and painters are free to fill these in “using whatever colors they wish to use” (as long as each number corresponds to one and only one color as per standard CCSS.Art.Painting.666.4b)…”
Now that was worth repeating!!!
I have been tracking the SLO promotions from USDE contractors. One of the external evaluators of an SLO for an introductory and exploratory art course criticized the SLO, insisting that all of the concepts explored in the course needed to be recast for MASTERY, with differentiated teaching strategies to ensure that. In a similar case in Ohio, the teacher’s SLO for grade 9 Art was faulted for insufficient baseline data on prior learning in art. The reviewer thought students were required to take art in every grade. This reviewer said that if data was not available for Art then data for any subject would do, including any courses in science. In 1977, an economist coined the term bureaupathology to describe this inane preoccupation with filling in forms. Of course this stupidity iarises from the GATES/USDE insistence that any data is better than none. The misrepresentation of teaching and learning and of American education is routine. If comes from the preoccupation with form-filling over substance and total disregard for the phenomenon of “garage in, garbage out.”
The education schools tried to remake their discipline into a subject-neutral science, and then the policy wonks and bureaucrats joined in, and then the plutocrats found a way to monetize that approach via software, and such crap as these SLOs are the result. One day, perhaps, all these fools will be kicked out of schools and we can return to teaching art and literature and history and languages. Next time you encounter one of these educrats, find out what subject area he or she taught in. Then ask him or her a few basic content questions in that area. So, which is your favorite of the Romantic poets? Is your own tastes more expressionist or representationalist? And what you will find is that these educrats, including many of considerable renown, are typically breathtakingly ignorant. They know almost nothing of actual content, but they have learned a free-floating abstract gobbledygook unchecked by any reference to actual subject-area knowledge. Exhibit 1 in my argument: The Common Core State Standards in ELA. The truly shameful thing is that the authors of these “standards” have not been laughed off the national stage. They are a national embarrassment.
yikes. just spotted an agreement error there. I very much wish that one could correct typos in Word Press!
two egregious agreement errors! alas, I really must edit before hitting that Post button!
In my 30 years in K-12 education as a textbook writer and teacher, I have met thousands of education experts who were breathtakingly ignorant of their subjects but were masters of EdSpeak–e.g., state-level and district-level language arts coordinators who hadn’t read a classic novel since their undergraduate days, who never read any poetry that wasn’t in their students’ textbooks, who wouldn’t be able to explain to you the difference between metonymy and metaphor, who couldn’t name three poems by Percy Shelley, who wouldn’t be able to describe the basic tenets of three or four schools of criticism, who knew what a rubric was but couldn’t explain to you the three unities, who wrote objectives for teaching traditional grammar but couldn’t explain to you the difference between a preposition and a particle or the distinction in generative grammar between learning and acquisition.
I have thought a lot about why work as puerile as the CCSS in ELA did not go down, almost immediately, beneath howls of derision.
Answering that question will not win me any friends. The plutocrats and politicians have been able to usurp K-12 English education because it had already been weakened by decades of skill-based abstraction with no there there. The teaching of reading had already devolved to endless exercises in “reading strategies,” and texts had already become mere interchangeable opportunities for implementing those strategies.
One has only to compare the treatment of the American Puritans in an 11th-grade basal lit anthology from the 1970s to the same treatment in a current anthology to see what I mean. Almost all the content is gone. Where, before, students learned about the Protestant Reformation and original sin and election and predestination local governance and Luther and Calvin and Edwards and the Mathers, students now read to “analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone” because many of the users of the standards do not, themselves, have a clue who the Puritans were and what they thought and how their ideas affected intellectual, social, political, and cultural development in this country.
I recently encountered a woman overseeing development of a new literature program who thought that Don Quixote was about the virtues of dreaming the impossible dream. She was a big fan of Camelot but had never actually, it seems, read Don Quixote, which is an extended send-up of that very idea. In other words, the very idea that Cervantes was satirizing became the message of her lesson on Cervantes’s book! Not having actually read Don Quixote did not prevent her from outlining a lesson on it for her new CCSS-based program from a major publisher.
I mention this because it is TYPICAL these days. Actual learning in one’s subject area has become completely devalued. The CCSS in ELA are amateurish and prescentific, and one could create whole programs in ELA based entirely on their lacunae. But one of the most egregious characteristics of these so-called “newer, higher standards”–one that is little remarked–is that they are almost entirely content-free. In that respect, they are just like most of the state “standards” that preceded them. And that’s a problem that predates and enabled the whole era of “standards-based” ed deform.
Most CCSS-inspired lessons would go down in flames if people asked themselves four simple questions about them:
After the lesson. . . .
1 what does the student know that he or she did not know before? In other words, what declarative knowledge, or world knowledge, did the student gain? (not just specific facts, but bodies of related fact, concepts, understandings)
2 what, concretely, can the student do that he or she was not able to do before? In other words, what specific procedural knowledge, what ability to carry out some concretely describable action, did the student gain?
3 what does the student now care about, and
4 what was he or she inspired to do?
The CCSS in ELA simply perpetuate and codify (which is the next best thing to mandating) the endless practice, with snippets of interchangeable text, of extraordinarily vaguely formulated, unoperationalized skills that cannot be validly tested because they have not been operationalized. “Today, class, we are going to practice our inferencing skills.”
It’s also important to understand that some abilities in ELA are not explicitly taught or explicitly learned. They are, rather, acquired in the course of intrinsically motivated engagement with material of inherent significance. Lack of understanding of this distinction between acquisition and learning is one of the hallmarks of the profoundly uninformed CCSS in ELA, especially in the writing, language, and vocabulary standards. However, and this is important, such acquisition happens only in the context of significant engagement. The student has to be motivated, and he or she will not be motivated by endless New Criticism for Dummies directed at isolated snippets of informative text.
Matthew Arnold wrote, a 150 years ago, in the preface to his “Culture and Anarchy,” that
“The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.”
Scratch that in the Brave New World of U.S. education. No, instead we shall have content-free “standards” applicable to any isolated snippet of informational text taken at random.
One could go through an entire PreK-12 sequence of Common Core ELA instruction without encountering a single idea or technique from among “the best that has been thought and said in the world” and without ever having had a teacher who knew anything of what anyone thought prior to whenever it was the teacher was born, for the CCSS in ELA is just another blithering, random, completely unexamined, never-vetted list of vaguely and incoherently abstracted skills.
Laura.. yes indeed.. garbage in and garbage out = SLO. Data and baseline pre tests, mid year tests and final tests to prove “art growth” is the most insane misuse of testing and prevents creative process from unfolding in the classroom. Danielson should be speaking out forcefully but alas her own self profit must be more important!
“The Common Color”
The Common Color
Paint by number
Artsy standard for the schools
Fill in spaces
With no traces
Outside boxes, them’s the rules
Wonderful comment, Bob. Now I’m going to go enjoy my novel before the plutocrats screw it up.
Thanks, Laura. I have a fantasy about Rumi and Milton and Blake and Shelley and Yeats and Borges answering CCSS writing prompts.
“Uh. Gee, Mr. Blake, you don’t seem to have followed the rubric.”
“But I did.”
“When the Sun rises, do you not See a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?”
“O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying ‘Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty!”
And that seems just fine to most of our educrats and edupundits and eduentrepreneurs.
Bob Shephard.. I am replying to a much later post below where you address “educrats” being very ignorant of their own subject they taught. Yes.. in fact I know someone in my own field who is National Board Certified in his subject and got this because of his uncanny ability to get on line and get in touch with the right people so he could get his answers reviewed by those in the know and know if he did his entries correct. He struggled with the knowledge part of the test and took a course to boost his scores in the subject. Then he got national board certified. He gamed the system and this is what “educratocracy” promotes.. not passion-led knowledge of subject matter but “pseudo knowledge” just to get another “corporate ed notch” in the belt! Many of our educates have so many “notches in their belts” but vapidness “upstairs”!
meant to say “educates” (not educates)…
Aren’ we lucky that neither artists nor novelists pay much attention to what comes out of Washington? Nor should teachers, their stdents, parents & administrators…
the shadow of hope is always despair
All our talk about vigilance, The Resistance, child advocacy, making noise, and fighting the good fight rings hollow if we constantly decry our profession and continue to dissuade young people, with the same vocation as us, from becoming teachers. Teaching is still a noble profession and an invaluable public service. Public education has been one of the cornerstones of our democracy, steeped in great history – too great to let a bunch of fly by night, flim-flam artists take it over. The reform foundation is built on lies, threats, intimidation, bogus claims, lawlessness, fascist tendencies, and profit motives that will not withstand the power of the institution.
“Castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually.” JH
But, how honest is it to encourage people to enter a profession that is not functioning as it should? When one goes to college for a career, it is not acceptable that the career be limited to a few years due to perpetual changes in expectations.
Is it responsible to ask people to jump on a train as it appears to be going over a cliff ?
I subbed this year even though the stress of teaching wrecked my health in many ways. But the teaching part is still rewarding. Well, this week I subbed while teachers were going in to see their VAM scores. They came back in shock, saying that they had different classes from the past two years, and they didn’t do anything less or address any students in need with any less effort.
Yet their ratings went down. They were quiet and glum. They are getting worn down. These are great teachers, following the commands, working hard, loving these kids…and they are saddened.
VAM is more terrible for teachers than anything else.
This is happening in a district that has the highest scores in the county which has been Excellent with Distinction for 5 years. If they are suffering, what is occurring in struggling districts?
And, you know, it is more and more difficult if students performed well in earlier grades to keep students from hitting a plateau and not quite showing a year’s growth. If domeone is achieving above grade level and highly advanced in third grade, how can they expect to continue to outdo themselves? And how is it the teacher’s responsibility that the student didn’t quite do well on the subsequent tests?
Yes, these teachers need the break. I hope they are happy for a few days. It is simply appalling.
To top it off the state is on the verge of dropping the mandatory pay scale, meaning some districts would have the right to pay first year teachers $17,500 per year…in 2015.
And, by the way, our state is Red.
I agree that the use of VAM is what has created a toxic and divisive environment for many. WHEN the use of VAM and SLOs go away, the climate in schools and teacher morale will improve instantly. Call me overly optimistic, but that day is coming sooner rather than later. Counseling young people out of their vocation before they even start is in my opinion a mistake. By the time they finish college, the test-and-punish environment should be long gone.
Many if us said that in the early 200s. We said NCLB couldn’t last. It did. And VAM was started in Ohio. But it is interesting to observe how it was sneaked in on unsuspecting teachers. So many didn’t see the writing on the wall.
I said that this data was designed to be used against us. They thought I was paranoid. Then we had to full out the Batelle checklist on our students. So, the tracking of each teacher’s input on each child began. No one mentioned what we were doing or why. Most complained of how tedious it was, but few saw the connection to the VAM. When they did, they retired.
All I can say is: if someone wants to enter the teaching profession, he/she needs to enter with the facts, not the idealism that drew me in years ago.
Test-and-punish can’t be the new (and permanent) normal for teachers because it is psychologically unsustainable and professionally debilitating. No regime with such inhumane policies can last very long. It will soon collapse under its own weight.
So far this year three of our new teachers have been hospitalized for stress-related disorders.
One was thought to be on the verge of a stroke, with hemorrhaging behind his eyes. He’s 33.
Another has developed severe migraines and is on a strong medication that costs more than her car payment each month. She just started and has no insurance yet. She is 28.
The third was rushed to the hospital with blood pressure so high a stroke or heart attack was imminent. She had fainted at the beginning of her VAM/Danielson lesson observation, overwhelmed by the impossible expectations. She is 24.
Last year a 51 year old teacher at another Title I school went into cardiac arrest during a state Differentiated Accountability walk-through day. She died.
Tell them how noble teaching is, NY Teacher. I don’t mean to be a pessimist but clearly you are not suffering to the degree we are here in Florida.
I myself underwent 8 weeks of counseling to deal with panic attacks and stress last year. Three other teachers on my team just began counseling.
It is a sick profession and if you choose to work at a Title I school in Florida you are placing your life and your health at risk in the hopes that someday things might change.
After the last election, which cemented the gerrymandered Tea Party and ALEC-controlled Republicans in power in Tallahassee for the foreseeable future and re-elected Rick Scott for 4 more years there will be no change but change for us in the Sunshine State.
I still am thankful for what I have and I wish all a Happy Thanksgiving. I just ask that you not ignore the suffering we are already experiencing outside of the Big Apple and not sugarcoat how bad things have gotten and how long it will take to change things back to something akin to normal.
The panic attacks were the beginning if my health issues, plus I fell during building renovation and ruined my knee. But the stress resulted in three years of nightly panic attacks, trying to teach on three hours of sleep, constant working late, eating poorly, getting hooked on Gummie Bears for the sugar boost, and having a principal that drove most everyone to the brink.
I am a “pleaser” trying to do everything for everyone. When it is impossible, a person simply can’t continue.
I think that anyone entering teaching needs to know the realities. If he/she still wants to enter, good luck.
All I know is that a young kindergarten teacher had a nervous breakdown before the first semester ended. The replacement also left at the end of the year. Many young teachers were convinced that they needed to find other careers or at the very least, find a school with a different principal. . .
That principal was finally forced out …after 10 years of her bullying. Things are somewhat better. But it is simply a shame that so many lives have been ruined, mire from the unfairness of evaluations than any other factor.
This to will pass doesn’t quite cut it when you know there is a good chance that you will pass before “this” does.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
I am not buying it NY. My district is slated to close a minimum of six more schools with 600 seats rumored to be opening at a charter school.
We have TFAs and other uncertified teachers manning classrooms while 400 veteran teachers languish in EWPS status.
Entire libraries are being relinquished to dumpsters.
I hope conditions in Never Never Land are laudable. However, I would not in good conscience recommend a teaching career to anyone.
NJ Teacher
I would not use the conditions in the Newark school district to draw any general conclusions about education or to make recommendations to young people about teaching careers. Your district is an outlier and a complete disaster.
My Dearest NY,
Your governor has pledged to end the monopoly of public schools.
If I may be so presumptuous to speak for the outliers in Newark and Philadelphia and Chicago, our students are privileged to have scripted lessons facilitated by bright eyed youngsters who have not figured out if they are coming or going. They are shipped in from far away places and the vast majority arrive with exit strategies in tow. In the meantime, art, music, gym, library classes are booked often two or three home rooms per period. It is virtually impossible to learn all the children’s names.
I hope and I pray that the insider districts never encounter any of the effects I report.
From my reading, Buffalo was already in the thick of it prior to the massive snow storm.
I am sitting in a Dunkin Donuts and I really am not that far removed from reality.
I understand your despair and empathize with your plight. I just hope you are not filling out an application to work at your local Duncan Donuts. For the thousands of like teachers unable or unwilling to escape the inner city districts they work in, for all those colleagues of yours that are in silent agreement with you, for every demoralized teacher facing the harsh realities of impoverished, drug infested, crime ridden neighborhoods, trying to motivate students raised in dysfunctional families, entrenched in the hopelessness of generational poverty, and now being dictated to by the know-nothing, know-it-alls, and for every young HS senior that expresses an interest in teaching, what exactly do you say? What is your message of hope or optimism? If you have none you may want to ask for an application after all.
Um, well, my problem is that I stuck with it until my health was wrecked. 5 years of panic attacks and 3 hours of sleep each night, 10-12 hour days, no raises for 5 years, being as positive as I could, and dealing with a principal as mean as a snake…ruined my health and my idealism. When 100% passage isn’t good enough and all students have to get a higher score than the year before when it was obvious from the first week of school that some scores were way too high…I didn’t expect some scores to rise, since they were outlier scores. It is quite bizarre that these scores are so all important.
I really don’t know what you expect. My next step was going to be a heart attack, FYI. Oh, well.
Deb. Nothing is worth taking away your health and your peace of mind. Nothing. Please know that you are not alone. You will be rewarded in Heaven someday for all you did for children.
Thank God that DESPITE all the ed deform nonsense–despite the embarrassingly amateurish “standards”; despite the numerology of the student, school, and teacher evaluations; despite the incessant, invalid testing; despite the extraordinarily time-consuming and energy-sapping deform mandates and busywork; despite the replacement of humane learning and teaching with technocratic Philistinism; despite the usurpation by the clueless of those teachers’ autonomy in their classrooms–thank God that despite all this there are still hundreds of thousands of teachers who have kept burning their love for learning and have kept working, every day, as best they can under such conditions, to kindle and tend that flame in their students.
Of course the dark tower of Ed deform will collapse under its own stupid dead weight. All despotisms come to the same end. But how much damage will be done in the interim? That’s the question.
And my God, what a waste! Billions and billions spent on this ed deform nonsense. Trillions of work-hours. And if every vestige of these “reforms” disappeared tomorrow, there would be a vast IMPROVEMENT in outcomes due in no small part to relief of the pressures on the system. That will become obvious to everyone in time.
Ai yai yai. Heck of a job, Bush, Gates, Obama, Dunkster. Heck of a job.
Should people go into teaching? Well, this is the profession of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Socrates, of Zhuangzi, of Rumi, of the Baal Shem Tov. Of course people should go into teaching.
But they should go into it with their eyes and ears open and their crap detectors turned up high.
Robert, good to read your comments again more regularly. I get to feeling like such a gadfly and I get a little blue. . . but your words tend to make me feel smart again. And less alone. Thank you.
Joanna, you are very kind. Happy Thanksgiving to you.
NJ Teacher made a comment about Buffalo and Cuomo.
Well, let me tell you about the gaff Cuomo made at a news conference in Buffalo after the recent storm.
In Buffalo, which is on Lake Erie, there is always a danger of a lake effect storm, especially in November when the lake hasn’t frozen over yet. The warm water, cold air, and moisture result in snow, the packing kind, and often a lot of it. This recent storm was kind of freakish in that it stayed over one area for an extended time dropping an inordinate amount of snow. Not inches, but feet of it. In a few cases, even a couple of “yards” of snow. Now, we have lots of snow plows, but for that much snow you need to literally bring in dump trucks and physically pick up the snow and then dump it somewhere else (in this case the old train station terminal which is no longer in use). Add to this dilemma, abandoned and parked cars, narrow streets, and continued snowfall, and you’ve got a crisis.
Now just prior to the start of this mess, a tractor trailer had jackknifed on the thruway causing a backup. Before that issue was resolved, the snow started and didn’t stop, so numerous people were stuck in their cars. A couple of hours later the thruway was closed, but there were still drivers on the road who had entered prior to the ban. Now, a few thruway entrances were physically blocked, but most remained open, so unless you were listening to the radio, you might not realize the roadway was closed. (From personal experience, I avoid any highway in a storm if I can help it.) The upshot was that people were stuck in their cars on the thruway (unless they abandoned them) for a couple of days until they were dug out.
Cuomo came to Buffalo to view the damage and when asked about the thruway fiasco, BLAMED the drivers for being on the thruway when it had been closed and hinted they might be ticketed for breaking the law. (No one was ticketed and there was no fee for the owners of towed cars). This did not go over well in Buffalo, especially since the head of the thruway admitted they should have closed the road much earlier. Luckily it wasn’t too cold (temps were in the upper twenties to low thirties), but I’m sure those trapped were chilled to the bone.
FYI: Only part of Buffalo was affected (South Buffalo and what is referred to as Kaisertown). My daughter who works downtown had no difficulty getting to work. You could see the storm clouds in the distance over the lake dumping snow in a southern trajectory. There was no snow in the of Town if Amherst where I live, but nearby Cheektowaga, Depew, and Lancaster got socked. That’s about six miles or less from my house. ALL area schools had to close (even where there was no snow) because so many teachers called in snowbound and there weren’t enough subs available to staff the buildings. One district housed their buses in nearby Cheektowaga. The Buffalo schools had to close a little longer until the narrow side streets could be dug out so the buses could get through. Then it warmed up and the snow melted. Schools were closed from four to seven days. The Bills had to play in Detroit (their stadium was completely buried). They play again tomorrow with no snow and temps in the 50s.
I stayed home, turned up the heat, and read a couple of books. My son went to Wegmans, got what supplies he could (the shelves had gotten quite bare due to a lack of shipments) and we were set. This wasn’t my first or my last “rodeo”.
Anyway – that’s the story.
Ellen T Klock
NJ Teacher also made a comment about the Buffalo Public Schools (BPS).
I cringe when I think of the mess in the Buffalo Public Schools. First we had a series of inept superintendents. Then we had a strong interim superintendent who had come up from the ranks, was well liked and respected, and had a vision. She was a white female, but when the time came for a permanent appointment, she was passed over in preference of an outsider, a black female. Buffalo’s loss. Since the issues in Buffalo are pressing, I won’t make judgements on this next individual’s job performance, although I did hear rumors. Let’s just say that her stay was short and few people were sorry to see her leave. The problems in the city schools, many which are due to outside pressures from the state, remain intact.
How they will be resolved is the issue.
Enter the Buffalo Board of Education (BOE) , an elected body of nine individuals. At one point we had what was referred to as the “sisterhood” or five black females who usually voted in a block. Last May, one of those women decided to call it quits. There were about thirteen individuals running for the privilege of serving in one of the four open seats. An unusually large amount of money was thrown behind this race backing those candidates who were pro charter schools (from all the national pro charter sources we have read about for the past couple of years). Money talks with common sense choices being the loser.
Prior to the election, the above mentioned superintendent had refused a half million dollar buyout from the Board to leave her position – saying she would leave it to the city voters to see if she would remain, but after the election she negotiated an exit package and left immediately. One of the assistant superintendents took her place (and did a fine job) for the remainder of the year, canceling the extremely unpopular planned closings of several “underperforming schools”. The current interim superintendent is a white male who successfully ran the BOCES program in the area and came out of his recent retirement to help out. I’m reserving judgement on his effectiveness until I see some definitive results.
I won’t get into all the interim activity at the moment, but some of the board’s actions over the past few months make you want to tear out your hair.
I’ll skip over to the current dilemma – those “underperforming” schools. There is pressure on the BPS from the Board of Regents and Governor Cuomo to come up with an improvement plan for these schools. Not just any plan, but a plan the Regents will approve.
Now, Buffalo is no friend to the Board of Regents. Between the push back from the Buffalo Teacher’s Federation and the lack of cooperation from the different Superintendents, there is no love lost between the city schools and Albany (look at Cuomo’s election results from the region – even with the billion dollars he has pledged to help rebuild Buffalo).
The new School Board, however, wants to go in a different direction. They are encouraging the development of a charter school within each of these buildings, side by side with the existing school. (Please note: there are plenty of existing structures available to house charter schools – many of them owned by one of the BOE members.) No new charter proposal was forthcoming, but the BOE is now courting the current charter schools from the city to expand their programs into these “troubled” schools. You see, the Buffalo News has been running a series of articles on schools which have been successful in an urban population, and a couple from Buffalo have been singled out as exemplary. Why not take their vision and apply it to the troubled spots?
As you can guess, details such as the lack of special education students, ELL learners, and a larger ratio of white students in their student populations than in the average BPS, were downplayed. Comparing their statistics to the stats of the ENTIRE district and not similarly populated schools in Buffalo was misleading, to say the least. I’m not saying they are badly run schools, I’m just saying that their model shouldn’t be considered the salvation of the BPS.
Cuomo has personally called out Lafayette High School as a failing school, despite the fact that the majority of their population are refugees from various countries throughout the world representing over fifty languages. These students are expected to take the same assessments as native born students the year following their arrival in the United States. The faculty is dedicated, hard working, and an important aspect in their students’ lives, providing them stability in a time of great transition. They should be lauded not ridiculed. There is constant pressure to close the school and scatter the students throughout the district, ignoring the special needs of this student body. (And there are already pockets of this population throughout the city schools).
My question is: Why can’t public schools provide the answer to specific needs without pressure to conform by the state? If Lafayette were a Charter School, the staff would be considered heroes for all their hard work. Instead they are the goat.
This is just a snippet of the current issues. I’m sure there will be more “excitement” to follow.
Ellen T Klock
In the early to late 2000’s, when I was away on leave for several years for my parents, but subbing day-to-day whenever I could return to New York, I used to be called, quite often, to a local school that actually had a teacher’s lounge — a rare thing here in New York City.
Sitting in that lounge in my off-periods, I used to observe — and at times chat with — the teachers, who in those days were somewhat less hard-pressed than they are nowadays, although still of course continually busy. In that setting, I made the acquaintance of an amiable senior teacher, who made some remarks that I still remember. Let me call him Bob.
Bob told me about a past colleague of his, who had joined the profession, as quite a few did at the time, to avoid or lower the chances of having to go to Vietnam. This must have been in the 1960’s or early 1970’s. As also could happen, this young man was given some difficult classes, with rowdy students who made life very difficult for him. In addition, he faced the usual indifference or worse from the administrators and even colleagues.
One day, this young teacher came in rather late for work. When Bob asked him what had happened, this is what he said.
“I was sitting in my car for half an hour, wondering whether I should just go and sign up for the war, whether that might be less of a hell than this.”
That young man probably made the right decision, however difficult, at the time, by coming in for work to face the daily fire at the school. After all, soldiers were coming back from ‘Nam in body bags every day. And those who survived were at times damaged for life, physically or mentally — or both.
Of course, the foreign wars of more recent times, though lower in bodily casualties for our troops, seem to be wreaking just as much mental havoc among them, judging from the suicide rates. Most soldiers, like teachers, don’t like to talk too much about their experiences, perhaps for similar reasons.
There was something else that Bob said, which might explain quite a bit about what we see around us. Once again, it applies to both soldiers and teachers.
“Oh, you’ve got to hang up your conscience with your coat, when you come into the building.”
This was in response to a question I had, even then, about how we could go about our jobs in good conscience, given all that was set up wrong or was going wrong, even then, for the students — and also for their teachers.
That remark of Bob’s seemed cynical to me at the time, and still does. I never could do as he prescribed, which might explain a lot of my woes over the years. But perhaps what he summed up so picturesquely is how one survives in the schools, as a soldier might do in a war zone.
I learned, the hard way, to keep my mouth shut (most of the time), but I never could do the same for my heart. I don’t think that this situation — of a closed mouth, but an open heart — is that uncommon among teachers, although sometimes I wonder.
Following conscience, on tries to do what seems right, but this can be a very hard path to take, both as regards the workload that ensues, and from the attitudes of one’s “supervisors”, many of one’s colleagues and, as can happen more frequently than not, from quite a few of one’s students. One can give and give, expecting little in return. But the psyche can only take so much punishment before it becomes discouraged or rebels.
Of course, there are always those, if one takes care to notice, in all of these three categories, that do no harm, do their jobs and might even be appreciative and supportive. But human nature is such that we notice, much more, those who behave in highly negative ways, often through no fault of our own.
So one has to continually tell oneself to disregard those folk, or at least not let their attitudes, words and actions unduly affect us — and focus instead on the others.
One can act, to some very limited degree, as therapist to one’s troubled students — but one hardly do this for those who are colleagues and supervisors and act like mean-spirited bullies.
So this continual re-adjustment of perspective, to notice the good around us rather than the bad, is easier said than done. This is our work environment, where we are also expected to be productive — and we have students who need to learn a subject and pass tests that might seem impossible, not only for them, but for those of us who want to be able to help all of them who are willing, not just the better-prepared ones.
The physical and mental noise around us, including in our classrooms, often drowns out the weak and faltering signal, however much we may labor to keep it extant. Part of that signal is the transmission of culture from one generation to the next — including values — the latter more by example than by speech. The other part, from our (teachers’) point of view, involves the reception, on our part, of whatever our students, including the quieter ones, are trying to, or need to, communicate to us, often silently. This is a conversation that needs some peace and quiet in order to proceed. We can neither speak nor listen and notice, without these things. I should note that not even speech and its comprehension can be taken for granted with many of our students, recently arrived from distant lands.
Some of us are fortunate to have found — or made, with a bit of luck and quite a bit of effort — a niche in which we can function. Others are not so lucky. I suppose it might be the same for those who go to war.
Be that as it may, as pressures mount in the schools, those of conscience or those faced with impossible working conditions might find themselves in a situation not dissimilar to that young man sitting in his car. Of course, the job pays much better than it did in those days, and there’s no draft. We have drones now. But all the old problems and pressures in the schools are just as great as they were then, with naught having been done about them over the years — and many new ones have been added, that tax even more our strength and our conscience.
So here are some verses, from last Saturday. I am sending them out today, on Thanksgiving Day, when one should perhaps also take a moment to think of the birds and the beasts, including us humans — and our history on this and other continents.
http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2014/11/karma-part-ii.html
Peace,
From your linked poetry. The lines below speak to my mantra.
Thank you for the link and Happy Thanksgiving.
‘So follow dharma now. Let conscience speak.
And if you can, defend the ones who’re meek.
Be cognizant of thought, of speech and deed.
For once you’re gone, you will be dead indeed.
But you can leave behind a wake of pain
or one that blesses, time and time again.
Go gently on your path upon this world,
in which we each, by randomness, are hurled.’
From your lips to gods ears.
I agree with the comment above about the master race to the top–there was an agenda put in place some time ago, this is just follow through. With the push for more tracking and more data, including on non-cognitive indicators, this is a discriminatory agenda to say the least. Lots of money to be made, and they get to keep track of the poor and persons of color. It’s going to be difficult to keep any semblance of public education in place. We all have to fight hard.
This too shall pass? Yes, Reagan passed his policies to H.W. Bush who passed his ed policies to Bill Clinton. Clinton seamlessly his policies to George W. Bush (NCLB). And Obama implemented all their policies through RTTT. Why expect anything different will happen during the next presidential administration? Democrats have become Republicans when it comes to ed policy. They have both relinquished their responsibilities for ed policy to the corporate world.
Duncan’s NCLB waiver policies, including RTTT, are what created this mess. The required use of VAM and SLOs was not handed down by anyone. The misuse of standardized, Common Core aligned test scores to evaluate teachers IS the central issue here. Suggesting that this is a decades old problem that is permanently ingrained in the public education system is inaccurate.
I beg to differ. Saw the handwriting on the wall as soon as Ohio’s Proficiency tests were switched to Achievement Tests and then Achievement Assessments. We have had value added for years, before 2009.
You are correct, these are the essential issues that need to be addressed. And I thought as you did at one time. As an elementary teacher, I saw top-down dictums come and go. Reading First was deemed a failure, but NCLB remains and reading instruction continues to reflect Reading First policies. My research into the origins of the Common Core — seeking to understand how we ended up in this quagmire of RTTT policies — left me a little unsettled because, in fact, these policies are rooted in a coalescence of the historic criticism of public schools, teachers, and students. And it is alarming to see how education policy has been almost seamlessly passed from one administration to another.
http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-origins-of-the-common-core-deborah-duncan-owens/?isb=9781137482679
Susan Ohanian’s article is an excellent source for those interested in the political/ed. policy transitions that culminated in RTTT and VAM models for holding teachers. VAM models are a natural extension of a hyper-focus on test scores.
http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=404
Duncan’s policies are a direct replication of Jeb Bush’s policies that began here in Florida, received the imprimatur of Obama and Harvard, and have been ALECed across the nation in state after state.
You also need to read Susan Ohanian’s book “Why Is Corporate America Bashing America’s Public Schools?” to see a very carefully researched and documented timeline of how long this corporate takeover of public schools has been in the works.
Thanks Diane.. I am sure you are right . We are anxiously waiting for this regime to be gone. Nothing is forever. Their is Always Hope and good things coming.
“Hope and Chains”
Regimes change
But core remains
To rearrange
The Hope and Chains
I encourage all to watch Zephyr Teachout on Moyers and Company from November 21.
http://www.billmoyers.com.
She makes an interesting distinction between optimism and hope. She says she can’t be optimistic, believing that things will get better anytime soon for teachers, other public servants, workers and their families, while our government is a plutocracy and the wants and needs of the 99% go unheard. But she is hopeful, she believes things can change, since the mechanisms for change still exist in our Constitution and the possibility that private money can be removed from politics is real. I am with her. I am not optimistic that our schools and teaching can be saved but I am hopeful. The growing opt-out movement, student movements for full and fair funding in Philly and Providence, parent leaders like Helen Gym, and political leaders like Zephyr, and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who speak truth, these give me hope.
It’s going to take a lot of work and won’t happen soon enough. But there is reason to hope that the new generation of teachers will not have the joy and creativity of teaching driven out of them by the profit takers. The message is getting out and our constituents, parents and students, are beginning to question what the Kochs, et al have been feeding them.
Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow teachers.
Value Added was originally created to help us with the students who never passed the testing, but it didn’t take long for the evil politicians to see that it would be a good measure to use against teachers too. Value Added stresses me out to the point that I get almost sick before I look at my yearly report. I can’t try any harder, and each class is very different. I usually get very good passage rates on testing, but if one of my students fall from a 460 (Advanced) to a 458 (still Advanced), the state of Ohio still lowers my value added to let me know I am an incompetent teacher. I get no credit for teaching that 460 to 458 student that school year. How crazy….
On this Thanksgiving Day, I am very thankful that I do not have that many years of teaching left. I love my students and they love me. But, the paperwork from the state of Ohio and all of the constant pretests, quarterly assessments, midterm assessments, and the list goes on and on…the stress is just too much. Add to all of that paperwork..the stress of the new teacher evaluation system… I work on my teaching job constantly…I stay at school at least until 6 PM every night…and sometimes later. I work constantly on my teacher job at home too. My paycheck is never bigger, even with all of these overtime hours. I am thankful for a wonderful husband, who is retired from education, and was a past principal – he totally understands what I go through. My two children understand what I go through too, always asking what they can do to help. They run into the grocery store to get prizes for my students and have even helped me grade papers to get progress reports completed. There is hardly time to grade papers anymore because a teacher is always grading assessments. It has gotten out of control. Stress levels of teachers are through the roof!
Let’s all get real here. I totally agree with the past teachers who said that they could never recommend teaching to anyone. As a Christian, I could never mislead a young person and recommend a profession which presently causes so much suffering. I would not be able to sleep at night if I misled a young person like that. A Bachelor’s degree can cost up to $100,000 and above…How could anyone recommend a profession to a young person who might only have the job for 3 years? They could easily be terminated at the end of 3 years for low test scores. These poor young people could be homeless. If they want to work with young people, I would recommend working with children at their church and helping with coaching. In no way would I ever lead a young person into the suffering of this profession. Presently, in my state of Ohio the legislators are working on doing away with minimum teacher salaries and doing away with the teacher pay schedule entirely. How awful….Many young people have student loans to pay back!
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I am thankful for Diane’s blog on this Thanksgiving
Day! It helps so much to know others are going through what I go through. God Bless all of you!
There is simply too much money and real investment on the side of the reformers. Common Core etc. is and always has been about union busting. Period.
Our unions, both national and state and even local should have seen what was obvious to many of us “paranoids” at the time. They were and should be the white blood cells against this stuff, but they missed it entirely, and let the fox in to the proverbial hen house. Now they are on their heels, disorganized (speaking mostly of NYSUT here), reacting, and absolutely behind the curve. Their only real and sustained game is to increase membership among other groups that are not teachers and hope they survive as an organization, no matter how hollow. The real nuclear bomb to us was when Cuomo, an ostensibly Democratic Gov. was elected TWICE without the support of NYSUT….that’s the status we have now! Dead in the water politically. Our troubles are now pretty obviously both from the outside-the reformers and their political pawns-and from the union leadership which will, when the big histories of this are written, will be seen as the cadre of people that oversaw the last wave of successful union busting in American history. If this needs further clarity, understand how troubling it is that the first and most aggressive line of defense we as teachers have are parents….not our unions. Our union leaders are simply not up to the task organizationally or philosophically. This is an existential moment for teachers and schools, literally, and they are playing it like its just a policy disagreement.
So yeah, I’m about done with hope. The game is pretty well lost. We are all talking in an echo chamber. The money has almost entirely won. They will push through. I teach every day with that knowledge. This is at bottom a labor battle. Not a philosophical one over the tenets of good schools and teaching….to any thinking person, the answers there are obvious and on our side. We are the last vestage of large scale organized labor. We are in the way of a huge grab of public resources by the private sector. And we are in the process of losing. Morale among all of the teachers I know is lower than what I ever imagined low to be. As far as recommending this career to students or other younger folk: is that really a topic of serious discussion? Teaching was a noble profession, absolutely worth it….when unions were strong. In not too many years, it won’t even be at the status of a profession. Thanks NYSUT!
Just calling it as it appears from NY.
NYSTEACHER, Sad Ohio Teacher totally agrees with you! I can’t believe how badly teachers are treated. When I started teaching in the fall of 1985, it was a respected profession. Now, like I’ve said before in Diane’s blog, the state of Ohio makes me feel like a poisonous bug which needs stepped on and destroyed so that I will no longer damage my students’ learning. You are so right – Teachers are in the last big group of organized union labor and the evil politicians will not stop until we are destroyed. They have destroyed everything else.
This is not a fad or a pendulum swing. That’s the fatal assumption in that post. Both major political parties are in bed with neoliberal interests out to destroy the public sector for private gain. It’s a worldwide movement, and these neoliberals will not stop until the last public dime is pilfered to benefit the very, very few at the top.
i agree with you Susan. This is the heart of it all.
“This too shall pass.” I wonder how many teachers are going to be saying that when they loose their houses, health, and sanity due to the ed-deform movement.
We will see the ‘passing’ of the ed deformers and their plutocrat associates ONLY if we view this ‘passing’ as a long war to save public education. We must continue to invest ourselves into long term efforts. There is no short term ‘passing’. Whomever follows Obams will continue on the present road and we must be ready to up the struggle. There is no other choice…unless one wants to see the death of american public school education,
It isn’t just public education–it’s our very way of life.
There is a concerned effort afloat to turn the U.S. into a third world country. It’s well on its way to being there.
We in So. California, see it all around us. The disparity of Bel Air juxtaposed to South Central is tragic. The protestors this week marched toward Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, and were very lucky no one was shot.
This does not give me peace of mind. My daughter is in 5th grade. She has already been broken by this new standard. Another two years and her entire education-related self-esteem will most likely be damaged beyond repair. Teaching will survive. The education system will survive. But children in a 5-10 year time frame will already have lost.
As free from hope as I truly am here in New York, there IS a path out for us. It’s clear. It’s historically proven to be the only real thing that can bring change for us. It’s not the product of wonks and their stilted thinking. It’s being prepared, in the face of existential threat, to our careers and our profession, to play all the cards. I remain void of hope because I do not think our leadership (NYSUT et. al.) is up to it or ever will be up to it. One must look to the 1930s here at the moment we are in as teachers. 1930s labor folks saw things plain, and knew enough not to beg for seats at a table. Rather, they created their own seats and in many ways, their own tables.
Anyhow, it seems that there are places where being willing to lay it all on the line seem to have yielded results. I think more people should read this, especially here on NY where
“getting a seat at the table” seems to be a career ambition for our union leadership….like some insecure child-like desire to sit near the artificial warmth of authority. Please read:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/no-more-backroom-deals/
There are things to do. Saying “no to all of the above” may be the exact place to start. But that takes some folks with some life in them and some spirit. And maybe a sense of adventure. I’d rather end up working retail and knowing that I was part of the last big stand unions made, then end up working retail after I came out on the wrong end of some ridiculous APPR or was replaced by a laptop and some TFA master of the universe. Just saying. Teachers and the teaching profession are not going to come out of this via some discussion at someone else’s table or via some long string of negotiations. That simply is not in the cards. Nor is some amorphous moment of clarity descending on policy makers, whereas they all suddenly stop and say “oh, right, this is the wrong path.” That moment wont happen. We should all start to think about things…. There are other options….
All I know is that come next Monday, they still need teachers in classrooms. And probably for the next year or so. There simply arent enough TFA folks to go all the way around. But time is very short.