The American Federation of Teachers and the Badass Teachers Association collaborated on a survey of teachers that revealed enormous stress among teachers.
Says the article in Yahoo:
“It sounds like the worst job ever. Employees complain about little autonomy, constant stress, being forced to implement new workplace demands without adequate training or institutional support to carry them out. As new recruits, nearly 90 percent were eager to get to work; by the time they’re veterans, more than three-quarters of them say the thrill is gone.
“Welcome to the world of your child’s classroom teacher.
“A new survey of 30,000 educators by the American Federation of Teachers found a broad swath of complaints about the job, including unfunded mandates such as the Common Core curriculum standards and high-stakes achievement tests, as well as negative headlines—and finger-pointing—about failing schools and the black-white achievement gap.
“At the same time, however, surprisingly few say they’re ready to walk away from the Promethean board and leave the classroom.”
The survey found that:
Only 1 in 5 educators feel respected by government officials or the media.
Fourteen percent strongly agree with the statement that they trust their administrator or supervisor.
More than 75 percent say they do not have enough staff to get the work done.
Seventy-eight percent say they are often physically and emotionally exhausted at the end of the day.
Eighty-seven percent say the demands of their job are at least sometimes interfering with their family life.
Among the greatest workplace stressors were the adoption of new initiatives without proper training or professional development, mandated curriculum and standardized tests.
The survey shows the need for a scientific study.
The AFT has called for a federal study.
Click to access worklifesurveyresults2015.pdf
Click to access ltr-randi-duncan-howard-051415.pdf
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Jade Southwick.
I’m always curious with surveys like this one about whether there’s a response bias. How many teachers was the survey circulated to, and how many didn’t respond, should be incorporated into the percentages, I think.
That said, I don’t think the takeaways would change, nor should they be surprising to anyone who knows what they’re talking about. A lot of folks who work on education policy need to spend more time thinking about why teachers feel this way and less time insisting that there’s not a “war on teachers” (no matter how much they think those specific words constitute hyperbole).
I was one of those teachers who had a chance to take this survey yet didn’t. Believe me, I wanted to – I just didn’t have enough time to complete it. Am I stressed out? You bet! With less than a month left in the school year my principal told me I’m going to be teaching an entirely NEW class next year based on new middle school business/computer standards. So with no guidance or support what so ever, I’ve been ordered to submit an outline of both the 5th and 6th grade curriculum for this class before the end of school. That on top of my regular teaching duties which include grading end of year projects and finals. Oh, an I’m also the school librarian so let’s not forget processing all those books I ordered, getting all the books currently out checked back in and shelved AND taking inventory. Oh, and I need to submit the library budget for next year as well. So no, I didn’t have time to fill out this survey. I’m betting those teachers who did were probably the LEAST stressed out among us. Now THAT’s a scary thought!
Federal Study?
The same people who purposefully created chaos, harm and abuse? For Life!
We should fund our own studies related to this crisis.
Asking Arne,Obama & Co. to gather more data on how vulnerable teachers, children and parents are makes absolutely no sense. Shoot us now!?
Agreed. We cannot count on a Federal “study” to fix this- indeed an intended goal of those behind public ed deform is the forcing out of veteran and creative, innovative teachers who don’t want to teach to inappropriate standards and canned scripted test prep masked as deeper curricula. Much cheaper to de-professionalize our beloved profession and use a temp workforce with no commitment to our children, our communities, or to teaching. Thus the ratings tied to test scores, and the demonizing or our unions and rank and file. Much more profitable to eliminate public ed altogether and replace with for profit charters, and vouchers for private and parochial schools. If it happens in NY as planned by our DINO governor – the NY known for its liberalism and strong unions, democratic public education for all will be a forgotten dream.
I would also add that a source of stress identified in the survey is the failure or inability of our unions to protect us, to challenge the planned destruction, and in some instances, enabling the damage done. AFT has in its own hands the power to address that complaint. It is incumbent upon our unions to step up to that challenge.
Involve the FEDs? Bad idea. Can’t trust the FEDs and yet another UN-Blue Ribbon Commission.
Every year it becomes more and more stressful. Next year will be my twentieth, and the job hardly resembles the one I started with in 1996.
There are no surprises in these findings. Teaching is stressful as a career. Good teachers must juggle many instructional and classroom management balls, make wise choices often under duress, think on their feet as they interact with students, teachers, administrators as well as parents. On a good day teaching is a challenge.
The last decade has been the most challenging for teachers and their profession. Teachers have had to endure a relentless attacks from the media and politicians. I have never witnessed such abandonment by a government of public schools and teachers as in the last decade. Some of the attacks have come from ideological zealots, but most have come from billionaires who have used their deep pockets and influence to try to destroy public schools. As a result public education has been a political ping pong ball among the various groups, and few of the decisions have focused on what parents and children need. The only grand vision from the federal government has been a punitive, misguided testing regimen that has been used to club districts into submission. When the monetization of public education is added to the mix, the snake oil salesmen arrive to make a profit off the chaos and lack of oversight. None of these choices have been “evidence based.” What has been created is a patchwork of splinter schools that come and go that are less efficient, effective, more expensive to operate. Our government has destabilized the lives of our poorest, most vulnerable students. It is shameful!
It is time to put on the brakes and assess what has happened before blindly authorizing more of this mess. It is time to reinvest in public education which has the best track record in preparing students to become responsible citizens. Stop demonizing teachers, and start investing in them. Public education is the keystone of democracy. It’s time for politicians to stop taking money from the wealthy to destroy public schools, and it is time for them to serve the American people.
I hope that teachers and public education advocates will send the news of this survey to university allies and request some scholarly research. Surely the well funded corporate looters of our public education system are scheming on their own survey to disprove what these 30,000 reported and what the rest of us know to be true.
As retired teacher says, this is not surprising. She has great points.
Too
As most of you will know this is NOT just education. Police and doctors among probably others are finding political interference so bad that they advise college students not to go into their “profession”.
Firefighters were facing this until 9/11 when so many lost their lives. They were going UP the stairs as everyone else was going down. That changed perspective. Let us hope that a similar occurrence does not have to happen again to wake the general public and media up.
History shows that way too often a great nation falls because of ineptitude from within. Outside forces may deal the final deathblow but the rot from inside was the main force. There are so VERY many humongous problems inadequately addressed or as in education wrongly addressed with us now and our politicians are bought off by big money.
AND as has been stated way back when, of what use is a bag of gold in a desert. This was used when climate change was first talked about but the same kind of mind set is true with education. The moneyed people may get their money but if/when the country falls apart of what earthly use will their money be.
Our currency has lasted longer than usual but in the last century many country’s currency has become useless and they had to start over again, something that we all should think about, especially those greedy persons who see money as the bottom line.
The best way to increase stress is to make someone responsible for something they have little control over, then measure performance using irrelevant and invalid methods. Reformers are trying to destroy teachers.
It is why I tell prospective teachers run, don’t walk, from the profession.
one statement I find hard to believe is this one:
“Eighty-seven percent say the demands of their job are at least sometimes interfering with their family life…”
Personally, I would believe the statement if it read: “Eighty-seven percent say the demands of their job completely interfere with their family life…”
I am not atypical and my weekends ARE NOT MY OWN. They are dedicated to school related work nearly ALL THE TIME. And so much of it is the result of mandated requirements that are not necessary to good teaching.
How ironic that this month is National Mental Health Awereness Month in our district.
Cross posted on Facebook and OEN;http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-American-Federation-of-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Adoption_Complaint_Demands_Diane-Ravitch-150516-572.html#comment545219
with this comment & quotes from posts at this blog, (which have embedded links at the OEN post.)
No surprise here; Most novice teachers are gone in 3 to 5 years when they discover that there is not a shred of support for LEARNING, AND that there is active antagonism and anti-learning mandates so that schools will fail, and can ge replaced by charters schools and curricula that distorts history.
This article is a brilliant essay by Bard College President Leon Botstein about the democratic and civic purposes of education.
http://www.democracyjournal.org/36/are-we-still-making-citizens.php?page=2
Gene V. Glass posted the following words by David Berliner on his blog,
http://ed2worlds.blogspot.com/2015/04/david-berliners-views-on-teaching.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+EducationInTwoWorlds+(Education+in+Two+Worlds)
Education in Two Worlds: When a profession as large and necessary to society as teaching is insulted by state and federal Secretaries of Education, judged negatively by the nation’s presidents and governors, see their pensions cut, receive salaries that do not keep up with inflation, often cannot afford to live in the communities they work in, cannot always practice their profession in ways that are ethical and efficacious, are asked to support policies that may do harm to children, are judged by student test scores that are insensitive to instruction and more often reflect social class differences rather than instructional quality, see public monies used to support discriminatory charter and private schools, yet still have a great deal of support from the parents of the children they teach, then there is a strategy for making teachers’ lives better. It is called unionization. The reasons for unionization could not be plainer. New and veteran teachers should band together and close down school systems of the type I have described. It will be difficult, of course, and some teachers will no doubt be fired and jailed. But if teachers do not fix this once noble profession, America may well lose its soul, as well as its edge.
William Doyle writes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/04/27/why-calling-school-reform-corporate-reform-is-an-insult-to-corporate-reform/
that it is an insult to real corporate reform to confuse it with the misguided methods of those who call themselves school reformers. Doyle writes: “It is a mistake to refer to failing education reforms as “corporate reform. No leading company would place the entire foundation of its business on inaccurate, unreliable, system-distorting and often “bad” data like multiple-choice standardized tests. No leading company would roll out a multi-billion-dollar national venture (like Common Core) nationally without extensive field-and-market testing first.”
But Diane Ravitch is on the email list for an organization called “In the Public Interest.” It follows privatization in every sector, including education. The current newsletter is eye-opening.
http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/sites/default/files/Update%203-2-15.pdf If you want to know how private interests have finagled their way into making a killing off public sector dollars, read this e-newsletter and subscribe (free).
Dark Money, Blurred Principles
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/opinion/dark-money-blurred-principles.html?emc=edit_ty_20150312&nl=opinion&nlid=50637717&_r=0
When Randi Weingarten first tweeted her suggestion of asking the Feds to perform their survey, I responded:
Teachers, children and parents ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE PROBLEMS WITH SUCH TREATMENT!
What surprise?
This is a natural consequence and outcome to abuse!
If this continues long enough…yes, it will continue, soon the Stockholm Syndrome will set in – may already with the beginning teachers or teachers who must hold on to such abusive jobs until they drop.
Unbelievable!
What are the Unions waiting for? I listen to their speeches, read their writings…and wait. Have been waiting for years!
Deformsters laugh their heads off as we continue to send out >>> HELP! URGENT!
Opt-Out got their attention for a little while. Now, they can plan their next abuse until next year when Opt-Out will no longer exist. Who knows what else evil people can invent. We have examples in history, which also started slowly, harmless and became lethal.
Well behaved teachers have never changed history!
Ha Hurley I wrote to you, but after writing this (below) I decided to post it as a larger comment… I HATE TO HAVE MY WORDS CRAWL ALONG THE SIDE… SO LOOK FOR THAT COMMENT… it is addressed to YOU!
Randi was the president of the UFT in the decade that the NYC schools were systematically emptied of the veteran teachers. I was at the top of my career (see my author’s page at OEN) http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
when the superintendent of district 2 told me AT A MEETING AFTER 6 MONTHS IN A RUBBER ROOM WITH NO WORD as to why, that I had been FOUND GUILTY of corporal punishment…based on an allegation that I cursed at a 12 year old.
Stop laughing. Dan Rather (who knew of my reputaion and success) laughed, too, and then expressed his incredulity with this “Where was the UNION??
Where indeed!
and this one from an older post: Quicklink: Revolving Door Of Teachers Costs Schools Billions Every Year : NPR Ed; by OWEN PHILLIPS | OpEdNews
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Revolving-Door-Of-Teachers-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Decision_Force_Frustration_Reason-150402-14.html#comment539682
Steve Matthews, superintendent of the Novi school district, here explains how the education profession has been attacked and demonized, with premeditation. He begins: “So you want to kill a profession. It’s easy.”
Stephen Mucher, director of the Bard Master of Arts Teaching program in Los Angeles, warns about the precipitous decline in enrollments in teacher preparation programs.
Teachers are demoralized by scripted curricula and overemphasis on testing. They feel their voice doesn’t count in their workplace. Given the tide of teacher-bashing and mandates, they are right to feel demoralized. … and finally, who will want to teach if this goes on?… From Leeny Isenberg at Perdaily, “Professor Diane Ravitch calls it “the dominant narrative: “The incessant litany in the media that says the only things wrong with public education are bad teachers and not enough charter schools.”
Isenberg continues: “Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels called this same kind of dominant narrative the big lie :”If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
“What good public education is about is truth. Not a single truth, but the individual truth that comes from all students being educated to their highest potential. If you thwart this education by establishing a privatized dumbed down public education system, you have created the best mechanism for implementing Goebbels big lie on the largest scale.”
and at OEn, last April when I published a link to The Revolving Door of Teachers,”
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Revolving-Door-Of-Teachers-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Decision_Force_Frustration_Reason-150402-14.html#comment539682
Jill Henderdeen, a teacher, wrote there: HMMMM. In my own local school district, most teachers who’ve “left” in the last 14 years were fired, and most of those were teachers who were popular with the students”.”Submitted on Thursday, Apr 2, 2015 at 9:13:11 PM
Ya Think?
In 1998, I was not only beloved by students and parents>> but with the schools failing across the nation newer legislatures are usurping what educators once did, , and public schools are being replaced by charter schools …in hindsight…MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE ENFORCED THE LEGAL CONTRACT AND GUARANTEED OUR CIVIL RIGHTS FROM THE GETGO!
“The AFT has called for a federal study.” Another “study” of what we already know.
The AFT should be calling for a nationwide walkout of teachers from their schools.
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My reaction too. Seriously, it takes a STUDY to see that teachers are stressed out because they are not treated as the learned professionals they are? Save money and time and just get the changes made. Are there any politicians, philanthropists and businesses listening?
No to your question, lghiggins. Well, maybe Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold (running again–yes!!) & Al Grayson on the political side.
Meanwhile, lots of villainthropists & businesses (such as WalMart) are drooling over this “news” (not news to us!)–rubbing their tentacles together & weaving their webs with which to catch those poor teachers for a better career–as WalMart associates.
AMEN!!! Add to that ALL teachers unions. Unite.
Karen Lewis showed how to do so effectively. Get the community behind you. THEN strike, strike hard at them. Public education has the high ground. We have the statistical data, which just does not see the light of day in the corporate controlled media, at least not enough so that the general public gets the message with enough force to change minds.
Make if abundantly clear that the energy is for better schools, not higher pay and/or teacher benefits. That is what the public is led to believe.
ONLY with that kind of force will anything get done. The money people control the propaganda now. Statistical data while essential for understanding just does not get the job done for meaningful change.
When society gets something done, sadly it has to fight. Unions in the early stages literally had to put their lives on the line. African Americans the same. Money talks. It always has.
Only when enough people say enough do the politicians take notice.
True in the past. True now.
TEACHER LIVES MATTER! Those of us in a position to support teachers during this difficult time must make it a priority. Education is a people business and so it is people first.
Education is NOT a business! Education is a profession that serves the public. We do not produce educated people. We do not make a stamped out product. Every student, young or old, is treated and taught as the individuals they are. People take the knowldge their teachers impart and use it in myriad ways in order to contribute to our world. Today we have cookie cutter curriculum, big money going to a few, deteriorating school building infrastructure, edicts from the top instead of educators making decisions based on their students’ needs, little parent input, little teacher input, students who are told their thoughts don’t matter by the monied ruling class, testing instead of teaching, teachers assessed by test scores instead of by the quality of their work and very few people who want to enter the profession. Often our hands are tied, our voices silenced our desire to educate crushed. Is it any reason why teachers are more stressed than ever?
Isn’t it astounding that a survey conducted by the AFT would report such results? Real surprise, isn’t it? [smile]
Yeah, very predictable it is, just like your reaction to the posting, huh? [cynical smile].
Your post has stressed me out. [crazed look]
Nothing is more predictable than a study conducted by or on behalf of The Gates Foundation, but it is certainly true that a study researching stress-level of teachers in response to policy changes under both W and Obama Administrations would be just as predictable.
An attorney I used to work with had a sign in his office that said “Please don’t tell my mother I’m an attorney. She thinks I play piano at a brothel.”
I think maybe we can now replace “attorney” with “teacher” as the most scorned profession.
Funny! Thanks for the laugh. My son had a mentor and leader growing up who was kind, fair, understanding, and completely dedicated sacrificing much to help kids. Darn if he didn’t ruin my preconceived biases and turn out to be an attorney!
Here’s to all the thousands of teachers suffering in silence. This excellent survey offers just a glimpse of the pain our children’s educators are experiencing. We rain down untested, unfunded mandates on our public schools never once even asking for teacher’s input. We shouldn’t be surprised that the people who have to actually carry out all this nonsense are frustrated by the job. But we stay because we love our kids and don’t want to leave them alone to face all this nonsense.
Teaching has always been hard work but the rewards were there. …now it is so stressful…the witch hunt for bad teachers, the nonsense tests, the scripted lessons, the narrow curriculum, the tight budgets on basics and the waste on miracle cures…
Well, much of the hard work was eagerly done because the many of the rewards were in that process and in the experience of seeing the reactions and interactions that would come.
Now that everything is so scripted and stupidly micromanaged within multiple layers of myopia and organizational mania, those rewards are almost gone.
Teaching has always had stress. It is a physical and mental job. You are physically expended by 3:00 p.m.
When I began teaching in 1965, trying to do all that needed to be done created stress. I learned to prioritize and to let go of the idea I could do it all.
Then, political events impacted the classroom. I learned to protect students (fires set in closets) and to guide student leaders to safe decisions (Is it really safe to lead sixth graders on a march around the block?) I learned to intercede as necessary.
Next came poor building conditions: too much heat, too little heat, poor lighting, peeling paint, malfunctioning shades, bad florescent lighting, bomb threats (from the school pay phone). I recommended paint schemes and flooring I had seen in Columbus, Ohio, and I wore a coat for four winters.
Then the era of child abuse and litigation arrived. One never knows what innocuous comment will be misconstrued, especially by ELL students. But parents know they can complain and sue or threaten to do so. (Talk about disruption.)
And then the joke that is technology in districts that cannot provide appropriate technical support. I learned computer repair for the classroom. And then the slimming of custodial staff. I already knew how to clean the classroom. No brainer.
Now, just in time, I retired from a special education position after countless hours of graduate credential classes, a life believing I could find a cognitive solution to efficiently educate, and a purposeful life, only to find that non-educators think they have the answer. And they do. Just eliminate trying and teach only the students who from Kindergarten on want to learn, can tell you where they will go to college, and what career they want. In other words, kids like I was in 1949.
Speaking of studies. Here is a beauty. Along with a longer post.
We know this by now: USDE policies that purport to be evidence-based are large-scale experiments with little or no evidence to support of them.
In a belated recognition that something may be “amiss,” USDE commissioned a study for the purpose of getting “rigorous” evidence on whether the evaluation systems called for in federal policy have their intended effects on teacher and leader performance and student achievement (AIR, American Institutes for Research, 2012, February).
This five-year, $16 million study of Teacher and Leader Evaluation Systems will be completed in 2017, long after teachers and principals in almost every state have endured the requirements of evaluation systems KNOWN to be unreliable and ineffective as means to improve educational outcomes. That includes infamous measures of “growth,” VAM and SLOs, both invalid for evaluating teachers and as invalid as standardized tests are for evaluating the achievements of students.
So much rhetoric about evidence–based policy and practice, so little of that informing what has been passed off as needed reform.
I doubt that this AIR study will even look at the roll-out of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and new tests for those standards. With the vanishing of Arne Duncan and his McKinsey & Co. buddies, at least there is now some hope that a corner can be turned on the flow of insults to teachers, and parents, and students from people in high office. Some states may enjoy some relief from the equally insulting tools for micro-managing students and teachers, including all of the hoopla and bizarre “trainings” over the Common Core and security for the associated tests. The hoopla has been introduced by federal policies and state policies shaped by a decade and a half of sustained marketing, not because of their educational merit.
The huge investments in “messaging systems” to keep the CCSS and tests in public schools–not necessarily charter schools–are continuing. The most recent PR campaign calls for higher education administrators to accept the SBAC and PARCC test scores for admission to college.
This up-tick in messaging is needed because the grand experiment to make one standardized system of education, including teacher education, is slowly but surely getting dismantled, by some “truthiness” (Thank you Steven Colbert)
The CCSS are not internationally benchmarked. Nobody looked at the benchmarking study which was almost entirely about scores on international tests and equating those scores with “high performing nations.” Baloney.
The CCSS are not valid as predicates for any student to successfully complete introductory credit-bearing courses in college. That is the marketing promise, but the whole idea is untested. It cannot be verified. Why?
It is unlikely that any cohort of students will be found in 2028 who, having begun Kindergarten in 2014-15 with “full implementation” of the CCSS, will have : (a) successfully completed their college freshman courses, or (b) are on a path to full-time employment sufficient to sustain a family of four. It is important to remember those were the selling points for the CCSS and the associated tests. Those were the promises offered by the people who engineered the CCSS into existence.
The Common Core standards came with other promises, like… they did not dictate curriculum or instruction. Baloney.
Close reading is an instructional technique on steroids. Curriculum is in formation when you specify the proportions of informational and literary texts to be studied by grade level. If you follow the CCSS devotion to a cockamamie and proprietary readability formula in selecting texts, you are unavoidably making instructional decisions. It is time for truth in advertising about the CCSS and the tests.
Curriculum is also constructed by the verbatim rule—no picking and choosing among the 1,620 grade-by-grade standards (including parts a-e but not counting high school courses). No rationale for geometry as the only topic taught in every grade, and with 88 standards more than half of these in grade 8. No explanation for a college ELA assignment appearing as if a good example for grade 9/10.
Teachers are fed up with being lied to about the CCSS and tests, by the insistent rhetoric that these standards are “state-led,” a grassroots phenomenon, a product of serious and sustained thinking by experts in education, including vast numbers of teachers. Baloney.
Rick Hess, a policy wonk at the American Enterprise Institute has offered a great commentary on why the demise of the CCSS and associated tests is highly probable. There is already momentum for that, witness the opt out movement from parents, and governors of states, and steady stream of marketing to save this deeply flawed stew of policies.
But here is another truthiness nugget, from a longtime inside-the-beltway student of educational policy “While advocates insist that the Common Core was ‘state-led,’ it’s fairer to say it was conceived by inside-the-Beltway nonprofits, foisted upon the states by federal bribes, and kept in place by federal coercion.” How the Common Core Went Wrong, National Affairs, Number 21, Fall 2014, p. 10).
The main inside-the-beltway nonprofits responsible for the CCSS are the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governor’s Association, and its two workhorse offshoots, the NGA Center for Best Practices, and Achieve, Inc.
Off-stage there were, and there still are, many private foundations who paid for the CCSS, the adoptions of the CCSS by states, and for the on-going blitz of marketing, notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but also many others.
And like Gates, many of these other foundations have also promulgated greater rigor and standardization for public schools while relentlessly nurturing market-based schools including charters, on-line courses etc—all eligible for public funds and with freedom to do much else. That “much else” includes the to opportunity to raise additional money from private sources and to avoid a lot of public accountability plus the standards and standardization required for public schools.
We can now recognize that these policies have developed into a dual system of publicly-funded education. This system has been created by a prolonged and a two-pronged strategy for demeaning and strangling pubic education with top-down regulation and micromanaging while appearing to help students “escape failing schools” rescuing them with market based education becoming a matter of securing their civil right to equitable, excellent, high quality education.
The CCSS and the tests for those standards function as a wedge, greatly expanding the opportunity of ideologues and profit-seekers to operate on two fronts with the illusion of being on moral high ground by pressing for excellence; high quality x, y, z; equity and excellence; a grand and glorious transformation and turnaround of American education, achieved by innovations, reinventing schools.
Here is how the wedge works, insist on more rigor and a strictly academic focus in public schools on the one hand WHILE on the other hand investing big bucks in charter expansion under the banner of choice and civil rights. You undermine financial and political support for public education and aggrandize market-based education, choice, and innovations all of these free of the absurd and demoralizing policies for public schools.
This wedging activity–piling it on public schools and nurturing market based schools– became apparent when I started some research on “advocacy” funding for the CCSS. Many of the same foundations and groups that where poring money into coalitions, alliances, and networks promoting the CCSS were also spending big bucks to nurture charter supporters and connect them with advocates for special education and so-called minorities (the new majority) in education.
Here is an example. In 2009, a year before the CCSS were published “The Coalition for College and Career Readiness in America,” was brought into existence as if from nowhere. The website says it is a coalition of more than 100 “like-minded” organizations with two major missions: The first was to “ensure that America’s education system prepares all students for college and today’s workplace,” The second (looking ahead) was to “ensure that federal education funds available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) would be used, in part, to drive key education reforms to dramatically improve U.S. student achievement—a cornerstone of sustained national economic recovery.”
This is no mere coalition of like-minded people. It it the equivalent of a lobby intent on embedding the CCSS into federal policy. So…I looked again at the “100” like-minded members of the coalition. The list includes: 29 charter school alliances and authorizers, 17 foundations promoting pay for performance and charter schools (Broad, Walton, Gates, Joyce, among others), 17 business groups and alliances, including the US Chamber of Commerce, 13 social service agencies (versions of United Way, community development, and youth groups), and 11 organizations representing minorities, among these many of the same “civil rights” groups recently pressing for tests to be retained in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. http://www.collegeandcareerreadyamerica.org/about-us
I am reasonably certain, as are many others, that this grandiose experiment to transform American education has been market-driven from the get go. It has been directed at standardizing public education. It has included an unending series of demands for accountability, no excuses, compliance with the CCSS and tests or else. The message is that public education needs to become lean, mean, rigorous, and a strictly academic teaching machine with a sharp focus on the basics, the 3Rs, re-branded as the Common Core. That is what America needs to be globally competitive.
And, along side of those policies and that kind of rhetoric, we have witnessed not just the outflow of public funds to nurture and honor and expand market-based “innovators,” but also noticed the major foundations who are aiding this transformation—siphoning public funds from public education–are purchasing media outlets and editorials and white papers and politicians who will join federal officials in talk about education, blaming the dismal state of public education on low standards, lazy students, arrogant parents, ignorant teachers with no time or interest in the neediest students.
Aiding all of this churn are those reified test scores–the best marketing tool ever invented for any purpose in education, except being a valid, reliable, and wise point of departure for thinking about education.
long post- short reply – amen
So lucid! Thank you, Laura.
“USDE policies that purport to be evidence-based are large-scale experiments with little or no evidence to support of them. In a belated recognition that something may be “amiss,” USDE commissioned a study for the purpose of getting “rigorous” evidence on whether the evaluation systems called for in federal policy have their intended effects on teacher and leader performance and student achievement (AIR, American Institutes for Research, 2012, February).”
Is the USDOE concerned that they will be in violation of the *SBR provision of the ESEA? Could open the door for legitimate constitutional challenges.
*The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, calls for the use of “scientifically based research” as the foundation for many education programs and for classroom instruction.
On February 6, 2002, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Susan Neuman hosted a seminar where leading experts in the fields of education and science discussed the meaning of scientifically based research and its status across various disciplines. Below is the transcript of the seminar.
http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/methods/whatworks/research/index.html
Arne works as if legal issues do not matter, nor does scientifically based evidence a term used throughout NCLB and other federal education programs. The lip service is there. Then what follows is that many of the sources of ” evidence” are cherry picked reports from think tanks, not peer reviewed. The standard held up as exemplary for education is a random controlled trial, dubbed RCT, common with humans only if they can give informed consent and that consent instrument is reviewed by a panel officially convened by the sponsoring agency to protect the ” subjects” in the experiment. Random assignments in education are extremely difficult to arrange, usually interfere with the process of education, and are hard to maintain because the pristine lab idea is just not present in most educational settings. You can do experimental treatments but the results cannot usually be generalized. The calculation of VAM assumes that students are randomly assigned to classrooms, the classrooms are assigned to teachers. That makes no educational sense. That is not the norms and one reason why the use of VAM to rate individual teachers is unethical in addition to be unscientific.
Do you think it will ever be challenged successfully in court?
I can’t thank you enough for your relentless professionalism and research that helps us all keep us armed with the truth. You are the best Laura!
Listen to us!
Listen to all you highly experienced and knowlegable educators!
All this knowledge and experience in EDUCATION means the world to us, our souls and our profession. We entered this field because we want children to learn, be successful, creative, caring and thriving human beings. The scholarship got us there and we knew how to educate children, and we also knew what they needed BEYOND the classroom. We tried to do it all, but we needed help from parents, communities and other professionals. Our profession made huge strides in all aspects, especially in SpEd & ELL. Much more needed to be done, but we knew that we were always growing and so were our students.
Several areas we were having a difficult time with was making consistent progress for children in poverty and children with conduct disorder and deliquency.
This 2000 lb Anchor was not being addressed, funded, supported, or even slightly being pulled up so children could become successful. Actually, NCLB & RTTT added another 20,000lbs to that anchor and they tied it to every teacher who had to bear that weight or else.
Thanks to Diane and thousands of bloggers, tweeters and marchers, we can still reset our professional compass and speak the education language. We have not lost our knowledge or our skills, we are being bludgeoned by Billionaires who are sick of hearing from us, our kids and their parents. As dedicated educators, we keep trying to educate the Billionaires and they could care less. The more we try, the more $B they spend to keep their propaganda machine going.
We are one Hell-of-a patient bunch. That’s who we are.
Unless we speak THEIR LANGUAGE, i.e., Opt-Out & other more creative strategies, we are being pushed aside. More & More…because their $B are endless.
Just think how many economics, poliSci and public policy majors are graduating as we speak – with little job prospects…except in EDUCATION. Tada!
These graduates are dominating the education field and are beautifully funded by foundations, thinky tanks and Billionaires.
THEY SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE, and we don’t.
We speak children, they speak $B!
That simple!
We must stop handing them our hearts and souls.
And for God’s Sake – No Surveys from them, developed by them or more data flowing to them. We still have some control left and we must use it.
Survival…Folks!
“they speak $B!”
Did you mean B$?
Randi is looking for an excuse to keep stringing us along on NCLB, RTTT, and PARCC. IFT is a joke. When a statehouse hearing was being held in February on annual testing, I received an e-mail from IFT – Gee, I thought it might be about encouraging us to submit comments for the hearing, and that IFT would be there to express their concerns/objetions to PARCC. Instead, IFT’s e-mail was a promo encouraging teachers to sign up for IFT’s workshop to become more PARCC/Common Core proficient.
IFT has also failed to alert their members to Illinois State Rep. Will Guzzardi’s bill which would allow parents to opt out. Our union leadership is worthless, and here in Illinois, like with Randi at the top, have continued to sell us down the river again and again.
Let’s see, a marriage between a virtual “association” and the AFT conducting a survey on teacher stress. Will their next venture concern teacher’s vital need for food and water ? I find this very disturbing.
AFT’s survey on Survey Monkey was a joke, too.
Not having taken the survey, I am ever-so-curious about the questions and available responses in it. As teachers we get “so many surveys” that actually do not give us a genuine voice. Often times we know what the survey creator wants because the questions are overly directed and do not give the taker a real voice at all. I am curious about the question which involves family time and states that 87 percent of responders state that teaching cuts into SOME of their family life. I bet there was no response available to answer “cuts into MOST or ALMOST ALL of family life”. If there were, the 87 percent would have reflected this. Does anyone have the questions and “canned response” choices they could share???? So many surveys I am given as a teacher force me to “answer” while giving me no voice at all. Rarely is there a comment section free from “guided” questions and answers. This is the “great corporate” way to ask our “opinions” without really asking our opinions!
To HA Hurley and to everyone who wants a quick look at the UFT through my eyes when Randi was President.
Randi was the president of the UFT in the nineties —which was the decade that the NYC schools were systematically emptied of the veteran teachers. This was long before VAM gave them a legal way to do the dirty job.
I was at the top of my career (see my author’s page at OEN) http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
when the superintendent of district 2 told me AT A MEETING AFTER 6 MONTHS IN A RUBBER ROOM WITH NO WORD as to why, that I had been FOUND GUILTY of corporal punishment…based on an allegation that I cursed at a 12 year old.
Stop laughing.
Dan Rather (who knew of my reputaion and success) laughed, too, and then expressed his incredulity with this “Where was the UNION??
Where indeed!
Of course, it is NOT ‘corporal anything’, as my attorney– who filed a lawsuit– pointed out.
He cost me 25K because Ivan Tiger, the UFT MANHATTAN REP, –who was present when that absurd ‘verdict’ was READ to me at that ‘meeting’ — told me to ‘SIT DOWN! I had expressed my outrage…you see… because this was the first time I had heard of this —no charges had been filed, no investigation made and no hearing. I was blindsided.
That is the result of lack accountability under the law which was the UNION’S ONLY JOB!
That collective bargaining contract protects our CIVIL RIGHTS… not our tenure, nor our salary… that is media spin.
The principals had harassed me for six years, once I ah d put that school on the map, and my students were at the top of the city on the tests the gave back then,. I justtaught my heart out at this wonderful little school on the East Side, and ignored them!
Thus, it forced Sup’t Elaine Fink to do her thing. … before she moved on to do her dirty work as chancellor in San Diego.! (Boy, did they got rid of her pronto! “We don’t treat our teachers like that,” said the head honcho there. I SAW IT ON TV WHEN SHE GOT CANNED!) But I digress!
Here in NYC, where the UFT looked the other way, NO accountability provided a slippery slope. http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
Yeah, thanks to my attorney and a 4 million dollar lawsuit filing, I was allowed to return to my school– TO A CLOSET where I taught 5 kids each period instead of the entire seventh grade. My famous curriculum was trashed and my room, materials and books given to other teachers.
NONE of my grievances were heard beyond step one! Randi did not know about me –YET — but certainly she knew what was ongoing in NYC!
THUS, the new ‘principal’ — the 4th in 8 years,– (who knew me well when I was the cohort and she was Director of Curriculum,) … was emboldened and thus, to get rid of the old lady –she had a teacher allege — in writing– that I had ‘threatened to kill her.” Back to the rubber room went I!!!
Imagine, I who had a publisher clamoring for a book on ‘how I did the magic I did….
I whose work went around the nation with the LRDC (the tools folks who had observed my astonishing work for the standards research) was defined by these haradans.
Enter Randi Weingarten…. not because of my grievance, but because MY HUSBAND PHONED her and actually got through to her ( by accident”).
YUP! She came to my rescue!
Perhaps realizing that I had filed a LAWSUIT filing which made it clear that things had better change; or perhaps because I was indeed FAMOUS, as the NYSEC EDUCATOR OF EXCELLENCE (THE NYS ENGLISH COUNCIL… a most prestigious award for English teachers)
Yup, she got me a leave of absence to recover from the shock, and then she helped me OUT OF MY career and into retirement…just as my longevity raise would have raised my salary from $58 Kto over $70K.
Yeah, the UFT attorney and Randi know the evidence that I hold of the COMPLICITY and corruption at my site of the union rep. They know that I hold the tapes and documents that show Mr. Tiger’s chosen path… (although HE was sent to Albany when the scandal surrounding the OSI (Office of Special Investigations) and Marlene Malamay hit the fan. I am sure he got a nice fat pension, too, whereas mine is … well they screwed me and thousands of other wonderful educators when Randi was at the top
Only with the union on board could this happen
… and by the way, Carmen Farina was a principal in this same milieu. Amazing the folks that get to run the show.
Hey…I like Randi… nice lady… but IT IS WHAT IT IS!
Lesson?????
WE NEED UNIONS!!!!!!!!!
WITHOUT THEM we are so much fodder and this happens
BUT>>>>>> We need to get rid of the political mob who ran the union, when the union let them run the teachers out of town! WE need new union leaders…real leaders who can put our profession back into the schools and provide the ONE THING that a union actually PROVIDES…. the civil right to face accusers in a judicial venue..
The union allowed them to break the law and abrogated my contract.
Period!
It is unbelievable what has happened to my profession. It is so sad. I have two more years to teach after this school year. I could not have taught for all of these years under my current stress level. My husband knows and understands that I would have had to somehow retrain into another entirely different career. I am currently responsible for variables that I have no control over. These variables directly determine my evaluation.
I deliver a wonderful product to my students, but it is not good enough. I have to wait and see how my students perform on a very tricky PARCC test based on developmentally inappropriate objectives. Even though I have been highly requested and my students love me, I do not think I would have survived a full career under these toxic policies.