Wake up, Florida!
Years of so-called “reform” are driving out teachers and principals. Can you have good education of you can’t hold on to successful teachers?
The Orlando Sentinel reports on the crisis level exodus from teaching:
Noah David Lein has always loved teaching.
And if you believe the state of Florida, the honors English teacher at Winter Springs High School is precisely the kind of instructor we want in our classrooms.
He sparks kids’ curiosity and was among only 4 percent of the region’s teachers to receive the “Best and Brightest” bonus for “highly effective” teachers last year.
Lein still loves opening students’ minds and introducing them to complex thoughts.
But not in Florida.
Not in a state that continually beats teachers down.
So next week, when the school year ends, Lein plans to walk out of the classroom for the last time … and in to a career in sales.
It wasn’t an easy decision. To put it bluntly, Lein said: “I kind of threw up in my mouth at the thought of abandoning the profession I always wanted.”
But Florida politicians keep pushing good teachers away.
With a lack of respect. With obsessing about standardized testing over learning. And with cruddy salaries.
Lein, 32, said he started working in 2007 with a salary of $37,000. Nine years later, he makes $40,300 for his family of three — and started working weekends at a catering company to make ends meet.
“I’ve spent my last ounce of energy to make a difference to my students, but it isn’t making a difference to me and my family,”he said. “I’m exhausted, I’m bitter, and I’m grasping for something to be hopeful and positive about.”
If you care about public education, Lein’s loss should depress you.
But it should disturb you even more to know that he’s not alone. Rather, he’s part of a trend — of Florida teachers leaving the profession they once loved.
The exodus is so intense that state records show that 40 percent of new teachers leave within five years after they start.
Florida’s attrition rate for new teachers is 15-20 percent higher than the national average, depending on the year….
Scott Maxwell has an idea for the Florida legislature: Instead of talking to one another, instead of convening work groups and task forces, they should start listening to teachers, “the people who actually teach for a living.” Ask teachers why they are leaving in droves. Ask them what it would take to get them to stay or to return.
Good advice. Common sense. Will the Florida legislators listen?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Although it is much worse for teachers today thanks to G. W. Bush and Obama, it wasn’t that easy back in the 1980s and 1990s after President Reagan’s flawed and misleading “A Nation at Risk” report fraud that was the foundation of the current muckraking, carpetbagger, authoritarian war on public education, teachers, the U.S. Republic, the U.S. Constitution women and democracy by mostly libertarian and/or tech billionaires.
When I first started teaching in 1975-76 it wasn’t all that bad if we ignore the fact that there wasn’t enough money to buy enough textbooks for every student and there weren’t enough books for even a class set for each teacher and most of the teachers were spending many extra hours creating their own material from scratch to support the curriculum. We didn’t have copy machines back then but we did have ditto machines and the ditto fluid stained your fingers purple. My fingers were so purple that others teachers started to call me Mr. Ditto Machine.
But after “A Nation at Risk” things changed and in addition to the lack of funds to buy textbooks and the struggle to maintain school facilities due to lack of funds, we also had to test kids relentlessly to prove they were learning.
By the time I retired at age 60 after 30 years of teaching I resolved that if the frauds waging this war against public education and public teachers including public retirement plans win and I lost my teacher retirement to these crooks, I’d rather volunteer to be a human bomb in Afghanistan or Syria/Iraq and blow myself up in a room filled with Taliban, al Qaeda or ISIS troops then return to the classroom to be tortured by the corporate public education for profit reform movement and the totalitarian monsters (For instance, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Waltons, etc) funding it. I don’t think these monsters are human and no matter how soft spoken they are in front of a camera, I doubt if they have an image that appears in a mirror when they stand in front of one. I’m convinced that Lucifer, the alleged Lord of the Underworld, a place called Hell, is very proud of his minions and the work they are doing here on the Earth.
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Lloyd,
I think NCLB was a piece of cake compared to RttT.
Both are bad laws, but prior to NCLB, the teaching profession was free to pursue excellence because it was not impeded by high stakes testing and did not use standardized test scores to determine anyone’s worthiness.
It’s all so sad.
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California implemented its own standards and high stakes standardized tests back in the 1990s and stated ranking schools from the results of those tests years before NCLB. The one thing they didn’t do was rank and fire teachers based on the results of those tests that were tied to California’s standards but students had to pass all the tests to be allowed to graduate from high school. When RTTT and the Common Core high stakes tests came along California ditched its own standards it had been developing and using for more than a decade and adopted the RTTT and CC crap but still managed to avoid rating teacher performance to those crap tests. However, grading schools continues in California where every school must post a school report card online for anyone to read, and schools with Ds and Fs are called failing schools and put on probation. If they don’t get off probation, the state often takes them over. For instance, California took over Compton’s entire school district in 1993 and appointed a superintendent before G. W. Bush was elected and before NCLB. Someone attempted to shoot the first state appointed superintendant.
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/sep/18/news/mn-23004
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-16/local/me-2446_1_school-district
What is happening across the country—except for using test results to judge teachers—since Obama took office was happening in California back in the 1990s but California was comparing teachers using those test results as if the test results would reveal the super teachers.
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Yup. That’s me. Right there. I’ve taught 5 years in the mid west and I’m done. I love my kids, but my health has gone downhill, stress levels too high, pay is low, and my friends and family tell me I have no hobbies and talk about nothing else in my free time other than my job. I’m done. I will fight for student and teacher rights from the side line, but I just can’t be on the front lines anymore.
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It is a self fulfilling prophecy and they know exactly what they are doing. The continual mantra that public schools are failing. The rhetoric and disrespect, not to mention the pay are driving experienced teachers out of the field and causing fewer and fewer young people to enter the field. Now we have governors pushing for people without teaching degrees to fill in the gaps. The entities that are working hard to destroy public schools have convinced a portion of the public that anyone can teach except for those with proper training and experience. Hopefully they’ll start seeing the light, but I don’t have a lot of faith these days in people easily swayed by such rhetoric.
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Similar conditions in my state Wisconsin. Our education despising governor, Scott Walker, has done much to worsen the lot of teachers as well as taking steps to bring down the quality of our great University by cutting budgets and weakening tenure, leading to an exodus of fine profs. This appears to be part of a, possibly unintentional, promotion of an ignorant society, especially on the part of the Republican Party. This makes sense because the Republican world view rests on a set of beliefs that do not stand up to scrutiny. Theirs is a world in which climate change is not real and “free market” is best even though we don’t really have one and even though the wealth gap increases. It’s a world in which the poor deserve to be poor. They benefit most from a populace that cannot or will not question assumptions that need questioning.
This all is most troubling now since we are at a crucial time when what we do will determine whether we and other species will survive and in what condition.
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Young parents of today are bringing up their 2 year olds to post items on Facebook and other sites. I can walk into the Apple store and see children in strollers playing games on tablets – mindlessly swiping away on the touchscreen. I can’t see how these parents will think there is anything wrong with having their children sit in front of computers all day.
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RobAlex,
In your almost accurate description, it’s not just a world where the poor deserve to be poor. It’s a world where the middle and working classes deserve to be poor . . . . Where old people deserve to be poor, where young adults trying to attend college deserve to be poor, and where very solvent people deserve to be poor as a result of incurring medical debt . . . .The list is too long.
We have allowed this to happen over the last 40 years, but we all have the power to reverse it and insert new paradigms.
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MKA
Who needs teachers when you have Siri and Alexa?
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You’re correct, we need more freedom and liberty, not the iron fist of big government. The free market (although not perfect-nothing is.) has been the greatest system the world has ever seen to lift more people out of poverty; just look at history!!!! I believe more competition needs to be the answer; this brings out the best from everyone. What has made America the greatest country in the world?
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Scott,
America’s greatness came from a balance of private and public sectors.
Public education has been a mainstay of our democracy since the mid 19 century. It has always been a communal responsibility.
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Scott, thanks for commenting. You bring up many issues that would take at least a book to give them justice, so I’ll just briefly raise one issue. Two main problems with free markets are 1) that we don’t have one. In economic theory there are fairly stringent conditions that need to hold for a free market to exist. Our business institutions tend to gravitate to increasing size that comes with near monopolistic power, and 2) even pure free markets don’t guarantee that people won’t starve. I’ll probably say more about these issues in future posts.
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Scott, the Constitution protects us from the alleged, mythical fist of big government. If you want to look for real big fists, look at huge corporations and what they do to crush anyone who blows the whistle on them.
How many local small businesses were crushed by Walmart?
What did the tobacco industry do to the whistler blower who revealed that big tobacco knew their product caused cancer and shortened life?
Government protects us from the crooks and frauds in the private sector. If the govenrment hadn’t been crippled in its over sight of Wall Street and Big Banks we wouldn’t have had the 2007-08 global financial crises.
In the early 1900’s when President Teddy Roosevelt busted the huge corporate trusts that were stiffing competition and crushing anyone that got in their way. When Teddy gave the government the power to stand up to big business, the poverty rate in the U.S. was 40 percent.
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The worst salaries in the business are no doubt in Florida and especially in South Florida when we adjust for inflation. Here are some of the cuts Florida imposed that impacted my decision to leave the profession all together.
1. National Board pay was close to $7,000 it is now completely eliminated.
2. In Broward County, if a teacher was National Board Certified and taught in a title one
school, he or she received an extra $10,000 in salary on top of the $7,000 already
awarded for being National Board Certified this too has been axed.
3. The supplement for teaching an extra period has been reduced from one sixth of a
teachers salary to a flat rate of $6,000. For a teacher at the top of the salary scale,
this amounts to a $6,000 pay cut for teaching an extra period.
4. Zero step movement for 7 consecutive years. This was the major reason I quit. I had
13 years of experience when I left and yet I was only on step 6 when in reality I should
have been on step 14. This is problematic because not only are these crooks
stealing money from you up front, they are also stealing from you on the back end
by negatively impacting future pension payouts.
5. Teachers in Florida are now essentially 40K earners for life unless they were
were fortunate enough to make it to the stop of the salary scale before the SHTF.
6. Advanced Degree pay is nothing short of a joke. Masters pay is $3,600. Specialist
is $1400 and Doctorate pay is $2,000. This equates to an average increase in pay
of $58 per week before taxes. Why would anyone in their right mind return to school
to obtain these degrees when the student loan payment itself will be much higher than
the extra bump in salary? Obtaining these degrees is what I would equate to as
economic suicide.
7. Broward County pays it’s beginning carpenters, painters, landscapers, electricians
and head custodians at least $10,000 more per year than they do their mid career
teachers.
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What is the custodian/janitor pay, or has that been outsourced? If not outsourced, likely it pays more than a novice teacher.
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I live in north Florida, and I have met several teachers that love their students, but are frustrated by state’s attitude towards teachers, the lack of autonomy and the out of control testing. At the same time, the pay is low, and the benefits have been recently trimmed so employees assume more responsibility for health coverage. Some districts are experimenting with Gates’ personalized, computer based learning. It would please a lot of the policymakers, if they could computerize all instruction. Parents are going to have to put pressure on the legislature if they expect more than that from their schools.
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WhyIHatePearson
Exactly! You’ve said it all. I have been talking to colleagues about your points 4, 5, 6, and 7 for years!! Even though I knew about the miserable 3,000 increase after the master’s, I don’t know what possessed me to go for that educational leadership degree… Well, the same desire that got me started as a teacher, I suppose. Wanting to make a difference. However, I have committed financial suicide and a huge mistake going that route. I have decided I am not returning to the classroom this year. I have been checking out employment through temp agencies. I was surprised, appalled, and saddened to find out that one can start a job at $40,0000 working for an entry position at a private corporation in Florida. Amazing! Working for the state is absolute crap!
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San Francisco Chronicle article today states teachers can’t pay the rent on their salaries. Scandalous!
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Head Custodians make 55K and up in BCPS. I know because I have seen the job advertised on their website various times. Duties include: ability to supervise personnel and manage time cards. I have also seen grass cutter positions in the upper 30K range which is essentially what a new teacher is making.
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Isn’t having teachers leave the whole point of this “reform”? What better way to get rid of public schools altogether in the drive toward privatization? God help us!
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Thanks, Jeb.
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Have a look at this and ask yourself would you work as a teacher if this was your compensation.http://www.broward.k12.fl.us/teacher/employment/ins/salary/new_hire_salary_schedule.html. This scale is for new hires. This is what the grandfathered scale looks like. On this scale it takes a teacher 18 years to go from 39K to 49K. Pathetic!http://www.nctq.org/docs/Broward_2014-2015_Salary_Schedule_73395.pdf
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For a frame of reference from history, I started teaching in Dade County/Miami with a contract for $3600 in 1957. In today’s inflation adjusted dollars that starting salary would be $30,851. Bak then, the demand for teachers was so great that you could attend a state university on full “scholarship.” The scholarship was really a loan, renewable for four years if you were in good academic standing and enrolled in an accredited teacher prep program. The loan was totally forgiven for every year you taught in the state, but it had an interest rate of 5% a year, if you failed to teach in Florida for four consecutive years following graduation. With some part-time work during college, you could make ends meet and graduate debt-free.
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As designed. Do we really think that teachers leaving isn’t a feature?
Wendy and her teach for america, teach for all, Rhee and the new teacher project, Pearson, Broad, Gates – they have the answer to teachers leaving in droves. Wait for it.
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Yes and it involves a computer screen and recyclable material with little to no overhead costs.
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And no computer pensions, presumably.
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But learning will be “personalized” and “the greatest teachers” will be are brought to every classroom by video feed.
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My teaching friends, most of whom are retiring early thanks to having a spouse with a great pension plan or a high-paying job, have been urging me to apply for a coaching job in my district because they say I need to share my knowledge and experience with more than just my own class.
I wouldn’t even consider it because A. it requires a master’s degree just to apply yet B. if you are hired as a coach you lose the paltry $1,800/year increase that a master’s degree brings you. Got that? Moving ‘up’ and taking on more responsibility actually nets you LESS pay.
Yes, The Real One, ours is half what your old district paid. I have 2 master’s degrees but only get the one measly $1,800 bump (divide that by 26 yearly paychecks and I get a whopping $69.23/paycheck for completing an MA at a prestigious university with a 4.0 GPA.
The step system is now outlawed; districts can’t use seniority or degrees in determining salary, though most still have the vestiges of one in place until the merit pay law goes into full effect next year.
The union’s playbook on this was to negotiate a Memo of Understanding with the Superintendent that held teachers harmless until the law must be put in place permanently.
The hope was that lawsuits, public outcry, and lobbying would get the law repealed or replaced. It didn’t happen during this year’s legislative session and so next year things are going to get REALLY dangerous and ugly for any teacher who doesn’t teach upper middle class white kids in our district, about 5 or 6 schools out of nearly 40.
Public shaming and lobbying is less than worthless. The leaders of the Florida legislative bodies and their spouse/families all profit handsomely from charter school and voucher-related businesses and they pass multiple laws every year that further enrich themselves and their cronies.
When multiple newspapers from around the state called them out for double-dipping and conflict of interest they told the voters to buzz off. They will all move into very lucrative consulting and lobbying positions after the mandatory retirement after 2 terms in the legislature so they don’t care what voters think or say at all.
No other salary increases are possible unless you give up your seniority and due process rights and going the ‘bonus’ program, which to no one’s surprise, went only to teachers at upper middle class white schools. No one at a Title I schools qualified for that ‘bonus’ or the SAT/ACT ‘bonus’ because of their students’ test scores.
I am less than a decade away from retirement and I realize that, because I dedicated my life to teaching poor children of color, I will never own my own home, appliances like a washer and dryer or refrigerator, have a new car, or be able to afford much more than beans and rice until I die.
This is the reward Florida gives a National Board Certified teacher with 2 master’s degrees and over 20 years experience.
I’m glad for the teachers who are able to leave and build a new life. I waited too long, I guess, and now will have to look at ways to continue working until I die once the DROP program forces me out.
I never cared about money throughout my career or my life; I just wanted to teach kids to love learning like I did. Now, I guess, I am paying the price for my naiveté but I don’t regret a moment.
I just wish we could jail all the reformers, starting with JEB! Bush, and take back our beloved profession and save our public schools before I’m gone.
I’ll keep praying!
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The lack of respect, irrational ratings, and legislated control over salary paints a bleak picture for anyone wanting to teach in Florida. From what you describe TFA should just serve Florida as it is clear the state has limited to no interest in investing in its schools. That is probably the intention of the SAT score bonus. It is unfortunate that you find yourself caught in the cesspool of “reform.”
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Chris in Florida: to you and the other teachers that posted here, while it may be of little consolation, at least y’all can pass the mirror test.
¿?
When you look in a mirror, however imperfect you may be, you can be proud of the person looking back at you.
I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart.
😎
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This is a sad tale. We have a major political party that is committed to ignorance and sees little value in having a well educated populace. It is self perpetuating, though, because the conditions being discussed here wouldn’t have occurred if we had an engaged and knowledgeable electorate. I’m afraid I don’t see a quick turnaround. We may be seeing our own “decline and fall.”
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It’s never too late to leave when I was accepted into an Anesthesiologist Assistant program one of the finalists in my interview group was 51 years old. Go figure he too was also accepted into the program. A lot of times we let fears hold us back from what we know we have to do. I say if you’re sick and tired of the BS just leave. It may seem brazen and risky at the moment but who knows it may very well be the best move you ever make. I struggled for about a year and a half when I quit teaching because the undergrad pre med courses I took were at a Community College and the amount of the loans I was able to access in order to sustain myself were very small in scope. However, when I was accepted into my program formally I was able to access funds greater than my teacher salary after my classes were paid for. I will have to pay this back of course but in the mean time I don’t have any financial worries and that is a huge burden off of my chest.
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Thanks for the encouragement! I care for a disabled partner, and I financially help a disabled friend and an elderly parent each month. I’m still paying off student loans from getting my teaching degrees all those years ago.
I actually have an interview this week, though it is for a part-time position with an education-related company. It may be the foot out the door for me, I don’t know. Nothing has been communicated yet about salary.
Wish me luck!
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Wow!
The stories of pay are . . . just insane wow. Speechless am I.
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In my small to medium small sized district this year, we had 111 positions that were never filled by a full-time teacher.
All were taught by longterm subs and, at some schools like mine, an entire grade level with the exception of 1 teacher, was staffed by a rotating pool of subs for the entire school year.
Few are coming to apply for teaching jobs, especially in testing grades and especially Title I schools. The few that do apply are not the cream of the crop and many won’t commit to more than a few weeks.
The low payout this creates thrills the bean counters. The parents, kids, and community? Not so much . . . .
Why would anyone willingly or knowingly accept being bullied daily, treated like an errant child in need of constant supervision, denied due process and a living wage, and have little incentive to making it to a mean retirement of suffering and going without?
Yet every day I hear people say “Teachers should just shut up and do their work and quit complaining. We all have it tough!”
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I teach in a title one school. We have quite a few teachers retiring before they have 30 years in. I will retire in the next few years, I hope to make it to 25 years. Our district is over 2,600 teachers short. Clark County Nevada has the business community open it’s wisdom to propose such gems as having medical students teach a period a day of high school science (after all we are short of stem people, while one of our math teachers is an engineer displaced by a H1 Visa person.) No one asked the medical students what they thought of the idea. They also plan on issuing emergency credentials to those with special areas of science and math….What they don’t realize is that there is a reason no one is applying for the jobs and a reason so many people are leaving. I look forward to seeing backwards Nevada in my rear view mirror for the last time. My youngest son will finish his high school education elsewhere while living with his older brother in another state, Nevada higher education is being destroyed by the libertarian business oligarchs here. The elite are still shocked that the bright young people they seek are not flocking to their call, and the rest of us are leaving. They really do not have a clue what will happen. I am pushing 60, I would be nuts to do this much longer, but, pursuing a law degree to pay back the CCSD……I can find the energy for that! Maybe Duane’s Karmic Gods of Justice would be appeased.
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Read everything by Dr. Michael Apple and you will see this is all part of the plan. ~Former K-12 Teacher…I miss my students, too.
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Here is the main problem with these tests. The FLDOE has absolutely no clue on how long it takes to teach each standard effectively. So the question is, “can a teacher teach the standards in the allotted time during the year?” As an educational software company we looked at the standards that a fifth grade teacher is required to teach effectively and stopped counting when we found it would take a minimum of at least 300 school days to teach the standards to an effective level. This does not include teaching a child how to type effectively if the state required typing on the writing portion of the test. The problem is, it’s impossible for an elementary school teacher or for that matter anybody including the testing companies to teach the standards that are on the test in a school year. In order for a teacher or school to score effectively on these tests you have to hope that the students that are coming into your classroom have at least some prior knowledge of the standards.
You have to understand that these tests are not built to test your child’s learning knowledge, they are built to evaluate the schools and teachers on their effectiveness on teaching the standards. Finally, ask yourself this question… “Who benefits if the teachers and schools FAIL teaching the standards effectively?” Teachers? Schools? Children? No benefit here!… Private Charter Schools? Testing Companies? Publishers? ED Tech Companies? Lobbyists and the list goes on and on and on…..
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Whole Truth,
Would you mind clarifying, please – did you mean it would take 300 days to teach the standards, teaching one standard per day?
Thank you,
Sandy
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Sandy, no I did not mean teaching one standard per day. One math standard could easily take two weeks to teach effectively to a class of fifth grade students. What I am saying is, if you isolated each standard in fifth grade that A.I.R. creates a test question from, it is impossible for a teacher to teach all of the standards effectively during one school year. We tried to isolate the standards in math, science, writing, and ELA, to see if we could create content to help fifth grade teachers in the State of Florida. It became very obvious to us that this was an impossible task to help teachers cover all of these standards effectively in one year. In a nutshell, a fifth grade teacher in the State of Florida has a 0% chance of covering all of the standards.
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Don’t pretend the the usual rules of employment and economics don’t apply to education. Ignore the simple realities of the workplace, and you run a risk of ruin. And the teaching ranks are in ruin.
There are simple reasons why teachers are fleeing the profession, college prep programs are drying up, and master teachers are rushing to retirement. This reform has gutted any attraction the profession ever held. But, as a master teacher, I see the destruction in different terms than just stark numbers.
Teachers know how schools change over time. Serve a few decades and you’re not much bothered by the continuous, subtle adjustments from year to year. Schools are ever in a state of reform. They have to be.
Way back when, the drug stuff had us all alarmed … and the beer stuff, too. That was everyday teen stuff leaking into our narrow world. We had run-ins with hygiene and sex and cigarettes. And, of course, drunk driving. Daring schools talked about daring stuff beyond classrooms … like alcohol and divorce … and physical abuse.
Then there was AIDS. That was extra-delicate and owned a frantic immediacy. The right words were so hard to find. Lots of times, I felt like I was killing innocence. Other moments were colored by usual stuff. Usual for adults, trauma for kids. Big difference.
Not many of us got much help from teacher-prep programs or post-grad classes. Not about those issues. There weren’t many best-sellers on the issues that seeped into our classrooms. No sexy titles like you might find today … like “ Beer and the Back Seat” … which would kill two sins at once. Or “I’ll Love You for All of Next Week” … which might seem cute, but is likely to be an overly graphic how-to manual for very young teens in this age of sexual over-kill. That’s the sad trend.
Sexting is now a middle school sport. And cell phones are sex toys. Hazing never really goes away … it just morphs into some new ugliness. Today, schools are nimble emergency responders … making mighty efforts to cushion kids for any and all eventualities. Lots of schools have figured out how to deal with very different students with very different issues who weren’t part of the landscape even a few years ago. Not an easy feat when the student body itself is lost in the weeds of immaturity. Lots of adults become stumble-bumblers in such situations … and it’s often these kids who sort of tutor us big dopes.
My point? Where does generation after generation of teachers get their wisdom for things like this? … and for other topics that seem invisible to outsiders? Who whispers to them?
Who makes the greenhorns less green and the naive less naive? Who gives the next generations their reality booster shot? … and gets them to understand the nuances of their craft? Who oracles them?
Know who? The folks walking out that back door. And they’re leaving in droves. They’re walking away from the New Nonsense and the New Idiocy. They’re leaving because they have something the New Intruders have never possessed … integrity. And they won’t ever compromise that. And they won’t betray kids. Not ever.
This sudden exodus isn’t just the usual changing of the guard. Nope. When this brigade of Old Souls … these Gray Heads … gather up their experiences and box their lives and leave for good … they’ll be packing up decades of wisdom that will no longer be at the ready for the newbies who are never, ever as ready as they think.
The most important things learned about teaching happen in whispers, asides, or in simple observations. It happens in fable form and in funny-sincere recollections of long disappeared characters. And it could happen anywhere … at any time. In hallways. At a copy machine. Or the parking lot. In a stairwell or in an empty classroom … very late in the day … when the school goes silent save for the sounds of sloshy mops and things on squeaky wheels. And now those splendid souls …the Wisdomers … they’re leaving. Vanishing.
And in their moving vans are the moving stories young teachers need to know … because those stories are informal survival guides. They’re reference material for soothing young souls and spackling torn hearts. What’s in those boxes are manuals for curing failure and repairing kids who’ve had a bottom-bounce. Those are medicine boxes with un-named elixirs for hurts of all sorts. And all of this magic is flying out the back door of schools.
Those master teachers are the antidote for this sick reform. But they’ll be gone when their wisdom is most needed.
Someday … not sure when, but someday … we’ll come to our senses. We’ll have a national mea culpa. And we’ll get our educational priorities back in common sense rhythms. But it’s not going to be easy at all. It’s gonna be hard stuff.
All of the wisdom whispers will have disappeared. And “starting from scratch” won’t be a cliche any more. It’ll be a reality.
Wish us luck. We’re gonna need it.
Denis Ian
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Well said and beautifully written, Denis.
Our district is putting in place an online PD management system where the principal can say “Oh, by the way, during my 2-minute drive-by walk-through I failed to notice anything about standards in your classroom, despite the fact that you had them posted, delineated clearly in your lesson plans, and used quoted verbiage from them while teaching. I am requiring you to take a PD class in Standards 101 for the next 6 months.”
We will have no recourse but to take whatever courses we are assigned or get fired.
This is supposed to be supplanting and replacing the old knowledge exiting the building. Laughable and sad and totally won’t work.
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Accurate, powerful.
The tragedy is that this loss of individual and collective wisdom has been planned, pushed as policy, glorified as exactly what needs to happen.
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This is just so disgusting on so many levels what is being done to teaching. Do politicians and school boards not think this will effect their communities and states having less qualified teachers and in turn less educated citizens?
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After reading this post in its entirety, I can honestly say (after several years of reading Diane’s many links) this one is stellar. We teachers (as every single human being) are all made of stars.
Just about all share their experiences, knowledge and wisdom here. This, in itself, is proof without all the detailed number data that we are not alone. But as much as we complain about the circumstances, we are all here in front of a computer, learning day after day.
No one has stated it more eloquently than Denis Ian.
Many thanks.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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There you go America – your priorities are mocked around the world! You don’t even realize!! Education is second most important to Health Care and you have neither! Just ignorant politicians who were educated by your own inept systems !
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The US isn’t alone. The UK has the same inept systems or they are worse.
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Good morning Diane, Thank you so much for all that you are doing for teachers!
Mark Eichenlaub
On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 3:25 PM, Diane Ravitchs blog wrote:
> Bonsai commented: “There you go America – your priorities are mocked > around the world! You don’t even realize!! Education is second most > important to Health Care and you have neither! Just ignorant politicians > who were educated by your own inept systems !” >
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@Lloyd Lofthouse – you were the first to reply to this post. Oh, I know the US is not alone. But I would not rather purposely put myself in front of a bomb. I so respect all you say (I read all the categories on your own site). I personally would rather get called back from my lay-off position.
I might add that I live with a Vietnam Veteran. He wants to shoot the Superintendent of Education (and the VA Health System!). The Superintendent of Education in my state WAS (as of last year) the Superintendent of the district where I worked.
I would prefer to just get called back to work. I guess that’s like a choice to redeploy, isn’t it?
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Most of the living combat vets I know from all the wars usually have one solution to deal with any problem caused by an authoritarian psychopath, and that is to shoot the problem. That doesn’t mean we follow through or a lot of authoritarian psychopaths would be getting shot because there are a lot more of us combat vets than them.
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I know. I understand that a little bit now. I was just surprised you wrote that first comment on this post using that “combat” language (you have done so before). I didn’t mean to criticize or insult you in any way. In so many ways, YOU are my teacher. Please everyone, go to Lloyd’s site. There is so much to learn from him! His books are well worth every dollar spent.
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Thank you. I hope some of what they might learn is what not to think or do. Learn from my mistakes and don’t repeat them.
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