Indiana has been taken over by the forces of corporate school reform, under a succession of Republican governors devoted to school choice: Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence, now Eric Holcomb. The public schools got a brief respite when educator Glenda Ritz was elected State Commissioner in 2012, but Pence spent four years attacking her Office and taking away its powers. Indiana has the gamut of privatization reforms: charter schools, vouchers, cybercharters.
The epicenter of the privatization movement is Indianapolis, where an organization called The Mind Trust has led the effort to destroy public education.
A teacher in Indiana recently left a comment about what she encountered when she returned to teaching in the public schools: lessons learned from charters.
She writes:
“I believe this “hypernormalization” can be traced back to the use of TFA teachers in our public school system. I had to come out of retirement to go back to the classroom for economic reasons and found an Art teacher position in the Indianapolis Public Schools. I joined a staff of over 50 teachers in a K-6 school with mostly young teachers (less than 10 years experience), TFA teachers, administrators with NO teaching experience and no teacher’s license, and a building with a high needs student population that was in complete chaos. The principal and assistant principal were only concerned only with “creating classroom culture,” or making sure that all the students walked in straight lines with a bubble in their mouth, hands clasped behind their backs. Data collection and testing was the driving force behind everything and it was of utmost importance to point out to any staff member their “numbers” to make sure the customers (parents) would be happy. With all of the emphasis on the outcome and none on actual learning, the building was reduced to violent fights and constant behavior disruption as evidence by the 12 staff members that were dedicated to behavior remediation. When I made comments or brought up ideas about changing the way behavior was addressed, or looking into more emphasis on learning and less on data collection I was regarded as a horrible relic from the past that had no idea how to teach in today’s public schools. I was force fed TFA propaganda, pummeled with articles about data from pro-TFA researchers, and forced to watch videos on the TFA Youtube channel to bring my thinking into the same place as the inexperienced teachers and administrators that demonstrated they knew nothing about how public schools work. As a teacher of over 30 years, with all kinds of recognition and accolades for excellence, I am regarded as an out of step relic who can’t possibly know what I am doing.
“TFA is like a virus that has infected the teaching profession and is slowly killing education. The sad part is that TFA’s philosophy is solidly grounded in the IPS school system, and I don’t see it changing with our GOP led state legislature imposing their micro management of IPS and other large urban school systems in Indiana; and I see the same thing happening in Florida, Ohio and many of the other super-reformy states.
“If any of us have any hope of stopping the normalization of what isn’t normal for learning, then we need to identify the sources such as TFA and end their participation in public education.”
Heartbreaking.
Thank goodness for the relics! These trained teachers know what it means to actually teach without too many outside influences because they taught before NCLB when teachers had a voice. They actually know how to teach young people without big brother watching them. They can learn a lot more from observing students than any bubble test can ever tell them. Proud to be a relic!
Who allowed TFA in public schools anyway? The state should have to abide by its own certification rules for teachers. What were the unions doing? They were taking money from Bill Gates and groveling for a “seat at the table?”
Most of the Mind Trust promoters came from the office of the mayor of Indianapolis. They had the political and monetary support to begin the takeover of Indianapolis schools.
Mind Trust should be regarded as a money-laundering operation for TFA and the charter industry–promoters of inferior environments for learning while claiming to have the entrepreneurial skills to create excellent schools.
A recruiter for TFA working for the The Mind Trust came to Cincinnati and got some PR. He was supposed to raise millions to add to some funds put into an “accelerator” by some deep-pocket citizens eager to demolish public education. He had been recruited by Bellwether Education Partners, friendly to all things charter. In less than a year, this fabulous recruit–intended CEO of the Accelerator–vanished from sight with little publicity.
Sadly, these so-called principals and administrators are trusted to give you a reference when you have to move on…which, of course, you will. Most of them have no ethical guidance and they honestly believe that if they rid the educational system of “relics” then they have done a valuable service. I was accused of having a “pre-set mindset” even though I have only been teaching a few years and was relying on my instincts as a parent, and the benefits of good old-fashioned common sense, to guide some of my decisions. Now I am hung out to dry again because I have never had a “real” principal. All of my principals have been new to the job (one of them was 28 years old), and the last one is a narcissist with no masters and no certification. I am searching high and low for a great principal that will give me the time of day. Wish me luck!
About TFA…I have already had my TFA administrator. She has now moved on to the charter school scene in Colorado, a state that is hurting for teachers because they keep hurting teachers…another smack-your-head-common-sense edreform paradox. I saw her picture recently, and I thought about how much sadistic fun she must be having ruining people’s lives. It is so sad that our system is allowing these monsters to hurt our public trust and our children. When hiring managers at “real” public schools are making decisions, they should also look at the place where the applicant is coming from and the qualifications of the school’s principal and district. If the principal has no experience or certifications, please, keep looking. Don’t make a mess of your career and put yourself through these hideous experiences.
The subtext of this, the foundational ethos is that the whole micromanaged, behavioral control based TFA / corporate reform atrocity can be understood as this business model: all citizens, all children their parents are viewed by deformers and the moneyed elites as being only one of two things, either a commodity to be exploited or a liability to be externalized or discarded. When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable must be the truth. Strip away the rhetoric and sales pitches and the truth of this is plain to see. The education sphere is most certainly not the only one where this ethos holds sway.
We relic teachers considered our students the precious future of our country. In doing our work, we thought we were contributing to the future of democracy. We handled curriculum change with a sense of gravitas that is missing today. We adopted new programs and curricula in a careful manner by researching, studying, piloting and evaluating before widespread adoptions were made.
Today’s students are the sum of their scores and the number of marketable data points. Integrity is gone, and curricula are focused on test scores. Students are no longer the priority. They are to be molded to serve the needs of the 1% and corporations that pay to play with the education of our young people. This is how the market operates. It creates winners and losers. The big winners are the wealthy that profit from endless experimentation with other people’s children. The losers are the monetized young people and teachers on whom this chaos has been inflicted.
I agree that TFA is at the root of so-called data-driven pseudoteaching. At this point, the maladroit, test-centric attitude has spread well beyond TFAers to infect our teacher colleges and district hierarchies. It seems like everyone I meet has accepted or is working toward a grant from some foundation or even directly from a tech conglomerate itself (as with Google Innovators). Our culture has been purchased. We forgot to write a receipt.
Follow the money. “There’s gold in them schools!”
So many middle-income citizens, while arguing that their own children have “good” teachers, are more than willing to buy into the theory that our nation’s “other” schools are struggling with the terrible handicap of having many, many “bad” teachers. Thus the endless grants pushing teacher training/teacher control.
I just sent this email to my State Representative and State Senator (Indiana). Here is my letter:
Dear Senator Niemeyer and Representative Slager,
I was horrified to read the injustices that are being put upon children in this state. PLEASE RECONSIDER WHAT YOU ARE DOING!! This was written by a teacher with knowledge and experience. I am a retired teacher with nearly 30 years in the system and I totally agree with her.
Would one of you like to get back to me? I keep sending emails and never get a response. What am I to think when, as an experienced teacher, I have no affect on your decisions.
Sincerely,
Carol Ring
(Address)
Schererville, IN 46375
(Phone number)
“…Data collection and testing was the driving force behind everything and it was of utmost importance to point out to any staff member their “numbers” to make sure the customers (parents) would be happy. With all of the emphasis on the outcome and none on actual learning, the building was reduced to violent fights and constant behavior disruption as evidence by the 12 staff members that were dedicated to behavior remediation….”
What Carol just posted is what MUST be done in my view. We can preach to the choir in blogs like this but we absolutely MUST raise our voices, ALL of us. Indeed there is a mind set out there that really believes in what they are doing BUT…
I remember well back several years now when we just HAD to emulate the GREAT Japanese school system which forced children into extra hours of forced learning. They learned to their horror as will we that by the time the children had graduated from high school they had learned two things:
1. To hate school and learning
2. How to pass tests. They had never really learned material, only how to regurgitate material which they did not understand onto written answer sheets.
We will also learn that horrific lesson at a terrible cost.
I hear other horror stories now from at least one principal where the brightest students have just given up. They can do the work but hate the pressure etc so much that they rebel. What an horrific state of affairs to call it education.
Mitch Daniels and the wife of TIAA’s CEO are on the Board of the Urban Institute. The Institute has an image of concern for civil rights and they post education studies. If their research merits reading I wouldn’t know because when I saw they had a pension project funded by the Arnold Foundation, I concluded their image of concern didn’t extend to the earned pensions of people of color.
Any pension project funded by Arnold is intended to get rid of pensions. John Arnold, formerly of Enron, doesn’t need a pension, so why should you? He is a billionaire.
Also on the Urban Board (1) promoter of contractor schools, former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams (2) Chair of MIT’s Economics Dept.
(about the same time that the Pew/Arnold dog and pony show testified about pensions in the state capitols, MIT Econ. grad., Prof. Joshua Rauh was also presenting his research, which has been soundly criticized by experts.
In a list of TFA contributors, the Indianapolis school system was the only public school identified as a donor. The Board must want to help education contractors who hire mercenaries.
I am the teacher that posted the comment on Diane’s post “Michael Hynes: The New Normal is Sick.” If you haven’t read that post yet, please read! It is a scary warning of what our public schools have become; schools that are being reduced to charter school/TFA mentality where behavior modification and emphasis on outcome only results is regarded as an effective way to educate our children.
After a month of trying to teach Art in a school where all the emphasis was on testing, preparing for tests and remediation for retaking the tests, I had an epiphany. I realized that not only did most of the staff come through alternative teacher training programs that emphasized only the outcome, but nearly all of the staff was a product of that type of education. Most of our young teachers were subject to a testing culture when they were in school, and they were trained to be teachers that perpetuate that attitude.
I only have a few years left in me; when I reach 65 I’m out. I hope those of us that know this is the wrong way to educate our children will continue to push back.
I can’t agree with this entire post and the comments more. Especially since very similar experiences happened to me also. Only I couldn’t make it the last year, because I was “laid off”. At age 64.
I am so sorry that happened to you.
Thanks, Teresa. It made me very sad for what seemed like a long time, and then I got angry. Still trying to balance the two effectively. Learning all about it, especially here, and from people like you.