A teacher in Baltimore County public schools described her experience on this blog with the promotion of technology in every classroom. The former superintendent, Dallas Dance, resigned a few months ago, after committing measly $300 million to new technology, and is under criminal investigation.

The frenzied pushing of laptops for every elementary student 1-5 in Baltimore County had some big ripples beyond the obvious. It was also tied to purchasing brand new reading and math curricula. Both were horrible, for various reasons. The reading program package came without sufficient quantities of required resources–I had 6 hard-copies of books that 2 reading groups (with 8 students in each) needed to use simultaneously. There were about 6 different titles of books for each of the 6 units, each with only 6 copies. We were supposed to access the texts on the laptops, rather than use the paperbacks. Super! Except that on any given day, our local server would crash from overload, or the county server would crash due to overload, or the power in our building would go down, or some glitch in the program would keep throwing kids out of the program or eating their work… These issues were in addition to a crazy, difficult-to-access, error-riddled, age-inappropriate, never-piloted (!) county-written curriculum that SORT OF followed the Pearson curriculum. There was no writing curriculum until teacher complaints led them to try to stuff one into the reading curriculum. There were no samples of how the kids’ work product should look. The rubrics were vague. Nobody in the county language arts department could reliably answer any of our questions because it was a revolving door there. Oh, and the head of the department when I left was none other than Verletta White. Prior to that she was an area supe for my part of the county.

And that is just some of how crazy language arts was. There were similar issues with the new math curriculum and Pearson program.

In addition to all of these overnight curriculum, software, and hardware changes there were drastic changes in HOW we were expected to teach, interact with, and assess our students. On top of that, we were saddled with the idiotic, easy-to-abuse Charlotte Danielson evaluation system. Anyone who principals or area supes felt couldn’t hack it was forced out. You know–teachers with many years of experience. Some teachers, like a colleague of mine–who were eligible to retire, but wanted to keep teaching–promptly decided retirement looked great all of a sudden.

Others, like me (21 years in!), were not eligible to retire and had to simply resign. I lost my salary which was half my family income. I lost my health benefits, including those that would have followed me into retirement. My pension is frozen. Getting hired in another district would likely be dicey, as I am sure I would be asked why I resigned after 21 years–at the same school, no less!–instead of asking for a transfer. All districts in Maryland were on a similar track with PARCC, so using curricular and methods changes as a reason would not be helpful. (I am still searching for a job in some other field, but employers are not interested in 50+ year old entry level employees.)

This happened at schools all over the county. The school communities–children, parents, neighbors, and colleagues–lost our teaching expertise; our experience working with diverse learners, colleagues, and stakeholders; and our contribution to the continuity of our schools’ institutional culture. The amount of taxpayers’ money wasted for such a rotten outcome is criminal. The only good outcome was for Pearson and Hewlitt Packard. They are still counting their money.