Nancy Bailey reminds us that a decade ago, we were allegedly “Waiting for Superman” to save us, but that was a hoax because the film was propaganda for charter schools and privatization.
Today, as our nation fights a deadly pandemic, we know that the genuine superheroes, the ones who protect our children, are teachers.
Every state faces a budget shortfall because of the pandemic and its effect on the economy.
Projected job losses for teachers are huge.
Bailey advises: Don’t fire our superheroes.
Our children need smaller classes.
Hire more teachers.
How to pay for it?
Raise taxes on those with the greatest income and wealth.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Go, Nancy Bailey!
Thank you. Great piece.
It’s all a hoax. Here’s a group of experts to reassure us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o
100K Dead. Teachers, are you ready to go back to work?
Okay, I’m already wildly popular around here, so I might as well seal the deal.
This is a joke. Teachers as superhereos of the pandemic? At the same time the universal consensus on this blog is that teachers can’t return to the classroom so long as there is any threat of the disease? Even though you admit that children are miserable with distance learning? And you don’t see a contradiction here?
Every day healthcare workers and nursing home staff and other essential workers go in and deal with people actually diagnosed with COVID-19 and people in high-risk groups. My roommate earns less than $30,000 a year to work in a residential setting with people with mental illness. Because these people are in their own home, they don’t have to wear masks or follow social distancing. One of his clients has tested positive. He’s hardly alone among low-paid, under-protected workers taking care of the most vulnerable people day in and day out at considerable, actual risk to their own health.
But teachers (at least on this blog) are refusing to work with children, the lowest risk group even if it means that children rot at home “e-learning” (sic) for the rest of their childhoods isolated from their peers and missing all of what makes childhood, childhood.
Daily new case rates and death rates have gone down substantially in the past month and school is another three months away, yet people here aren’t even willing to consider re-opening schools, constantly pointing out all the problems with any and every safety precaution that schools could take. Nothing less than 100% safety will apparently do.
I’m sorry, but you can’t be a hero hiding in a bunker.
Go ahead and hate me. I won’t be back to read it.
I’m not sure what the answer is to school, dienne77. I find the rules for attendance to be unnatural and restrictive especially for young children. But children are becoming seriously ill too. That’s important to watch.
No matter what, teachers do the work, whether it’s remotely or in person, not the Gates Foundation and those writing up blueprints in the back room.
I wrote this because I’ve noticed lots of talk about school districts letting go of teachers.
Teachers make the school no matter how school is presented. The teachers role needs to be protected. The teachers I know have been working overtime to help their students.
Thanks, Diane.
every year with or without a pandemic, teachers go the extra mile 🙂
Hey, Dienne, wimping out? “Go ahead and hate me. I won’t be back to read it.” That’s a drive-by: you started it, stick around to finish it.
I agree w/you [& disagree w/Nancy Bailey]: teachers are not “heroes,” at least not in the context of essential workers that bring us food, medicine, healthcare, et al goods during the pandemic. We have more in common with office workers who are able to provide a diluted version of their services from home, safely, online. I’ve been watching my husband do it daily, & it’s quite similar to what I’m going through: it takes twice as long, but deadlines don’t change much, so he has to work more hours. The main difference: he’s been getting paid for those extra hours! In the longer run, though, it’s the same. Everybody was gung-ho for the first 2 mos., but in fact the project budget can’t support the extra hrs & isn’t getting increased, so demand for his time is dropping off, & obviously the deadlines will get pushed out. Something like that will happen w/school curriculum, too.
Not sure what you’re trying to say w/the repetition of “at least on this blog”… Are any teachers outside this blog just dying to jump back into 6+hrs/day inside a bldg w/a host of ppl from surrounding area– including children “the lowest risk group” [ = they can give it to us, but don’t worry not many of them will get it… really?!], protected only by whatever slapdash PPE & unenforceable social distancing is on hand?
Wondering what your bottom line is with this argument. Just trying to say teachers aren’t pandemic heroes [agree]? Or maybe, teachers should become pandemic heroes so that others can get get back– unsafely– to work [disagree]?
I think the overuse of the word hero is a particular American trait. We have a primal need to elevate everything and anything. Victor Klemperer observed how the Nazi regime adopted the style of “Americanisms,” the use of bombastic language to constantly apply the imagery of greatness, superiority, or ranking unquantifiable concepts. I remember seeing a sign on Washington state freeways, to “Be A Hero” and report on people violating HOV lane restrictions. Isn’t doing one’s duty heroic? Especially today? Isn’t that enough? Doctors and nurses are “heroes,” no doubt. But at their core, aren’t the really motivated and acting because of duty. You know who are getting too little notice as heroes? The custodial workers who keep hospitals and public facilities clean. And what about the grocery store workers who toil on and likely have few resources upon which to rely should they or their loved ones get sick. Let’s elevate the word “duty” and fulfillment of it and quit overusing the word “hero.”
Nancy is spot-on as usual. There are major financial hurdles. There are also serious health risks in reopening schools. The protected cost-savings from instructional delivery online will come at the unknown costs and inevitability the costs of student boredom, tech glitches, interruptions in many homes, especially in family/caregiving environments with several students and a limited number of devices.
The tech industry has invested in software that is supposed to ensure that unauthorized people cannot be online and completing assignments for students. These techniques of surveillance have a cost, and not just in dollars. The issue is privacy–keeping personally identifiable information of each student (PII)–from becoming the major commodity sought by marketers of tech and “convenient” software. I am not confident that teachers or students will be mindful of PII as “gold” to the tech industry and to predators, especially on ZOOM and other platforms now being promoted as a proxy for live interaction in a classroom.
There can be no doubt that high stakes testing should not be present in any way shape or form in the coming year, and preferably on a permanent basis. That means ESSA and like versions of federal micromanagement must given a funeral.
I hope also hope that AP is seriously impaired from the $500 million lawsuit filed by Fair Test. See Mercedes Schneider’s extended and brilliant treatment of this fraud. I hope the ACT and SAT tests find fewer takers. It is well known that high school GPA is the most reliable indicator of likely success in college. GPA should become the focus of campaigns to radically increase scholarships for students.
As a final observation, this is no time for the two teachers unions to be cuddling up with the pro-charter Center for American Progress. It may be a victory that some few charter teachers want a union. Good for them. But the charter industry as a whole should not be subsidized by the limited funds available for public schools.
I should have made clear above, I agree completely with your comment, one semantic detail excepted.
Hero or not, teachers do important work! Teachers not only plan and provide academics. They are a voice of stability and compassion in a world that often gives some children neither. Teachers offer social and emotional support.
As Bailey points out, if states would stop transferring money out of public education for privatization schemes, it would save lots of money that could be better used in efficiently operated public schools. What do states have to show for all their charters and vouchers? Maybe it is time to realize they offer very little value add, and they decrease the efficiency of the schools that serve 85-90% of the students.
Maybe it is time for parents to realize if they want decent public education, they are going to have to stand up and fight for it. DeVos, McConnell and Trump would love for your children to accept sitting in front of a screen all day pretending it is “education.” It is not a quality education, and we know this from research. They do not care about your children and their future! The children of the wealthy will continue to get a world class education. If parents want a decent education for their children, they are going to have to be advocates for legitimate public education. They are going to have pester their representatives and reject those that represent the forces of privatization.
Important post. This is the topic we should all be discussing. Raise taxes on Bill Gates and the wealthy, and fund public schools to keep class sizes from exploding. If disaster capitalism is allowed to take hold during the pandemic, public schools will be starved of funding for years and decades to come. It’s easy to raise class size, it’s a struggle to get class size back down again.
Heroes or not, teachers are important. Democratic society needs teachers, not Pearsonalized, depersonalized websites.
We must not let Bill Gates and the rest of the billionaires, who have been trying to replace public schools and teachers with tech for a long time, make Competency Based Education websites and AI grading get a foothold this year. Once the camel’s nose is under the tent, once the fox is in the henhouse, once they get all their cameras and microphones into every space and replace large numbers of teachers with apps, we will never get rid of them. We must come together in solidarity now to fight to protect public school funding.
People understand that our current situation is a crisis. Why should the working class have to shoulder the burden through their children’s education? Billionaires are writing tax codes to benefit themselves, and many successful companies pay zero taxes. We managed to offer real public education during the depression and WW II. On-line services are not an equivalent education, and all evidence points to its failure. There are also concerns related to student health, well-being and privacy connected to cyber services. Let’s stop calling on-line options “instruction” or “education.” Let’s call it services like Uber.
I wouldn’t even call online options services. They’re just websites. They’re products.
Cheap, defective products.
Product is another good word to substitute for learning, instruction or education. We should drop the privatizers’ jargon. It is misleading.
I agree. It’s always critically important to use precise language instead of the privatization industry’s Orwellian word soup.
The pandemic may very well change the public’s view of whose jobs are important, must be retained, and many if not most deserving better pay. “Essential workers” is a new and evolving concept. Early on, most grasped the crucial role of healthcare workers. Some have become aware of the rock-bottom pay of a huge subset ranging from EMT’s to bedpan-emptiers, janitors, home health aides. Less visible but equally essential are state, municipal & hospital funded staff providing daycare for their children. There is renewed respect for postal workers, and the whole spectrum of drivers, deliverymen, processing and warehouse workers making it possible to receive food, medicine & other goods while staying safe at home. I am grateful every week for the smallbizfolk running little stores where I can renew my supply of a few fresh items, avoiding the crush of less-observant folk at big grocers for up to a month at a time.
It’s hard to say precisely where teachers providing remote ed during pandemic school closures fit into this picture, in the public eye. That’s going to be an evolving concept, depending on the length of closures, and how much onsite ed can be accommodated going forward.
Two months ago even we teachers on this blog discredited the value of onsite late-spring pubsch ed, acknowledging the minimal value of the testing season. Though we know remote teaching is a poor substitute, we probably recognized some value for some students in a couple months’ at-home review sans tests. Parents/ public unlikely to grasp that comparison. But during that two months many parents gained increased respect for the profession.
However, parental respect has never been the big issue [see PDK polls]. Too bad parents of K12 students aren’t a bigger piece of the forces affecting pubsch funding. The general public rarely thinks much beyond K12 ed’s social role as babysitter for workers. Hence the ease of slipping into disrespect, lack of concern for overcrowded classes and underpaid teachers, complete oblivion re: low-qual digital ed programs.
I see two pluses coming out of extended pandemic public school closures & slow partial re-openings.
(1) a much higher value placed on the “babysitting” function. There’s a serious dollar value associated w/a service that allows home-bound workers to return to jobsites. Make them pay for it! They (govrs) may think all they have to do is dictate reopening FT. With health of staff & students depending on how it’s done, they’re going to have to re-think this as invitations– which, w/o proper measures, won’t get sufficient takers. Teachers/ staff need to stop acting like beggars and indentured servants to govt dictates.
(2) un-standardization! The country is a checkerboard of varying covid stats. Timing of staged reopenings will vary by weeks and even months. Stages may be clawed back here & there in response to rates of infection. Whether schools deal w/distancing via half-days, alternate days, youngest first etc depends on local facilities/ staffing: there will be big regional & even district-to-district differences. This fluid status will last at least through 2020-21 schyr if not longer. Seems to me that opens a big window on throwing the govt-stdzn monkey off pubsch backs! No way they can afford to monitor/
micromanage w/o stdzn.
“Too bad parents of K12 students aren’t a bigger piece of the forces affecting pubsch funding.”
I admittedly have a limited view, but I see these attitudes among too many of the teachers in my district as well. There’s almost a resignation, a feeling of, “it’s too big for us.”
This is fantasy. I am focused exclusively on my own city’s schools, but I assume it’s more or less representative of most local school districts, especially urban ones that rely heavily on state aid. The NYC education budget is going to get absolutely crushed absent a “make whole” federal bailout, which does not look likely. And even if there is such a bailout, this is a multi-year crisis. We are in triage mode. We will not be adding headcount. The only way class sizes will be lowered is by reducing the number of days each student attends school. Presto! You go to school two days only two days a week, but your classes are 1/2 the size!
To the extent there is any money available, it should go toward improving remote instruction. Investments need to be in technology (hardware, internet access) and the transition to a remote instruction model until a vaccine is available. Half-assing a halfway return to classrooms with social distancing measures without huge investments in remote-learning technology will just drive even more extreme neglect for an entire generation of students, while at the same time resulting in many additional deaths of teachers (and possibly students) from COVID-19.
Peter Mayo:
How do we strike a happy medium between online and face to face teaching? Will online learning continue to drag (higher) education along the business route or will it play its part in an overall conception of education as a public good? To end on an optimistic note, as hope springs eternal, I reproduce the words of one of the US’s most prominent educators, Ira Shor who wrote to me on this matter, stating “Critical teachers who question the unequal, toxic status quo will deliver critical education no matter the delivery system”.
Peter Mayo?
I agree, FLERP. We need to get past the fact that remote learning is inferior to IRL classes, & deal w/the reality of the next year or more. PT school seems a certainty when schools reopen, & many are planning for 100% remote for hisch, if not midsch. Any combination will require remote instruction.
You’ ve outlined priority #1, the delivery system. But equally important is fending off canned “personalized learning” sw in favor of teacher-created material, school videoconf platforms etc.