Bob Shepherd returned to teaching after many years in the education publishing industry, where he developed curriculum and assessments. He writes about what changed while he was away. Thanks to State and federal mandates, he found himself ensnared by stand
I taught at the beginning of my career, had a successful career in educational publishing, and then returned to teaching at the end of my career. What a difference these years made!!!!
At the beginning of my career, I had English Department Chairpeople who were highly experienced teachers. The general attitude of administrators was that English teachers were the experts on English, History teachers the experts on History and the teaching of History, etc., and they pretty much stayed out of stuff that wasn’t their business. We in the English Department would hold regular meetings and discuss what was and wasn’t working in our classes, choose curricula, share tips and lesson plans and materials (many of which we had developed), and set policies and procedures. Once a year, the English Department chairperson would do evaluations of the teachers in his or her department. We made our own tests. There was enormous opportunity for innovation because we could actually discuss with one another various pedagogical approaches and curricular materials and make our own decisions. Our discussions/debates about pedagogy and curricula were vigorous and spirited. Many of the teachers were older women who had been doing the job for years. They were, almost to a person, scholarly and highly knowledgeable. The kids learned a lot.
I loved teaching. The only reason I left was that the pay wasn’t great. I started a family, and the year I left, I almost tripled my salary.
Flash forward 25 years. When I returned to teaching, everything was micromanaged. We still had department meetings, but these had devolved into sessions in which the Department chairperson read to us the latest mandates from our administration or from the state. Curriculum materials were chosen for us and were HORRIBLE, test-preppy crap. We were expected to follow a day-by-day script from the state. Formal evaluations were done four times a year by APs or the Principal, using mandated checklists, and in addition, there were four other informal evaluations and a system of demerits for not completing an enormous list of requirements (if, for example, an AP came into one’s classroom and the standard, bellwork, essential question, daily vocabulary, and homework for the hour’s lesson weren’t posted on the board; if one’s Data Wall or lesson plan book (each class had to have a two-page lesson plan in a folder) were not completed and up to date; and so on (there were hundreds of such requirements–far too many for anyone to keep track of them). In short, the Department Chairperson and the teachers had lost all autonomy. We were expected to do enormous amounts of test prep because what mattered–to the evaluations of the students, of us, of the administrators, and the school–were the scores on the invalid, sloppy, ridiculous state tests. My pay depended upon the school’s state rating based upon those demonstrably invalid tests.
And the teachers had changed. They were mostly young. They were not scholarly and not knowledgeable. “What’s a gerund?” the 26-year-old English Department Chairperson asked me, looking at the month’s required grammar topics. “Oh, what’s that book?” a fellow English teacher asked me about a volume I was carrying. Never heard of this guy. YEETS?”
“Yeats,” I said. “His collected poems.”
“Oh, I don’t read poetry,” she said.
The Reading Coordinator informed us that our 9th graders had to read ALL of the Odyssey, in her words, “the ENTIRE NOVEL.” She freaking thought that The Odyssey was a novel!!! When we met to discuss a classical literature unit, she had no idea that the term referred to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome.
And there was enormous churn. Between a quarter and a third of the teaching staff every year.
To teach at all sanely, I had to pretend to be following the rules while secretly making my own curricular materials in the form of handouts.
I spent most of my time carrying out required tasks that were of ZERO value to my students, most of the related, in one way or another, to supposed “accountability.”
The profession had been utterly ruined in the name of “reform.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Important correction: On reflection, I think it wasn’t the English Department Chairperson who asked me what a gerund was but another full-time English teacher.
I would hire that English Department chairperson in a heartbeat because she was extremely generous-spirited toward her students. All these people were working within a system of micromanagement from above, and the problems were mostly systemic. That’s almost always the case in workplaces where there are problems. The problem isn’t the workers but the system–in the case of K-12 education today, a system that has reduced teachers to do-bots in a test prep machine.
No one functions well–does his or her best work–in conditions of low autonomy.
Thank you, Bob Shepherd.
So much has changed since all those DEFORMS along with the expensive testing regime that says NOTHING about student learning or teacher accountability.
Personally, all this baloney clothed as REFORMS were nothing more than to DISS public schools and public school teachers. SICKENING.
Expensive indeed. 6-7 billion a year in state testing contracts alone, but that figure pales in comparison to the costs of computers to take the tests on, maintenance of those, test reporting systems, test proctoring, data walls and data chats, test prep materials, benchmark and other practice tests, and curriculum materials that have been devolved to be test preppy. Billions and billions that might go toward something actually of value, like wrap-around services and science and art supplies.
Bob, remember Thomas Wolf, “You can’t go home again,”
NYC has moved to small high schools, over 400 schools w/ about four hundred kids each, instructional teams, flexible block scheduling, advisory classes, far more personalized than 2,000 – 4,000 student high schools, and yes, younger, mobile staffs, and, schools and staffs more students and teachers of color.
Teaching w/ colleagues younger than your children is challenging- for you and your colleagues
Well observed, Peter. I think it was the American playwright Moss Hart who wrote of a damning review of a play by a young author that “You don’t castigate an acorn for not yet being an oak.”
Might have been the great British playwright Christopher Fry, author of the breathtakingly funny “The Lady’s Not for Burning.”
True, but the acorns also need to be humble and understand that the oaks actually have knowledge and experiences they can observe and learn from.
Why does the assumption exist that “instructional teams” equals improved educational experiences for students? Teams/groups are trendy, with no proof offered that this improves education.
By teams, I meant departments: the English Department, the Social Studies Department, the Mathematics Department. I believe it demonstrable, quite easily, that a group of English teachers working together knows more about teaching English that does the typical Principal or AP.
AMEN!!!
And that is precisely why I retired on the first day I was eligible.
It’s the boiled frog phenomenon. A steady drip, drip, drip over the years, stealing away the autonomy and professionalism of teachers and test prepping the curricula and pedagogy.
For nonteachers reading this: curricula = teaching materials; pedagogy = teaching methods
I was just thinking of the drip drip over time. Somehow, I never quite caught on to what was happening. The creep was very slow in the more affluent suburbs when I returned to teaching special ed at the middle school/jr. high level. When I moved to a high school in a low income minority majority community, it was a bit of culture shock even without recognizing that the rules were changing. By the end of my time there, administrators were creeping around to make sure you were following all the ridiculous administrative strictures. Anybody who knows what SWBAT is will be able to fill in the blanks. Bob did a good job of laying it out.
Here’s the thing, Bob. Back in the day, teachers may have had more independence and, at least among high school teachers, more scholarship. However, student academic success was not evenly distributed. Inequity in an out of schools intervened. New opportunities for women and continued substandard pay for educators intervened. A Nation at Risk, Reagan, and the drive to privatize and undermine unions intervened.
The clever slogan No Child Left Behind was a ruse to test every child’s behind in order to promote a failure narrative to undermine commitment to public education as part of a drive to turn away from government support for wellbeing of all while enhancing the wealth of a few. So yes, we need a turn back to respect for teacher professionalism. But any pining for the good old days without recognition of longstanding persistent inequity won’t move us forward.
I work on assessment. It’s humbling. Figuring out what students understand and using that to help them move their own learning forward is very hard once we take the time to probe for deeper sustained learning. So, I also think it is a mistake to assert that a return to teacher made tests (or the grades that typically came with them) is an easy solution.
OK, Arthur, I was with you until the last. I, too, have done a lot of work in assessment over the years. I have nothing but contempt for most of our standardized state tests. That teacher tests could use improvement is certainly the case. Doubtless, more time should be given to instruction on writing tests in teacher prep programs. But with regard to the choice between teacher-made tests with a lot of department-level teacher autonomy and top-down micromanagement and standardized testing, the former is, hands down, better.
I have been pushing against the misuse of testing since the 1970s. When some ELLs were found to need special education, I had to sit in a meeting and hear psychologists state that the student was found to have an IQ of 72 or 64. I would tell them that the student’s score was inaccurate because the student is did not have enough command of English and was not born in this culture. Tests were only available in English in those days. I fought this battle for maybe a decade until psychologists understood that what I was saying was correct. Even in the ’70s and early ’80s, there were scholars that recognized that standardized testing was biased.
Misclassifying students can have dire consequences for students’ whole lives. At the time classified students in NYS could not get a high school diploma. They got a certificate of attendance instead. How is this certificate going to help them support themselves?
Misclassifying students can have dire consequences for students’ whole lives.
Oh yes! But ofc the whole standardized testing phenomenon originated with the Eugenics movement. It was SOLD as being about meritocracy–giving the folks at the bottom a chance–as being a vehicle for implementing Thomas Jefferson’s notion of “a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents,” based not on birth but merit. However, its actual goals and practical results were perpetuation of the status quo and creation of a permanent underclass of rural people and people of color. The testing regime was and is extremely successful at that. What it hasn’t done, AT ALL, is close achievement gaps. It has, instead, perpetuated them.
My point was a shift away from standarized tests to giving teachers time and support for formative assessment, especially daily students work.
Totally agree with that, Arthur. Sorry that I didn’t follow you.
When I gave summative tests, one of my favorite approaches was to say to the kids: “Hey, guess what? Suppose you could buy a copy of Mr. Shepherd’s test a few days before the exam? Well, I just happen to have a copy. And I’ll give it to you for a very low price. OK. I was joking. In fact, I’m going to give it to you for free. Just a few things to note: He changes the order of the questions, and he rewords them a bit, and the questions are short response, mostly, with one or two little essays. Cool, huh? No guessing what’s going to be on the exam. And, you can totally discuss the answers with other students in the class. In fact, I’ll give you time to do that.”
Jefferson’s comment about the “natural aristocracy among men” is telling. This founder of American democracy was willing to continue to enslave others in order to maintain his own luxurious lifestyle. Doubtless he was, in his own mind, one of those natural aristocrats, a thought that assuaged his guilt. This ugly truth is not one that Americans want to look upon squarely because like others in other places and times, we love our mythologies. What Jefferson objected to was not the stark, extreme differences in the material conditions under which people lived but, rather, that such differences be a matter of inherited privilege rather than merit, as if removal of the impediment of hereditary restrictions were enough to make it possible for merit actually to be realized. This is, I believe, an immoral point of view, and its immorality is amply demonstrated by Jefferson’s quotidian life–the debt-ridden man playing the master and acting the libertine in extraordinary comfort in the big house while others lived like barnyard animals in the back with the purpose of serving him and underwriting, with their blood and sweat, his extravagances and debts. His political work toward ending slavery cannot absolve him. I’ve visited Monticello many times and always with revulsion. Giving people an equal shot at developing and expressing their talents (inherent, acquired, more commonly, both), an equal shot at life and the pursuit of happiness, involves a lot more than he dreamed of, for what are the liberties of a child who dies at birth because his mother cannot afford proper prenatal care or born into grinding poverty in a country that looks the other way? We have a long way to go toward creating a more perfect union. We have a moral obligation to ensure that the basic needs of every person are met and another to strive toward creating a level playing field for every child through compensatory government action.
How do you test a child to see if they acquired the skills playing an instrument or riding a bike. or any skill?
I assessed and evaluated writing performance through portfolio. I never gave more that a quick quiz for weekly assignment work.
My curriculum was one of 6, studied by Pew that was unique. MY test…their writing in June compared to September. MY methods: clear expectations, rewards for learning, and excellent materials and guidance for achievement. So simple..
“I work on assessment. It’s humbling. Figuring out what students understand and using that to help them move their own learning forward is very hard once we take the time to probe for deeper sustained learning. So, I also think it is a mistake to assert that a return to teacher made tests (or the grades that typically came with them) is an easy solution.”
Yes, working on any classroom assessment, activity and/or practice is humbling. . . if one realizes not only whether they are appropriate and are doing the job-which is to help the student learn and understand where they are in their own learning process (and nothing to do with what anyone else supposedly needs to know about it) but for the implications for all the students in the classroom as far as equity and justice issues are concerned which is I am taking from your second sentence.
However, I have to disagree with your last thought in some regards while at the same time agreeing with part of it. For me, well thought out teacher made assessments which are designed for the benefit of the students and their learning are the only truly just and equitable means of assessing the students, which by the way I’m sure that you’re like me and realize that I was assessing the students 100% of time in some fashion or another. It’s that most will not acknowledge that that constant assessment is actually going on. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that aspect of the teaching and learning process.
And that is not to say that it is an “easy solution”. It’s actually the more difficult solution and far less costly than the other options of standardized curriculum and testing.
Grades? Well as I used to tell my students in the rural districts in which I taught, “Grades are a bunch of excrement of bovine origin.” Literally, that’s what I told them. They understood that fact! So we went from there in helping the students play that grade game. I made sure it was “rigged” in the favor of the students.
If the teacher makes the assessment, he or she can tailor it to the background, culture, experience, academic level, and other abilities of the students being served. This is more equitable than a nationally distributed, standardized assessment.
And, of course, tailor it to what has been taught in the class.
Amen
I’m arguing for support for teachers for formative assessment and moving away from standarized tests that neither support not diagnose learning.
I have not done a thorough investigation of district behavior across the country, but what you report, along with my experience in two urban districts in two states, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. While in college around 1980, I read David Tyach’s book “The One Best System.” The basic premise of top down management has been the thrown in the side of public education almost since its inception. Power needs to be given back to teachers in the classroom if public schools are going to be effective. It probably won’t be perfect, but it will be far more successful and student centered than what we do now.
Ironically, the test-and-punish occupation force in our schools has leadership, at the top, made up of business people, and there isn’t a business school in the country that doesn’t teach the perils of top-down (Theory X) management, as opposed to autonomous work groups (Theory Y). So, these business leaders OUGHT to know better.
Well, some of the so- called “business leaders” are people like Bill Gates who nearly destroyed his own company with top down micromanagement and ranking of employees and Laurene Powell Jobs, whose “business” claim is having married Steve Jobs. I guess she managed him pretty well.
Managed to get all his billions when he died, at least.
Remember, many of those grand business leaders didn’t finish their college education (nor probably put much into the time they were in school.)
As someone that had a long career in teaching, I agree with your conclusion about the dumbing down of content and pedagogy and the micromanaging. I had a very early master’s degree teaching English to speakers of other languages, and nobody in administration knew exactly what it was. I had total autonomy as there was no curricula and few materials at that time. Other than a few observations, I enjoyed the creative freedom I had. Over time the state got more involved in mandating ever increasing testing. I retired in the middle of the NCLB debacle when department meetings became data review sessions.
I taught in the NYC suburbs, but I think the red states like Florida have been far worse for teachers. When a state seeks to dismantle its public system, it will create hostile workplace and disinvest in education to support this objective. Florida is one of the worst states for badgering and demoralizing teachers. When I meet retired teachers here in Florida, most of them left before retirement age because the working conditions and pay were abominable. Districts are always scouting for teachers, but they are having a harder time finding naive victims that are willing to be punching bags for right wing policies and politicians.
I taught in Flor-uh-duh as well. In order to turn a temporary English teaching certificate into a permanent one, a person had to earn 300 ESOL credits online. I thought it great that this ESOL requirement existed until I actually started taking those classes. The class materials (I took a LOT of these) were terrible–full of errors in grammar, usage, mechanics, and fact; lacking in basic understanding of contemporary linguistics; replete with instruction in the obvious and mindless busywork. For each lesson, we were supposed to post a “Reflection.” I took to posting for these critiques of the instructional materials, which were abysmal.
My master’s degree from back in the day was like a degree in applied linguistics with lots of useful content. My degree gave me lots of useful tools, and I went back to get certified as a reading teacher to help them even more. Many states have watered down the requirements because they need teachers for ELLs. There is a lot more do teaching ELLs than holding their hands, wiping their tears and singing a round of “Kumbaya.”
YES!!!!
I have long been upset by the fact that linguists don’t talk much to the folks in English teacher preparation programs. If they did, we long ago would have had a grassroots revolt against the linguistically puerile portions of the Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] (CC$$)–those parts that deal with the acquisition of the syntax, morphology, semantics, and vocabulary of a language, in particular, as well as those portions that deal with acquisition of “speaking and listening skills.” These, in the CC$$, I’ve described as being as thought someone handed David Coleman copies of Galen, the medical works of Hildegard of Bingen, and the 1858 edition of Grey’s Anatomy and told him to write new standards for medicine based on those. Almost completely pre-scientific.
The only good thing about those classes is that they did teach some actual knowledge about the law regarding the teaching of language learners. That part was valuable.
Again, the instructors were great, if overworked for little pay, and I suspect that the quality of the instructional materials had to do with the limited budgets the state had for putting these together.
From the trenches, YES. I, too, was involuntarily transferred (they closed our program that worked) back to the “regular classroom” after 20 years working with at-risk high school students to teach 8th grade English and social studies. From the early ’90s when I first started (one test per year, art, music, and creativity) to who knows what (2019-2020), nothing made sense to me and it was so far removed from “student needs” I was going insane. So, being “Charvet Rogue Rider of the West,” the only way to make a difference for the kids (reading levels 2 -11 all in the same class and others with behavioral/undiagnosed learning disabilities and needing glasses — geez 10 kids couldn’t see the board) was to differentiate and create my own materials as well. It was the only way I could survive. I created my own tests (very easy and had the students help by creating the tests as well — a very useful study technique) based on what they actually studied. But my advice from the experts, “I called you into my office because we have complaints from parents that you are not teaching the curriculum.” Novels were not used in place of some other computerized garbage the kids (across the US ) referred to as “Study Stink.” I digress.
Study Stink. LOL. The kids aren’t fools. They know.
Great comments, “Charvet Rogue Rider of the West!”
I started teaching in 1974 (when P.L. 94-142 came along (later, I.D.E.A,), in SpEd. Those were” golden ages” of ed. As I recal, things started going downhill in the ’90s (testing, testing, testing, but SpEd kids used to be exempt for a time). By the time I retired in 2010…awful. The year I left, my school was “reconstituted,” & teachers were shamed, due to “failing” test scores. (& these came from the ELL & SpEd subgroups, NOT the gen. ed. pop.)
Anyway–welcome! Haven’t seen you here before, but hope you come back, again & again.
I “liked” this post, even if there was absolutely nothing to like about it.
The plutocrats got their wish. Well-educated teachers have been replaced by education-technicians. I think this is part of a two-pronged approach to undermine teachers and teacher unions.
Students have been treated similarly, especially with the elimination of student debt no longer being dischargeable through bankruptcy. Debt burdened ex-students have to shut up and toe the line because they cannot afford to lose their jobs. See any young people at demonstrations lately? No? I wonder why.
Just getting back to scratch will take a monumental effort.
A long time ago, while still teaching, I wrote about the disparagement being heaped upon the lecture mode of instruction. I believed this was in part because we had to paint something as “bad” in order to drum up the need to change. The lecture method was the primary mode of instruction when our educational system became the envy of the rest of the world. Could it be improved? Certainly. Should it have been denigrated? Nope.
I spent my lest decade or so as a teacher, providing help for students as to how to take advantage of lecture courses (read everything before the lecture, etc.) because their prior learning (mostly due to grade inflation) had not offered them the challenge to learn how to do just that. I still think there is a great deal merit front this mode, if the teachers and students are taught how to take best advantage of it.
There are many ways to teach and many ways to be a great teacher. Lecture is a useful part of the toolkit. I’m all in favor of giving students and individual task and sending them off to do it. But I’m reminded of two conversations I had with young adults.
I asked the daughter of a friend of mine who had just returned from her first year in college how it was. She said, “Wow. What a relief. We have people standing up in front of the class telling us things that we didn’t know before. Quite a change from sitting around in circles with other kids in high school goofing off and listening to their b********t.
I was interviewing a young woman, a recent graduate of a prestigious writing program, for an editorial job. I asked her if she knew the standard editorial and proofreading symbols for marking manuscripts. She said, “Oh, no. They didn’t teach us anything useful like that. We mostly sat around a bs’d about gender relations.”
Now, I am ALL IN for discussions of gender relations, but people who deride the lecture are clueless. It’s an important part of a teacher’s toolkit and always has been. The format can be incredibly informative and inspiring. Kids can end up saying, oh yeah, give me some of that!
I agree with this so much. There has to be a balance. The social aspect of school and peer projects and interactions are crucial. So I am not dismissing project based and collaborative learning. I value it.
But too much class time spent in peer discussions can have it’s limitations…. and can certainly involve a lot of listening b.s. – whether it’s in a 3rd grade classroom or a master’s level class.
We have had oodles of inservice courses where every 15-20 minutes we are “turning and talking” to discuss something. We have been “turning and talking” with the same colleagues about the same topics over many years. There is only so many ways you can say the same thing over and over again in these sessions – with the instructor and a district level admin floating around to listen to the discussion.
My favorite courses have involved a fair amount of “lecture” or strong modeling from the instructor – rather than just an instructor as a coordinator of learning.
strong modeling from the instructor. yes, yes, yes
a big and varied teaching toolkit. yes, yes, and yes again
What a great article! I remember an administrator from downtown posit that the scripts provided for my second graders were so immutable that she wanted to hear a teacher start a sentence in one room, and then when she stepped into the next room, that teacher would be finishing the sentence. They seemed to have this vision of an overwhelming number of lousy teachers unable to teach the material, that they needed to tell them exactly what to say. It’s not only insulting, it is antithetical to true learning.
Thanks for sharing this!
scary to know that this type of thinking still leads in ‘reform expert’ circles
Bob I am guessing that you are reminiscing over the period 85-05 give or take a few years. Yong Zhao speaks of these years, too. Creating tangible assets from the intangible. Education giving USA the edge over China, imagine that.
At least in CPS, teaching in the schools before that was low wage and sometimes no wage (yes, teachers worked for “pension credit” for a few months) And since about 05 it’s been a ratcheting up of the standardization, privatization, and the “non-negotiables”. I am blessed to have been a student in CPS for some of this time (I graduated 8th grade in 91). I had really good teachers because of the job qualities that you describe. They enjoyed going to work! Ten years left to go here I am not sure I am going to make it. They want me out. The junior teachers in “tier 2” are done. Their hybrid plan makes it plain as day. If this doesn’t do it, closing my school will. Biden’s new Ed Sec pick won’t save us. People won’t realize what was taken until we and it are long gone.
Bob Shepherd, thank you for this important perspective. I have great admiration for teachers trying to work in a system where ed reformers who care more about pleasing the billionaires who fund them than the students hold so much power.
However, despite all the problems you rightly note, I see that the education I got in the 1960s and 1970s was pretty awful compared to what my kids got in this era despite ed reform.
I know there is too much standardized testing today, and that does likely disproportionately affect the schools that teach the most at-risk kids, and probably they suffer the most. But my education back then seemed to be a textbook for each class, and learning the content in that textbook (plus reading some assigned novels in high school). It was not engaging. It was rote learning, and it had nothing to do with having a standardized test or a common core curriculum.
I do think that some of the changes in educational philosophy began for the right reasons, but they were taken over by people without scruples who would not admit they were wrong. The honest people whose goal was the students and not their own careers – like Diane Ravitch — left.
It’s a shame because if those billionaires and their sycophants had any scruples or principles, they would be interested in knowing what works and what doesn’t. No “reform” will work perfectly, but we live in an era where instead of listening to criticisms and working to make something better, people double down and insist that the reality is that their system is perfect.
Thank you to the current teachers that are in the trenches trying to do their best despite the deck being stacked against them. These continue to be challenging times for education and educators even if we were not dealing with a pandemic.
Yes, there are so, so many teachers valiantly doing real teaching DESPITE the mandates, often in secret, behind their closed doors:
So, Keri is not understanding your question, Javier. Can you rephrase it for her? The one about Mary Shelley’s knowledge of science? (Administrator walks in.) As I was saying, according to literature standard ELA.L.FUVM.666, . . .
The boiled frog is the perfect analogy. However, to mix metaphors it’s the boiled frog on a runaway train. De-professionalizing teaching has been boiling for years and the train ain’t stoppin’
In a bizarre way, however, mid-pandemic, it’s causing discussion at all levels about how do we assess if kids have learned anything?! Teaching has become so regimented, scripted, standards (in isolation) driven, and ultra-assessed – pulling that off online is virtually impossible (couldn’t resist) – – and that’s a good thing!
But so many teachers have been raised on reform they are stuck – not with technology – but planning and curriculum and authentic assessment. Too many have been “trained” as teachers and “managed” in schools – not developed and inspired by each other and instructional leadership.
We’ve been in the water even since the Governors met in the 80s and A Nation At Risk came out. Like the totally misleading “defunding the police” that gave the GOP all kinds of ad fodder, the “If another nation launched an attack… ” line from ANAR did us in.
The Governors and city boards salivated over Michelle Rhee. The idea of common standards (note lower case c and s) shifted from standards like NCSS or NCTE or NCTM where professionals debated shifted to Mississippi and New York should have the same bar so national common core evolved. NCLB… and the rest is details.
Many writing here were on that runaway train. We wrote newspaper column, journal articles, and books. We attended conferences…. We spoke at school board meetings…
No stopping that train. Politicians, privatizers, and profiteers prevailed. Diane and many commenters have informed and shared the experiences from the trenches well.
Yes – Reform ruined teaching. It infiltrated the profession as a profession.
From the ’50s on I had and have since observed hundreds and hundreds of remarkable teacher. They had the gift, learned the skills, and created new methods. (Fortunately many are still there and buck the system and prevail).
What are the colleges and universities turning out now? How did the curriculum offices evolve to operating just like the business office? Why did Professional Development become “training”?
However… In some bizarre way the pandemic has resurfaced the debate on LEARNING! The # of students getting Fs is outrageous. The primary reason is kids not (able to or just not) getting online. The rich get richer and … Teachers are working themselves to exhaustion. Relationships and interactive classrooms are taking turns talking.
So schools have either resorted to non-stop benchmark tests or no benchmark tests. For the latter – it’s resurfaced the debate: How do we know if kids are learning anything?
The professionals know!
I suggested, once, to my Principal, charged by district and state requirements to deliver so many professional development hours each year, that PA sessions could actually TEACH KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SUBJECT AREAS. I gave her a bunch of examples. I could do a session for English teachers on folklore motifs and motif indexes or using trees to model syntactic structures or on using memorization of short passages with syntactic forms graduated in complexity to increase students’ syntactic fluency. She looked at me as though I had suggested that we do PA on naked bodypainting. PA = modeling a lesson on practice of one of the standards for the test. That, or using some new online “instructional tool.” We all sat through hours and hours of PA and learned almost nothing we didn’t already know or that was of actual use in a classroom.
What is PA? Professional Advancement?
Yikes. I meant PD, of course.
We would do well to get rid of the term “skills” entirely in education, for the use of it leads to vague lessons from which kids take away no concrete, practical learning. It should be replaced with the term “procedural knowledge” (knowledge of how). The use of that term, instead of “skills,” would make it clear that what is required is the imparting of knowledge of step-by-step heuristics for accomplishing tasks–how do I make my speaking voice more melodic? how do I format a Works Cited page? How do I write a metaphor that works? The procedural knowledge in a subject area is, of course, in addition to the declarative knowledge (knowledge of the what, who, when, and why).
Your comments are spot on and insightful. The data mongers are destroying meaningful and creative instruction in the name of “improving” education. All the money behind the bean counters makes it hard to get rid of them. Maybe if parents knew about the invasion of privacy from all the data collection they would fight against it. Forcing students work on-line for several hours a day enriches the already rich while it bores students to tears. It is exploitation under the guise of “innovation.”
The practitioners of Deform Pseudoscience have ruined perfectly good words like “data” and “rigor” by totally misapplying them. Invalidly generated numbers aren’t data. Rigor refers to an argument in which each inference is correct (allowed by the axioms of the logical or mathematical system). The Education Deformers remind me of the New Age cultists who speak about “Quantum Realignment of the Mind/Body’s Energy Fields.” Total bs involving misuse of actually meaningful scientific terms.
Correction: Rigor refers to argument in which each step is allowed by the axioms and rules of inference of the logical or mathematical system.
Quite an indictment of what’s been happening in schools, Bob
When I started teaching we still had a “faculty” that did things together. Of course, that was before we went through a three-school merger back in 1999 on top of the acceleration of what could be described as our culture’s internet-based way of living now (at least for some people.)
I remember older colleagues lamenting the loss of having a “faculty”. I was lucky to experience some of that sense of community and I remain great friends with the people I worked with back then.
Even before the pandemic, life in a 21st century classroom was becoming very different from what I’d known. The students I teach are wonderful and so is our faculty and staff. But smartphones rapidly transformed almost everything. (On top of all the other craziness that you so accurately describe.)
How much of this is school and how much of it is the entire world? I think about that question a lot.
BTW I was going to head out and cut some firewood for our New Year’s Eve bonfire but it’s much warmer sitting here reading this blog, LOL. It’s a cold, dreary, pandemic day out there in my corner of the world. I went to get a haircut this morning over in Pennsylvania and there’s a simmering furor there that was scary. Lots of Trump signs all over the place still and people in the hardware store not wearing masks etc..etc…. We’re talking 15 minutes from the New York State border.
I love your posts, John. So thoughtful. And these details. Vivid. Memorable. You have a gift for telling engaging, important stories in a few words.
And I know exactly what you mean about feeling oneself a part of a faculty. That’s how it used to be. We have so many good people, now, young teachers, stuck in this top-down, micromanaged, mandated, numerology-driven nonsense like a moth who has flown into a restaurant and gotten stuck in treacle on a plate in the kitchen pass-through window, spinning, there, madly and hopelessly.
and politicians like John Kasich actually arguing that teachers should never have places like teachers’ lounges where teachers go only to say “Woe is us..”
@ciedie
I wonder what John Kasich’s thought are on a president who spends half of his speeches and twitter posts essentially saying “woe is me.” ??
And maybe Gov. Kasich should instead think… if teacher’s lounges are filled with exhausted teachers who need to process the stress of teaching…. maybe we need to support the profession to make it less stressful.
Great article, Bob Shepherd. The technocrats sure have taken over. Shrink wrapped crap for curricula, continued prssure on standardized test scores, love affair with bar graphs, pie graphs, color coded numbers and labels for students…if there’s no “DATA” administrators can’t function…even when the child has been at a school for over three years…with all teachers present and able to talk about him…and his areas of need….insufficient! Gotta’ have those numbers…
No recognition that young children learn differently that older kids…Early Childhood education includes third grade. Elementary school is just that; elementary.
David Elkind, author of The Hurried Child, coined the phrase “curriculum shovedown,” years ago…that’s been totally ignored…along with Piaget, Dewey, Froebel, Vygotsky, Erickson,Rousseau, etc.,etc., Gore Vidal’s famous phrase,”The United States of Amnesia,” is an accurate assessment of public education! How about the erosion of language? All the silly acronyms, ELA, ELD, MTSS, and all time favorite: the BIP.
All this in the context (at least in the school where I teach), of an ugly, neglected, decaying building….rust everywhere, peeling paint, cracked pavement, windows that don’t open, beyond depressing…it’s as though everyone is blind.
Schools reflect society…why isn’t that consistently referred to, and examined in depth?
Us teachers are sick of the hideous buildings, crap curriculum, often weak admin., standardized testing, sick of no music, no art, no performing arts, no beauty…really sick of love afairs with DATA and STANDARDIZATION. Not to mention inadequate pay.
PS it’s my 32nd year teaching (primary age students). I love teaching young children and the children of former students, love hearing from many former students, love hearing that often the first thing they ask is “Are you still reading The Blue Moose? The Whipping Boy? Mr. Popper’s Penguins, etc., It’s the good books and worlds I introduced to them (jazz music and jazz history) they remember.
Thus the value of your point : autonomy
Thanks!
Oh, the value of those idiosyncratic teacher passions in a classroom! Yeah, oh yeah. I first learned about jazz from Ms. Harrison. She was awesome. That’s the stuff kids remember.
Social studies teacher for 20+ years…most years I try to do my own things in class while also trying to make it look like I’m accepting the BS from admin and my incompetent department. Incredible amount of administrative mandates, tech crap, etc.
Love the story of the girl who sat around listening to nonsense during her group work in HS…”20th century skills” my butt! I agree with those who know that content/background knowledge is a key to reading comprehension. I try hard not to sell my students short in this area.
When I was English department chair several years ago, the principal directed me to run meetings only about tech and data. I left that school. At my current school, the English chair doesn’t even run department meetings. The principal brings in presentations by the district and vendors about tech and data. I’m trying to change that but, in addition to resistance from admin, there is also resistance from fellow English teachers who know only tech and data.
One of the incredibly valuable services that Diane Ravich provides is that like Studs Terkel, she collects and shares these oral histories, these teachers’ stories. So important. So valuable. A check on the official nonsense. Thank you, Diane.
@Janet Harrison
The Hurried Child – Yes!
(one of those books where the title says it all and the rest is details). And, so many others.
We knew they were relevant, but not cautionary tales.
Tied to this post’s effects of reform on teaching – the “hurried” feature is more prominent than ever. If ever we needed professional teachers, it is now – not classrooms with scripted lessons and teleprompter teaching instead of teachable moments – moments that sadly compete with the Hurried Child in 2020.
“Curriculum shovedown”
If that were our only problem (well it is because the only-data-matter folks are fixated on teachers “using the pacing guide with standards-based lessons submitted in two-week lesson plans that read like masters theses). Kids in class lost 1, Opportunity Gap filled 0.
I digress.
The Hurried Child was the perfect middle school reality check. Adolescent kids living in an adult-wannabe world forced upon them. HA! Compared to today – that was as innocuous as could be.
9/11 – We know the hundreds of stories from those watching helplessly in the tri-state area – kids and adults with relatives and friends of friends working in the towers and surrounding blocks. Teachers knew what to do! And, it wasn’t the the exit ticket on CCSS 1.A.1 Author’s purpose.
I remember on 9/11 not allowing middle schooler to watch. The towers had just been struck. What if there had been a third – a fourth – simultaneous attacks beyond the three locations. In 2001, should an 11 year old even with the security of a teacher in the room be watching murder live on TV? Today – it’s the nightly news and what they see walking home past the yellow police tape surrounding a porch.
And in 19 years… social media, cell phones, instantaneous simultaneous broadcasts of terror and horror.
If ever we needed professional teachers – and thank goodness for the millions fighting the standardization – it is today.
But this generation’s teachers teaching children and content with relevance is not in the reform job description.
And, let’s not forget the incubators of innovation. Charters will save us. HA!
As another book comes to mind – Cullum’s “The Flowers on the Window Sill Died, Teacher, and You Just Kept Teaching.”
Today with Covid, it’s my mother died, and you kept on teaching…..and testing in some of the states which is wrong on so many levels.
On the news tonight there was a story on how the grades of high school students have declined during Covid. This is particularly true in large urban districts where there are lots of poor students and those without a lot of access to technology.
Bring out your dead, and make sure your gerund worksheets are finished by tomorrow!
This is what I experienced during the thirty years I taught from 1975 to 2005. I think the dividing point was President Ray-Gun’s lying and misleading “A Nation at Risk” report in 1983.
After that flawed and F’d up report, everything started going downhill and teachers were not treated as professionals with trust and respect but were blamed for every failure, even the endless failures of the deform movement that is still dismantling and destroying public education in this country. I still remember some Republicans running for the U.S. Senate that blamed the skyrocketing growth of prison populations in the U.S. on the pulbic schools, not the real reason, Nixon and Reagon’s war on recreational drugs.
The second major blow came with NCLB in 2002 and the Common Core Crap Cesspool based on greed and the ignorance of non-educators inserting themselves in the entire K-12 education process as in Bill Gates, and he is still at it.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Bob, this is a well-written piece that exactly captures my observations over the years, watching my school and department swirl ever downward. Thank you.
Thank you. I know that such comments strike a chord with many teachers–all those who know alternatives to serving as a functionary of the Ed Deform occupying force in US K-12 education. Those who give into it and serve it are collaborators. Vichy swine. Some do so because they don’t see any alternatives. Others because it’s easy and comes with a lot of perks. Collaboration is always easier than is resistance.
And now, it has been long enough for teachers who have grown up in this melieu and do not know anything else.
@spedukr – That’s what keeps coming to mind for me too. If teachers have been indoctrinated in this education environment – it becomes what you think is best for children. Words like “research based” and data make it all seem so science-based and certain. That’s what makes change difficult at the school level – half of the teachers are fairly new and wanting to make a good impression and accept that what is happening is normal. It takes several years of being in the classroom to start to deliberate about what is best for learning and children.
Seeing another learning model and how children react and learn in that model/environment – and comparing and contrasting learning environments over time, could support understanding of what we discuss here – what’s best for learning and healthy development.
Whatever happens – it needs to happen at the federal and state level to be fully impactful. Hoping the Biden admin is able to undertake a major change in education that aligns with the thinking in this blog.
Yes, hoping that that will be the case, but not holding my breath that the Core-d out ELA instruction will disappear any time soon.
Scrolling back through this post, the thought came to me: what a better use of time it would’ve been on some of those tedious “inservice days” to have read all these comments then discussed them in relation to our school.
One of the best “staff development” days we ever had was years ago when our newly minted superintendent was just learning the ropes. (So we were left to our own devices. He didn’t know any better -or worse, I should say, ha, ha.)
For part of day we got to talk and just not in our departments. A phys ed teacher organized all of us. The question we discussed was something like, “What’s one small, doable change that people might be able to think about that would make your job easier?” We broke down into smaller groups and just went around the circle and focused on that idea. Then later we came together as a faculty.
I vividly remember one of the secretaries in the front office saying that first thing in the morning was incredibly hectic and if teachers and staff could hold off on questions etc… until later in the day that would help. (I still follow her advice -gladly…I can hear her voice in my head.)
The principal at the time said she needed help out in the hallways between classes (DItto: I still do that. I’ll actually get up out of my desk sometimes and go out in the hallway because she said that one thing all those years ago.)
That’s funny isn’t it.
I try to ask my students the same sort of question. I ought to do it even more, especially now when the kids are being absolutely hammered by stress.
Anyway, Bob, thanks again for the comments and to everyone who contributed, too. I printed this post out. It’s a keeper.
Great observation, John! Excellent advice for Principals and district PD personnel.
Some poems remain apt (unfortunately)
America Ruins on Duncan
America ruins on Duncan
The motto of “Reform”
Where every school is flunkin’
And “dough” nut$ are the norm
Absolutely, totally wonderful. Especially since Dunkin (donuts, that is) is ( like the ed “deforms”) an overrated mess. The drive thru line yesterday at the Dunkin I drove past was crazy, yet the local coffee joint down the road was in and out and the stuff tastes better.
But, yeah…very funny.
Bob’s experience with the last 20 years of education reform has been validated by my own. Thanks Bob.
I’m late to this post, but I recommend for everyone on here the wonderful anti-Reform satirical novel by Roxanna Elden titled: “Adequate Yearly Progress.” Mandatory reading for all teachers and great to read over the break.
Oooooo!!!! Will definitely check this out. The whole business of Education Deform as it is instantiated on the ground, in classrooms and administrators’ offices is soooooo ripe for satire.
“To teach at all sanely, I had to pretend to be following the rules while secretly making my own curricular materials in the form of handouts.”
I taught K-8 special ed kids through my career. Severe problems controlling their emotions and most either had learning disabilities or had fallen so far behind that they’d given up.
During my first decade of service, my colleagues and I developed an effective ELA and Math program using a remedial text and workbook program along with what our collaborative experiences had shown us really worked with our population. Contracts. Extrinsic leading to intrinsic rewards. And more. It wasn’t perfect but the kids bought in and we saw realistic progress. A high level admin came in one day, masquerading as a tech who had to add some software to our computers. He told the principal it was the best special ed reading class he’d ever seen.
All that changed with the coming of education reform via Mayor Mike Bloomberg. They averaged out the functional levels of our classes and gave us that one grade level general ed curricula per class. Every minute of every day was dictated to us from orders on high. We were basically told to abandon everything we’d been using through years of experience.
I’d kept some of the remedial series’ books and made copies at Staples. Tried to be low profile. Got caught by the AP one day. She told me that if she ever saw me using those books again, she would personally burn them. She literally said that.
These kids were volatile and, predictably, their behavior went downhill in a big way. And, just as predictably; their academic progress faltered, proportionally.
For what purpose…? Surely not for the well being of the kids who I faced, every day.
At one point, copies of the extremely Common Core-y Pear$on My Perspectives literature program showed up in my class, along with an email saying that we were required to use it. I reviewed the program. Then, I opened to one two-page spread in the book and detailed 26 errors in grammar, usage, punctuation, definition, and fact on that single spread and emailed this to my colleagues. For the rest of the year, the books remained in boxes in my room except when I took them out to have the students read a story or poem that happened to be printed in them. I was teaching high-school American and British literature and wanted to make sure that my students got a good survey, in each case, of the main cultural and intellectual trends in American and British history from the beginning to today. The Pear$on books, which were obviously thrown together quickly and sloppily by nonexperts, were almost completely useless to me. But I was “required” to use them. So, I had a choice. I could cheat my students and use those books, or I could basically write my own on the fly and try to stay under the radar. I chose the latter course.
cx: a good survey, in each case, of the main cultural and intellectual trends in American and British history, as reflected in the literature, from the beginning to today.
A handful of years ago I explored jobs at some of the big education publishing companies and applied for a few. It was a very long shot as I had no connections and was simply submitting a resume through their site. Looking at the job descriptions, rarely were there any positions that required teaching experience or expertise. Even the jobs titled “Education Coordinator” or manager often required sales experience and not teaching experience. It really opened my eyes.
I’m not going to name any names here, but years ago I worked at a small educational publisher that was gobbled up by a much larger one. There was an editor there, in his fifties, who had for decades been in charge of the ongoing revisions of a textbook program that had 80 percent of its market. He was a profoundly learned man in his subject. He was summarily fired and replaced by a 20-something with an MBA.
One way to land these jobs these days is to do freelance work for one of the development houses, such as Six Red Marbles, Words and Numbers, or Monotype Corporation, on various K-12 projects. Warning: Educational publishing freelance jobs, these days, don’t typically pay what they used to, and they often involve lots of tedious coding for software applications.
One way to break in these days is to do freelance work for one of the educational development houses. These are companies that develop materials for the educational publishers. The work doesn’t pay what it used to and often involves a lot of tedious coding for software applications, but a few of these jobs provides relevant material to put on a resume. Brown Publishing published/publishes a directory of educational publishing that includes contact info for the educational publishing development companies. It just merged with another development house, Six Red Marbles, so you might have to contact them to see if the directory is still available. I’ve done work for Six Red Marbles and had very good experiences with them. Same with Words and Numbers, in Baltimore, which just merged with Monotype Corporation. I ran development houses myself for a time.
Thank you. I will check out those companies. At this point I am leery of going in that direction. Even if I were to get a position I feel like I would be a cog in a wheel without any connection to students.
When I first started doing this, one could work directly with the ed book publishers, and the pay was MUCH better. Development houses contact with the publishers, then they subcontract minus their administrative and other overhead, their profits, and project costs. So, there’s less left for the freelancer, alas.
Sounds like there is less left for anyone with a brain in their head. It’s all flash and bang. No substance.
It’s horrible. When I first started doing this work, many years ago, I would write coherent chapters on subjects like The Elements of Drama or Writing a Film Script or The Transcendentalists. Now, it’s 10 exercises on Standard ELA.L.FUVM.666.
Yes! I have lived ALL of that…and more.
I am coming to the end of my career (37 years!) and, yes, I could have given up the ghost at the beginning of this year, but am sticking it out for a couple reasons; to see how this is going to be handled (clumsily), how were kids going to handle it academically and emotionally (especially after the March to June fiasco of Pass/Fail grading), and , of course, how would I handle it. Suffice to say, at this holiday break, it’s going just OK. Not great, not terrible, just ‘going.’
Among all we are dealing with, my district has decided to go ahead and evaluate us anyway. No pressure, right? Well, trying to engage in this fashion of Zoom isn’t quite the fun we imagined: 90 minute classes, (“are you ‘on camera, or not?”), background distractions, parents asking questions “during class!!! or not there at all. And the famous, the name is there, but no voice behind the student. The novelty has, indeed, worn off.
I know this sound like I’m the old cogger just milking it, but it is not. I mean another year won’t make a huge impact on my pension. But the difference is watching my colleagues marshal on and be creative as hell, while putting a backseat to those standardized assessments and focus on those “in class.”
There will certainly be a digital hangover what will be utilized into the “now normal” set of circumstances that have come our way. I don’t see that as positive, but my hope is that the 20-somethings that inhabit the teaching ranks, they need to remember what brought them here in the first place…otherwise it’s a job, not an avocation or a calling.
[T]he difference is watching my colleagues marshal on and be creative as hell, while putting a backseat to those standardized assessments and focus on those “in class.”
Wow. Wonderful!
At the start (NCLB) of the standards-based, test-threaten-punish reform movement of the 21st century we saw an undue emphasis on academics and the testing/data craze left many special area teachers feeling marginalized and less relevant than ever. This elicited a very damaging but understandable reaction on the part of special area teachers: they, in turn, placed an undue emphasis on academics! Phys-ed teachers requiring research reports. Art teachers administering exams. Shop teachers handing out textbooks. Music teachers doing much of the same. And an absolute explosion of homework requirements. Can’t say I don’t blame them but the effect this had on kids was, in the end, worse than counter-productive. We now had parent/student staffings with six or seven teachers each providing lists of missing classwork and homework assignments. We deluged kids in every class (even math) with the one thing they disliked the most: writing. If less is more, what we did was make more much, much less.
The emphasis on soft, so-called, 21st century critical thinking skills, discovery and constructivist methodologies, project based learning, and other mushy, vague and subjective approaches – courtesy of the second wave of reform (CCSS/RTTT.ESSA) pretty much drove the last nails into the coffin of teaching and learning that matters the most.
The problem with “ruining the teaching profession” is that it ruins the students’ learning environment. It ruins the teaching (which is a learning position) and learning process.
Nailed it, Duane
Stop keeping us in suspense! What’s a gerund!? Enquiring minds want to know!
But on a more serious note, while reading this I was thinking the next step will be to set x% of lessons to be YouTube videos taught by celebrity teachers, and the working teachers will be relegated to marking those homework assignments that cannot be marked automatically, and maybe running supplemental workshop sessions in the richer school districts.
to working as test proctors and as technicians to ensure that the students’ computers are working so they can do their Common [sic] Core [sic] worksheets on a screen
Ook: roflmsao (the “s” is for “sweet”)
Politicians have done horrible things to education
They have, indeed!
Adminimals and GAGA Good German teachers have done horrible things to education. There is plenty of blame to go around.
Obama’s memoir has just one brief entry for Arne Duncan. He had so much on his plate that he just turned the education portfolio completely over to Duncan, leading to the devastation wrought by David Coleman, eventually leading all the way from kindergarten to (once he became president of the College Board) the GED and SAT tests. NAEP scores during that period plummeted to well below what they would have been had the CCSS never been adopted. Fortunately, Biden’s education platform appears to have no mention of curriculum mandates.
That’s interesting, Sandra, No question that Obama inherited an absolute mess.
I remember an interview with Arne, in which he was asked about his decisions and policies. He was quoted as saying that he was just doing what the President told him to do.
I’d like to think that your assessment was the more genuine and that Arne was lying. Except for his record on education and appointing those who’d created the financial crisis, in charge of fixing it…I liked Barak Obama.
Teacher evaluation has had a lot to do with this. I just retired after 30 years of teaching, and in Michigan education became a competition between teachers – the evaluation rating system was based on comparing teachers, then competition rather than collaboration became the goal. If you’re going to compare my teaching to others, than why would I share ideas with colleagues? If my ideas were “better” than I would receive a better evaluation rating, and would be considered more valuable by my school district or building than other teachers that I was working with.
The other factor that I wonder about is the impact of Teach for America on the teaching profession. I’ve corresponded with professionals, especially in higher-ed, that see TFA as being a detriment to the profession rather than something that has enhanced the profession.
Oh, Robert, you nailed it
My story is also one of incompetence in school management,, but also of intentional attacks on recognized, experienced professionals in service. They needed to rid our nation of the educators who Know WLLL…What Learning Looks Like.
The words were used when the Univ. of Pittsburgh ran the seminars for the National Standards research. The team went into the classrooms of tens of thousands of teachers in 12 districts in the US, to see how the most successful teachers followed THE PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING, (Harvard: Lauren Resnick’s thesis)
When Harvard (and Pew) chose me as the NYC cohort… because of the success of my curriculum., they studied my practice for 2 years
. I attended the seminars that came to District 2, when I brought the standards research there. I saw the final VOLUMES OF THE PERFORMANCE STANDARDS ON THE SHELVES at DISTRICT 2, when I was thrown into THE RUBBER ROOM.
No qualified teacher will ever be allowed to educate the masses. Ignorant citizen are required to ensure serfdom. The pandemic gave them a forward momentum from which I ear we will never recover.