Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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A Principal Supports Due Process

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2012 //
17

In a response appropriate for Labor Day weekend, a principal comments on a post about “the biggest lie about unions“:

As a principal who has removed several poor performing teachers in the past few years, I agree with this statement. I also agree that behind every poor teacher is a poor administrator.

I support due process, believing that it is not only a right for employees, but that it also provides me with a structure that holds me accountable as I take action. I view this as a form of protection for myself as a professional.

As accomplished as I’ve become as a principal, I am not immune from mistakes and misjudgments. With someone’s career on the line, I appreciate having a process and a partnership with our union that ensures that we do what’s right not only for children, but employees as well.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Principals, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

What Do Teachers Do Best?

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
1

A good post by Glen Brown on his blog.

It explains very simply what teachers do best.

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

A Message to Teachers

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
6

Mark Naison writes that teachers are the nation’s unsung heroes.

He says:

….in spite of the forces arrayed against you, do not give up or
give in, because you are all that stands between our children  and
dehumanization . There is no metric that can measure love, there is no
metric that can measure compassion, there is no metric that can measure
imagination, there is no metric that can measure humor.

   You are our hope, You are our future.

  Stay true, stay strong. Someday the nation will recognize that your
vision, and your best practices, are the only sure path to improving
our schools. 

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Reformers Target Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2012 //
11

My friends at The Chalkface have thrown themselves into the fight to support public education, with a radio show, videos, and blogs.

Now they let you know–in language you won’ t hear from me–about the latest reformer attack on teacher education. The reformers want Arne Duncan to ignore the objections of major institutions of higher education. They want him to adopt regulations that would judge teacher education programs by the test scores of the students of their graduates.

Got that. The test scores of the students taught by the graduates of these institutions.

This is guaranteed to make teaching to the test the official doctrine of American education, top to bottom. It means imposing NCLB on higher education.

It is absurd. It is reckless. It is ___________. (Fill in the blank.)

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Higher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, U.S. Department of Education

I Became a Teacher Because…

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2012 //
3

A reader responds to an earlier post:

I became a teacher because I love to learn. Leonard Bernstein said, “When I learn, I teach. When I teach, I learn.” This statement has always held true for me. Teaching is my third career. I worked with non-profits for 7 years, practiced law for 10 years, then entered teaching in my 40’s. I have been teaching for 16 years in an urban public school.

Do I love my students? As teacher1blog notes, this develops over time. I love exchanging ideas with them, and helping them learn to become better readers and writers. I think they deserve an excellent education.

I wish all the “reformers” in suits would work on things that would help make that possible, such as adequate health care and decent housing.

Categories Education Reform, Poverty, Teachers and Teaching

I Became a Teacher Because…

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2012 //
14

A reader responds to an earlier post:

As Augustine said, an unexamined life is not worth living.  My single attribute was the ability to defend others.  After nearly 16 years in special forces I found myself shot up one time too many.  I had too many broken bones to keep jumping out of aircraft. Too many psychotic violent people had come too close to killing me.  As I woke up in intensive care again I contemplated the meaning of life.  I met a fine young lady that had volunteered to help a bunch of us soldiers with our therapy before returning to duty.  By divine providence I returned to the area for training afterwards and was hurt once more.  I found my soul mate and a new challenge for my intellect.  I no longer wanted to match wits with violent people, my busted up hands were no longer agile enough to safely disarm bombs as I once had, I needed a new reason to live.  Teaching gave me something important to do that used my mental talents, my wife gave me the courage to become a teacher, she said she could live with the lesser monetary status it would assure us.  I have no regrets other than not doing this sooner

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Reformers’ Double Talk

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2012 //
31

A reader comments on the conflict between what reformers say and what they do:

Ironically, sometimes, what corporate sponsored “reformers” say they want is the exact opposite of what they really want.

For example, this week on Twitter, Arne Duncan was promoting student involvement in mock elections and said, “Watch the MyVoice National Mock Election 2012 PSA series, and get involved!” However, this is a man who believes in, and personally benefitted from, mayoral controlled education, which has meant recinding the democratic rights of citizens to vote for and elect their local school boards and, instead, turning education over to mayors who appoint puppet boards and Superintendents –which is how he got his job as CEO of schools in Chicago. (As rightwing ALEC promotes.) Of course, Duncan got appointed to his current position due to cronyism and a Congress that had a majority of Democrats at the time, so he really believes in voting only when it might be to his advantage (such as re-electing Obama).

Other times, what corporate sponsored “reformers” really want is deeply entangled in the language they choose to use to describe what they say they are against.

For example, Gates, Rhee and Duncan have claimed repeatedly that teachers are not “interchangable widgets”, in order to combat unions, seniority and lane and step pay schedules. However, when it comes to teaching children, they think it’s fine to use teachers as “interchangable widgets”, such as when they promote Teach for America, which has placed people like Rhee, who had a bachelor’s degree in government, in a classroom teaching 3rd graders, who are not very likely to be studying much, if anything, about government.

This TFA placement practice still exists today, according to Barbara Veltri, author of Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher,

“most corps report that they are teaching out-­of-­field and in Special Education classrooms, where they arrive with about 5 hours of training”

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/category/teach-for-america/

I think the Common Core mandate on informational texts paves the way for using more teachers as “interchangable widgets” in classrooms. For example, English curriculum is likely to include reading books about people and events in history, which will make it easier to justify the placement of out of field teachers (not just TFAers), such as those with degrees in history teaching English classes –like Tony Danza.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Rhee, Michelle, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

Idiotic Pre-K Performance Assessments

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2012 //
8

A reader tells us what is expected of Pre-K teachers in New York CitY, where teachers must administer laborious tasks which are filed away and forgotten.

too late..pre-k is already being assessed with performance tasks.


In NYC we can choose one ELA and one Math bundle.

that’s what the DOE calls units–bundles. I’m not quite sure why.


In my district we were encouraged to use the five senses for the ELA and Math
Each bundle provides performance tasks for both.


We had to do a 6 week unit on the five senses. Do you know how much wasted time that was teaching the 5 senses over 30 days?
The performance tasks in ELA required children to draw a picture of themselves using one or more of the 5 senses. The math required telling a story using manipulatives and asking children addition and subtraction question.


If one is really interested you may find the bundles on the DOE website in the office of early childhood section.

Back to the assessment. After the children drew their pictures, each child had to conference with the teacher and tell the teacher what he/she had drawn and what sense had been used.


With the math we were supposed to have 4 children at a time but that really didn’t work out because some of them called out the answers. So one child at a time and the child was to give the response and articulate how she/he came to that answer.


Aside from many students getting very, very stressed, I am sure by now those of you who are teachers can calculate the number of hours it took to administer these tasks and then score them using a DOE created rubric for each.


This all had to copied for our files and originals sent to some suits somewhere in the universe.


I never heard back from anyone. Somewhere there are hundreds of sets of performance tasks bundles sitting in a room. I’m not sure what use they were to the suits. If you calculate the number of pre-k classes in the NYC DOE and multiply the performance tasks x2 (we had to do 2 in the fall and 2 in the spring..2 each of ELA and 2 each of Math) you can imagine that the DOE either has a lot of empty space or they took a storage unit somewhere in Manhattan to house all these useless papers.


In pre-k we have 18 children in all day and some schools have 18 and 18 in half day programs.


The administration of these tasks took hours over several weeks. Think of all the instructional time that was lost. When I started the assessment process I made private notes on how each child was going to do. I didn’t miss one.


I won’t even tell you how bored my kids were by the end of this bundle.

And they didn’t really learn anymore than when I taught the 5 senses in one week.
Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Why Did You Become a Teacher?

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2012 //
28

This reader explains why she became a teacher. She didn’t do it because she loves the children but because she loves to teach. What do you think?

Would you please address this statement which I heard last night in Chris Christie’s speech. It is about the idea that people become and stay as teachers because they love children.

I really disagree with this. Yes, teachers may love children but that is not really why they become teachers. I became a teacher when I went to college because I loved my subject matter and I loved learning. I thought that I would excel at the passing down knowledge and culture and making ties between history and literature. I loved doing research and I loved explaining things to people- children, adults, whoever would listen.

I asked my husband this. He is a lawyer. He always said he went into law because he loved the law. He never said I am going into law because I love my clients. Yes, I love helping them but not because I love them. I doubt that doctors go into medicine because they love they patients. There needs to be more to a job than loving those you serve. This constant confusion that a teacher is somehow part of the child’s family is wrong. As you well know, the problem with education lies with the problems of families.

I went into teaching when I was 21. I taught middle and high school in NYC and Sao Paulo. I am 44 and have witnessed the wholesale destruction of this profession. The powers above have taken the humanity out of this very human profession. I will still keep up the fight against the DEFORMERS but I have lost hope ever teaching again. Thank you Diane for giving voice to the teachers.
Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Look at This Great Poster

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2012 //
18

This morning I posted about Neil Armstrong and the letter he wrote to one of his teachers when she retired, thanking her for what she had done for him. She was his math teacher in elementary school.

A reader asked if she could turn what I had written into a poster, and I said “of course.”

Hours later, I received this link. Look at it: It is beautiful!

I am touched and grateful.

Categories Education Reform, Ravitch, Diane, Teachers and Teaching
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