Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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How Would You Answer This Question?

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2012 //
8

A reader writes for our help.

I would say to these students: No one can promise you will land a job, not in this or any other field, but I can promise you that teaching is the most exciting, rewarding, and important job you will ever have. It will change your life, and you all have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of your students.

What would you say to them?

I wrote to the celebrities [who are in “Teachers Rock”], and I hope all our messages make a difference. I have a pressing question that I hoped to have answered for myself by now, but I’m still searching. In less than 2 weeks I’ll be standing in front of 26 20-somethings who are preparing to be teachers. They’ll be taking at least 36 units of education courses over at least 2 years, completing countless hours of student teaching, passing several standardized tests, and expecting to make a positive difference in children’s lives. They’ll also be expecting to get a teaching job and keep it. Many readers of this blog must be in a similar place. What shall we say to these hopeful, idealistic, young people?

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Not Needed: Carrots and Sticks

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2012 //
4

A librarian and a teacher of teachers responds to the New York Times’ editorial demand for more carrots (merit pay) and sticks (firings) for teachers in schools with low test scores.

Re “Carrots and Sticks for School Systems” (editorial, Aug. 6):

It is not surprising that many school managers do not distinguish between high- and low-performing teachers. Most schools are still based on an industrial model of moving students through an assembly line of classes and grades to achieve outcomes measured by standardized tests.

Standardized teaching can be done by mediocre teachers using scripted lessons. Excellent teaching requires well-honed judgments about individual students based on observation, information from a robust assessment program, and a great deal of knowledge and informed intuition about young people. These qualities are not encouraged or rewarded by a culture of standardization but rather of professionalism.

Nor will teachers improve using “carrots and sticks.” Excellence does not come from negative reviews, the possibility of promotions or even salary increases based on merit. Excellence is encouraged by the intrinsic rewards teachers seek, which come from a school’s commitment to their continuing development as professionals.

JAMES O. LEE
Devon, Pa., Aug. 6, 2012

The writer is an adjunct instructor at Saint Joseph’s University.

To the Editor:

Your editorial, which calls for punishing and rewarding teachers based on the academic growth of their students, is mired in outdated notions of motivation. As Daniel H. Pink makes clear in “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” 21st-century workers are motivated by three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose. This is especially true for educators.

At my diverse urban public school, my principal rewards good teaching by praising and videotaping the best teachers, setting them up as role models for the rest of the faculty. He chooses these master teachers as members of the leadership team, which advises the principal on both school policy and mission.

Teaching is a collaborative, communal effort. Teachers were file-sharing back when files were housed in metal cabinets.

Punishing and rewarding teachers based on student test scores only incentivizes a drill-and-kill, teach-to-the-test mentality. It puts teachers in a competitive rather than collaborative environment.

Good principals have always been able to get rid of bad teachers. We need to focus on the recent research on motivation and move beyond carrots and paddling.

SARA STEVENSON
Austin, Tex., Aug. 6, 2012

Categories Accountability, Merit pay, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

This Texas Teacher Wishes They Would Let Her Teach

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2012 //
17

Being a Texan, though long removed from my native soil, I always react with a start and with more than a bit of pleasure when I hear the authentic voice of a fellow Texan. We Texans don’t like to be pushed around. We like to express ourselves with vigor. Some of us care a lot about learning. Here is a Texas teacher who is fed up with the bullies who want to fence her in:

The exact same thing is happening in Texas. The scripted lesson plans actually cause me anxiety. Teaching is an ART! How dare they try to tell me to throw away all my lessons that facilitate my kids’ learning, so I can follow their “teacher” proofed script. Never!! Nev-uh!! I shut my door, and when they walk in, I fake it if I have to. My kids are so sweet; they just play along. Once the devils leave, I teach REAL reading and writing–no multiple choice for my kids! Never!!The full parking lots at schools every Saturday is just sickening. What is that? We sent men to the MOON, and we never took these horrible low-level tests! All this tutoring is ridiculous. Our kids are simply bored and tested to death! They do just enough to make it through the day!Instead of attacking the real educational issues that stop instruction, the issues that de-motivate students, education prescribes the same old thing, tutoring and scouring “data.” You’d think they’d realize it isn’t working. It’s not about the kids!It’s not about the kids. A colleague has been telling me, “It’s not about the kids!” I am finally starting to believe her. I just could not wrap my head around it, but it must be true.

Not to mention, I’ve literally heard and seen the extreme bullying of many teachers by these ex-three year teachers turned administrators. It is shocking. I understand we all need our jobs, but to take abuse. I just don’t get it. To take abuse from ex-teachers who did all they could to RUN out of the classroom as soon as they fulfilled their “in-class” requirement. Disgusting. Those that SHOULD be principals can’t bear to leave the kids behind. How ironic.

If I were some of these administrators, I would be afraid. How can they treat people so abysmally and feel safe. Dress code for the kids? I’m more worried about a teacher going Koo Koo for Cocoa Puffs. Goodness forbid, but these fool administrators consciously and unconsciously make many of our schools an UNSAFE environment.

Women need to stand up; we have the power to change the world; this field is abdicating its responsibility.

At times, anger is useless, a wasted emotion. But when it comes to education, ANGER is desperately needed, anger that fuels a change.

 I teach MY way. I have been looking too, but I RESENT being pushed out of a job I absolutely LOVE!!Yes, I plan, but I am an artist, I sketch out my plan (sometimes I am inspired by NPR on the drive in, and my sketch is in my head…and that is OK!!!). But really, do you think I actually write those lesson plan NOVELS. Do you think they they are “legit.” Laugh out LOUD as they SAY: NOPE. ALL FAKE! I print them out and pop them on the WALL. They walk in, it makes them happy (incompetence!). Basically, I shut my door, and I teach. Many times I don’t shut my door, and I TEACH.Hence, my Title I “low” performing students can write better than most American college students! Guaranteed! They probably write better than President Bush’s grandkids and President Obama’s little girls! I TEACH! I WILL NEVER FOLLOW A SCRIPT. I will never become a slave to a system that is hurting our kids in the name of PROFIT! Let them pull their bullying on me (they dare not), and I will make a SCENE!!

Our kids can read and write well enough to be inspired, and once inspired, they take OFF. And yes, on test day, they remember the teacher that did NOT torture them with worksheets, and they will pass that piece of crap for us if not for themselves. They know. Like us, they are just trying to make it through, and we should not let fear stop us. We need to get them reading and writing and speaking.

TIP: You know what I do as far as grades for my HIGH performing students at my “low” performing school….So I can give them feedback on their papers, I AUTO FILL GRADES!! YEP…tweak them a bit to cue me in to what they individually need help with, and we simply get to learning!! I ask them, “Is it all about the grade?” And they smile and they say, “Nooo, it’s about the learning!!” ha ha… adorable.

Once we show kids how to create what we expect them to know, they never forget it. Once we show kids how to create, they can apply, and they will remember it.

I tell them: “I did not come in to teaching to teach you how to bubble.” In return, they just smile and shake their heads in agreement.

As you know. Multiple choice=meaningless.

–Talk to the kids; they know.
–Walk down the hallways; you can “FEEL” good teaching. You don’t even have to
come into the room. All of us that work in schools, all of the students in our schools,
know who the FEW teachers in need of serious development are…
–Administrators need to get out of their offices. Stop spending hours documenting
dress code violations, documenting student not wearing belts! Get INTO the
classrooms. Teach some lessons!
–Evaluate students (we have our degrees) on PRODUCT not worksheets.
–Evaluate students through portfolios, through their CREATIONS, not their ability to bubble. Students will continue to suffer, and the testing and textbook gurus will become wealthier if we keep blaming teachers. Teachers are a SCAPEGOAT. I’ve seen it, and it sickens me.My country, this country, sent men to the MOON without weeks of testing torture, without daily torture of teachers. How did we do it? How did we become a world leader, a superpower without weeks of testing and benchmarking? How did we ever make it without multiple choice tests?

Let’s put the “training” focus back on the kids: Teachers have degrees. Teachers actually enjoy productive professional development that is NOT held on Saturdays by bully administrators (I DON’T go when I am being bullied).

I recommend a moratorium, an executive ORDER, on TESTING and a moratorium on teacher evaluations. Those of you who think all is the fault of the teacher, you have been BAMBOOZLED. Ask yourself, who MAKES THE MONEY by blaming the passive teacher? Follow the money folks, and you will find the answer.

Let’s put our money towards paying independent evaluators to peruse student portfolios. This will immediately stop all the teaching to a test. Out of fear, many teachers are teaching to a test. I have heard countless teachers say they DON’T teach writing because they are tested in READING. What the heck? How can leave out writing. Reading is invisible. Unless a kid writes or speaks, the OUTPUT, how do you know they GET it!? You don’t! And you never will with a multiple choice TEST!!! It’s about CREATION America! When you do, you remember. When you create, you use imagination. When you use imagination, you are thinking. There is no thinking or creating going on with a multiple choice TEST and being all consumed with a teacher’s evaluation!

It’s a double edged sword–teacher performance is being based on kids’ test scores. How dare you place a test score on my teaching for some of my students who only come to school ONCE a week! How DARE the SYSTEM do that!

If teachers were FREE to teach on the foundation of a LITERATE society (it’s all about the reading and the writing folks!), you would kick yourselves for being so worried about all the “HORRIBLE” teachers who come into this field to hurt children and take abuse and have to listen to the rants of administrators who ran out of the classroom at the first opportunity.

Leave us alone! Evaluate administrators on their leadership, on their ability to retain teachers, on their ability to coach, on their ability keep their teachers happy. Hello? If teachers are happy, then the kids will get the best of us. Help administrators who are afraid of the “hard” conversations. They are so weak; we get mass emails over the silliest things because they don’t want to confront the “few” below mediocre teachers.

I don’t have time to proofread, but I have never been more disgusted in my life, and I don’t have TIME…school is about to start… But, all of you who are NOT teachers…all of you who are teachers that have been lucky enough (I was for three years) to have a good administrator…all of you who have never taught, just give it a try before you delude yourself into thinking you have a clue.

Oh, and by the way. Just because YOUR KID CAN PASS a multiple choice test, JUST BECAUSE YOUR school district has “TOP” performing schools, your kids and your district and your school are simply MEDIOCRE.

It’s called dumbing down the curriculum!! The curriculum is too shallow! Instead of depth, our kids will not be the orcas of the ocean, will not be the sharks…we are a becoming a nation of guppies, hanging out in the shallow end.

ALL OF YOUR KIDS ARE BEING UNDER-SERVED, regardless of economic level. I know several brave teachers that SHUT THEIR doors and SIT on all the curriculum BS, teachers who draft bogus lesson plans and continue to sketch out their lessons, differentiating instruction instead of following a SCRIPT, but you can’t blame those wonderful, amazing teachers who are afraid. They want to make sure their kids can pass that TEST or their EVALUATION will be TRASHED.

Woo hoo, your community has a 100% pass RATE on a multiple choice test (I’m so angry, I am laughing out loud, scaring my poodle)!!!!

I am afraid for my country, a country that sent men to the moon with NO standardized testing!!!

SHAME on all of you who have fallen for the HYPE.
Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Texas

A Teacher in a Charter School

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2012 //
26

A teacher in a charter school comments:

I have worked in a charter school in an impoverished area for several years. I am a teacher by trade and by nature and I am patient, caring and kind to my students. Teaching is my vocation. I agree with what is being said about charter schools. The children are NOT getting a better education in fact they are getting a worse one. The sense of community is not there and more importantly the eyes and ears of the community cannot be utilized to watch over those who run them because these corporations are run more than not outside of the state they are operating. Where is the “voted in to office school board?” Oh yeah that’s right we have a CEO and a board made up of people from all over most who have never taught. Charter schools are about the MONEY people. Keep your money in your community and do not allow charter schools in your community. I would love to find a job in a regular public school and be in a union. Charter schools are sweat shops for teachers. I don’t have a choice right now but I do know that my days are numbered in a charter school.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

A Call to Retired Teachers!

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2012 //
7

Several readers have pointed out that retired teachers are free to be outspoken, because they can’t lose their jobs.

This teacher explains what retired teachers did in one community:

In Rockford, IL, a group of retired teachers and parents heard the cry for help from their active teachers. They formed an organization (W.E.E.: Watchdogs for Ethics in Education), and set about doing fact-finding work: they researched, went to meetings and took notes, filed an FOIA, and then presented their facts via a fact sheet to the community. Their efforts–in large part–resulted in the departure of their reviled Broad superintendent! (The next one was better, and he also knew that W.E.E. was on the case!) So–get your retired teachers out there to work with parents and community members (don’t involve active teachers–they’re too busy teaching, and their jobs might be threatened), and have at it.

Categories Broad Foundation, Teachers and Teaching

Do Parents Always Know What Is Best?

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2012 //
181

This post turned out to be controversial.

It is the view of one teacher.

Other teachers disagreed, and i printed their views too.

This is my view of the role of parents: .https://dianeravitch.net/2012/08/16/what-i-think-about-parents/

The State Commissioner of Education John White memorably said in defense of school vouchers: “To me, it’s a moral outrage that the government would say, ‘We know what’s best for your child,’” White said. “Who are we to tell parents we know better?” 

This Louisiana teacher disagrees. She says that parents should expect professionals to know what’s best when it comes to education. She says that parents and teachers should work together, but that it is irresponsible to assume that parents always know what’s best for their child.

I am  tired of this attitude about parents knowing what is best for their children. Parents are easily swayed by politicians, talk show hosts and preachers.  They rarely understand how schools work unless they are teachers themselves or have relatives who are teachers.   If their child broke his leg they would not try to fix it themselves even if they did not have health insurance. They would take the child to a health care professional.  So what in God’s name is wrong with taking your child to an Education Professional?  This debasement of teachers and deprofessionalization of of K-12 education has got to go before we get a whole generation of uneducated, dysfunctional adults.

Certainly they should  have a say and be part of the decision making about the child’s education  but parents also starve, beat, tie up, and rape their children.  They also spoil them rotten and don’t expect them to do anything and teach them that they are “entitled”.You have to have a license to drive a car, for your dog, and to practice most professions.  No license is required to be a parent.  I have also seen parents demand inappropriate programs for their child and not accept the truth that a child with a 30 IQ should not be mainstreamed into a college prep program.  I had a parent swear that her multihandicapped son could rollerskate when he could not even turn over on his own.  But I had to clean dried feces off the little boy’s butt.

I agree that some school programs are bad.  They have no vision for the children’s success. They think poor kids are in a pipeline to prison. I have known some bad teachers, some lazy, some incompetent, some functionally illiterate, two drunks and some just not bright enough to teach.  But at least 95% of teachers do their best and are competent and do better as they get experience.  Some of the best teachers I have known started as paraprofessionals.

Programs may be inadequate or inappropriate for some students but that is not the fault of the teachers but of the politicians and upper administrators.  That is part of why I stayed in Severe/Profound.  I could pretty much do what I wanted because most people thought my children could not learn anything.  I could keep away from the politics pretty well until I came to Louisiana.  But this place is a mess from hell.

Categories Louisiana, Parents, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

Shocking: Common Sense in Iowa

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
5

The Des Moines Register published an important and wise editorial. It shows that someone in the mainstream press is still thoughtful and wise.

It seems that Governor Terry Branstad wants to see a much healthier Iowa. So he is urging people to lead healthier lifestyles.

Funny, he didn’t blame the medical profession of Iowa. He didn’t set standards for their daily practice. He didn’t pledge to fire the bottom 5-10% of doctors.

The editorial begins:

Gov. Terry Branstad has talked repeatedly about making Iowa the healthiest state in the nation. To accomplish this, he wants residents to eat better, exercise and “take responsibility” for their lifestyles. He has not suggested Iowa doctors do a better job. There have been no proposals to pay physicians in a different way or require a minimum grade-point average for incoming medical students.

Why not? Because such proposals are obviously ridiculous. No one would lay the responsibility for the complicated task of improving the health of an entire state on the professionals working in health care.

So why is the governor fixated on teachers when it comes to the complicated task of improving education in Iowa?

The governor blames teachers for student achievement or lack thereof and has a raft of proposals on what teachers should do to shape up.

He doesn’t say that poor health is the doctors’ fault. But low test scores are the teachers’ fault.

Let’s hope that Governor Branstad sees the illogic of his views and begins to treat teachers as professionals, for all the reason laid out in Iowa’s leading newspaper.

Categories Accountability, Teachers and Teaching

Test Scores Drop in Pittsburgh, But Why? UPDATE!

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
12

Test scores dipped in Pittsburgh for the first time in five years, and the graduation rate is flat.

Here are some possible reasons.

Budget cuts.

Teacher layoffs.

Budget cuts and layoffs mean larger class sizes.

Schools will be closed, and teachers are uncertain about where they will be assigned.

One thought: budget cuts and turmoil do not enhance learning.

Both cause anxiety among teachers and undoubtedly among students as well.

Time for leaders in Pittsburgh to think some more.

Newsflash! This tweet just arrived:

More to it than turmoil & budget. Gates driven reforms not working. Community misinformed. Teachers blamed.

I forgot that Pittsburgh is one of the districts that received a big grant from the Gates Foundation ($40 million) and adopted the Gates’ approach: data-driven instruction, Gates-style teacher evaluation, etc. Pittsburgh was one of the Gates’ prize districts. We will wait to hear what Bill Gates says about this.

It seems clear by now that the Gates Foundation has never reformed any district, but has no hesitation telling districts what to do so that every teacher is in the top quintile.

Their constant meddling makes you long for the days when all they wanted to do was create small schools, not tell everyone what to do all day.
Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teachers and Teaching, Testing

How NCLB Redefined Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
8

From an article in Salon (to which I linked yesterday). This is the passage that many people identified as most relevant to their own lives:

“Since 2001, when, for the first time in the history of federal education policy, George Bush’s No Child Left Behind linked school and teacher assessment — and cash rewards — directly to children’s standardized test performance, teachers have been, too often, nothing more than the getters of the scores. What matters in this calculation isn’t the person in front of the class, what his expertise is, what he thinks, about anything. Teachers are no longer the scholars. They are not wise or trusted. They are not valued for their knowledge or ingenuity, but for their ability to abide, to “buy in,” to “manage” a classroom, punch the biometric clock and agree to all things. They are the middlemen, only, the vehicle through which pre-set processed information is handed along. The vehicle that would rarely question an administrator, let alone carry a sign. The vehicle that can be replaced, as I was, when my principal ‘released me from my assignment.'”

Categories Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teachers and Teaching

Why This Teacher Has Not Ended Poverty Yet

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2012 //
7

This teacher admits that he has not ended poverty.

But that doesn’t mean that he has been lazy or had nothing to do.

This is what he does every day.

This is typical of a teacher’s life today. I didn’t know I was suppose to end poverty. My bad. I’m already overwhelmed here in DC. Sorry. I ‘ll add poverty abatement to the list. Thanks for reminding me. In addition, I ‘ll also be mentoring, counseling, teaching, motivating, tutoring, breaking up fights, cheering on and at times being a surrogate father to three-quarters of my students. I do a few other things at school. I also have a life and a wife. I also need to eat and sleep. Plan and grade. Take a college class. Update my website. Make a few phone calls, attend a few meetings, send out and respond to a few emails. So before I forget. When will you join me in this care-free and under-worked profession? My door is always open. By the way, DC Public Schools is always in need of subs. Come on. You can apply online. I’m waiting.
Categories Poverty, Teachers and Teaching
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