Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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Another Way to Take a Stand

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2012 //
2

A group of principals in Long Island, New York, went to training sessions about the state’s evolving educator evaluation plan. When they realized that teachers would be graded on a curve and that half would be rated ineffective by design, they were horrified. When they realized that teachers who didn’t produce higher test scores would be rated ineffective no matter how highly they were rated by their principal, they were outraged.

And they wrote a petition to the State Education Department asking for a trial of this potentially injurious system.

Please sign their petition, no matter where you live:

1508 NY principals …over 1/3 of NYS, signed a letter, a detailed research based letter, against evaluating teachers by test scores. A few thousand teachers signed too. How about 1/3 of NY teachers signing?
Www.Newyorkprincipals.org

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, New York, Principals, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Read This. Share My Rage.

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
22

This story is heartfelt and it makes me very sad. It also makes me angry. What are the politicians and policymakers doing? Why aren’t they giving teachers the support and respect they need to do their work? When I read this, I wonder if the Rhees and Kleins and Gates and Broads and Waltons and all their buddies can look at themselves in the mirror and feel good about what they are doing to education in this country.

After 27 years, I, too, retired last August. Yes, it was a legitimate choice. I had always thought I’d teach at least 31 years; that was my unspoken goal.
Teaching has been my passion, having told my principal three years prior to my retirement that I had the best position in the district (elementary art teacher, pk-4). At the time, he argued, saying that he had the best job as the newly assigned elementary principal after having been a teacher only a handful of years. We laughed as we argued, and I told him with his leadership, our school would soar.
Unfortunately, this same man was soon named superintendent. Transitioning from teacher to principal to superintendent in such a short span of years, changed the person I thought I knew. Or maybe it just opened my eyes.
As superintendent, his new theme at last year’s opening inservice became “Get on the treadmill with me or get off.” Honestly. Together, the district staff watched a ten minute motivational youtube video of “Will Smith’s Wisdom” in which Smith (the actor) urged listeners to “get on the treadmill” as he stressed work ethic and journeying for success.
I had never thought of the parallels of education and treadmills. However, as I thought about the idea, the treadmill connection was apparent. So many of us are running ourselves ragged just by trying to stay on the treadmill. Even Race to the Top is a treadmill…state against state on the treadmill, with only a few winning those precious carrot-dollars.
After the third day of inservice last year, I submitted my request for retirement. I had to get off the treadmill. This was the day before the official school start. I had a 2 1/2 hour meeting with my superintendent (and NEA Uniserve Director) sharing with him my reasons, my concerns, and my fears for education locally and at state and federal levels.
I’m not certain he actually heard me, but I said my piece. It felt good. I highly recommend it.
I packed my 27 years of teaching and moved out by midnight that very night. Of course, before I locked my room for the last time, I left a lesson plan for each grade level for the next morning with each level’s supplies set out, the all-so-mighty curriculum book that I’d put my blood, sweat and tears into developing, a brief statement about how to use my filing system of three filled five-drawer file cabinets, the updated inventory, the short list of new inventory, blank seating charts for each class, the class lists—if you’re a teacher, you know the routine. It IS all about the kids, even as one is leaving.
Now, after a year of retirement, I know I’ve done what I needed to do for me and for my mental health.
In the nick of time, I might add. Next week, my district begins implementing a four-day school week. Oh, all the money we’ll save, AND it’s “all about the children.” Who are we kidding?
And thus, I can be an advocate for children in other ways. I am. I will forever be.
Categories Teachers and Teaching

Teachers and Principals Together

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
8

A wonderful comment by a principal. Build alliances:

Please do not assume that administrators are not every bit as disheartened as teachers at what is happening in public education. I am a principal. I taught for over 20 years. I became a principal because I knew that teachers need administrators who know how hard they work, how dedicated they are, and how much they give to the children in their classes. I became an administrator to ‘stand in the gap’ and allow teachers to teach, even in this high stakes testing, anti-teachers environment. It breaks my heart every single day to see what is happening to our schools. Every day my goal is to help the teachers in our school build the learning environment where our kids find joy in learning and our teachers find joy in teaching. And trust me, it is not easy. Sometimes I feel like the only way to DO my job well is to put my job on the line every day.

 
Categories Principals, Teachers and Teaching

This Teacher Invites Michelle Rhee to Come Home to Ohio

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
17

This reader has some ideas for Michelle Rhee and an invitation:

 As a teacher from a small city in Ohio, I resent Michelle Rhee making statements about my teaching based on a small sample set from inner city schools hundreds of miles away. The next question is- What sort of administrative support did these “poor experienced teachers” receive?Dear Michelle- You came from northwest Ohio. Why don’t you come back and talk to some of us? Talk to the many outstanding public school teachers who do great things every day. The one thing we have here is support. We support each other as fellow teachers where there is no or little administrative support. We can identify strengths in each other when YOU and so many others try to beat us down. When, due to your example, administrators tell teachers that, as a building, they are broken, we are able to look at each other and lift each other up again. That is what makes great teachers. We also have parents who support us, in spite of our administrators. Did your sample set have this?

It is disheartening to speak with younger teachers this summer. They are away from each other, and many are not looking forward to the new school year. Why should they? When they come together for convocation day, they will be put down by their administrators, told they are broken, and need to change or get out. Who, in any job, would want to work under those conditions? But they will. And when the administrators are gone, the teachers will again lift each other up, and remember why they are there- for the children. They will squeeze in ‘real teaching’ in between testing teaching, when the administrators aren’t looking. What part of this looks like freedom, or the United States I grew up in?

How different would our country be if all of us and our children saw our leaders complimenting each other rather than bullying each other. What if they could model working together for all of us? And isn’t it sad that this will never be anything but a dream?
Categories Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Teachers and Teaching

Only in Education Would This Happen

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
7

A retired teacher writes:

Education is the only field in which people (i.e., teachers) are moved around like chess pawns, often at the whim of
administrators. Would a law firm tell a lawyer who specialized in real estate law to switch to labor law? Would a hospital or medical group tell a gastroenterologist to become an ob/gyne? And yet, we have teachers (like me–duly certified, in numerous areas–because I taught special ed. and I continued to take classes so that I could better help my students in the evolving world of disabilities, inclusion,
RTI, etc.) who are moved from early childhood classes to middle
school, because, “Oh, you are such a wonderful teacher–you could teach anyone!” And, then, when you are not quite the teacher they cracked you up to be, they criticize you, make your life miserable (and this from other teachers!), and–instead of placing you back in the job for which you trained and were extremely successful in–they
transfer you somewhere else because NO ONE  “wanted” to teach
that class in that school! (This was successfully fought–and won!–
thanks to the union contract!) Further, in the last job (which lasted
twenty years), it took at least three years to gain the expertise.
Lucky for all concerned that it stretched to seventeen more. What a
gain for the students and parents!

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Do First-Year Teachers Become Ineffective?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
11

In response to the post about the “irreplaceables,” in which the New Teacher Project claims that an average first-year teacher is more effective than 40 percent of teachers with seven or more years of experience, teachers are asking the inevitable questions.

Why is education the only field in which experience is undesirable? In what other line of work would a first-year practitioner be considered better than those with years of experience? When you go to a hospital, do you want to see a doctor or a first-year intern or, for that matter, a new college graduate with no medical training at all?

And this:

If a first year teacher is more effective than one with seven years, what happens when that first year teacher has seven years? Does she too become ineffectual? I have been teaching for 16 years and know I am definitely better now than I was then. I also believe I will continue to get better with each passing year. This is nonsense.
Categories Alternate Route To Certification, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Who Is Really an Irreplaceable Teacher?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
11

We have lately heard that certain teachers are “irreplaceable.” So was the conclusion of a report by The New Teacher Project, an organization founded by Michelle Rhee to place new teachers in the classroom. TNTP always thinks big ideas that will push out experienced teachers and make room for the new teachers they recruit. TNPT is enamored with test scores as the bottom-line measure of good teaching because they are convinced their new teachers will raise test scores faster and higher than veteran teachers. Whether this is so, it is hard to say because the new teachers have never taught before and one year of data doesn’t mean much. So maybe after three or four years, it is possible to test their claims. The larger question, which TNTP never addresses or considers unimportant, is whether the ability to raise test scores is the very best way to measure who is a good teacher, who is irreplaceable.

Here is the tip-off to their self-interest: “In fact, in these districts, 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years of experience are less effective at advancing academic progress than the average first-year teacher.” Imagine that! The average first-year teachers (that is, the ones you can get if you work with TNTP) are far more effective that 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years experience! You can see where this is leading: experience is irrelevant because those great first-year teachers are better than 40 percent of the veterans. Why not ditch tenure and seniority and get rid of 40 percent of anyone who has taught for more than seven years? Unfortunately, the report laments, those ineffective experienced teachers were making more money than the average first-year teacher, which struck TNTP as blatantly unfair! Why not pay the highly effective, irreplaceable first-year teachers even more than the seven-year veterans and fire the veterans? I’m not clear about how they know first-year teachers are irreplaceable when they have no data until they are in their second year or third or fourth or fifth year. And maybe they are just good test-drill instructors. But since I don’t understand why anyone would think the way TNTP thinks, I can’t explain their thinking. Read it for yourself.

When the New York Times wrote its editorial advocating carrots and sticks, it was responding to the TNTP report, taking it as fact and truth.

Here is a different point of view about who is irreplaceable:

I was a good teacher before I went through National Boards. It was a grueling process–I had three episodes of shingles during that year, and cried the entire month of January. But I came out the other end a much better teacher, and I can document the impact I’ve had on student learning and student lives. If you’re NBCT, you’re highly effective–one might even say you’re one of the “irreplaceable” teachers that are beginning to make the news. BUT…you can’t use test scores to show student learning–it’s a much more complex and subtle process of actually looking at students as individuals and measuring learning in many ways. This is not comprehensible to anal-retentive number-crunching business-type reformers, who see the world in black and white–their world is binary. Research has shown that NBCTs are highly effective teachers. Several of my fellow NBCTs are leaving teaching for the private sector, and many others are retiring early, because of the “reforms” in education. So not only are the reformers destroying a program that increases teacher effectiveness, they’re driving effective teachers out of the classroom. I’m sad for our students, because they’re the ones that are getting the raw deal.
Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

When Merit Pay Went Wrong

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
1

A thought-provoking comment by Jere Hochman, the remarkable superintendent of the Bedford, New York, school district:

Merit pay existed well before the corporate interest in the ’80s / ’90s, the Governors’ attention in the ’90s, the Federal Intrusion in ’01, and the recent corporate takeover of politicians and state education. (Hopefully an unintended consequence of RTTT).

Several school districts had “merit” pay plans in place in the ’70s and ’80s with at least two presumptions: 1) Motivate and provide incentives (not just monetary) for leadership development, innovation, action-research, and professional growth in areas of interest and school direction. 2) Distinguish compensation for those who “seem” (no data used then) to be teaching at higher levels of proficiency but mostly expertise. Early research was clear on the development of novice vs. expert professionals so in lieu of or complementing the traditional step schedule, raises for continued growth and expertise that gets results.

Sadly, the politicians and state education / corporations have co-opted the model as a fixed pay-for-learning-to-follow-scripts-that-get-results model while stripping the schools of creativity, innovation, and intrinsic motivation. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater (the way we have with just about everything else in education). Teachers are eager. They are on a mission. In spite of the rhetoric, they are not all about unions and raises, and clock-punching – the good ones just depend on the outspoken unions to protect them from unfair practices of the past. (Yes – it’s gone too far in counting minutes and pay-for-everything but there are millions of remarkable teachers in this for children and, yes, a fair wage, benefit, and protection). Teachers are motivated to continue learning and reaching every student – and those who pursue leadership and continued innovation and growth toward expertise should be compensated (again, not for sit-and-get credit workshops and poor online courses).

There was/is/can be great value (and return-on-investments for those who follow that) in “merit pay” but not the way the politicians and corporate quick-fixers are defining it. It’s time to take it all back: curriculum, pedagogy, innovation, bona-fide authentic evaluation, minimal standardized testing and more local authentic assessment, and professional development.

Categories Merit pay, Teachers and Teaching

But He Didn’t Mention His Test Scores

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
4

An amazing exchange took place on this blog.

I posted a comment by a reader who gratefully remembered four teachers in the Chicago public schools who literally changed his life.

One of the four teachers responded.

And the original writer wrote back:

Wow! Thank you, Miss Schwartz!Of the teachers that I mentioned, you actually impacted my life the most. At the time, I was primarily into writing, but I learned from you that, in order to improve one’s writing, one must read. At that point, I had not enjoyed reading and actually avoided it, and I was a rather rebellious adolescent… However, you were patient and inspiring… After exploring different genres and concepts with you, I discovered that there were many books I wanted to read, as well as many things in the world that I wanted to read about. Ever since, I’ve been interested in learning about virtually everything and my library has been my prized possession.

You also alerted me to my first two teaching jobs, working with preschoolers in Head Start and tutoring primary aged kids who were struggling readers. I had never planned to become a teacher, but that resulted in my 44 year long teaching career. (And, yes, I know what it’s like to have students return to touch base years later, too…!)

Thank you ever so much for appreciating my strengths, opening up the world to me (and me to it), and setting me on such an intrinsically rewarding path! Forever grateful (and sorry that I was not an easy kid)–
Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Note to New York Times: What Motivates Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
2

In response to our discussion about merit pay, this teacher writes:

We become teachers for the rewarding feeling we get from touching childrens lives, not for the money. If that feeling is stripped from us, what or who will be left?

 

Categories Merit pay, Teachers and Teaching
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