Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

In Michigan, Few Want to Become Teachers: Thanks, Betsy DeVos, Rick Snyder, and Arne Duncan!

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2017 //
45

Alternet published an article about the dire condition of teachers and teaching in Michigan. Nancy Derringer describes the growing crisis over the future of the profession in a state that treats teachers like Kleenex.

The legislature has hacked away at teacher benefits, and would-be teachers have gotten the message.

The latest data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title II program, which supports teacher training and professional development, show enrollment in teacher prep at the college level is falling, sharply in some states. In Michigan, 11,099 students were enrolled in the state’s 39 teacher-prep programs in 2014-15, the most recent data available. That is a 3,273-student decline from just two years previous, in 2012-13. Since 2008, the total number of Michigan college students studying to become a teacher is down more than 50 percent.

Michigan State University saw its teacher-prep enrollment fall 45 percent between 2010 and 2014, from 1,659 to 911. Grand Valley State University’s tumbled by 67 percent, from 751 to 248 in the same period. Only the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Central Michigan University saw increases, of 39 percent and 6 percent, respectively.

Whether these numbers portend a coming teacher shortage is unclear. But it does reflect a trend that has been ongoing for some time, said Abbie Groff-Blaszak, director of the Office of Educator Talent with the state Department of Education. Not only are fewer aspiring teachers entering programs, but fewer are completing them, and there’s been a decrease in teaching certificates issued by the DOE.

The combination of Betsy DeVos, Rick Snyder, and Arne Duncan has been deadly for the teaching profession:

The push to improve student test scores, particularly among low-income students, has led to a number of changes that put more accountability on teachers. Groff-Blaszak said the decline in enrollment has tracked with Race to the Top reforms, which in addition to rewarding excellent educators, also provides for the removal of ineffective ones. Such reforms have not been universally embraced, for fear that they are a cover for sapping the power of unions, or holding teachers accountable, via testing, for factors they say they have little control over.

And before they even become teachers, teacher prep students must pass the state’s Professional Readiness Exam, which was toughened in recent years in an effort to raise teaching standards. In 2013-14, its first year, fewer than a third of students attempting it passed on their first try. At Western Michigan University, education students must pass the PRE and maintain a 3.0 average, said Marcia Fetters, the school’s associate dean and director of teacher education.

“When I entered teaching in 1982, there was no GPA requirement,” Fetters said, who described the current PRE, which tests math skills, reading and writing, as “infamous.”

“I don’t know how valid the test is to serve as a predictor of student performance in a teacher-ed program,” said Fetters. “On the one hand, we only want the qualified, but at the same time, if the test itself is not valid? We have had complaints.”

For charter school teachers, the situation is even more dire. They get little or no mentoring or support. Turnover among staff is high. And salaries are lower than in public schools.

Does anyone in Michigan care about educating the next generation of students? Apparently not.

Categories Michigan, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

Pasi Sahlberg: Finnish Teachers Are NOT the “Best and Brightest”

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2017 //
25

Pasi Sahlberg tries in this article to dispel the myth that Finnish teachers are specifically “the best and brightest.” He notes that misguided education leaders have tried to devise ways to attract the teachers with the highest test scores. But, he says, that is not what Finnish education leaders do.

Finnish teacher educators do not believe that teacher quality correlates directly with academic ability.

“The University of Helsinki could easily pick the best and the brightest of the huge pool of applicants each year, and have all of their new trainee teachers with admirable grades.

“But they don’t do this because they know that teaching potential is hidden more evenly across the range of different people. Young athletes, musicians and youth leaders, for example, often have the emerging characteristics of great teachers without having the best academic record. What Finland shows is that rather than get “best and the brightest” into teaching, it is better to design initial teacher education in a way that will get the best from young people who have natural passion to teach for life.”

Those who become teachers in Finland are carefully chosen, carefully prepared, and are fully committed to a career as teachers.

Note that the term “Best and Brightest” was used ironically by the late author David Halberstam to refer to the “geniuses” from Ivy League universities who got our military mired in a pointless and ultimately failed war in Vietnam. To be the “Best and Brightest” is not a compliment.

Categories International, Teachers and Teaching

In Praise of the Experienced Teacher

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2017 //
40

This is an article that praises the wisdom and knowledge of experienced teachers. What is most starting about it is that it was written by Justin Minkel, who entered teaching with six weeks of training in Teach for America. TFA has made hundreds of millions of dollars based on the assertion that experience is unimportant and that their young corps members have the power to close achievement gaps and bring about the day when all children have an excellent education. No other organization has done as much to demean experience as TFA.

Yet here is Justin Minkel, who now teaches elementary school in Arkansas, writing in praise of the experienced teachers and blowing up myths about them.

He writes:

We all know what veteran teachers are like. They’re fat, for one thing. Lazy, too. They wear ill-fitting sweatshirts stained by soup, and do crossword puzzles at their desk while students run riot around the room. They contaminate the staff lounge, grumbling and grousing about “these kids” while they wait for the microwave to defrost the frozen gray lumps of their lunch.

Am I right?

The problem with this image is that it’s conjured of more fiction than fact. Most of us have at some point come across a burned-out teacher who deserved the descriptor “toxic.” But we have also known hundreds of career teachers who are unfailingly kind, brilliant, compassionate, and innovative. The ugly stereotype of veteran teachers has at its heart the cruel-spirited flaw of all stereotypes: It fails to capture the truth of the group it demeans.

Consider these three career teachers. Their example does a far better job of capturing the portrait of those teachers who devote their lives to our profession.

* Josie Robledo was my mentor when I started at P.S. 192 in West Harlem after only six weeks of teacher training. She was tough but compassionate, and she would teach my class so I could observe almost every other teacher in the school. I was terrible at teaching math, and I once froze up mid-sentence in the middle of a math lesson. It was like a bad dream-these 32 4th graders watching me with patient bewilderment, waiting to see if I would finish my sentence. Ms. Robledo had to step in and finish the lesson for me. We met at lunch that day in the staff lounge. Blinking back tears, I beseeched her, “Just please tell me I’ll get better at this.” She looked me in the eye and told me with calm certainty, “You will get better.” That was all I needed to hear.

* Ms. Armendariz has taught art to my 6-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter since they began kindergarten, as she has to a generation of students. She elicits artwork from young children, like this painting of flowers my daughter did when she was 5 years old, that always makes me stare in amazement and ask, “Wait-you made that yourself?”

* For three years in college, I did my work study in Bill VanSlyke’s 4th and 5th grade classroom, where I witnessed his humor, compassion, and dedication to his students firsthand. I saw how significant it was for many of the children simply to have the daily presence of a gentle, kind man in their daily world. I hadn’t planned to become an elementary teacher, but I became one because of Mr. V’s example. He loved teaching, and he took it seriously. He also had time in his life to be a great father alongside his professional identity. His young son and daughter went to the school, and they would walk upstairs to his classroom as soon as the bell rang at the end of the day. In the summers, he dug up garlic on his farm outside town. He provided a model for me not only of the kind of career I wanted to build, but the kind of life I wanted to have someday.

These three remarkable human beings all love what they do. They get better every year. They are constantly seeking new ideas and honing their craft. Their influence on students and colleagues is like sunlight to plants; it nurtures and sustains everyone in their reach.

All three are “veteran teachers.” And yet, they don’t wear soup-stained sweatshirts. They don’t grouse about “these kids.” They don’t, in the words of our breathtakingly unqualified secretary of education, “wait to be told what they have to do.”

Those false stereotypes aren’t just inaccurate. They justify the budget-driven practice, in many districts, of trying to push experienced teachers out of the classroom in order to hire cheaper, less experienced teachers.

It’s no coincidence that these new teachers tend to be more pliant when it comes to following administrators’ mandates than teachers who have been there for 20 or 30 years. Not only are these new teachers cheaper-“two for the price of one!”-but they also tend to be younger, less established in the community, and less likely to rock the boat by challenging questionable rules.

The reality, of course, is that you don’t get “two for one” in these devil’s bargain buyouts. You lose wisdom, expertise, and the long-term relationships with students and families that give a school its very soul.

No one familiar with our profession would deny that burnout is a real phenomenon. But I have seen first-, second-, and third-year teachers who are burned out. I have also seen teachers beginning their 30th year in the classroom who are filled with joy and a spirit of perpetual innovation that makes them seem young beyond their years.

It’s a popular notion that teachers don’t improve much beyond five years of experience. The unspoken assumption is that teaching-unlike medicine, engineering, or law-is a profession in which mastery can be reached in five years. How hard can coloring, 2+2=4, and picture books about pigs in polka-dotted dresses really be?

Experienced teachers know differently. We know how much time it takes to understand individual children and the complexity of their ever-changing minds. We know that the process by which a child learns to read can be as complicated as astrophysics.

We know there is no substitute for the fusion of knowledge and intuition that forms expertise. We have honed that expertise through hundreds of thousands of interactions with children, combined with reflection that takes place in the moment itself or days later. We continue to improve long beyond that mythical five-year figure. As a result, what we considered to be good teaching in our first five years no longer passes muster in year 10, 15, or 20.

Justin reminds us that even those who start in TFA may grow to become good teachers who respect professionalism.

Thank you, Justin.

Categories Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching

Leonie Haimson: Two Bad Policies Converge in NYC

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
25

Leonie Haimson writes here about the disastrous legacy that Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg left to the New York City public schools.

https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2017/08/fair-student-funding-atr-system-two-bad.html?m=1

One is called the Absent Teacher Reserve, wa pool of teachers who had been left jobless because their school closed or they were awaiting disciplinary proceedings. Now hundreds of teachers are in the lowly ATR pool, where they are treated disdainfully regardless of the reason they are unassigned.

The other policy is Fair Student Funding, which Leonie explains in her post.

The ATR pool costs the city more than $150 million per year. The Department of Education says it will assign these teachers to schools even if the principal doesn’t want them (most are experienced and thus expensive).

Arthur Goldstein thrashes the website Chalkbeat for demonizing ATT teachers. Klein used to use the very existence of the ATR pool to denounce tenure, seniority, and the union.

http://nyceducator.com/2017/08/reformy-chalkbeat-deems-paying-teachers.html?m=1

He attributes Chalkbeat’s coverage of ATR’s to their funding by Walton and other anti-teacher foundations.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Klein, Joel, New York City, Teachers and Teaching

Mercedes Schneider: A Film You Must See about the Passion for Teaching and the Importance of Human Interaction in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
4

Mercedes Schneider was invited to screen a film titled “Passion to Teach,” which was produced and directed by career teachers, Bart Nourse and Sandria Parsons.

She loved it! She provides information about how you can arrange a screening.

She writes:

Passion to Teach is a phenomenal film that poignantly defies the processed-food-product nature of top-down, politically-popular, test-score-centered education reforms.

I have two favorite parts. The first involves an assignment in which students and volunteer adults recreate immigrant arrival at Ellis Island and the subsequent application process for gaining US citizenship.

The second involves the end of the film, an ending that celebrates the teacher-student connection that extends well beyond a student’s time in a beloved teacher’s classroom.

However, the major point of the Parsons-Nourse film is not merely to celebrate the teacher-student relationship. It is to fuel pro-public-school activism.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Real Education, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Carol Burris: The Link Connecting Charter Schools, Cuomo, Political Donations, and Teacher Certification

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2017 //
34

Carol Burris has written a bombshell piece exposing the links that connect charter schools, political money, and teacher certification.

Wall Street gives heavily to Governor Cuomo. Hedge fund managers love charter schools, those entrepreneurial start-ups that they identify with. Charter schools in New York have a serious problem retaining teachers. Some charters have a teacher turnover rate exceeding 50% every year. Several charters authorized by the State University of New York (SUNY) had teacher attrition rates of at least 70%. The charter committee of SUNY was appointed by Governor Cuomo. It is considering a plan to allow new teachers to bypass the state’s high standards and to gain their teaching credential from the charter. This credential would not be recognized by any public schools in New York State.

Want to know what’s behind all of these machinations?

Let’s look at the confluence of Cuomo-appointed SUNY board members to large contributions of charter boards to Cuomo’s campaigns[1].

“The corporation with the largest number of charter schools under the control of the SUNY Charter School Institute is the Success Academy charter chain, run by Eva Moskowitz. Her political action committee, the Great Public Schools PAC, contributed $65,000 to Cuomo in 2011-2012 and another $50,000 to date in 2017. Success Academy Chairman Daniel Loeb, founder and chief executive of Third Rock Capital, and his wife, have directly contributed over $133,000 to Cuomo. Since 2015, Loeb has added $300,000 to Moskowitz’s PAC, and another $270,000 to other PACs that support Cuomo. That’s more than $700,000.

“Other Success Academy present or former board member families who contributed over $100,000 either directly to, or to PACS, supporting Cuomo include: Andrew and Dana Stone ($280,000), Bruce Kovner ($130,000); Joel and Julia Greenblatt ($280,000), John and Regina Scully of California ($110,000), John Petry ($130,000) and Daniel Nir and his wife Jill Braufman ($152,500). An additional nine other Success Academy Board members, including three who live outside New York state, collectively contributed hundreds of thousands directly or indirectly to Cuomo. Most of the contributions are direct donations.

“The Success Board is only one example of many. Paul Tudor Jones is the founder of Excellence Boys Charter School of Bedford Stuyvesant, which is also authorized by the SUNY Charter Board. He and his wife, who both live in Connecticut, contributed $400,000, with most of the contributions going into PACs that gave to the governor. Even the charter-loving Waltons, who don’t live in New York, have jumped in — nearly $100,000 in direct contributions to Cuomo and over $100,000 into PACs. And it doesn’t end there. Charter board members from the Harlem Children’s Zone to Hebrew Academy Charter Schools contribute large sums of money to Cuomo.”

That kind of money buys a lot of friendship.

We will see if it is enough to establish a special route for charter school teachers: one with lower standards.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, New York, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching

Liberia: Teachers Oppose Outsourcing of Schools to For-Profit Bridge International Academies

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2017 //
14

The Liberian Teachers Association and other African teachers groups published a protest against the commercializations of the nation’s schools.

“In January 2016, in a controversial move, the Government of Liberia announced its intention to outsource its primary and pre-primary education system to a US-based for-profit corporate actor, Bridge International Academies (BIA). Following considerable opposition to this unprecedented move the Government conceived a pilot program, Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), where eight actors would operate 93 schools in the first year.

“Despite claiming that PSL would be subject to a rigorous evaluation through a Randomized Control Trial (RCT), six months into the trial, the Ministry of Education (MoE) decided to increase the number of schools to 202 in the project’s second year. Serious unanswered concerns, including children being denied access to their local schools, have not been enough for the government to pause and reflect. This rush to expand the pilot before independent research is available has been rightly criticized by the international academic and research community and the appointed RCT team who questioned the government’s capacity to hold providers accountable.

“In addition to lack of independent evidence supporting the government’s actions, the PSL is also plagued with a lack of transparency. To date not one of the eight current Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) between the service providers and the MoE have been made public. Despite the secrecy surrounding the PSL, information that has entered the public domain thus far gives rise to serious concerns about the sustainability of the program.

“This lack of independent evidences, transparency and resultant lack of accountability does not make for good policy nor good governance. Furthermore, the increased power put into the hands of undemocratic, often foreign private institutions that make decisions with little community input and accountability undermines our voice and sovereignty over our education system and our nation as a whole.

“We fear, once having outsourced our schools through this PSL arrangement we will never be able to get them back. We will be at the mercy of large corporate operators who will seek to maximize profit at the expense of Liberia’s children and their future.

“The many unanswered questions give rise to genuine concern about the future direction in the provision of quality education for all.

“Considering:

“• Liberia’s 2011 Education Law which guarantees free and compulsory education for all.
“• The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Kishore Singh’s words which describe the intended outsourcing of Liberia schools as “violating Liberia’s legal and moral obligations,” and that “such arrangements are a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education.”
“• The absence of clear, independent, and public research supporting the PSL program.
“• Serious ongoing issues including the lack of community input, transparency, and accountability of the program.
“We call on the government to immediately abandon the PSL program.
The children of Liberia deserve evidence based, sustainable improvements in public education, including:
“• Free, quality, early childhood education
“• Free, compulsory, quality primary and secondary education
“• A focus on gender equality and girls’ education
“• Quality teaching and learning environments and resources
“• Quality alternative education for over-age children.
“• Policies focusing on the most marginalized children.
“• Effective, negotiated school and system monitoring and supervision.

“We need:

“• Quality teacher training and on-going professional development; and
“• Our teachers to be properly supported and remunerated, on time, and respected.

“Acknowledging the challenges that continue to impact on the provision of education, we reiterate our preparedness now, as we have in the past, to work constructively with the government and any other interested parties to develop a sustainable Liberian plan leading to the ongoing improvement in the provision of quality education for all Liberian children.

“SIGNED:

National Teachers’ Association of Liberia (NTAL)
Civil Society and Trade Union Institutions of Liberia (CTIL)
National Health Workers Association of Liberia (NAHWAL)
Roberts International Airport Workers Union (RIAWU)
Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE)
Diversified Educators Empowerment Project (DEEP)
National Christian Council of Liberia (NCCL)
Union of Islamic Citizens of Liberia (UICL) Monrovia Consolidated School System Teachers’ Association (MCSSTA) Liberia Education for All Technical Committee (LETCOM)
Concern Universities Students of the Ministry of Education Local Scholarship Program (CUSMOP)
United Methodist Church Human Rights Monitor (UMCHRM)
National Association of Liberian School Principals (NALSP)

“With the support of:
Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT)
Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT)
South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) Uganda National Teachers Union (UNATU) Education International (EI)”

Categories For-Profit, International, Students, Supporting public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

C.J. Cain: “They Ask Me Why I Teach”

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2017 //
10

C.J. Cain is a young teacher.

He shares with us a bit of inspiration, a poem written long ago, in a different era. It was written in 1948, when most of us then alive believed in a world of progress and possibilities. Of course, I was only 10, but I believed.

What do we believe now? Have we become cynical? Do we despair of possibility?

One thing I have learned: never give up hope. No matter how dark it is, never give up hope for better times. And work like the dickens to bring change.

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Carol Burris: SUNY’s Absurd Proposal to Allow Charters to Certify Their Own Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2017 //
32

Carol Burris, veteran teacher and principal, author and executive director of the Network for Public Education, here analyzes the proposal by the charter committee of the State University of New York to allow charter schools to hire uncertified teachers and to do their own certifying. Among other problems, this insults the education faculty of SUNY, as well as the New York Board of Regents, which sets high standards for new public school teachers in the state. The charter committee includes no educators; its members were appointed by Governor Cuomo.

Burris writes:

The proposed regulations by the State University of New York (SUNY) Board for charter school teacher certification have been posted. The SUNY Board should hang its head in shame. These regulations eliminate nearly all NYS requirements, requirements they themselves have endorsed under the new TEACH certification regulations.

While this proposal may further the political interests of the Governor who appointed 15 of the 18 Board members, and who has received millions in contributions from charter school board members, it does so at the expense of the children who attend the charter schools SUNY authorizes.

In a nutshell, turn up at a charter school door with a bachelors’ degree, and you can become a certified teacher in weeks.

According to the proposed regulations:

· Prospective charter teachers would be required to take only 30 hours of instruction (the equivalent of less than 4 days) by someone who holds a Master’s Degree, including an uncertified teacher whose students got good scores on state tests. (Yes, that nuttiness is written into the regulation.) The 30 hours do not even have to be “real” hours—SUNY’s proposed regulation defines an instructional hour as at least 50 minutes. Instruction can even be provided via video, as long as there is some face to face time.

· For a second certification—only six more hours is all that is required.

· The candidate needs 100 hours of field experience under the supervision of an experienced teacher. That teacher can be uncertified as long as they are a two-year, TFAer, anyone who has taught for 3 years and received satisfactory evaluations, or a university professor. Contrast this field experience requirement with that of SUNY’s Stony Brook University which requires a 75 day internship with a certified teacher. The State Education Department requires a minimum of 40 days.

· The teacher would be eligible to teach in SUNY authorized charters only, essentially relegating them to an indentured servant status. They would be unable to leave for public schools with better pay and better working conditions unless they went through a traditional program which would be very difficult, if not impossible, given the long days required by charter schools.

Speak out and let SUNY know that you are opposed to the proposed regulations. Let them know every New York child deserves a well-trained, qualified teacher.

Sign the Network for Public Education’s petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/every-child-deserves-a-well-prepared-teacher?clear_id=true

Call: Ralph A. Rossi II, at (518) 455-4250

Send an e-mail to charters@suny.edu

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New York, Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching

Peter Greene: Forbes Thinks that Schools Need Uncertified Teachers

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2017 //
54

Peter Greene saw an article in Forbes making the absurd assertion that the problem with public schools is that they have certified teachers. In typical fashion, he demolishes this claim.

The article argues that teachers do not need to be paid well, and they do not need to be certified.

Greene says this is nonsense, to put it mildly.

He points out 18 reasons why the authors are wrong.

Here is the 18th reason:

“18) And it offers the best hope of bringing more capable people into the teaching that all agree is so vital.

“This is the final line of the article, and nothing in it has been proven in any of the lines that came before. Great teachers are somehow born and not made, and they alone can fix everything, and they are apparently distributed randomly throughout the population. Somehow by lowering standards, lowering pay, destabilizing pay, and removing job security, we will attract more of them and flush them out.

“That’s 18 dumb things in one short article. I suppose Forbes could get better articles if they paid less and let anybody write for them.”

Categories Education Reform, Hoax, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »