Has your state passed gag orders banning books or topics? Check the PEN listing.
PEN wrote:
Over the past three years, state legislators have launched an onslaught of educational gag orders—state legislative and policy efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in educational settings.1PEN America tracks these bills in our Index of Educational Gag Orders.
During the 2023 state legislative sessions, 110 bills that PEN America defines as educational gag orders were introduced, and 10 became law. Four more gag orders were imposed via executive order or state or system regulation: two in Florida, and one each in Arkansas and California. These developments bring the number of educational gag orders that have become law or policy to a total of 40 across 21 states as of November 1, 2023.
While it is difficult to guess the total number of educators affected by these laws and policies, a conservative estimate would put the number at approximately 1.3 million public school teachers and 100,000 public college and university faculty.2 The students who have been directly affected—through canceled classes, censored teachers, and decimated school library collections—likely number in the millions. The chilling effect on public education across the country is certainly much larger.
In this report, we analyze the educational gag orders introduced and passed in the 2023 legislative sessions, as well as the impact of laws passed in 2022 and 2021. We find the following trends:
In 2023, educational gag orders changed dramatically in their shape. Their supporters, who remain overwhelmingly politically conservative, have learned from past mistakes and have new and more insidious strategies for silencing America’s educators.
Backers of these laws in K–12 schools have shifted their emphasis to bills that restrict speech about LGBTQ+ topics and identities, including numerous copycats of last year’s HB 1557 in Florida, known to critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
In higher education, legislators have introduced a new set of bills that attack the traditional support network that underpins academic freedom and free speech,including proposed restrictions on university governance, curricula, faculty tenure, DEI offices and initiatives, and accreditation agencies.
New surveys of K–12 and college teachers affected by educational gag orders show for the first time the extensive toll such laws are having on educators.
Fortunately, resistance to educational gag orders is rapidly growing. Increasing majorities of Americans have had enough, and organized opposition to educational censorship has increased across the country, with some notable successes.
In 2024, legislative efforts to censor educational institutions are likely to continue. Each of the past three legislative sessions has seen greater and more varied proposals to impose prohibitions on the freedom to learn and teach in schools, colleges, and universities. The 2024 general election is likely to contribute to ongoing escalation of this trend.
If you missed the 10th annual conference of the Network for Public Education, you missed some of the best presentations in our ten years of holding conferences.
You missed the brilliant Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor Emerita and formerly the Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ladson-Billings gave an outstanding speech that brought an enthusiastic audience to its feet. She spoke about controversial topics with wit, charm, wisdom, and insight.
Fortunately, her presentation was videotaped. If you were there, you will enjoy watching it again. If you were not there, you have a treat in store.
Thomas Ultican of California has become a regular attendee at the annual meetings of the Network for Public Education. He attended every keynote and many panels, and he reports here on what he heard.
Ultican wrote:
NPE met at the Capitol Hilton for a weekend conference beginning on Friday, October 27. The old hotel seemed well maintained. That first evening, Diane Ravitch interviewed James Harvey who was a key contributor to “A Nation at Risk.”We gathered in a large conference room which caused Mr. Harvey to comment, “I remember being at a meeting in this room fifty years ago when we heard that Alexander Butterfield had just testified that there were tapes of the oval office.” With that historical reference, the conference was off to a wonderful start.
“A Nation at Risk” is seen as an unfair turning point that undermined public education. Mr. Harvey’s job was to synthesize the input from members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which was created by Secretary of Education Terrence Bell to produce the report. He shared with us that two famous academics on the panel, Nobel Prize winner Glen Seaborg and physicist Gerald Holton, were the driving forces for politicizing public education.
Diane Ravitch and James Harvey
That first night’s presentation was actually an added event for the benefit of us coming in on Friday afternoon. The conference had three keynote addresses, two panel discussions and seven breakout sessions. The difficult problem was choosing which of the six offerings in the breakout sessions to attend.
Pastors for Children
For session one, I attended “Mobilizing Faith Leaders as Public Education Allies.” The amazing founder of Pastors for Children, Charles Foster Johnson, and his two cohorts were well reasoned and did not proselytize us. Their movement really does seem to be about helping communities and not building their church. Among Johnson’s points were,
“Privatized religion teachers believe “God likes my tribe best.”
“We are the reason there is not a voucher program in Texas.”
“Conservatives and liberals come together over education.”
“Faith leaders have a different effect when lobbying politicians.”
“We are making social justice warriors out of fundamentalist Baptist preachers.”
Houston School Takeover
I have no intention of writing about each of the 7 sessions I attended, but the session on the Houston School District takeover needs mention.
Texas took-over Houston Independent School District (ISD) on June 1, 2023. It is the largest school district in the state and eighth largest in the country with more than 180,000 students attending 274 schools. The student demographics are 62% Hispanic, 22% African-American, 10% White and 4% Asian with 79% identified as economically disadvantaged.
In 2021, Millard House II was selected by a unanimous vote of the Houston ISD school board to be Superintendent. Under his leadership, Houston ISD was rated a B+ district and the school in one of Houston’s poorest neighborhoods that was used to excuse the takeover received a passing grade on Texas’s latest STAR testing. The take-over board replaced House with Mike Miles, a charter school operator from Colorado who previously only lasted 2 years of his five year contract to lead the Dallas ISD.
Ruth Kravetz talked at some length about the how angry Houstonians are and their effective grassroots organizing. Kravetz stated, “We want Mike Miles gone.” She noted that the local media started turning against the takeover when citizens were locked out of the first takeover board meetings. Kravetz intoned,
“Teachers no longer need a certificate or college degree to teach in Houston ISD.”
“Seven year-olds are not allowed to use restrooms during instructional times. They must wait.”
“People are being fired for ridiculous reasons. Five people were fired last week over a made up story.”
Expect more student action against the takeover.
“Rolling sickouts are coming.”
Jessica Campos is a mother in one of Houston’s poorest communities. She said her school is made up of 98% Mexicans with 68% of them being Spanish speakers. Jessica claims, “Our school community has been destroyed” and reported that all teachers were removed with many being replaced by uncertified teachers.
Daniel Santos (High School social studies teacher) said,
“It is all about dismantling our school district. We wear red-for-Ed every Wednesday and Mayor Turner lights up city hall in red.”
The Keynote Addresses
Gloria Ladson-Billings from the University of Wisconsin Madison delivered the first Keynote address on Saturday morning.
She mentioned that we were really dealing with 4 pandemics:
Covid-19
George Floyd murder
“Economic Shesession” (Large numbers of women were forced to leave the workforce.)
Climate catastrophe
Professor Ladson-Billings claims the larger agenda is the complete eradication of public education in what she sees as an evolving effort.
The evacuation of the public spaces which are being privatized.
Affordable, Reliable and Dependable (public space keys) is being undermined.
Public housing is closing.
The last domino is public education!
Ladson-Billings says, “choice is a synonym for privatization.” There is money in the public and wealthy elites do not think the public should have it.
She noted, “We are in the business of citizen making.” We do not want to go back to normal because it was not that great.
Ladson-Billings ended on a positive note about the attack on public education in Florida, “All is not lost – people on the ground in Florida are working hard to reverse it.”
History ProfessorMarvin Dunn from Florida was our lunch time keynote speaker. Professor Dunn has been working hard to educate the children of Florida about the states racist past including giving guided tours of the site of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre of an African American community.
He noted that “Racism is in our national DNA” and shared that George Washington owned 500+ slaves. When he was 11 years-old, Washington was given his first slave. Still, 500 black soldiers were with him at the crossing of the Delaware river.
Another American icon mentioned by Professor Dunn was Thomas Jefferson. The third president of the United States was 41 years-old when first having sexual relations with Sally Hemings; she was 14.
Julian Vasquez Heilig, Josh Cowen and Jon Hale held a public discussion late in the afternoon on Saturday. The moderator, Heilig, made the point that instead of funding one system, now many states are funding three systems with the same amount of dollars.
Josh Cowen, from Michigan State University, noted that using evidence based data, since 2013, vouchers have been catastrophic. If we were using evidence informed education policy, vouchers would have died 5 years ago. Test score losses from voucher students are greater than those experienced in either Katrina or Covid-19. He also noted that 20% – 30% of children give up their voucher each year.
Cowen added don’t believe a word coming out of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ mouth. She has instituted vouchers, opposed abortion and supported child labor. Reynolds is pushing Christian nationalism.
Jon Hale, from the University of Illinois says white architects of choice have a 70 year history. He says it was never about improving schools. The white supremacist movement sprung up after Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954…
What I Found
Several participants showed up kind of down in the mouth. However, by the end of the conference they were heading back home with new energy and resolve. Billionaires are spending vast sums of money trying to end public school because if public education goes then all of the commons will follow. Their big problem is that vast wealth and spending is not a match for the grassroots organizing that is happening throughout America.
Diane Ravitch, Carol Burris and the members of NPE have become a bulwark for democracy and public education.
Jan Resseger lives in Ohio. She has spent her career as an advocate for social justice and educational equity. Her blog is a must-read. This column probes the growing gap in pay between teachers and other college graduates. It is ironic and pathetic that self-styled “reformers” like Bill Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg are silent on the issue of teacher pay, but expend their resources to promote teacher evaluation, merit pay, innovation, and other dead ends. They know they have to pay for talent in their own organizations. Why not in schools?
She writes:
In our society, teaching is not a high status position. It used to be considered women’s work, probably still is by many people. How wonderful it would be if we had fully transcended the cruelty of the old joke: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach, teach gym.” But we haven’t. I regularly hear legislators in my state explaining that if someone who knew what he was doing were put in charge, teachers would be forced to improve test scores immediately. The implication, of course, is that teaching is simply a matter of the production of test scores, and teachers don’t produce.
The tragedy of this kind of thinking is that the same teachers whom people attack and insult are the human beings to whom we trust the formation of our children. The opinion polls tell us that we handle this contradiction by learning to know, respect, and appreciate our own child’s teacher even as we fail to protest the barrage of attacks on teachers in general.
We forget to consider that teaching is a relentlessly hard job. Teachers work with masses of children and adolescents all day without much of a break. The pressure is relentless. Regents’ Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Arizona State University and the past president of both the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association, David Berliner describes just some of the complexity of a teacher’s day:
“A physician usually works with one patient at a time, while a teacher serves 25, 30 or in places like Los Angeles and other large cities, they may be serving 35 or more youngsters simultaneously… (T)eachers have been found to make about .7 decisions per minute during interactive teaching… (A) researcher estimated that teachers’ decisions numbered about 1,500 per day. Decision fatigue is among the many reasons teachers are tired after what some critics call a short work day, forgetting or ignoring the enormous amount of time needed for preparation, for grading papers and homework, and for filling out bureaucratic forms and attending school meetings.”
Teachers know how to build trusting relationships with their students and to help students respect each other while they all engage with their academic work. One of the best writers about teaching , the late Mike Rose published my favorite definition of excellent teaching based on years of observing teachers in their classrooms: “Some of the teachers I visited were new, and some had taught for decades. Some organized their classrooms with desks in rows, and others turned their rooms into hives of activity. Some were real performers, and some were serious and proper. For all the variation, however, the classrooms shared certain qualities… The classrooms were safe. They provided physical safety…. but there was also safety from insult and diminishment…. Intimately related to safety is respect…. Talking about safety and respect leads to a consideration of authority…. A teacher’s authority came not just with age or with the role, but from multiple sources—knowing the subject, appreciating students’ backgrounds, and providing a safe and respectful space. And even in traditionally run classrooms, authority was distributed…. These classrooms, then, were places of expectation and responsibility…. Overall the students I talked to, from primary-grade children to graduating seniors, had the sense that their teachers had their best interests at heart and their classrooms were good places to be.”
In the introduction to her annual report on the teacher pay penalty, published last week by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Sylvia Allegretto acknowledges the challenges teachers face: “Teachers have one of the most consequential jobs in the country—they have the future of the U.S. in front of them every day. But teaching is becoming a less appealing career choice for new college graduates. Not only are levels of compensation low, but teaching is becoming increasingly stressful as teachers are forced to navigate battles over curriculum and COVID-19 related mandates as well as rising incidence of violence in schools. Low pay makes recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers difficult.
Here are Allegretto’s conclusions about the trend in teachers’ wages and compensation through 2022:
“The pay penalty for teachers—the gap between the weekly wages of teachers and college graduates working in other professions—grew to a record 26.4% in 2022, a significant increase from 6.1% in 1996.
“Although teachers tend to receive better benefits packages than other professionals do, this advantage is not large enough to offset the growing wage penalty for teachers.
“On average, teachers earned 73.6 cents for every dollar that other professionals made in 2022. This is much less than the 93.9 cents on the dollar they made in 1996.”
Allegretto explains: “Because public school teachers must attain at least a bachelor’s degree to teach in the U.S., this research compares teachers with college graduates working in other professions… Over the past two decades, the weekly wages and total compensation of public school teachers have fallen further and further behind… Recent high inflation has significantly reduced the average weekly wages of teachers but has had less of an effect on other college graduates… The erosion of relative weekly wages for teachers continued apace in 2022.” “Teachers generally receive a higher share of their total compensation as benefits than other professionals do, partially offsetting the weekly wage penalty.” But, “the benefits advantage for teachers has not been enough to offset the growing wage penalty.”
Inflation has been a significant factor recently: “From 2021 to 2022, real wages for teachers fell by a bit more than inflation (8.8% vs 8.1%), meaning that the lion’s share of the decline was due to inflation, not a large drop in nominal wages. Regardless, the buying power of teachers took a big hit…. This dynamic is likely explained (at least in part) because teachers’ wages are often set by long-term union contracts and dependent on government budgets. In contrast, the private sector can often respond more quickly to improving or deteriorating economic conditions by adjusting wages. Other college graduates were able to garner an increase in nominal wages to keep pace with inflation….”
In 31 states, in 2022 the relative teacher wage penalty was greater than 20 percent. The five states with the greatest relative teacher wage penalty in 2022 were Colorado at 37.4 percent, Arizona at 33.2 percent, Virginia at 32.1 percent, Oklahoma at 31.8 percent, and Alabama at 30.9 percent. You can check your state’s relative teacher wage penalty on page 8 of Allegretto’s report.
Allegretto concludes: “One of our nation’s highest ideals is the promise to educate every child without regard to means. In many respects, we have always fallen short on that promise. And there are many issues to be addressed around public education and its funding… But one thing is for sure. A world-class public educational system cannot be accomplished without the best and the brightest heading our classrooms. And it cannot be done on the cheap.”
Recently a bus carrying members of the Farmingdale (Long Island), New York, high school marching band to band camp in Pennsylvania crashed through a road barrier and rolled down a 50-foot deep ravine. Two people were killed: the marching band director, Gina Pellettierre, and a retired teacher who was a chaperone, Bea Ferrari.
Their deaths brought an outpouring of grief from the community. Especially touching were the tributes from Ms. P’s former students. She made an indelible imprint on their lives. She also modeled the life of a great teacher, an inspiration to her students.
FARMINGDALE, NY — Gina Pellettiere, the director of the Farmingdale High School marching band and wind ensemble, left a lasting impact with every student-musician she ever taught and every person she ever worked with, all agree…
Joanna McCoskey Wiltshire, class of 2010
“Gina, or Ms. P as we called her, was a force to be reckoned with, with a smile that lit up the room. She made me believe that anything I wanted to do was possible, all while being able to make me laugh until my sides hurt. I looked to her as the inspiration to go into music teaching, especially with an emphasis on wind conducting. She encouraged this love in me by giving me conducting pointers anytime I was on the podium and giving me multiple opportunities to practice in front of the band. She loved her job but most importantly, we knew that she loved us. Gina made band our home and safe space. I will never be able to thank her enough for the impact she had on my life and for showing me an example of the educator I want to become — someone who was passionate and dedicated to her craft and the music, all while never forgetting to stop and live in the moment with her students. I will miss her terribly and I mourn her loss along with the rest of the Farmingdale community
“I just am grateful to have ever had her as my teacher and to have known her. As a music teacher in another state now, I kind of took for granted how amazing our music education truly was. Her education and passion for music prepared me for a lifelong love for music, so much so that I made it my career. I can only hope to be half the teacher she was for us one day.
“My favorite memories of her were her pranks. One day when we were on spring break, it happened to be April Fool’s Day, and Joanna and I went to visit the high school and Ms. P during 9th period band. Before class started, she told us she had dipped Mike Tuzzolo’s mouthpiece in salt, so we just kept an eye on him for his reaction, and it was so funny. She fell over laughing. I think her joking around and pranking kids just made her bond with them that much stronger.”
Brian Entwistle, class of 2012
“Her love of The Office is the reason I’m a professional musician today. That piano arrangement she threw at me in music theory one day led to everything I’m doing now.
As for memories… The biggest, on a personal level, will always be the time I performed Ewazen’s ‘Pastorale’ with her and Mr. K. It’s such a beautiful piece of music, but it’s forever going to be special to me for that reason.
As for some fun memories… aside from ‘Hey Joe’ and the muffin joke, that faculty vs. student volleyball game in 2011 will always be a highlight.
And the time she got scolded by Ms. Lindsley for throwing a mannequin leg onto the stage from the pit during Prank Day.”
Alex Cox, class of 2013
“Ms. Pellettiere didn’t stand out for just a few moments of the years she was with FHS. She made every memory just by being her energetic and intense self. A passionate person without limits and made sure everyone was valued for who they were.”
Joe Pantorno, class of 2009
“Ms. P always had a knack for speaking to students on the same level. There was no air of superiority or that traditional, ‘I’m the teacher and you’re the student, do as I say,’ dynamic. She always had a way of getting the very best out of her students and knew the right buttons to press for each individual, whether it was motivation, tough love or a nurturing pat on the back. It was always so clear that she wanted us to succeed and improve, because she legitimately cared about us — and every year she seemingly had an army of 100 during concert season or 300 during marching band season that would run through a wall for her because of that.”
Deborah Kick, class of 2011
“I was in wind ensemble all four years and marching band all four years. What I loved the most about Ms. P is that she saw all of us collectively and individually as musicians and human beings.
You were a wonderful teacher and human being. You saw your students as individuals while also recognizing what we can accomplish as a group. You made band fun, even during the most grueling moments of band camp and the tensest rehearsals before concerts or NYSSMA Majors. How lucky I was to learn under you. Your lessons carry me through my career today.
I will forever miss your warmth, your great hugs, your bright smile, and shout of ‘Deb Kick!’ when you saw me (I was never just ‘Deb’). I hope I can bring a fraction of the welcome, joy, and kindness to those in my life that you brought to everyone.
I hope all of us Dalers can find some peace in ourselves and in our community soon.”
Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, is at the center of a controversial state takeover by the Texas Education Agency. After working its way through the legal system for several years, last winter the Texas Supreme Court greenlit the replacement of district superintendent and the locally elected board of trustees by the head of the TEA, appointed directly by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. And last month, school was back in session under the newly appointed superintendent, Mike Miles – former US State Department ambassador, charter school CEO, and scandal-ridden Dallas ISD superintendent – amid dozens of pedagogical and policy changes that left teachers, parents, and students confused, frustrated, and afraid.
Among the most troubling changes is a strict “multiple-response strategy” where teachers must adhere to a four-minute timer to pause instruction and assess students for understanding – an intervention with seemingly no pedagogical justification. These strategies are paired with heavily scripted activities that are centered on drill and kill: repeat information over and over to memorize content. There has also been an increase in invasive admin walkthroughs to check for compliance with the scripted methods, which teachers and students have described as a distraction from learning. Teachers are required to keep a webcam on in their classroom at all times and their door must remain open. Defending these changes, Miles stated:
“Every classroom has a webcam and a Zoom link, and it’s on 24/7, if a kid is disruptive, we pull that student out of class. We put them in what we call a team center, and they’re being monitored by a learning coach, and they Zoom right back into the class they get pulled from.”
A veteran Houston ISD teacher, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of administrative backlash, reached out to back up these claims, describing the impact these reforms have had on teachers and students:
…I left to teach at a Title 1 Houston ISD campus, so I’m getting the luxury to watch this mess unfold, and I assure you, there’s definitely ‘something rotten in Denmark” with what’s happening to us.
My school is not NES nor NES-aligned, but Miles has carved his path in such a way that we’re being evaluated multiple times a day, being forced to follow this horrible curriculum in a lesson cycle that as far as my research has found–has no pedagogical roots. It’s literally drill and kill. Apparently this is a trend or something. Miles is something else and when you Google him or any of the administrations around him calling the shots, you’ll not see any pedigree of education, but multi-millionaire board members whose backgrounds are in gentrification projects and such.
I’m exhausted by the end of the day. Texas teachers are evaluated all the same, using the T-Tess system–well except us now. Their move to push through that District of Innovation leads me to believe they simply want to weed anyone who was part of the old system out. It absolutely feels like he’s pushing to make us all quit. We were notified that although we’re given 10 sick days for the year, if we’ve taken 4 days leave by November or so, we will be terminated. We had an impromptu faculty meeting and had to sign that we’d gotten notification of this. Plus that we’ll be evaluated different.
Before the takeover, HISD was told to shape up or that’s the end of the line. We scored a “B” as a district in the last ratings and still are being taken over. The Abbot/Morath/Miles steamroller is moving right along.
Being a District of Innovation will be the coup de gras for us, really. He wants to add weeks to the school year, he’s already firing any teachers who simply ask questions, and he’s even gaming the system in many ways to ensure that he’ll have “results.” Special Education? Accommodations? Support structures for at-risk students? All gutted. It’s hard to believe this stuff is legal.
I’m stressed and miserable. It’s hard to believe some of the insane stories about his demands–but I assure you they are true. Teaching with doors open, such a security risk. Stuff like no snack time in elementary if it’s not tied to a Texas standard. I at least teach…But we all were forced to watch an hour or so musical he put on that would rival anything out of North Korea.
At this pace and the way things are going, I just can’t sustain it. I can’t stand seeing such a grift ruin education as it’s doing. We definitely had issues as a district but this can’t be the best solution. I’ll try to make it this year, but I’m beginning to apply elsewhere. My students were often successful at the state test, but it’s a crazy world when I teach…and am afraid to ask to take a class day to show my students the library and have them check out books. It’s nuts.
Of course please don’t use my name or anything that might come back to bite me… As Miles promised in his introduction to us that “he’d find out whose spreading dissent and act” and by most accounts that’s exactly what’s been occurring.
Parents and community members have flooded school board meetings with accounts from teachers who are similarly afraid to speak out, for fear of losing their jobs, as teachers who question the changes have been labeled “insubordinate” and had their jobs threatened. Parents have also spoken publicly about how the changes have affected their own children, as one mother recounted to the board before having her mic cut-off:
“For the last week, I’ve had a kid that cries every morning and every evening. Crying not to go to school, and beginning not to go in the morning. She says school’s boring, she’s not learning, and she’d rather be homeschooled at this point…She’s miserable. Her confidence is plummeting, and she’s starting to lose her joy for learning.”
At a board meeting on September 14th, a 12-year-old HISD student delivered prepared remarks about the disruptive timers, distracting admin walkthroughs, and palpable teacher stress. The board cut her mic, too:
“Due to the new open door policy, I and many other students have a hard time concentrating due to the many distractions in the hallways. Isn’t it your first priority to have kids in HISD like me learn? Students should be in a place they want to go to inst- (mic is cut off)”
Please open the link and finish reading. Miles apparently wants to turn HISD into a “no-excuses” district.
Mike Miles, the state-imposed superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, has never been a teacher, but he thinks he knows exactly what teachers should do. He has dubbed his behaviorist program the “New Education System.” Those teaching in certain designated schools are required to do it his way or get out. Clearly he has never read the research on motivation (Edward Deci, Dan Ariely, Daniel Pink), or he would know that forced compliance depresses motivation.
Teachers called to a last-minute after school meeting at Chrysalis Middle School Friday afternoon were told to get with the New Education System program instituted by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles or get gone. And that they had until 6 p.m. Sunday to let the district know whether they’d be staying or wanted to be moved to another school.
Dr. Luz Martinez, the Central Division superintendent (previously at Midland in 2021 and Round Rock in January 2023 before moving to HISD this June), minced no words in making it clear that there wasn’t to be any more questioning of the new policies at the NES-Aligned schools, part of the Miles plan after the state takeover of HISD.
By Saturday, two teachers who tried to ask questions — one of whom was thrown out of the meeting — received letters that the district was beginning the process of terminating their employment and they were barred from campus. “Insubordination” was cited as the precipitating factor in Carr’s case.
“We are not going back. We are not compromising,” Martinez had told the teachers at the meeting while Principal Mary Lou Walter stood by, “All this noise that is going on, that’s in the past. We are moving forward. We are NES-Aligned.” She went on to insist that the NES program was “never intended to be rigid, never intended to be mechanical.”
At the same time, Martinez told teachers she’d be bringing more outsiders into the schools who would be in the teachers’ classrooms “all the time” to ensure they are “implementing the model with fidelity.”
Science teacher Teresa Carr said she attempted to ask in what way the teachers at Chrysalis were supposedly falling short. “[Martinez] said we were not implementing with fidelity,” said Carr but when the district superintendent was pressed, the only example she came up with was three elementary students she’d spotted on their way to the office because they’d had bathroom accidents. Pointing out that involved Cage and not the middle school or its teachers, Carr said she was unable to get Martinez to give any specific examples involving Chrysalis.
After Carr left the meeting, another teacher attempted to continue with follow up questions, Carr said. That teacher also received a letter of reprimand and notice that termination proceedings were beginning against her, Carr said.
The holder of a BA in science education and a master’s in English education, Carr said she had never been in trouble with the district before and clearly by Sunday was still very unsettled by what had happened. One bright spot was that she had joined the Houston Federation of Teachers union for the first time before the start of school this year and had already talked with her union rep.
A group of parents at Cage Elementary and Chrysalis — they share the campus and principal with Chrysalis — have planned a protest at 7:30 a.m. Monday about what happened Friday and the NESA program in general. Parent Mayra Lemus echoed the bewilderment of many when she pointed out that Cage has been an A level Blue Ribbon School, so why were the more rigid educational approaches that are part of NES instituted there.
Naturally enough, given the times in which we live, someone recorded part of Martinez’s speech.
Carr said when she asked again for an answer to her questions, Martinez walked toward her saying “You can leave. You can leave. You can leave.”
In her written reprimand to Carr, Martinez wrote that the science teacher had “acted in a highly unprofessional manner” in the meeting and was “insubordinate.” According to Martinez, Carr yelled during the exchange and talked over her. Carr insists that it was Martinez who did the yelling.
“As a result, I will move forward with an immediate recommendation to terminate your contract effective 9/16/2023,” Martinez wrote. She also notified Carr that she was not allowed on the Cage/Chrysalis campus for any reason and that she would have to make arrangements to have her personal items picked up after 5:30 p.m.
“If you’re one of those teachers who don’t want to do the model, that is fine. But you will not be here,” Martinez had told teachers assembled Friday. She gave them the weekend to think it over, but later that was shortened to 6 p.m. Sunday.
One of our readers, Rick Charvet, reacted to Nancy Flanagan’s review of Alexandra Robbins’ new book THE TEACHERS. Robbins wrote about three teachers after spending a year in their classrooms. It is a deeply sympathetic description of their lives as teachers.
Rick Charvet commented:
I have lived the three tales and more. I worked nights. I worked Saturdays. When I speak “from the trenches” it sounds like I “make crap up.” I did everything to survive on a teacher’s salary (and our district was the lowest paid in the county) and there wasn’t a day that went by I said, “I gotta quit.” But then I saw the little kid who had no socks; the little kid who didn’t have his hair combed for picture day; the other young man who fell asleep on my backroom floor so exhausted and more kids who had nothing to eat so just like The Lorax, “Who will help them?” And, of course, no one sees this. These are the things that go on when no one is watching. I loathed staff meetings to hear the “whine sessions.” This helped no one. I always thought about the lady who kept wiping away spider webs and could not figure out how to stop them: you need to get rid of the spider! As a creative, I learned quickly that I needed to get to the root of the issues. So many students with so many problems. The school psychologist told me, “You really found your niche helping the most needy.” So any time there was a troubled child, “Send ’em to Charvet, he will help them.” As in Ms. Flannagan’s review, I stayed away from the staff lunch room — such negative vibes; I preferred making a safe space for my kids. It was taxing, but in the end, it was about helping them to a brighter place. Times were dark. Kids did not see much beyond 18. And as Flanagan pointed out, “…If I hear one more time how Mr. Charvet did this or that…I even posted in the staff bulletin, “If anyone needs to send their student to me, I am willing to accept them into my room for a time out. Sometimes students just need a change of scenery because “it’s not happening for them today.” Oh how I heard, “Charvet won’t punish them. It wasn’t that they got away with stuff, it was about making amends and moving forward. Each day could be refreshed. And when I mentioned, “We are the eyes and ears for our kids. We teach to the whole child.” Basically, “Shut up, Charvet.” Charvet this and that…but the kids knew who LISTENED. And you know what? Those kids are fine today. But what did I know? It got to a point that because of my efforts to get the best out of students I was disciplined; written up “Created a negative environment…needs remediation…assigned to a peer review mentor to learn how to instruct…cannot adhere to curriculum…cannot manage a five-point lesson plan.” The peer mentor finally looked at me, “What the hell is going on here; you don’t need me.” I said, “I just want admin to let me be.” The kids needed a support system; school for me was not punitive, but making sure kids understood the consequences of their actions good or bad. And, I was even told that students who were not on grade level could never earn more than a C even it they were maxing out their cognitive capabilities. Wow, what joy! “Hey kid no matter how hard you work, you will never, ever earn an A.” Yeah motivates me. I never said I was great, I just followed my heart. But, here’s something for you all. https://gilroylife.com/2020/01/31/brownell-students-draw-on-creativity-to-solve-problems-initiate-change/ AND https://gilroylife.com/2019/06/07/education-project-h-o-p-e-helps-motivate-and-inspire-struggling-students/ Don’t get me wrong, there was joy and we laughed a lot — I mean I constantly told them, “If you can’t laugh, laugh at me because guaranteed I will do something stupid. Hey, but that’s how life is, eh? We shared life and I learned tremendously from my students.
Steven Singer considers the trajectory of Teach for America and concludes that it failed. Enrollment in the program is down. No one believes any more that TFA newcomers are “better” than experienced teachers. What’s the point of hiring a newby instead of someone who wants to make teaching their career?
These college graduates would take a five week crash course in education and commit to at least two years in the classroom thereby filling any vacant teaching positions.
In fact, it made things worse. Apparently deprofessionalizing education isn’t an incentive to dive into the field.
That isn’t to say everyone who went through the program became a bad teacher. But the few good and committed educators that did come through the program could have done so even more successfully by graduating with a degree in education.
Now the organization created in 1990 is expecting its lowest enrollment in 15 years. TFA anticipates placing slightly less than 2,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall. That’s two-thirds of the number of first-year teachers TFA placed in schools in fall 2019, and just one-third of the number it sent into the field at its height in 2013.
Apparently fewer people than ever don’t want to train for four to five years to become lifelong teachers – and neither do they want to be lightly trained for a few years as TFA recruits, either – even if that means they can pass themselves off as education experts afterwards and get high paying policy positions at think tanks and government.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 567,000 fewer educators in our public schools today than there were before the pandemic. And that’s on top of already losing 250,000 school employees during the recession of 2008-09 most of whom were never replaced. All while enrollment increased by 800,000 students.
It’s no wonder then that few college students want to enter the profession.
Over the past decade, there’s been a major decline in enrollment in bachelor’s degree programs in education.
Beginning in 2011, enrollment in such programs and new education certifications in Pennsylvania — my home state— started to decline. Today, only about a third as many students are enrolled in teacher prep programs in the Commonwealth as there were 10 years ago. And state records show new certifications are down by two-thirds over that period.
But don’t look to most of the so-called experts to solve the problem. A great deal of them are former TFA recruits!
Through programs like TFA’s Capitol Hill Fellows Program, alumni are placed in full-time, paid staff positions with legislators so they can “gain insights into the legislative process by working in a Congressional office” and work “on projects that impact education and opportunities for youth.”
Why do so many lawmakers hire them? Because they don’t cost anything.
Gary Rubinstein has been a teacher since 1991. Four of those years were spent teaching in Houston. Gary has been watching what’s happening since Mike Miles arrived and was taken aback when Miles imposed sweeping changes on the district without spending time getting to know it. Miles’ “reforms,” Gary predicts, are heading for trouble. Those reforms come out of the “corporate reform” playbook. Maybe Miles took a page or two from the Broad Academy guidelines, applicable in all situations.
Gary writes:
With around 200,000 students, Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the 8th largest school district in the United States. For years there was talk about the state possibly taking over the district and this finally happened on June 1, 2023. The board was fired and replaced by Texas Education Agency (TEA) appointees. Mike Miles, who founded a charter school network called Third Future Schools and was previously the head of Dallas Schools for three years, was hired as the new HISD superintendent. While most people new to a job like this would take some time to get the ‘lay of the land,’ Miles instantly proposed some radical, and in my estimation, terrible, reforms which I will outline in this post.
He identified the three lowest performing high schools in HISD: Wheatley, Kashmere, and North Forest. Those three schools together with the 26 middle and elementary schools that feed into those high schools were to become part of a new ‘New Education System’ known as NES. This NES is the latest ‘turnaround’ district. Over the past 20 years there have been several of these, the most prominent are the Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans, set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2003 and the Achievement School District (ASD) in Tennessee, created in 2011 with Race To The Top money. There was also Michigan’s Education Achievement Authority (EAA) in 2011 as well as a few more that have popped up around the country. To my knowledge, there has never been a successful takeover of this sort in the history of this country. The EAA has been shut down, the RSD has been merged back into the New Orleans school system and the ASD has floundered, never having any success at all in improving the test scores of the schools it took over. It is funny/sad to see this hopeful panel discussion by the leaders of these districtsbefore it was known how badly they would fail. (I’ve written a lot about the ASD, but here is something I wrote summarizing the history of these turnaround efforts.)
These turnaround efforts sometimes have school closures or staffs at schools having to reapply for their jobs and often have the schools converted into charters. For the HISD NES model, the schools are not getting taken over by charters but teachers do have to reapply for their jobs. Teachers at these schools will get raises and opportunities for bonuses with test score based merit pay. Other changes that will happen at these 29 schools are a restructuring of the teacher role where the teacher is like a ‘surgeon’ doing the most important part of the job while other tasks like grading, lesson planning, and discipline are done by others. Also, you may have read about elsewhere, libraries at these schools are converted into discipline centers where students are sent to watch a live streamed version of the lesson on a computer screen.
The reason that no turnaround effort like this has ever worked is that it is based on faulty assumptions about what the cause of the low test scores are at those schools so any solution based on those assumptions is doomed to fail. It is like trying to treat a broken leg by giving a patient a complete blood transfusion.
As someone who has been teaching since 1991 – and my first four years were in HISD actually, looking at the list of changes makes me shudder. Anyone who ever taught can see how most of these changes will make the schools worse but I want to summarize some of them here.
All teachers have to reapply for their jobs – When students come back and learn that many of their favorite teachers were not hired back, this can be very traumatic. There is no guarantee that the teachers who replace those who weren’t hired back, even if those teachers have been successful at a different school, will necessarily be a good fit at this school. This uncertain improvement coupled with guaranteed disruption is a pretty big risk. Why not first see how the current staff does with these new supports?
Please open the link to finish this important article.
Gary reviews the other major elements of Miles’s prepackaged plan and explains why they are unlikely to make a difference. They haven’t worked before, why will they work now? As Gary writes, takeovers typically fail because they are based on fake assumptions and prepackaged cures.
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