Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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Peter Smagorinsky: This Is What a Great Teacher Does

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2015 //
7

Peter Smagorinsky of the University of Georgia has been writing a series of articles about Great Georgia Teachers. They are posted in Maureen Downey’s blog in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This article celebrates Cameron Brooks, a third grade teacher at the Chase Street Elementary School in Athen, Georgia.

It is hard to believe that a teacher like Mr. Brooks still exists in this era of data-driven, test-based, lockstep compliance.

He has been teaching for eight years. His classroom is devoted to activities that are inspiring and joyful. Professor Smagorinsky asked a parent to describe what he does:

Another Chase Street parent wrote when I asked her about Cameron:

*He plays on the playground with his third grade students every day. One day recently, he was sighted swinging with a couple of girls and simultaneously playing ball with another group of students! He PLAYS with them and I have seen no other teacher do that.
*I know that in the mornings after the announcements, Cameron and his students do Qigong.
*His classroom is calm, safe, and obviously a community of caring individuals.
*He dedicates a lot of time and thought to his preparation — long after the expected school hours.
*He makes the day fun, productive and meaningful for all of his students.
Cameron’s colleague Krista Dean reinforces this perspective, saying, “One of the many awesome things about Mr. Brooks is that he plays with his students every day at recess. He teaches them skills and new games, enjoys their games, and models cooperative play. He can often be found on the soccer field with students after school on Fridays. He serves as a positive role model all throughout the day — practicing character qualities that we want in our students….

Cameron stresses the value of kindness to his students, a concept that seems out of place in schools that focus on competition between teachers and students for the highest individual scores. He models for his students his belief in committing “acts of kindness, exploration, inquiry, engagement,” each difficult to strive toward when learning is competitive….

As he tells his kids, “Kindness comes in all shapes and sizes. Helping a turtle across a busy street, sharing a simple ‘Hello,’ or giving directions to a new student makes life a little better.” He then builds this value into his instruction: “I challenge the class to 100 acts of kindness. When you do something kind, compose a personal narrative, then place it in the Box of Kindness. Once revised and edited, post it here for the world to see.” Kindness then is not simply a virtue, but a means through which his students generate materials for narrative writing.

Cameron’s teaching emphasizes education’s affective dimension. He has written, “The start of the school year is the ideal time to proactively bring attention to, and nurture qualities that promote a classroom culture of respect, openness, introspection, and empathy.” These human values are often lost in the current policy world in which 8-year-olds are measured according to their test score productivity and told they must compete with others and win at all costs.

There are still teachers like Cameron Brooks. They teach what matters most. They will always be remembered by the students lucky enough to have been in their classroom.

Kudos to Peter Smagorinsky for paying attention to the Great Teachers of Georgia. Great teachers can be found in every state and in every community. They don’t shine because of bonuses and merit pay. They shine because they love children and they love to teach. They make a difference.

Categories Georgia, Teachers and Teaching

Peter Greene Explains to Nicholas Kristof What Went Wrong with Reform

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2015 //
40

Peter Greene was not happy with Nicholas Kristof’s column saying that–after twelve years of trying–school reform hasn’t worked out and it was time to pay attention to the youngest children, where research was clear and there was bipartisan agreement.

Here is a snippet of Greene’s outrage:

“Look, I believe there are a handful of reformsters who know better, and I’m sure plenty of them mean well. But this is just too much. I’m pretty sure that I read Kristof more often than he reads me. But I have a message for him anyway.

“Dear Mr. Kristof:

“Does a decade seem like a long time to work at education? Does working at education seem hard? While we’re at it, have you noticed that water is wet?

“This– this “well this has been difficult, it’s time to move on”– THIS is why from the first moment reformsters showed up on the scene, teachers across America rolled our eyes, squared our shoulders, and turned away. Because we knew that the day would come when the tourists decided they wanted to pack up and leave. Because you were not in it to get the job done.

“Reformsters were never the white knights or the saviors of education. The vast majority of reformsters were the people who swept into a home, pulled all the furniture out from the wall, burned the drapes (because you don’t want these old things) and started to tear the floor up. Then somewhere around day three, you declare, “Man this is hard, and this couch doesn’t fit against that wall (which we had told you all along)” and so you pack up, drive away, and leave the residents to put things back together.

“You think twelve years was a long time? I’ve been at this for thirty-six, and I have plenty more to go because there’s still work to do, and as long as I can do it, I will. Plenty of my colleagues have done and will do the same. You think educating in the face of poverty and lack of resources and systemic inequity is difficult? Many of my colleagues have been doing it for decades. But reformsters have been so sure that they didn’t need to listen to the locals. They and their giant balls knew better than any stupid teachers.

“Doing the education thing takes a lifetime. In fact, it takes more than a lifetime– that’s why we’ve constructed an institution that provides continuity above and beyond what we could get from any single human being.

“You think that the education thing is hard, “a slog,” after just a decade! You amateur. You dabbler! You tourist! Has the education reform movement “peaked”? Well, guess what! Education has not. We are still working at it, still striving, still doing our damnedest. When reformsters have moved on because it’s hard and challenging and a slog and not just as fun as it was a whole ten years ago, we will still be here, doing the job, educating students and doing it all in the midst of the mess created by a bunch of wealthy well-connected hubristic tourists with gigantic balls.

“You think education is hard? What the hell do you think dedicated teachers across this country are doing with their entire adult lives?!!

“So get out. Go. Move on to the next big opportunity and screw around with that until you’re all distracted by the next shiny object. Education is not the better for your passing through.

“Education needs people who will commit, people who are in it for the marathon, not the sprint, people who are willing to dedicate their whole lives to teaching because that’s the minimum that it takes. Students and communities need schools that are permanent stable fixtures, not temporary structures built to long as a reformster’s attention span.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Media, Poverty, Teachers and Teaching

The BAT Who Cried

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2015 //
26

Robyn Brydalski is a third grade teacher. When she gathered up the Common Core tests at the end of three days of testing, she cried.

She cried for her students, who had spent hours and hours responding to questions that were often poorly written.

She cried for her profession, because the state had forced her to follow scripted modules, abandoning her own professional judgment.

“My blood boiled and anger seethed from the deepest parts of my heart when I saw the confusing passages and misleading questions. This test played on an eight year old mind taking advantage of these literal thinkers full knowing, on their own, very few students would be able to analyze, synthesize and evaluate an author’s message. The sheer volume of passages was exhausting. One of my brightest students was so confused by a question that she shut down and gave up. She looked at me and said, “I’m just stupid, I guess.” She is eight years old. No eight year old deserves to feel this way. I cried tears of pain when many of my students looked to me for guidance and clarification. I encouraged them but I knew without a teacher guiding them, they would not be successful with the expected question and my students knew this. How is this right? How is this just? How is this a true measure of good teaching? My students persevered through day one, toughed it out for day two but by day three could not demonstrate any evidence of learning. They were academically beat, physically exhausted and morally defeated.”

Categories Childhood, Real Education, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

A Poem Inspired by Reading Dr. Seuss

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2015 //
22

The poem below was written by Holly White, an English teacher and parent. I asked her to explain why she wrote it, and she did. Oh, when you read the poem, you will come to the acronym HEDI, which means “highly effective, effective, developing, and ineffective,” the ratings given to teachers based on test scores and observations.

 

Holly White writes:

 

“After graduating from Colgate University in the small town of Hamilton, NY, I was given the opportunity to stay in Hamilton and pursue my career as an English teacher. I have taught at HCS, the community’s P-12 public school, for 14 years. I’m proud of our creative and talented students, of our incredibly dedicated faculty and staff, and of the broader Hamilton community that supports us.

 

“As a teacher, and as a parent with two children in elementary school, corporate education reform is often on my mind, especially during testing season. One evening in early March, I was reading a few Dr. Seuss books to my children. I paused in the middle of the book “Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?” after reading the following passage:

 

Out west, near Hawtch-Hawtch,
there’s a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher.
His job is to watch…
is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee.
A bee that is watched will work harder, you see.

 

Well…he watched and he watched.
But, in spite of his watch,
that bee didn’t work any harder. Not mawtch.

 

So then somebody said,
“Our old bee-watching man
just isn’t bee-watching as hard as he can.
He ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher!
The thing that we need
is a Bee-Watcher-Watcher!

 

“After tucking my kids into bed, I still couldn’t shake the image of the Hawtch-Hawtchers lining up to watch the “lazy town bee.” I pulled out my laptop and–attempting to channel Seuss’s use of verbal irony and absurdity–wrote for the next four hours.”

 

A Portrait of Education Reform, Inspired by Dr. Seuss

 

We said students would be proficient, all 100 percent!

 

But the year 2014, it came and it went…
There’d been little improvement after 12 years of tests,

 

So we searched till we found the most “rigorous” ones yet.

 

What those teachers must need is more accountability,

 

Then they’ll surely work harder, every he and each she.

 

As soon as they hear about APPR,

 

They’ll take their feet off their desks, make their lessons five-star,

 

And strive to earn back the public’s trust

 

(A tough task, since they’ve been treated with scorn and disgust).

 

Once they know that we’re watching, and changing cut scores,

 

And counting all the 1’s, 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s,

 

They’ll teach and they’ll prep and they’ll drill for the test,

 

They’ll strive for a HEDI score that shows they’re the best,

 

They’ll cut back on art, science, creative writing

 

(The things they say students find most exciting).

 

They’ll overcome all of those pitiful excuses:

 

Poverty? Absenteeism? Hunger? Abuses?

 

Learning disabilities? Disobedient teens?

 

And kids who don’t read, but just stare at their screens?

 

Each student is different, learns at his own pace?

 

What’s that you say – learning isn’t a race?

 

No more excuses! With 40 minutes a day,

 

They can mold kids and shape them in every which way

 

(They can start in first grade, which is no place for play).

 

And all the while, schools’ funding will slow,

 

Because the harder we make things, the better they’ll go.

 

Each student will succeed, a year’s worth they’ll grow,

 

They’ll all factor trinomials and use “soak-a-toe”

 

If their teacher works hard like a real go-getter,

 

If she only works harder and faster and better…

But here I must pause in this poetic pretense,

 

(It’s been hard not to laugh while spouting nonsense).

 

Silly teachers, good luck being “highly effective,”

 

The system’s designed to say you’re flawed and defective.

 

The problem is, as by now you can probably tell,

 

Who’d want “reforms” if they knew teachers were doing well?

 

That just like most doctors, nurses, and crossing guards,

 

Most teachers are competent and already work hard.

 

What would happen to Pearson, McGraw, hedge fund investors,
Charter schools, EMOs, boards of directors?

 

Education’s a great source of new revenue,

 

The possibilities abound, and profits accrue.

 

But please, keep this between us; no one else needs to know.

 

As long as no one speaks up, then onward we’ll go…

 

by Holly White, HCS teacher

Categories Humor, Teachers and Teaching

All Testing Halted in Nevada, Montana, and North Dakota Because of a Computer Glitch

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2015 //
40

Yes, you read that right. The vendor of the Smarter Balanced Assessment was not prepared for the number of tests that the server had to deliver, and the system broke down in three states.

 

According to the Nevada Department of Education, a spike in students taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC) this morning in Nevada, Montana and North Dakota exceeded the data capacity of Measured Progress, a third-party vendor contracted by the states to provide the test.

 

All testing in the three states has been stopped until Measured Progress can increase its data capacity, according to an email sent to state superintendents today by state deputy superintendent Steve Canavero.

 

Students who were taking the test at the time of the problem were able to finish their test, but teachers could not start new tests. About 13,000 tests were completed this morning before the errors started occurring, according to the department.

 

Think about it. The vendor didn’t know that so many students would be taking tests at the same time. What were they thinking?

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

David Greene: Was I an Effective Teacher, a Developing Teacher, or an Ineffective Teacher?

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2015 //
36

David Greene taught for many years and most recently has been mentoring new teachers. He read Pasi Sahlberg’s post this morning which said that Finnish teachers are not “the best and the brightest,” but those who are both capable and are committed to becoming career educators. Reflecting on Pasi’s article, he wrote this one of his own. 

David is upset by the suggestion of the Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents that “high-performing districts,” with high test scores and high graduation rates might be exempted from the teacher-principal test-score based evaluations. Her purpose, one suspects, is to tamp down the opt out movement, which is especially strong in suburban districts.

He asks:

So, according to [Chancellor Merryl] Tisch, those who teach our “best and brightest” (i.e. mostly wealthier and whiter) would be exempt as a result of New York’s two-tier education system that also is the most highly segregated in the nation.

Tisch makes me wonder. Was I a highly effective teacher in wealthy and white Scarsdale High School when I taught her nephew? Was I a developing or effective teacher in mostly middle class and integrated Woodlands High School? And did that make me an ineffective teacher at Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx, the nation’s poorest urban county, regardless of the huge number of success stories that emanated from there?

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

A Peace Corps Volunteer Writes to Congress

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2015 //
22

The following comment was written by a young man just returned from teaching in the Peace Corps. Responding to a request from the Network for Public Education, he wrote a letter to Congress about NCLB:

 

Diane-

 

I would like to share the letter I wrote (at the urging of NPE) to my congressional Representative concerning H.R. 5:

 

This time last year I was a recently returned Peace Corps Volunteer, coming home from service as an English teacher in a Cameroonian public school. Shortly before I left Cameroon I attended a disciplinary hearing convened for the purpose of meting out punishment. I sat with other teachers in a ring at the edge of the principal’s office while students were shuffled in by grade level, given the chance to explain their infractions, then made to lie on their stomachs on the dusty floor while an administrator whipped them. It was against the law, but they did it anyway. This policy was intended to regulate student behavior, and it was shamefully successful. They followed an ideology of control and never have I seen such a passive group of students. My colleagues and the administrators managing us weren’t bad people–or even bad educators. I still marvel at their drive to impart knowledge, but their instructional model followed a paradigm that mirrored their discipline: students are, to lean upon a cliche, vessels to be filled, objects to be acted upon.

 

It may be hard for us to see, but their ideology is our ideology. By conventional standards I was a good student; in me the systems of reward and punishment accomplished their goals. My success, however, was bounded by its context. The social psychology research that claims traditional classroom practices limit student interest, reduce depth of thought, and discourage a challenge-seeking orientation resonate with my experience. When I reflect on my education I feel the deep tragedy of my untapped potential. Here was the refrain of the times: “Why would I put more effort into this? I already have an A.” I was lucky because many other students repeated its more destructive corollary: “Why would I put any effort in to this? I’m just going to get an F.” No matter what a student’s place on this artificial spectrum, reducing performance to an externally imposed measurement of a pseudo-objective standard constitutes control. When, later in my academic career, I did fail one class, I imagine the emotional pain I felt was a close cousin to the physical pain of my future Cameroonian students.

 

Whether or not there are legitimate uses for standards in today’s world, the current political environment has paired standards with a toxic accountability. There’s an or else. Pay teachers following our formula or we won’t send federal money your way. Raise your students’ scores to the level we say or we’ll give your school a failing grade. Do better or we’ll close it entirely. As a country our greatest shames have been perpetrated under contingency and duress. This is no different. My educational history has been filled with motivated teachers who didn’t require bribes or threats to seek self-improvement, who didn’t need standardized tests to gauge student proficiency.

 

If we want our students to learn to function in a democracy, why are our classrooms structured like dictatorships? Why are we pursuing a path that further alienates students from content by adding additional separation between teachers and curriculum? Why, if we expect students to learn independence, are we stripping it from educators?

 

Best Regards,

 

Jakob Gowell

 

B.A. English, Grinnell College 2011
RPCV Cameroon 2012-2014
Education Volunteer (TEFL)

Categories Accountability, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Teachers and Teaching

Why I Changed My Mind: An Interview with “The Teacher Educator”

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2015 //
30

Last year, when I spoke in Indianapolis to the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, I was interviewed by Gregory J. Marchant, professor of educational psychology at Ball State University. He published the interview, and it was recently selected as the most read article in the journal in 2014. Greg asked some penetrating questions about my personal journey in the world of education research. You might find it interesting to read. He is a good interviewer, and I was very colloquial, as I tend to be.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Ravitch, Diane, Resistance, Teachers and Teaching

Reader: How Education Should Be Managed

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2015 //
36

Mate Wierdl, a professor of mathematics at the University of Memphis, explains to another reader why the management model of education is different from that of business:

 

 

“Another reader wrote: “Before you even ask those questions, I believe you have to establish a consensus about purpose. What are public schools supposed to accomplish? Then you ask, Are they accomplishing it? How well?”

 

“I gave my opinion on this in other posts in this blog thread: in math, kids need to understand math (calculating using crazy formulas they forget within a week is unimportant), they need to enjoy thinking, problem solving, experimenting.

 

“What teachers don’t accomplish very well is to get kids excited about learning. I submit, the main reason for this is overwork: US teachers and students have to work way too much. For example, in Hungary, a teacher’s daily load is four 45 min classes with 15 minute breaks between classes—about 60% of what US teachers have to endure.

 

“Since teachers have to keep kids excited, they also need to be excited, enthusiastic, but that’s impossible to do 6 hours a day—plus grading, preparing, communicating with parents. If we want to improve education, the first thing to do is reduce teaching load, and reduce school and home work time for kids.

 

“My understanding is that you are worried that if the public doesn’t look over the teachers’ shoulders, they won’t do a good job. But teachers have a completely different management style from corporations.

 

“Simplistically, there are two kinds of evaluation/management systems. One is what we can call the military style with its hierarchical chain of authority. This is what seems to be preferred by big corporations: the “CEO system”.

 

“The other one is the democratic management system where each worker has full authority over her work. In this system, the quality of work is ensured by a peer review process. This democratic management system has been used in education, but many small businesses have been using it too.

 

“The controversy is that powerful people like Gates, who believe in the almighty CEO system, refused to believe that the democratic system works well in education—or anywhere, and so they decided to implement the military style management in education. This happened despite the fact that the US had the best higher ed system in the world and it’s based on the democratic management system.

 

“When people on this blog are pissed about, say, Gates, and they say, they don’t want to be evaluated by a military system Gates invented for them, they don’t imply that they don’t want to be responsible to the public. No, they just have a democratic management system that has been working very well for decades, and in some instances, for centuries. What teachers see is that outsiders want to force a different management style on them which has been proven ineffective in education numerous times in the past.”

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Michigan Superintendent: How to Kill a Profession

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2015 //
30

Steve Matthews, superintendent of the Novi school district, here explains how the education profession has been attacked and demonized, with premeditation.

 

He begins:

 

So you want to kill a profession.

 

It’s easy.

 

First you demonize the profession. To do this you will need a well-organized, broad-based public relations campaign that casts everyone associated with the profession as incompetent and doing harm. As an example, a well-orchestrated public relations campaign could get the front cover of a historically influential magazine to invoke an image that those associated with the profession are “rotten apples.”

 

Then you remove revenue control from the budget responsibilities of those at the local level. Then you tell the organization to run like a business which they clearly cannot do because they no longer have control of the revenue. As an example, you could create a system that places the control for revenue in the hands of the state legislature instead of with the local school board or local community.

 

Then you provide revenue that gives a local agency two choices: Give raises and go into deficit or don’t give raises so that you can maintain a fund balance but in the process demoralize employees. As an example, in Michigan there are school districts that have little to no fund balance who have continued to give raises to employees and you have school districts that have relatively healthy fund balances that have not given employees raises for several years.

 

Then have the state tell the local agency that it must tighten its belt to balance revenue and expenses. The underlying, unspoken assumption being that the employees will take up the slack and pay for needed supplies out of their own pockets.

 

Additionally , introduce “independent” charters so that “competition” and “market-forces” will “drive” the industry. However, many of these charters, when examined, give the illusion of a better environment but when examined show no improvement in service. The charters also offer no comprehensive benefits or significantly fewer benefits for employees. So the charters offer no better quality for “customers” and no security for employees but they ravage the local environment.

 

Then create a state-mandated evaluation system in an effort to improve quality…..

 

That is how it begins.

 

For his willingness to speak out honestly and courageously, I add Steve Matthews to the blog’s honor roll as a hero of public education.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Honor Roll, Michigan, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching
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