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Ernest Anemone: Market Reforms and the Threat to Democracy

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2014 //
29

Ernest Anemone, lawyer and teacher, describes here the growing opposition to market-based reforms such as school choice, test-based accountability, and Common Core. He praises the Badass Teachers Association for bringing out not only the grievances of teachers but giving them a vehicle to fight such powerful figures as Bill GTes and the Walton family.

What is at stake, he avers, is the future of democracy.

He writes:

“On one side of this battle are a powerful group of self-proclaimed reformers inspired by market values and financed by billionaire philanthropists like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Reed Hastings and the Walton Family. They believe that the purpose of education is to prepare children for the labor market by teaching them a “Common Core” of subjects which emphasize English and mathematics. Student proficiency is measured by standardized tests in these subjects, and classroom innovations are supposedly spread to the ‘best performers’ through the mechanisms of competition and ‘school choice.’

“On the other side of the battle are groups like the Badass Teachers, the teachers’ unions, and organizations like FairTest and the Network for Public Education who believe that schools should prepare children to be active agents of democracy, while providing them with a potentially-transformative experience. In their vision of education, students are engaged in cultivating their own moral voices through critical reflection, so educational achievement cannot be reduced to a standard curriculum or measured by standardized test results.

“Although classroom innovations are important, educational success is defined by broader factors outside of the school’s control—especially poverty. According to education historian Diane Ravitch, “poverty is the single greatest determinant of low test scores.” However, the standard package of reforms that is pushed so hard by Gates and others lacks any practical understanding of what it means to teach the 45 per cent of American children who come from struggling families, including the 16 million who live in abject poverty.

“The implication of ‘school choice’ programs is that good choices by ‘consumers’ lead to good results, and poor choices lead to poor results. But recasting poverty as a choice is not only misguided but damaging to the fabric of democracy. High-stakes standardized testing also creates a marketplace of shoddy comparisons—a marketplace that fails to see the strength in certain types of variation because it erroneously regards all variation as weakness.

“Against this background, it’s vital to protect the ability of schools to cooperate with each other (not to compete), and to model other aspects of democratic culture. When teachers, parents and children collaborate in a common search for solutions they increase their democratic capacities. It’s a fundamentally egalitarian vision that rejects the view of education as a commodity that can be quantified, bought and sold.”

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Resistance, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Vouchers

Carl Cohn: What’s Wrong with the Vergara Decision

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2014 //
7

Carl Cohn is one of the most respected and wisest figures in American education today. He was a successful superintendent in Long Beach and San Diego. He currently is a member of the California State Board of Education.

He writes here about the flawed logic of the Vergara decision, in which the judge ruled that teacher tenure and seniority were unconstitutional in California.

Cohn says the decision contradicts the reality of schools today, as well as what he observed as a superintendent.

He writes:

“What’s wrong with the ruling is that it reinforces a completely false narrative in which incompetent teachers are portrayed as the central problem facing urban schools.

“Serving as superintendent in both Long Beach and San Diego for 12-plus years, I didn’t see the “teacher jails” or “rubber rooms” – the places where teachers are assigned and do nothing while any of a range of charges against them are adjudicated – that have become a part of the popular-media-driven narrative about urban schools and districts.

“I saw remarkably heroic classroom teachers who delivered high-quality instruction on a daily basis. Sure, there were times when a teacher wasn’t performing up to par and needed help. And yes, there were times when a teacher needed to find a new career. But the notion that the only choice facing an urban district is to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars removing such teachers says more about poor leadership and poor human capital management in that district than it does about the existing state statutes under consideration in this court case.

“In my experience at Long Beach, the biggest help in counseling a teacher toward finding a new career was the head of the local teachers union, who understood that keeping a sub-par teacher in the profession was bad for both the district and the union. Most of the heavy lifting on getting that resignation was done by the union, not the district.

“In recent years, it has become fashionable to suggest that the battle in urban districts is all about adult interests versus the interests of schoolchildren. The truth is that an effective leader of an urban school system goes to work every day trying to figure out how best to motivate, inspire and develop the adults who work with kids. Those superintendents who feel that they can transform kids’ lives by fiat from the superintendent’s suite are kidding themselves and fooling the public. Enlisting, engaging and collaborating with classroom teachers are the only ways to genuinely move the needle on student achievement.”

He adds:

“Some change may well need to be considered in the length of time teachers must serve before gaining tenure. Most observers are waiting for some grand bargain to be crafted at the state level. But I think this would be best done from the “bottom up” in urban districts like San Jose and others, where district and union leaders are coming to the same conclusion that some beginning teachers are better served by lengthening the probationary period. State leaders and CTA need to get out of the way and let this happen.

“The work of improving urban schools is a long, hard slog. It requires stability of leadership and governance, along with taking the time to develop mutual trust between administrators and unions on building the capacity of the vast majority of the teacher workforce. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts.

“California is a great state that should never consider turning back the clock either on the civil rights of urban students, who have the right to a high-quality public school education, or on the employment rights of the dedicated teachers who I saw serving them so well in both Long Beach and San Diego.”

Categories California, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Read Anthony Cody’s New Book “The Educator and the Oligarch”

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2014 //
12

Anthony Cody just published a book about his efforts to educate Bill Gates. The book is called “The Educator and the Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges Bill Gates.” Please buy it and read it.

Bill Gates has used his billions to impose his ideas, despite his total lack of experience as a teacher or student or parent in the nation’s public schools. He surrounds himself with people who obviously never say no to him, never tell him his ideas are wacky and harmful.

Anthony Cody set himself the mission of explaining to Bill Gates why his ideas were wrong and what he should do instead. Cody even got the Foundation to engage in a dialogue with him.

I was honored to write the preface to my friend Anthony’s book.

This is what I wrote:

Anthony Cody is a teacher. For Cody, teaching is not just a job. It is his profession. It is his way of life. It is the place where his brain, his life experience, and his heart are joined. Having spent eighteen years as a middle-school science teacher in Oakland, California, having achieved National Board Certification while teaching in one of the nation’s toughest urban districts, Cody embraces teaching as his mission in life. He now coaches teachers, mentors teachers, and tries to instill in them the love and spirit that animated his own teaching.

When Cody began blogging on a regular basis in Education Week, he called his blog “Living in Dialogue,” which was an acknowledgement that truth is elusive and that there are usually at least two sides to every argument. Each column ends with pointed questions, inviting readers to agree or disagree with him, not to accept whatever he wrote as authoritative. He writes in the spirit of the science that he taught, with an informed mind, but with a skeptical bent, encouraging readers to question him and to question their own beliefs.

As a regular blogger, one with a particular interest in the teaching profession, it was only a matter of time until he began taking on the myriad of interest groups that are now seeking to undermine and destroy his beloved profession. He developed a large following, as he sharpened his ideas and his aims. In time, he recognized that the most powerful force in opposition to his own ideas about teaching was the Gates Foundation.

With his blog as his platform, he trained his sights on the Gates Foundation. While others feared to criticize the richest foundation in the United States, Cody regularly devoted blogs to questioning its ideas and programs. He questioned its focus on standardized testing. He questioned its belief that teachers should be judged by the test scores of their students. He questioned its support for organizations that are anti-union and anti-teacher. He questioned its decision to create new organizations of young teachers to act as a fifth column within teachers’ unions, ready to testify in legislative hearings against the interests of teachers and unions.

Perhaps because of his persistence, perhaps because of his earnest tone, perhaps because of his experience, Anthony Cody managed to get the attention of the Gates Foundation. The Foundation agreed to engage in a written debate with Cody. At the time, some of his admirers wondered whether the Gates Foundation would find a way to buy off or mollify or silence one of its most outspoken critics. But they underestimated Cody.

He exchanged several blogs with high-level members of the Gates Foundation, and his blogs were incisive, carefully documented, and fearless. The main point that he made—drawing on his own experience in Oakland as a classroom teacher but also on external and unimpeachable data—is that poverty is the greatest handicap to the academic performance of students today, not “bad teachers.” He knew that the Gates Foundation had helped to fund the anti-teacher propaganda film “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” and he saw the hand of the Foundation in almost every effort to reduce the status of the teaching profession and to replace it with scripts, standardized testing, and technology.

This book is a record of Anthony Cody’s valiant struggle to force the nation’s most powerful foundation and richest person to listen to the voice of an experienced teacher. Did Cody succeed? It is hard to know. Even as Cody was debating the Gates Foundation, it was spending billions of dollars to develop and implement the Common Core standards, which was yet another attempt to “teacher-proof” America’s classrooms. Cody knows that past efforts at “teacher-proofing” the schools were never successful. He knows that good schools depend on teachers who are well prepared, devoted to improving their craft, and devoted to their students.

There is no replacement for well-prepared teachers or for a school where collaboration—not competition—is the norm. Cody also understands that teachers alone—no matter how good or great they are—and schools alone—no matter how good or great they are—cannot overcome the handicaps imposed on children, families and communities by inequality, poverty, and segregation. This is his message to the oligarch who runs the Gates Foundation: Will he listen?

Diane Ravitch

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Resistance, Teachers and Teaching

Peter Greene Wonders Why Thomas Kane Doesn’t Trust Teachers

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2014 //
34

Fearless Peter Greene criticizes economist Thomas Kane for his latest paper, called “Never Diet Without a Bathroom Scale and Mirror: The Case for Combining Teacher Evaluation and the Common Core.”

Kane directed the study called Measures of Effective Teaching for the Gates Foundation.

Greene calls the new study “grade A baloney.” Kane calls for “a massive adult behavior change exercise,” not an easy thing to accomplish.

But Greene writes:

“The bathroom scale image is brave, given the number of times folks in the resistance have pointed out that you do not change the weight of a pig by repeatedly measuring it. But I am wondering now– why do I have to have scales or a mirror to lose weight? Will the weight loss occur if it is not caught in data? If a tree’s weight falls in the forest but nobody measures it, does it shake a pound?

“This could be an interesting new application of quantum physics, or it could be another inadvertent revelation about reformster (and economist) biases. Because I do not need a bathroom scale to lose weight. I don’t even need a bathroom scale to know I’m losing weight– I can see the difference in how my clothes fit, I can feel the easier step, the increase in energy. I only need a bathroom scale if I don’t trust my own senses, or because I have somehow been required to prove to someone else that I have lost weight. Or if I believe that things are only real when Important People measure them.

“Kane envisions the Core and new evaluations going hand in hand, leading to more successful implementation of the Core (he does not address the question of why a successful Core is a Good Thing, Much To Be Desired). And his vision of how evaluation will provide a connection to standards as well as the kind of continuous feedback by people who don’t know what they’re doing and whose judgment can’t be trusted.”

Kane says that one of the big problems in American education is teacher autonomy. He believes that teacher work must be carefully monitored, guided, and measured. He refers to Japanese lesson study as exemplary, but does not mention Finland, where teachers are highly prepared, then given considerable autonomy to do the work they were prepared for.

Greene says:

“My experience is that every good teacher I’ve ever known is involved in a constant, daily cycle of reflection and self-examination, using a rich tapestry of directly-observed data to evaluate her own performance, often consulting with fellow professionals. It’s continuous and instantly implemented, then instantly evaluated and modified as needed. It’s nimble, and it involves the professional judgment of trained experts in the field. That seems like a pretty good system to me.”

Categories Accountability, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

David B. Cohen: What Energizes Great Teachers?

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2014 //
3

David B. Cohen is a National Board Certified Teacher at Palo Alto High School, respected by his peers and students. He is spending this year traveling California, meeting teachers, learning about their practices, and writing about the great teachers he finds.

He has started a Kickstarter campaign and needs your help.

Unlike the “reformers,” David is not looking for failure. He is looking for success and knows he will find it and document it. He is a gifted writer.

Categories California, Teachers and Teaching

Joseph Ricciotti Explains the War on Teachers

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2014 //
21

Joseph Ricciotti, a former professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut, wrote a powerful article in which he describes the sinking morale of teachers, weighed down by the dehumanizing and demoralizing policies of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top.

He writes:

“The war on teachers began with the “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) program when George W. Bush was president and has continued with “Race to the Top” (RTTT) with President Obama and his non-educator, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Basically both programs are what is commonly referred to by public school educators as “test and punish” testing programs that are used primarily for closing schools, ranking students, demonizing teachers and for assessing teacher effectiveness. These programs have now morphed into the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in which the federal government has, in essence, usurped local control of education in the United States.

“Hence, the purpose of these so-called education reform movement with its high-stakes tests has been to rank students, not to educate them. The ranking consists of “winners”and “losers” which extends beyond the students to also include schools that are “successes” and “failures.”

Why the teacher-bashing?

“Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama as well as the political establishment in Washington, D.C. realized that the true culprit in the achievement gap of many urban schools and their suburban counterparts was poverty. Moreover, both presidents decided that a war on teachers would be cheaper than a war on poverty. At a time when poverty of children in the country has reached epic proportions and has become a national crisis, politicians from both parties have refused to deal with poverty in a meaningful manner and have, instead, decided to scapegoat teachers.”

The attacks on teachers by the corporate reformers is a smokescreen for their unwillingness to do anything meaningful about poverty. Under steady attack from the reformers, the professionalism of teachers was steadily eroded. Reformers, they of high status in the world of politics and philanthropy, never really understood why anyone became teachers and often suggested that teachers were drawn from the lowest academic rungs, an outright falsehood:

“Public school teachers today are considered by the corporate education reformers as merely “clerks” whose expertise, craft and artistry are no longer valued. As an outgrowth of Common Core, teachers no longer have any say or voice in the curriculum and can no longer function as reflective practitioners as the corporations and testing companies now determine what is taught and how it is taught. Educators realize that Common Core is a top-down reform movement developed by non-educators and supported by Bill Gates. It is, in essence, sheer politics with no chance of succeeding. Is it any wonder why teaching has been dehumanized when teachers must adhere to the mandates of the corporate reformers even though they know that these mandates run counter to the interests and needs of their students? It is time for teachers and parents to push back against these corporate education reformers and to help restore the dignity of teaching and public education.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Teachers and Teaching

Veteran Teacher In California Named Teacher of the Year

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2014 //
5

Glendale Unified School District in California named math teacher Win Saw its teacher of the year. The son of two teachers in Burma, Win Saw never expected to be a teacher. But while in college at Santa Barbara, he realized that was his calling. He has been inspiring students for more than 20 years.

With all the attacks on tenure and experience, it is easy to forget that teachers like Win Saw are the heart and soul of the teaching profession. They deserve our respect and our thanks for doing what they love and ignoring the reformers as the gnats they are. Crickets in the field, complaining about those who do the work on which our nation’s future depends.

Categories Teachers and Teaching

Teacher: Why Wasn’t Common Core Phased In Gradually?

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2014 //
49

A teacher left this thoughtful comment:

“I recently participated in professional development on the Smarter Balance test (SBAC), the newest of the assessments to measure student proficiency in competencies aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). One of my responsibilities as a language arts teacher of high school juniors is to prepare students for this high-stakes assessment. I also provide my students with SAT and ACT test-taking strategies.

“I left the workshop convinced that the classroom teacher has not had a meaningful voice in the assessment process. Let me explain: For SBAC’s multiple choice section, students must identify all possible correct answers or receive no credit. For the SATs, ACTS, and some AP multiple-choice sections, students choose the best answer. Furthermore, SBAC results seem to be tied to federal funding, high school rankings, and teacher performance. How does SBAC and related test preparation benefit my students?

“I asked the facilitator how much the state had to pay to administer this test. (Students also require computer access because the test is administered online; for schools where technology resources are limited, scheduling can be a nightmare). The facilitator did not know how much the test cost; she did advise that for schools which adopted the Common Core, federal funding was an incentive. It is my understanding that a school which opts out of adoption of the CCSS and test administration risks losing those coveted federal funds. In the corporate sector, such incentives would be considered extortion. Since when is extortion a permitted practice?

“Let me offer a portrait of the classroom from a practitioner’s standpoint. Most secondary Language Arts instructors focus on teaching critical read of texts—fiction and nonfiction—encouraging students to corroborate every statement with textual evidence. Often at the high school level, we have to push them beyond the reader-response model common in middle school where students often discuss about what the text means to them. The more advanced critical reader asks what is the author’s purpose and how does the author convey that message. We also emphasize analytic and argumentative writing. However, I have students, who at the high school level cannot write a complete sentence. When I explain to them every sentence needs a subject and a verb, too many stare blankly at me.

“I reference young people’s lack of grammatical and syntactical awareness because this deficiency is addressed in the CCSS. The foundations of our language—the parts of speech—are taught from the early grades. Nine years from now, my students should be well acquainted with the building blocks of our language. But today, especially at the secondary level, CCSS represents more of a catch-up paradigm. Education is a process that involves human beings. Even manufacturers don’t begin production in the middle of a process; why are people asking teachers to do so and then evaluating us on our success based on student performance data? Why not launch the CCSS systematically—allow the foundation to be built K-2; 3-5, and so on?

“I chose Teaching because I love language and literature; I am committed to nurturing a similar excitement in my students. I view Education as big business; many of the acronyms one encounters in the field today come straight from the corporate sector. A manufacturing model is antithetical to the process that is education. For example, when a manufacturer receives defective materials from a supplier, it returns those materials. Its final product must meet specifications. I have no control over who enters my classroom; i.e., my “materials.” Teaching cultivates; education produces. I believe the two processes conflict; and yet, it seems to me that a manufacturing/business model predominates in my profession.

“Here is the reality, at least in my classroom: sometimes, my students lack parental support or engagement; have emotional and cognitive disabilities; or are simply uninterested in academics at this juncture in their young lives. Some come from homes where providing the necessities such as food and shelter are a challenge. Finally, some young people do not connect to academics in high school; some prefer a vocational track; others blossom in college. There is no template or prototype for the student. There is no fixed path for a young person—teachers do their best to model, guide, support, and nurture intellectual and personal growth amidst a wide range of cognitive abilities, emotional maturity, and outside-school circumstances.

“When will those who have never taught acknowledge the human component in education and its inherent complexity and variability? The majority of teachers with whom I have associated are dedicated professionals who view their position in the classroom as a vocation versus a job. Of course there are some bad teachers! Our profession is not unique in that reality. There are ineffective practitioners in all professions. Welcome to humanity and the real world.

“In conclusion, can student performance on SBAC measure my success in the classroom? Will the latest curriculum design improve my instruction and relationship with my students? Can a high-school student amass eight years of prior instruction that was not in place until recently, so that he or she can master the CCSS objectives specified for grades 9-12? Are the massive amounts of money—garnered from taxpayer dollars—lining the pockets of those affiliated with the business of education, or are they merely an expensive camouflage that will, in a few years, disintegrate, leaving both teachers and students amidst the rubble of yet another pedagogy?”

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Laura H. Chapman: Marketing the Danielson Rubric

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2014 //
17

Our regular reader and commenter Laura Chapman offers us another nugget of informed analysis and wisdom:

She writes:

A press release dated NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ announced that The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust was investing $3 million “to establish a rigorous research project to modify and align the Framework for Teaching with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

This project will happen in four districts. One of these (unnamed) is in NY state.

You can find the application to market the 2013 Danielson Framework in NY state at http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/teachers-leaders/practicerubrics/Docs/danielson-application.pdf

There you will see that the application required empirical evidence in support of “each rubric.” Whatever that “each rubric” meant, the application was approved with very brief references to eight “empirical” studies, three with more elaborate descriptions of the methodology.

In addition to the questions I asked about the full spectrum applicability of the Danielson protocol, I should have asked about studies that paid attention to the “demographics” in the classrooms observed—the proportional composition of students who qualify for lunch programs, those in gifted programs, special education, students still learning English, recent transfers, and so on.

Every teacher knows how these distributions shift from class to class and make a huge daily difference in what is taught, how, and so on.

For a recent summary of the many problems with this and related high stakes evaluation schemes see Leading via Teacher Evaluation: The Case of the Missing Clothes?
(July, 2013) Joseph Murphy, Philip Hallinger and Ronald H. Heck

Click to access Teacher%20Eval%20-%20Case%20of%20Missing%20Clothes%20-%20Murphy.pdf

See also a 2014 VIP article by David C. Berliner in Teachers College Record. His online summary of the craze to evaluate teachers by flawed methods closes with this great sentence:

“In fact, the belief that there are thousands of consistently inadequate teachers may be like the search for welfare queens and disability scam artists—more sensationalism than it is reality.” http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=17293

Categories Common Core, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Joanne Yatvin: Let More Teachers Re-Invent the Wheel, Or Why We Don’t Need Standardization

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2014 //
14

Joanne Yatvin, now retired, wrote the following commentary in 1990, almost 25 years ago. It was published in Education Week. It remains as pertinent today as it was then. In fact, with the Common Core adopted by most states, it is even more pertinent today than it was in 1990. Special thanks to Education Week for granting permission to reprint the article in full.

 

 

 

Published: September 19, 1990

 

Let More Teachers ‘Re-Invent the Wheel’

 

By Joanne Yatvin

 

 

 

As a young teacher, I served from time to time on committees charged with writing curricula and selecting new materials for teaching language arts and reading. Often, during committee deliberations, someone would come up with an idea that involved having teachers produce their own classroom strategies and activities. There was something very appealing about many of these ideas–at least to me–and we would spend a lot of time exploring their possibilities.

 

Invariably, however, some old hand on the committee would haul us up short and remind us that Faraway Publishers had already produced the kinds of materials we needed and that Next Door School District had already developed an efficient method for teaching what we wanted to teach.

 

“Let’s not re-invent the wheel,” Old Hand would say, and we wild-eyed visionaries, sobered at last, would agree. We stopped talking, adopted the publisher’s materials, accepted the other district’s method, and went our separate ways.

 

Nowadays, I am not so compliant. Maybe that’s because I have become an old hand myself and an administrator to boot. But I prefer to think it is because I have learned something along the way: You have to re-invent the wheel, whether you want to or not, because nobody else’s wheels will work on your wagon.

 

 

I recount this personal reflection now because it bears on a key issue in education today: Should we use “top-down” or “bottom-up” models for improving our schools? Which way works better for school districts, particularly large and troubled ones where a few people at the top are bright, capable, dedicated, aware of the newest research and theory, and well paid; and the masses at the bottom may not be any of those things?

 

Under such circumstances, wouldn’t it be better–no, the only way–to give those folks at the bottom a well constructed6wheel, teach them how to use it, and make them accountable? Of course, some clods would never catch on but, at the very least, every teacher would be using a proper wheel, so the kids would be sure to get some benefit.

 

 

My answer to the question is swift and unequivocal: No, dammit! For three good reasons. The first has to do with the so-called “Hawthorne effect” that all those bright, well paid types may have heard about in graduate school but, in my opinion, didn’t quite understand. In that famous experiment in an Illinois manufacturing plant, dimming the lights so it was harder for workers to see was found to increase production.

 

Many graduate students (and unfortunately, some of their professors) think that the Hawthorne anomaly illustrates the fact that human subjects who know they are part of a scientific experiment may sabotage the study in their eagerness to make it succeed. What it really shows is that, when people believe they are important in a project, anything works, and, conversely, when they don’t believe they are important, nothing works.

 

The second reason for championing greater creativity for all is that, through the process of inventing, people learn to understand what their inventions can and cannot do. They learn how to fine-tune them for optimum performance, and, maybe, figure out what changes are needed to produce even better models in the future. In short, they acquire the intimate knowledge of object, system, and use that makes an invention truly their own.

 

The third reason is simply that a big part of teaching is inventing. Good teachers invent successfully all day long, every day. They invent better ways to explain lessons, to entice reluctant learners, to bring unruly classes under control, and to fire children’s imaginations. When teachers won’t or can’t invent, believe me, the kids will–100 ways to shoot their teachers down. If we want good teaching at the bottom of the pyramid, we’ve got to let all teachers learn their craft.

 

But given the structure of schools and school districts we now have, changing to an inventing mode is extremely difficult. The model of school operation in use for more than 50 years rests firmly on premises of industrial efficiency, institutional uniformity, whole-into-parts logic, and worker obedience that are completely antithetical to the concept of invention. That model never takes into account the fact that the people who make up the mass of the school pyramid have professional and personal needs that–however we try to suppress or sublimate them–will screw up efficiency and logic every time.

 

Ultimately, the only way to improve American education is to let schools be small, self-governing, self-renewing communities where everyone counts and everyone cares. Yet the people who have the power to make that happen–legislatures, state departments of education, superintendents, and school boards–will not. Convinced that they are the only intelligent, competent, and caring people around, they fear those barbarians in the classroom, teachers and children, who, if allowed, would dissipate all our public treasure of time and money hacking away at rough stone wheels as our nation sank into chaos.

 

They are, of course, dead wrong. But even if they were right, those rough stone wheels, forged by people who needed to use them, would roll and carry the load of learning, while the smooth round ones sent down from the central office would languish in classroom cupboards.

 

 

Joanne Yatvin, a former elementary-school principal and classroom teacher, is now superintendent of Clackamas County School District 107 in Boring, Oregon.

Update: Yatvin is a former teacher, superintendent, and president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is retired but remains concerned about education issues.

 

 

Categories Common Core, Teachers and Teaching
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