Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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Teachers: You Must Not Internalize the Blame

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2013 //
37

This teacher realized that she could not be free to think for herself until she stopped internalizing and accepting the reproaches of the corporate reformers. She was free when she realized that her training and experience as an educator mattered. She was free when she realized that when she did not attain perfection every day, it was not her fault.

She wrote:

“Can’t speak for everyone, but the way it worked for me was this way… initially, there was this vague sense of confusion when the NCLB legislation went through. “How can we defy the Bell Curve?” I asked myself. I chuckled thinking, “Ha, just wait ’til ‘they’ figure out that it can’t be done!” I was teaching special education at the time.

“Over the next couple of years… as the pressure mounted, I moved to a state that I felt would better suit me for the rest of my career. The first slap in the face was that I couldn’t get a job in a public school… my degree and years of experience made me “too expensive.” A charter school was willing to hire me though… they liked having someone w/ a sp.ed. background. Especially since the school is working in an area with kids from low SES backgrounds… they wanted and were willing to pay someone with my education and experience. At the time, I didn’t know or understand the difference between a charter school and public school. All I knew was that I had a job!

“Fast forward… more and more “accountability” was heaped on… and the rhetoric that the teachers heard placed more and more “accountability” onto them. If the scores aren’t high enough, then we’re not working hard enough. THAT was the proverbial Kool-Aid… because most teachers are overly responsible, they bought into the idea that “if we only work harder…”. Then they (whoever “they” are) tried to close our school by revoking the charter due to low test scores. Unlike many charter schools, we take ALL of the kids! Many of our children are challenging. Many of our children struggle with learning. The school’s charter has been picked up, so it will not close this year. In the meantime, I’ve educated myself on the difference between charter, public, and private schools. I discovered that this “angst” that had been growing over the years in me was being experienced by other teachers all over the country. And what has happened… is that teachers are REALIZING that it’s NOT their fault! Hence, all the grassroots organizations that Diane is trying to link through NPE.

“Teachers have “allowed” it, because most of us “drank the Kool-Aid” of believing that it really was our fault… and now many of us are saying, “NO! It’s NOT our fault!” Like the character “Boxer” from Animal Farm… we kept working harder, working harder… but instead of us all collapsing and being sent to the “glue factory,” we’re getting off the farm. I’m leaving my school. I “know” too much now about the school reform movement… and I can’t support it. I don’t know where I will go. But I do know, that as soon as I figured out that it was NOT all my fault is when I started saying, “There’s something wrong with the system, and it needs to be changed.” THIS is probably what your seeing with many teachers. They believe that they only need to work harder… work harder… work harder… . But when they realize it’s not them, it’s the system… that’s when the change starts to happen. I “allowed” these policies, because I’m “hyper-responsible”… I’m the kind of teacher that kids need in school… I do what needs to be done…. but, the downside is… I was taking responsibility for things that were not my fault… and I didn’t realize it until I heard Diane Ravitch speak about it on the youtube upload “Diane Ravitch defends teachers” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAivikFLJvU

“I’m grateful to Diane for this. In some ethereal way, she saved my life by helping me voice my experience and realize that the current state of education is NOT MY FAULT. I will NOT kill myself through the stress of working in an untenable situation.

“I’ve said it before, and I say it again, “THANK YOU DIANE!”

Categories Teachers and Teaching

What Makes a Great Teacher?

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2013 //
24

You won’t find the answer to that question in this exchange but you will see some sharply worded responses to David Greene, who has mentored many TFA recruits.

Greene has the somewhat antiquated (but true) belief that we need teachers who see teaching as a career. As he writes, “Teaching must be a lifelong career worthy of those we want to teach.”

It is odd that there are so many (including Arne Duncan and the far-right Walton Foundation) who see TFA as a systemic answer to the question. Duncan gave TFA $50 million. Walton gave them $49.5 million.

And yet in its 20+ year history, TFA has produced less than 30,000 alumi. Most of them are no longer in classrooms. Its most prominent graduates are demanding privatization of public education: Michelle Rhee, John White in Louisiana, Kevin Huffman in Tennessee.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching, Walton Foundation

Teaching or Testing?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
45

Michael Weston shares the news from his school, where testing takes precedence over teaching.

He writes:

May 3, 2013. It actually happened at Freedom High School today. The Unthinkable. Beyond the Pale. This afternoon, 7th period, we had an AP Testing pep rally. Yes, a testing pep rally. I had heard rumors of such things, but had a hard time believing them. Today I saw.

Hillsborough County Florida is one of those districts that has stuffed AP classes full with any student who a) wants to take one, b) can be cajoled to take one, c) is involuntarily signed up for one, or d) is placed under extreme pressure to take one.

This is all in the name of increased rigor of course. Apparently “increased rigor” is “New English” for Superintendent bonus. Yes, the number of AP tests taken is in her contract as a bonus provision.

Students lose instructional time taking these tests.
Students lose instructional time when their teachers have to proctor these tests.
Students lose instructional time when classes are under half full because OTHER kids are taking tests.

The list goes on.

For the last 4 weeks we have been FCATing. Two weeks ago started Florida End of Course Exams (they continue for some weeks) and Monday begins AP testing season.

Now – students lose learning time to a TESTING PEP RALLY??? REALLY?

Florida teachers should file a class action law suit or union grievances that this level of attention to testing creates a hostile environment for teaching.

Parents should likewise take action, as this level of attention to testing creates a hostile environment to learning.

Categories Florida, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Mentor: How to Fix Teach for America

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2013 //
27

David Greene mentored many Teach for America teachers. He knows how poorly prepared most of them were for the job of teaching in New York City’s toughest schools. He tried to help them cope.

Here he offers good advice to TFA.

Categories Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

“Education Drained of Its Humanity”

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
6

This thoughtful and provocative essay by Shawn Gude situates present-day corporate reform in its historical context. Gude shows the connections between early 20th century social efficiency and the present-day demand for testing, standardizing, and data-based decision-making.

Here is an excerpt:

“There’s a special resemblance between the struggles against scientific management, or Taylorism, and today’s teacher resistance to corporate reform schemes. Just as factory workers fought top-down dictates, deskilling, and the installation of anemic work processes, so too are teachers trying to prevent the undemocratic implementation of high-stakes testing and merit pay, assaults on professionalism, and the dumbing down and narrowing of curricula.

“There are more obvious parallels: Proponents of scientific management counted some prominent progressives in their ranks, just like the contemporary left-neoliberals hawking education reform. The nostrums of both Taylorism and the education accountability movement paper over foundational conflicts and root causes. Many of those who espouse education reform cast their solutions as unimpeachably “scientific” and “data-driven,” yet as with scientific management partisans, the empirical grounding of their prescriptions is highly dubious. And proponents of scientific management and corporate school reform share an antipathy toward unions, often casting them as self-interested inhibitors of progress.”

And here is another excerpt:

“When education is reduced to test prep, rich curricula and the craft of teaching are imperiled. The vapid classroom of neoliberal school reform mirrors the vapid workplace of Taylorism. Teach for America, which implicitly advances the idea that the sparsely trained can out-teach veteran educators, engenders deskilling and deprofessionalization. Non-practitioners dictating to practitioners how they should do their work mirrors management’s disciplining of workers; both militate against work as a creative activity. The appropriation of business language — the head of the Chicago Public Schools is the “CEO” — reinforces the idea that schools should be run like corporations. Merit pay individualizes and severs educators’ ties to one another, forcing them to compete instead of cooperate. So too with the anti-union animus that neoliberal reformers and scientific management proponents display.”

Read the essay. You will understand the roots of the corporate reforms of our day.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, U.S. education

A Scary Future? The Teaching Machine and Big Data: LINK FIXED

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
22

This is a fascinating and rather frightening essay about the quest for a teaching machine.

Philip McRae, the author, looks at the historical search for a machine that would standardize teaching, making it cost-efficient and providing a common curriculum. Then he describes the present-day efforts to aggregate Big Data, discover patterns, and create a platform through which content might be delivered to 100 or 200 students in a class.

Here is the pivotal line:

“At its most innocent it is a renewed attempt at bringing back behaviourism and operant conditioning to make learning more efficient. At its most sinister; it establishes children as measurable commodities to be cataloged and capitalized upon by corporations. It is a movement that could be the last tsunami that systematically privatizes public education systems.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers

Good Advice for Bill Gates about Curiosity

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
13

This post by Ysette Guevara offers good advice to Bill Gates about curiosity–how it begins, how it grows, how it can be stifled, and why it matters.

Bill recently said in an interview that few children are curious and self-motivated. This blogger was taken aback by Bill’s meager understanding of children and education. Given his background in technology, it is easy to see how Bill could look at education as a technical problem that can be engineered, rather than a problem of human development that requires knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

I hope someone at the Gates Foundation shares this post with Bill. I doubt he reads my blog but I assume that one or more people monitor the blog. Please show it to him.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teachers and Teaching

Sharp Decline in Number Entering Teaching in California

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2013 //
31

The corporate reform movement has been bashing teachers and public education without let-up for the past several years. The bashing became super-charged after the introduction of Race to the Top in 2009, because it explicitly blames teachers for low test scores despite evidence to the contrary.

The “reformers” claim they want “great teachers” in every classroom, and the way to do it is to fire teachers whose students get low scores, to close schools with low scores, and to deny teachers the right to due process. This is their formula, and they are sticking to it even though no other nation in the world has launched a vendetta against the teaching profession and public schools.

Now the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing reports a sharp decline in the number of people who want to teach.

Teresa Watanabe writes that:

” Interest in teaching is steadily dropping in California, with the number of educators earning a teaching credential dipping by 12% last year — marking the eighth straight annual decline.

“The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing reported this month that 16,450 educators earned their credential in 2011-12, compared with 23,320 in 2007-08.

“The number of students enrolling in teacher preparation programs has also decreased, to 34,838 in 2010-11 from 51,744 in 2006-07.”

This fraudulent reform movement is not going to achieve any of its stated goals. It will not lead to a great teacher in every classroom. Left unchecked, it will turn teaching into a temp job and dismantle public education. This will benefit the haves, not the have-nots. And that may explain why the haves are dumping millions of dollars into state and local school board races, to elect candidates who share their contempt for career educators and democratic control of public education.

Categories California, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Teacher: I Hate What Is Happening to Our Schools

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2013 //
9

This comment from a teacher who read the post “For Shame, Commissioner King.” That post described how the state commissioner in New York requires special education students to take examinations they can’t read.

The teacher writes:

“I am often asked to proctor extended time testing on our all-too-frequent assessment days (quarterly interims, ACTs, PSAEs, practice for all of the above, etc.). I have been told it’s because I “get it” by our very talented, also very frustrated, special education team. By “get it,” they mean that, as a traditionally-certified teacher (in a charter network which favors TFAers) who attended an actual school of education, I have taken a few required classes on student learning differences and understand that not all kids can be lumped into a mediocre average and expected to achieve the same baseline level of understanding given “optimal input” and prison-like management. My husband works in mental health, so I am also inappropriately (illegally) consulted on student psychological issues far outside my job as a Latin teacher. It amazes me how clueless, or maybe worse, how careless, our schools have become with these students. Our school has an AMAZING special education team, yet they are ignored, forgotten about, and not consulted when it comes to the students they know best. Many have left or are leaving to take their talent elsewhere, and who could blame them?

“When I proctored my first extended time interim (a totally unnecessary in-network assessment incentivized by bonuses for both students and teachers whose scores compete with other schools in our network), I was shocked and appalled at what we do to our kids who already struggle to stay focused on one narrow task and sit still in their normal 45-minute class periods. We put them all in a room together, and make them sit still and silent for four hours. It was miserable for me, and I can only imagine how miserable it was for them. One student managed to pull a dollar bill out of his pocket, and studied it intently for a good 10 or 15 minutes during his math exam, no doubt running out of time when it came to actually completing the test. Knowing this student, I’m sure something in his exam inspired some spark of curiosity that he couldn’t ignore. This type of exploration might have been acknowledged positively, could have lent itself to a “teachable moment” to help students see some cross-curricular connections between printed money and history or culture (I’m going to pretend he was reading the Latin). But instead, I was expected to silently discipline the student after the test for not “focusing hard enough” on his pointless, soulless, disconnected interim exam.

“I hate where we are headed. I hate how little schools are allowed to appreciate real, connected learning, curiosity, and critical thinking. I hate to see brilliance stifled by enforced mediocrity. I feel so lucky to have attended schools before this wave of “reform,” but heartbroken for so many of my students who trust their futures to a system that is ultimately failing to help them reach their human potential, because being human is too messy, too hard to assign convenient numerical values to, and apparently undesirable to our policymakers and their corporate sponsors.”

Categories Special Education, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Trigger-Happy Florida Senators

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2013 //
4

Just hours after the defeat of parent trigger legislation, some of its advocates moved key portions into another bill.

In this case, this provision was salvaged:

“A bill focused on charter schools (HB 7009) was amended Tuesday afternoon. It now requires that children in classes taught by teachers with an “unsatisfactory” or “needs improvement” ratings during the current school year could not be taught by similar teachers in the same subject next year.”

Sounds reasonable except that the state’s evaluation system is ineffective.

Never say die, especially if there is a chance at harassing public school teachers.

More of the “punish don’t support” theory.

Categories Florida, Parent trigger, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching
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