Can You Blame Them?

by Kristine Weishaar

We often hear the phrase "teach to the test," but the phrase that needs our attention is "learn for the test."  Teachers are forced to teach to the test as a means of professional survival.  Likewise, students are forced to learn for the test for their own academic survival.  Public school teachers and students (and many administrators) are simply doing what they can to survive.  Not thrive.  Survive. 

Today's teaching professionals have been backed into a corner.  Stripped of resources, attacked by the media, blamed for social inequities, educators are forced to teach to the test.  If their students perform poorly on the mandated tests, the teacher's reputation and career are immediately jeopardized.  The teacher does what she must to survive; she teaches to the test.  Can you blame her?

Our current students and recent graduates have been trained in a culture of short-term learning to simply perform on a test.   They learn skills and content in isolation in order to score well on an exam.  They are not able to see how rudimentary skills and basic content can lead to higher level thinking and a deeper knowledge base because our system does not provide opportunity.  Students do not value their education because, quite frankly, the culture does nothing to encourage them. Today's students are simply trying to survive the system.  Can you blame them?

Teachers are trying to survive.  Students are trying to survive.  Do you remember a time when young people did more than survive?  When they wanted to learn?  I'm sure you do.  Think of a moment when you watched a young person "do" for the sake of doing and not for a test.  Here's an example: You give a three-year-old building blocks and ask him to build a tower, and he does.  Once we see that he has mastered the task, we don't take away the blocks and move on.  We let him build taller towers and bridges and fortresses and anything else he can imagine.  We are amazed at his ingenuity and discovery of balance and physics.  We allow him to explore and learn.  We also don't require all children to create the same tower at the same pace with the same materials  (or significantly fewer materials) because we know that would be unreasonable.  Besides, do we want only one type of tower in our culture?  Sometimes the child's towers fall.  But we don't blame him.  We know block towers will fall, and we give the child the time he needs to rebuild. 

Why then, do we ask school-age students in public schools to learn something, write (or bubble) it on a test, and then put it away forever?  Why then do we punish students and their teachers for doing what it takes to survive in this culture?  Why? Because we have put too much emphasis on the test.  In our current system, designed by politicians and profiteers, there is very little time for true teaching and learning.  Those in the trenches are merely trying to survive.  Not thrive.  Survive. Can you blame them?

Let's turn back the clock before it's too late.  Let's create a system where children have time to "do" for the sake of doing.  Learn for the sake of learning.  Build for the sake of building. Let's create a culture in which teachers are trusted to teach their students.   Teachers  are regarded as experts.  Teachers have authority in their classrooms.

We need to change the culture and the system. Teaching to the test doesn't work.  Learning for the test doesn't work. Given opportunity, teachers and students will learn to thrive again.  Will you still blame them then?


Kristine Weishaar

Oct. 14, 2013

Bill Gates Speech--With a Brooklyn Accent (of Course) - Parody by Mark Naison

"We have 19th Century Schools for 21st Century Conditions. If we don't radically transform the way schools are managed and teachers are monitored, our country will lose its position as a global leader. We have to move quickly before the opposition builds and apply reforms quickly and ruthlessly. Yes, we will drive the best veteran teachers out of the profession, but we will recruit talented young teachers because their other job prospects are so grim. Yes, we will demoralize a generation of students who can't adapt to the more demanding standards, but that is the collateral damage we have to accept. In fifteen years, when the smoke has cleared, we will have a world class education system in every state of the union, even in high poverty neighborhoods. We cannot falter in our mission to implant these Reforms. The future of our nation is at stake"

I AM A TEACHER

Four Fallacies of Educational Policy

Originally posted by Jeff Bigler on the blog, Waterboarding the Horse

One of the easiest ways to make a parent angry is for people who do not have children of their own to give parenting advice.  Now suppose that those childless people were given the power to make rules that parents had to follow.  This is the situation in education—educational policies are forged and enacted by people who have an agenda and zero classroom experience.

Educational policies that have given us the current climate of test-and-punish are causing the very failures they were allegedly enacted to protect us from.  As our students become more and more ill-prepared for college, the laws and standards become more draconian and unrealistic in response.

The entire argument is based on the premise that we have assessments that can accurately measure the quality of education that a student has received.  There are at least four basic fallacies that work to create this premise.

1. If a student can get the correct answer reliably on an assessment, then the student has a deep knowledge of the subject.  While it is possible to construct assessments that make this statement true, such assessments are few and far between.  Most assessments—certainly the ones that can be scored by a machine—are testing snippets of knowledge rather than deep understanding.  Students can be taught to recognize patterns and to select a correct answer with little or no understanding of the concepts that the test is supposed to assess.
   
2. If a student scores highly on an assessment that tests at the lowest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, that student must have a similar level of understanding at the higher levels. Standardized tests are tied to state frameworks.  States use standardized tests to generate data that show how students perform on each of the standards.  For this reason, almost every question addresses one and only one standard.  Because the standards are broken down finely, a question that addresses only one standard will almost certainly require recall or understanding, and not any of the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.  While a student with a high-level understanding of a subject can certainly answer low-level questions, the reverse is, of course, not necessarily true.
   
3. If the students from a given school or district score highly on an assessment, then the school or district must also be living up equally well to its other responsibilities, and the test scores can therefore serve as a proxy for evaluating the school with respect to those other responsibilities.  Whether we believe this or not, most rankings and evaluations of schools and school districts are based solely on test scores.  Society tacitly assumes that a school with high test scores is a good school, and it therefore must be doing a good job with everything that schools do.
   
4. If the students from a given school or district score poorly on an assessment, then the school must be doing a poor job of living up to its responsibilities. If this is the case, the cause must be that the teachers have too much academic freedom, and are spending too much class time on things that don’t matter.  Again, the tacit assumption is that a school with low test scores is a failing school, and it therefore must be doing a bad job with everything else that schools do.

The real difference between the high-performing vs. low-performing schools is usually that the effects of poverty make it impossible for students in low-performing schools to get as much out of their education as the students in high-performing schools.  My own experience bears this out—the second year that I taught AP Chemistry was in a very high-performing, high socioeconomic status (SES) town.  All of my students passed the AP exam, most with scores of 4 and 5.  If I had stood in front of the class and picked my nose all year, most of those students would have learned the content on their own and passed the exam anyway.  The following year, I was certainly a better AP teacher, and my students certainly got a better AP Chemistry class.  However, I was teaching in an average-performing school in a much lower SES city.  Approximately one-fourth of my students passed the AP exam, and those who passed earned a 3 or 4.

The “fix” that is often applied is to give teachers in low-performing schools scripted lessons from teachers in high-performing schools.  The problem is that the teachers in the high-performing schools are generally no more talented at teaching than the teachers in the low-performing schools.  (I have taught at high-, average-, and low-performing schools, and my observations support this claim.)  Moreover, lessons that are designed for students in high-SES districts generally do not work out-of-the-box for students in low-SES districts.  If the teacher is not permitted to modify the lessons to suit the students’ needs, the scripted lessons fail to improve the performance of students from low-performing schools.  When this happens, everyone assumes that the difference must be caused by the difference between the teachers.  The obvious conclusion is therefore to fire the teachers in the low-performing schools.  Unfortunately, not only does this not solve the problem, it results in the low-performing school having to hire new teachers, who actually are less talented at teaching, due to their lack of experience.  When the students fail to improve under the new teacher, the cycle repeats itself, again and again.

The problem of how to make education work for students living in poverty is pervasive, and any solution will need to be multi-faceted.  However, in the short term, if we give teachers in low-performing schools the freedom to teach students the way they need to be taught, we might at least stop losing so much ground.


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Letter From The Front

It has been a tough year so far. I have been very discouraged with what is going on nationally as well as with my own campus and the administration of my particular area. I have been discouraged with how immature and disconnected this year's group of upperclassmen seem to be. I have been upset with how my hands have been tied this year. I am upset that what I know to be good teaching (track record proves it) is being discounted and criticized into oblivion. It has been hard to get up in the mornings to face yet another day full of constant negativity, implied threats and ever increasing bogus paperwork. This is the most discouraged I have felt professionally in many years.

Yet on Friday night, while my school and an opposing football team were notoriously making national headlines, something happened. I was home preparing for the imminent grading period, writing test questions and trying to figure out the statistical strategy to use in the rigged evaluation game we in Indiana call "RISE". I got a text from an unknown number. It was a former student who graduated two years ago. She had left her apartment without her wallet (as teens sometimes do). Her phone was dying. It was dark. It was getting late. She had run out of gas in a less than desirable neighborhood. She had called everyone she could think of to come to her aid. Her mother said she would be there shortly- that was two hours earlier. This student texted me. I went. I was greeted with a rushed dissertation of all the terrible things that had been happening recently. Then she told me how she had called everyone she could think of before calling me. She said, "I knew you would come. You always do." I hugged her, put gas in her car, sat and talked with her for two hours about her future and did a lot of listening and affirming- just as I had done the night before when a classmate of her's had reached out to me on Facebook with an emotional crisis.

It was a nice reminder of why I do drag myself out of bed and face the institutional negativity each day.


Michelle Coy

Yohuru Williams Why I Joined the BTA and Why You Should Do the Same

BY DR. YOHURU WILLIAMS

The following article appears in the lastword section of this month’s edition of Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Special thanks to Mark Naison who generously read and commented on an early version. All errors, of course, are mine.

 Lastword

While a graduate student at Howard University, I had the good fortune to land a job teaching in a wonderful private school in Washington, DC. Many of my friends and associates taught in the public schools. While our class sizes and access to resources was quite different, what we shared was a commitment to young people and a belief in the transformative power of education. What we also shared at the time, was a degree of respect and influence in the community due to our chosen profession. Back in the mid-1990s, teaching was still celebrated as a noble occupation if not a vocation of service. How things have changed.

Over the past few years, we witnessed a steady assault on teachers’ abilities. They shoulder the blame for the general failure of American education, including lower rates of student performance on high stakes testing and incredibly high dropout rates. At the same time, the narrative of the incompetent teacher, with its concomitant condemnation of the three T’s, tenure, teachers unions, and too much time off, dominates the national discussion on the failure of American education. Equally, a new abiding faith in technology, in the form of the push for online alternatives to traditional schooling has challenged the notion that large numbers of teachers are even necessary.

This troubling one two punch has been relentless and for the most part successful, perpetuated by a cacophony of interests unwilling to commit the resources or institute the reforms necessary to revitalize and transform our schools. In recent battles in New York, Los Angles, and Philadelphia, teachers have been vilified for supporting the idea that education is a civil right beyond compromise. Such demonization points to a Fahrenheit 451esque future. Before you burn the books, you must first do away with the teachers. Perhaps, this is already the case. In many communities from Wisconsin to New Jersey, monies allocated for corrections dwarf the amount spent on education, with little to no discourse about how to correct this. Philadelphia teachers even appealed to US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, but to no avail.

The press has certainly been complicit. In the last two decades alone, sensationalized stories about improper student teacher relations garnered bigger headlines than shrinking budgets and the demise of music and art in many districts. The vast majority of teachers labor for inadequate pay but are saddled with the tremendous responsibility as vital caretakers of our nation’s most precious commodity, our youth.
Where are the stories about the corporate tax breaks that have helped to compromise the health of our schools, especially in deindustrialized urban centers where the shrinking tax base seriously compromised education along with other basic city services?

This is not a blanket defense of the teaching profession. Long before critics became fixated on the so-called abuses of teachers unions, teachers themselves clamored for greater accountability, more opportunities for professional development, and administrators with practical insight (teaching experience) into the challenges of the field. What they got in exchange was “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” which share an appeal to form over substance, and appearance rather than performance.
Rather than deal with the real issues at the heart of our ailing schools, critics singled out teachers as the primary cause for the decline. All the “smart” people, so the story goes have real jobs in corporate America, leaving education to a mix of the well-intentioned, but incompetent or outright inept. Why would anyone “choose” to be a teacher, they ask unwittingly acknowledging the low pay and hardship associated with the work? The answer, of course, is simple, because we care.

What you may ask does any of this have to do with higher education? Over the past five years, we have also seen the corporatizing influence creeping into higher education with the same narrative applied to the professorate. Employers, we are told have complained that students are graduating from college unprepared for the challenges of 21st century America. They need skills training. Ironically, the response has not been calls for smaller class sizes, or more opportunities for collaboration between college and K-12 educators, but MOOCS massive online classes where the very same students we are told who are unable to read, write, or process information critically can fulfill their core requirements with even less opportunity to address these deficiencies. At the same time such classes, we are told could insure uniformity in instruction and student learning outcomes, contradictory to the evidence coming out of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
In conjunction with the so-called benefits, proponents have been quick to point out the cost cutting elements of such initiatives without acknowledging the importance of universities as important spaces of human interaction that have produced innovation in every arena from science and technology to literature, philosophy, and medicine not to mention as key centers of political discourse and exchange.

The same forces have branded professors as lazy, technophobes, singularly concerned with their own research and unwilling to make changes that might negatively affect their life of comfort. Calls for post tenure review, and now the abolition of tenure altogether are partly a reflection of this narrative. College professors, like teachers, have also led the charge in educational reform with initiatives like preparing future faculty that date back more than a decade.

It is for all these reasons that I recently joined the Badass Teacher Association (BTA). Founded in June of 2013, BTA is a growing network of educators from Kindergarten to College united by a common desire to bring these concerns back into focus. The fight for quality education, along with respect for those who deliver it, is only one of many fronts in the battle against economic, social, and political inequality in this country. It is, however an important one. BTA recognizes this pushing for sensible reform and enlightened administration that will assist not only in the education of future generations, but also in the restoration of sense of community, in which teachers and professors play a vital role. As a parent and professor, as well as a proponent of social justice, I can find no stronger argument than that.

Dr. Yohuru Williams is Chair and Professor of History at Fairfield University. Follow him on Twitter @yohuruwilliams.

The BATtle for Education

By Jennifer Clarke

Ineffective teachers should be removed from the classroom.  

Let’s play a bit of Mad Libs, shall we?

Ineffective (noun:occupation) ______________ should be removed from the (noun:place)________________.

There are not many nouns that could be placed in that sentence that would make it false. That being said, the question is not whether or not people who are ineffective in their positions should be removed, but rather what is the measure of effectiveness? There are terms being thrown around about what makes an effective teacher and the harms of tenure, etc. But what does all of this really mean?

What does effective teaching look like to the public?

Colton C., Texas High School Senior--“The most influential teacher that I have ever had really opened up my mind to a lot of new ideas. For a long time I had been very closed minded and didn't want to accept new ideas. She showed me that maybe . . .other way[s] could work too. I have grown substantially because of her. I find myself to be a much better person today than I was before and a lot of it is because of her. She's was and still is one of the most influential people I have ever met and I hope to keep learning from her.”

Sheri L., Louisiana Parent--“I am writing this letter to show my appreciation for a 2nd grade teacher from Henning Elementary School in Sulphur, Louisiana. . .I was blessed to have my daughter in the classroom of a teacher that not only was passionate about education but was a sincere person with unbelievable determination to make all those in her classroom excel. My daughter struggled at any early age with Attention Deficit Disorder.  While her case was mild in comparison to others she still faced struggles with her studies.  No matter the encouragement we gave her at home it was not enough to boost her confidence in the classroom.  Her teacher not only gave her the education required but also found a way to make her understand and enjoy learning. . . She graduated in the top percentile of her class and was awarded a small scholarship.  To most people this is average, to me and my daughter it was a blessing.  She received the gift of an educator from her early years in school that would change the course of her future forever. . . As more tests and focus on state testing is required, I find that great educators are no longer able to give this kind of attention to students.  Classrooms are spending more time working to prepare for “The Test” than staying on track with the needs of those that may struggle but still have bright minds waiting and begging to be developed.”

Rachel V., Texas College Student--“Throughout my high school career, I never felt like I fit in with the rest of my age group. I had few friends and many acquaintances, all of which were outcasts. I felt so out of place, I would even dress differently to make myself stand out. While the eyes of my peers were filled with shallow judgment, my teachers saw through my costume. . . Needless to say, I never had a teacher that didn't love me. . .My teachers were the ones who encouraged me and pushed me. Without their guiding hands, I do not believe I would have reached my full potential because I never believed in myself. There was one particular instance I will always remember. I would occasionally hear people say that high school was the best time of their lives. I absolutely despised being in high school and being told the experience would probably be the best time of my life made me feel hopeless. One wonderful English teacher told the class one day, ‘Class, I would like for you all to know that there is much more to life than high school. There are so many great experiences beyond this. Don't believe that this is the greatest time you will ever have in your life. There is so much more.’ And that's exactly what I needed to hear. Teachers are not just there to teach their students how to get high scores on a test. My teachers taught me vision and patience. My teachers brought me a joy through learning. My teachers... I will never forget.”

Brittany L., Texas High School Junior--“The most important thing my English teacher taught me was not the required materials or the district curriculum, but the way she taught it. She educated with such enthusiasm and honest concern for each individual student. Her attitude has stayed with me and inspired me to do tasks and work with a positive demeanor.”

Brandon L., Texas High School Graduate, currently deployed in Afghanistan--“I had two teachers who had very meaningful impacts on my life. My freshman math teacher, from the very first moment she walked into the class, her first time teaching in high school, . . . my classmates and myself knew she was different. She walked in, with a huge smile and the best attitude of any teacher I have seen on our first day of school. Through the year, she made learning fun. Wait actually she made MATH fun, something my classmates and myself thought to be completely impossible. But not only was it math she was teaching us . . .She was always trying to lead us into the right direction as teenagers growing into young adults. She shared life experiences with us, and if you ever needed an adult to talk to, her door was always open to her students. Through my four years of high school, I maintained a very close relationship with this teacher, and even after graduation we still maintain contact. . . I am grateful that I had such a caring person in those early years of me becoming an adult. I also am grateful for my senior English teacher. So by this point I was at that young adult age, getting ready to start pursuing my life outside of school. . .I was very lazy and didn’t feel like applying myself a lot of the time . . . But this teacher saw the potential in me, and always pushed me to strive for my best, even if I found the work to be easy.  And that was something that she did with all her students. There were students in my grade that . . . with her help and her support, they exceeded even their own expectations. Not only was she a motivator, . . . She was also a life lessons teacher. She always wanted what was best for her students and would do what she could to make sure her students were ok.  She is a caring person with a huge heart . . . She truly helped shaped my senior year, and many of her students will say that she has also influenced their life in a big way, and I am one of those students. To this day I can go back to her and talk to her and she will still help me, even if it is just the simplest advice there is. Truly an amazing individual and an amazing teacher.”

Nicole J., Texas Student--“In the 7th grade I was greatly influenced by my science teacher, not because of the lessons she taught me in school, but because of the lessons she taught me in life! She was young and full of love and kindness! One day I had overslept and missed my bus, which left me with no way to school, as this wonderful lady passes by and see's me walking she quickly turns around insisting she give me a ride to school! That day I was so grateful of her! And that day she taught me how much it can mean to someone else to take just a second out of your day to do a kind act for another. Later on during the next year we lost our house to a fire, and when my family and I were left with nothing, she contributed along with the rest of my school to raise money for my family and give me a christmas. This wonderful woman never stops giving! Because of her, I will always take time out of my day to help someone who may need me.”

Why is tenure under attack?

Michelle Rhee told The New York Times: “Tenure is the holy grail of teacher unions but has no educational value for kids; it only benefits adults. If we can put veteran teachers who have tenure in a position where they don’t have it, that would help us to radically increase our teacher quality. And maybe other districts would try it, too.” http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/11/20/michelle-rhee-takes-aim-teacher-tenure

Simply put, there is a misconception that tenure means a teacher who is ineffective or harmful cannot be removed from the classroom. Tenure does not mean a teacher’s contract cannot be terminated. Tenure simply guarantees teachers due process in pursuing claims or causes of action related to potential termination of a contract. That is really all it does. If a teacher is in danger of losing his or her job, then he or she is entitled to administrative processes to review the issues before any final decisions are made. Any other degreed, contracted professional is afforded the same right is some form.

Why are unions under attack?

“What she [Michelle Rhee] calls "Plan B" involves a more aggressive use of powers she already has and that are not subject to contract negotiations with the union. These could include strengthening the existing system of annual personnel evaluations that spell out procedures for terminating teachers.”
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-09-08/news/36823171_1_rhee-contract-negotiations-contract-talks

Unions have been systematically dismantled for decades, and worker’s rights have diminished. We could argue cause and effect, and it is likely a topic worth of discussion, but I mention it because the attacks on teacher unions that have suffered the same loss of power as other professional unions has resulted in essentially silencing teachers in the battles for job security, livable wages, professional protections, and true education reform. The result is that corporate reformers and politicians have bulldozed public education at the expense of educators and the peril of students. Unions function largely as mediators, and so the result is often continued silence of educators.

Why are students under attack?

The corporate and political reformers have decided that students should all conform to a set curriculum and pass a test that is standardized to the goal of the curriculum. The problem with this formula is that it is manufactured like a product and marketed as education. Despite what education is actually doing, the corporate and political reformers would have everyone believe that it is a gross failure. "It's no secret the U.S. education system is failing," Gates said. "We're doing all kinds of experiments that are different. The Race To The Top is going to do many different ones. There's no group-think."
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33469415/ns/us_news-education/t/bill-gates-makes-big-push-education-reform/#.UgZTzJJJ55E 

How will experiments that have no proven results, are formulated by people with little to no educational background, knowledge, or training, and based on a premise of conjecture yield anything reliable? Why are our children being used for this experiment? Are the classrooms really being used as a thinly veiled focus group for the product of corporate reform? This product does not appeal to and would not be effective for everyone. Students come from different backgrounds, have different language barriers, have obstacles to learning, and require varied educational practices and approaches. One product will not fit all. There are countless studies that have shown the largest barrier to student success is poverty. There is absolutely nothing about this product that addresses, adapts, or even acknowledges one of the major inhibitors to student success. It is presumptuous to label children as failures when they are being forced to participate in a system that is not designed for them to succeed.

Why are parents under attack?

Michelle Rhee: “I think if there is one thing I have learned over the last 15 months, it’s that cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated.”
September 2008 Aspen Institute’s education summit at the Mayflower Hotel (Washington Post)

Parents have been questioning the state of education for a long time, but have been given conflicting information in an endless tome of advice, documentation, internet articles, research, and countless confusing politically charged speeches on education reform. Parents have been told that teachers are ineffective. Parents have been told that teachers are failing. But parents are beginning to ask questions, research their rights, and pay attention to the legislation and statutes that govern education. Parents are beginning movements to opt-out of testing. Some states have passed parent-backed legislation that supports parent take overs of schools, but this is unlikely to be successful without significant cooperation between teachers and parents. The point is, parents have been under attack for not preparing kids to be educated. They are attacked for not participating in overseeing homework. They are attacked for not disciplining their children. Parents are attacked for not managing their children in the approximately three waking hours families have together on a weekday basis. While parent involvement is vital to student success, poverty and other economic failures plague families. Parents are working more hours to survive. Between feeding, bathing, and bedtime, little time is left for checking homework folders, assignment sheets, discussing grades, reading notes, signing forms, and still taking care of all other domestic family duties. Corporate reformers and politicians lack perspective. American families are struggling to survive. Kids are struggling to meet some arbitrary standard that has no basis in respected peer-reviewed pedagogy or benefit to the children. Until parents can afford to survive, “little Timmy’s” homework folder just doesn’t feel as important. It can’t be.

Why are public schools under attack?

President Obama: “And that’s what my key reform’s been all about, “Race To the Top.” What we’ve said to school districts is, ‘You’ve gotta emphasize high accountability, high standards. Make sure that teachers know that we’re going to be paying attention to the actual outcomes for kids. But we’re also going to give more resources to schools who are doing the right thing: Training teachers providing them the professional development and support that they need.’ Some of the things that we’ve done haven’t been popular with teachers unions. You know, I’m a big proponent of charter schools, for example. I think that pay-for-performance makes sense in some situations.”  http://thegrio.com/2012/09/26/president-obama-talks-education-school-reform-with-nbc-news-savannah-guthrie/

Reformers are pushing for vouchers, charters, and private schools. Interestingly, many of these options allow for non-participation in the imposed public school curriculum, alternate rating systems, or exemption from testing requirements. Additionally, many of the supporters of reform send their own children to the alternatives to public school. On the very face of the issue, my question is, if this curriculum and standardized testing will solve all ills in public education, then why would your very own children not be benefitting from this reform? More deeply, I question the intent behind this movement. Public education is the only guaranty for equity in access to education. When parents run to alternatives to escape testing for their children, public schools will be robbed of funding and programs needed for survival. Where will children who cannot participate fully in vouchers, attend private school, are travel to an available charter, go to school? If these schools are not required to participate in testing and curriculum mandates, when the public schools begin to dissolve, where will funding for the testing corporation continue to come from? At some point, this “house of cards” (thank you BATs) will fall.

Why are teachers under attack?

Michelle Rhee: “We will no longer describe failure as the result of vast impersonal forces like poverty or a broken bureaucracy." 
(July 2007 confirmation hearing (Washington Post)

Despite the realities of the problems in education, teachers have become the scapegoat. Teachers want real, effective evaluation based on valuable curriculum standards, educational practices, lesson engagement, and student impact, and they want to be evaluated by people and processes knowledgeable about education. Current evaluative practices include classroom monitoring, student intervention, parent contact, lesson evaluation, self-assessment, administrator evaluation, and teacher mentoring programs, but Gates, apparently misinformed, suggests that: “until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: satisfactory.”
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ted-talks-education/speaker/bill-gates/

Interestingly, Bill Gates said: “Teachers need the feedback and professional growth opportunities they want to help their students succeed instead of generic, one-size-fits all solutions that don’t help them grow as professionals.”  And yet, it is exactly, this “one-size-fits all solution” that he is backing financially.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/US-Program/College-Ready-Education


There are many factors that impact student success and educators are a part of the equation. But the teachers are only a part. Educator effectiveness cannot be calculated by student success if the student is being judged on a one size fits all criteria. Teachers will teach curriculum and students will learn—this has happened for centuries. Test scores or no test scores, students learn at school. Teachers also educate students on the value of thought, creativity, problem solving, self-reliance, achievement, and work ethic. These are valuable skills that are not quantifiable on a test, but they are necessary for any student to ultimately be successful. Teachers fill roles in students’ lives that are necessary and important for student development.  Teachers act as mentors, counselors, role models, and sometimes family to students in need of guidance. Teachers have placed students as their priority, and in so doing, as the unions dissolved, and administrations became overrun with business professionals, teachers have become silenced in the bureaucratic processes. This has made them an easy target. Additionally, politicians have made it clear that targeting poverty, joblessness, and other social issues is too big a burden to bear. Placing the blame on teachers through quantifiable (though irrelevant) data and statistics, is a much easier “solution” and comes with handy charts and graphs to show constituents. The truth is, teachers aren’t the problem. And when people are ready to allow them speak again without fear of retribution, they will gladly offer helpful ideas and solutions for student success.

Why it is time to defend?

Excerpt from a poem by Kisha Allgood, New Jersey College Student

Tell a story we know too well
A story of love and sacrifice 
A story of joy and pain 
Voices in harmony speak the same 
To all of the soldiers 
Mothers, Fathers, and friends
The battle has just begun , the question is where does it end?

Bill Gates said “U.S. teachers don't get enough feedback or have the opportunities to advance to different levels based on merit that are available in other countries.” Clearly, Gates is not familiar with education. What is teacher advancement? If you become an administrator you are no longer a teacher, but would that be advancement? It is a different job entirely and requires differentiated education. Teachers teach, Gates. Let them do it.
http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2013/04/27/bill-gates-on-philanthropy-one-thing.html?page=all

The major players in the corporate and political reform movement have made it clear that teachers, public schools, students, and parents are the problem with public education. Their solution is to build a curriculum and test wherein everyone conforms to the standard or is labeled a failure. As Michelle Rhee stated: “The bottom line is that if you can’t come to agreement then you have to push your agenda in a different way, and we’re absolutely going to do that." (September 2008 Aspen Institute’s education summit at the Mayflower Hotel (Washington Post). She is pretty clear about where her loyalties lie, and students aren’t first.

Arne Duncan has joined forces with corporate reformers hailing this union as paving the way for a brighter educational future, but researching Duncan shows his support of public education is lackluster at best. His sound bites are ludicrous, full of double talk, and really say nothing, so here is my question: You will remove highly qualified, skilled, trained educators with TFA recruits that have 5 weeks of training and plan to only stay for two years, and in your Race to the Top world, this is expected to yield better results? Political and corporate reform is not only bad for education, the reformers have no idea what effective education actually looks like.

President Obama said: “When I meet teachers all across the country, they are so devoted, so dedicated to their kids. And what we’ve tried to do is actually break through this left/right, conservative/liberal gridlock. . .Well, the key is to work with teachers”  http://thegrio.com/2012/09/26/president-obama-talks-education-school-reform-with-nbc-news-savannah-guthrie/

Remove the gridlock, Mr. President. We are here, sleeves rolled up, and we are ready to work with you.