Teacher as Savior

Yesterday I spoke of a forum I attended in the Bronx. An interesting conversation ensued between audience and panel about recruitment for TFA and Moskowitz Academies. Evidently the pitch is that children of color must be saved and only you, the students, can get it done. Oh, and also we can give you a job after you graduate up to your neck in debt.

There are a number of striking points you could make about this particular argument. One is that there are plenty of public schools right there in the Bronx, and if you wish to branch out there are four more boroughs nearby with kids who could use your assistance. Another is that working in an NYC public school still beats the hell out of doing test prep for Eva and watching your hapless kids pee their pants rather than pause one moment from studying. She treats those kids a lot worse than I treat my dog (and in fact I love my dog, treat him well, and take him out whenever he asks).

Then, as one of the panelists pointed out, it's not exactly within our means to change everything. You know, there's poverty, there are learning disabilities, there is environment, and there are newcomers who speak no English. And make no mistake, Eva talks a big ballgame, but she doesn't take the same kids we do. 100% of the students I teach are beginners. They are most definitely not ready for intensive bathroom-free test prep, and that's not to suggest that anyone else is. If Eva takes ELLs, they are certainly on a higher level. Special education runs the gamut as well. Just because someone has an IEP doesn't mean she's alternate assessment, like a group of kids at my school. Alternate assessment kids are not expected to graduate. We take them to worksites and train them for jobs, and their stats count against us at year's end. And, of course, self-purported savior Moskowitz has a reputation for dumping kids that don't help her test-score-based bottom line.

As for TFA, sure you can have them pack you off to anyplace in the country. Sure you can help poor students whether or not you've got training sufficient to work in a public school. Maybe you've seen movies like Freedom Writers, where the actress what's her name (who, in fairness, has been in some good stuff too) singlehandedly inspires kids and saves them from their otherwise miserable destinies. Then there was the movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, where I think she shot a gun off in class, or jumped out a window or something, and didn't get fired.

One really cool thing about these movie teachers is they invariably have only one class. That's convenient, because you can focus on the handful of kids being saved. Most teachers I know have 170 students, and are pretty busy with things like, oh, grading tests and lesson planning. In my school, located on this astral plane, we now have grading policies so ponderous that teachers can barely find time for anything else. And don't get me started on gym teachers who have different classes every other day and are expected to perform this nonsense for 500 kids. I don't know how they even learn student names.

Of course teachers are a positive influence. Of course teachers, next to parents, are often the very best role models for children. And of course sometimes teachers can do incredible things, and there are extraordinary teachers. I know real stories about real teachers who reach out and change lives. I even know one who did this for years, who was threatened with an ineffective rating from a supervisor who appreciated this not at all, and who died alone one weekend only months before his planned retirement. I don't suppose that would make a movie script, as the protagonists tend to be gorgeous young white women.

The really cool thing about the teacher as savior model is it takes almost everyone off the hook for just about everything. Problems with your kids? The teachers suck. Failing the class? The teachers suck. Not graduating on time? The teachers suck. Teacher calling your house? He should handle it himself, that's his job, and he sucks. Why can't he be more like Michelle Pfeiffer or what's-her-name from Freedom Writers?

Not only parents are off the hook, but so are politicians. Arne Duncan, or John King, or Barack Obama, or Michael Bloomberg, or Joel Klein, or Andrew Cuomo (all of whom send their kids to private schools), can get up and tell some story about how a great teacher can change a life. That takes them off the hook for crumbling infrastructure, lack of a living wage or affordable health care, and allowing both parents to work 200 hours a week each to make ends meet. The implication is that a good teacher can change absolutely everything, and politicians are suddenly responsible for nothing, It's a WIN-WIN!

Thus you devise ways to fire teachers, like value-added, you devise ways to vilify teachers, like attacking their unions, and you devise ways to blame them for every ill of society. You even try to make a few films that drop the whole savior routines and stereotype public school, making charters the hero. You gloss over the whole pants-peeing thing because it doesn't make for increased popcorn sales.

Here's the thing--we do the best we can, each and every day, under incredibly challenging circumstances. We choose to go out and work with America's children each and every day, no matter who they are or how they come to us. We're not asking to be portrayed as super-heroes, but we don't deserve super-villain status either.

I want to support kids and help them to be happy, but I can't do everything. Politicians need to do their part too, instead of simply taking money from rich people, making their comfortable lives even more so, and ignoring those of us who actually work for a living. And we need to hold their feet to the fire.

The best idea would be to make folks who run schools patronize them. If the schools you run aren't good enough for your children, they likely aren't good enough for mine either. If Bloomberg or Klein had to send their own kids to public school, they'd eye very different reforms than the ones they ended up enforcing. You wouldn't have kids sitting in trailers, eating lunch before 9 AM, herded like prisoners, running around outside because there is no gym, or going years without glasses because even an eye check is unaffordable.

With Donald Trump as President, with demagogues like Betsy DeVos and Eva Moskowitz pretending to care about all children but giving in to the backward moves of this administration, our jobs become even more difficult.

Maybe we have to be super-heroes after all. Maybe we can. But our super-hero status will have to bring us outside the classroom and into communities, where we will be truth-tellers. Truth-tellers are in very short supply here in 2017.

All's Fair in Love and Teacher-Bashing

I'm a teacher, so I write about education. But if I were a NY Times columnist, I could write about hedge funds. I probably wouldn't write very well about them because I'm not really clear on what they are. But, like NY Times columnists, hedge fund guys are education experts no matter what, and turnabout is fair play, so there you go.

Frank Bruni used to be a food writer. I'm sure if you want to know where you can get a souffle, he's your guy. Now he's writing about tenure. Here's how he begins:

Mike Johnston’s mother was a public-school teacher. So were her mother and father. And his godfather taught in both public and private schools.

What Mr. Bruni has here is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy designed to make us accept an argument whether or not it has merit. And there's more of that here.

Arne Duncan, the education secretary, praised the decision. Tenure even drew scrutiny from Whoopi Goldberg on the TV talk show “The View.” She repeatedly questioned the way it sometimes shielded bad teachers.

Well, if they think so, then it must be true, right? After all, they're famous, so they must know. Is that a good argument, or another appeal to authority? Or is it the bandwagon fallacy--Everyone's doing it, so it must be right. Let's take a look at the background of Colorado State Senator Johnston, on whose say-so Bruni appears to have determined tenure is no good:

Johnston spent two years with Teach for America in Mississippi in the late 1990s. Then, after getting a master’s in education from Harvard, he worked for six years as a principal in public schools in the Denver area, including one whose success drew so much attention that President Obama gave a major education speech there during his 2008 presidential campaign.

There's an expert for you. After all, he spent two whole years as a teacher. (That's almost as long as Reformy John King, who spent two in a charter and one in a public school.) Now me, I'd suggest that's not nearly enough time to be a qualified principal, let alone an expert on teachers or tenure. The fact is most teachers love the classroom, and want to be there. I know I do. I question the dedication and ability of anyone who needs to get out after two years.

Take a look at how vague that paragraph is. Six years as a principal, including one that was, supposedly, very successful. First, he was not principal of any single school for six years. Second, who knows how long he was principal of this successful school, who knows whether he was principal when Obama showed up, and who really thinks Obama, who hired DFER stooge Duncan as Education Secretary, knows or cares what a good public school is? Doesn't Obama send his own kids to Sidwell Friends, where they aren't subject to the reformy nonsense he and Arne impose on the rest of us?

And isn't this entire paragraph yet another appeal to authority--authority that is plainly questionable? Isn't TFA a political organization that sends five-week teachers to public schools, an organization that happily sends its young dilettantes to take the positions of Chicago teachers who've been dismissed by Rahm, an organization that got Arne Duncan to declare its five-week wonders were "highly qualified?" I'm left questioning not only Bruni's appeal to authority, but the authority with which we're presented. Let's take a look at what passes for actual argument in Bruni's piece:

“Do you have people who all share the same vision and are willing to walk through the fire together?” he said. Principals with control over that coax better outcomes from students, he said, citing not only his own experience but also the test scores of kids in Harlem who attend the Success Academy Charter Schools.

We've already explored Johnston's experience. Now let's take a look at the Moskowitz academies he so reveres. They have fewer kids with special needs than public schools do, and when kids don't meet expectations, they simply get rid of them. If you let public schools pick and choose, their test scores will go up too. What neither Bruni nor his expert understand is that we serve all kids, we take them as they come, and we don't dump them simply because they struggle, or misbehave, or whatever.

“You saw that when you could hire for talent and release for talent, you could actually demonstrate amazing results in places where that was never thought possible,” he said. “Ah, so it’s not the kids who are the problem! It’s the system.”

And yet, even disregarding Johnson's limited experience and poor grasp of Moskowitz schools, as well as his and Bruni's total lack of documented evidence, this entire concept is an anecdote. We don't even know what he bases it on. But it's the same reformy boilerplate--no excuses. We'll ignore poverty and just focus on the test scores. Was Johnston's school consistently successful? If so, how? If so, why? Who knows?

We need to pay good teachers much more.

Note that it's not "teachers," but rather "good teachers." There are several assumptions implicit here. One, of course, is that of the zombie plague of bad teachers that threatens both mom and apple pie. The other, of course, is that we need merit pay. This indicates that Bruni has not bothered to research merit pay, which has been rearing its ugly head for a hundred years and has never worked anywhere.

Here is Johnston's brainchild, the model to which Bruni sees us aspiring:

I sat down with Johnston, a Democrat who represents a racially diverse chunk of this city in the State Senate, because he was the leading proponent of a 2010 law that essentially abolished tenure in Colorado. To earn what is now called “non-probationary status,” a new teacher must demonstrate student progress three years in a row, and any teacher whose students show no progress for two consecutive years loses his or her job protection.

This is entirely based on value-added, judging from what Bruni says. This method is dubious at best, and junk science at worst. Regular readers of this blog know I see it as the latter. Bruni also bemoans job protections many Americans would envy. I don't blame them. I'm reminded of the story where one farmer says of another, "He has a cow, and I don't. I want his cow to die." For goodness sake, wouldn't it be better if both farmers had cows? My favorite argument in the column, though, comes from newly self-proclaimed education expert Whoopi Goldberg:

“Parents are not going to stand for it anymore,” she said. “And you teachers, in your union, you need to say, ‘These bad teachers are making us look bad.’ ”

This reminds me of nothing so much as the favored argument of bigots. "The bad ones spoil it for the good ones." Why not apply the same logic to criminal justice? Some of those criminals are just bad, so no due process for them. Just toss them in jail without any costly and inconvenient jury trial, because Whoopi Goldberg and Frank Bruni think it's OK.

Another argument bigots favor is, "I'm not a bigot. I know some of those people."

And waddya know, Johnston has teachers in his family. So he must be totally objective. And Bruni writes for the NY Times. So he must also be objective, with no ax to grind whatsoever. Doubtless it's mere coincidence that he was a guest at the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell Brown, and that he failed to disclose it.

After all, Campbell Brown herself forgot to mention that her husband was a bigshot at Students First, so stuff like that raises no question whatsoever in what passes for journalism these days.

Update: From Leonie Haimson--you left out the most pathetically outrageous thing Johnston said: 

"[Tenure] has a decimating impact on morale among staff, because some people can work hard, some can do nothing, and it doesn’t matter.” 

You see, tenure is what hurting teacher morale, see, not widespread teacher bashing by policymakers and the media, and their insistence that bad teaching is to blame for low student achievement, and/or the concomitant move to diminish their autonomy, disrespect their expertise, and take away their job security, pension, etc.

Why Do Teachers Quit?

There are a lot of reasons, of course, and we face them each and every day. This piece focuses on why teachers of color quit. Admittedly, I lack color, so I can speak personally only as to why I see people quit, and I'm afraid I don't pay much attention to what color they are. For one thing, this is a tough job. You don't instantly walk in and reach kids, and there are few things more frustrating than failure.

And let me tell you, you don't need to be observed 4-6 times a year to know you're failing. Kids will tell you instantly. They will ignore you. They will do whatever the hell they please, and you'll be standing there like an idiot. If you don't get a handle on that, and you don't quit, I don't know how you do it.

Financial matters can further alienate teachers of color from coworkers. Teachers from well-to-do families have the advantage of accepting a low-paying teaching position and still having money available to them through other means.

Apparently, I come from a background of extreme wealth. I didn't realize that until this writer told me. Actually, when I decided to turn down the first regular tenure-track assignment I'd ever been offered--teaching English at what was then Springfield Gardens High School, I should have asked mom and dad to support me. (By then, I'd decided I wanted to teach ESL, which I'd been assigned more or less by accident.)

Instead, I went out and found a job playing in world's worst Irish wedding band. I didn't love the gig, but it and a student loan got me through a year of grad school. In fact, while the writer may not have had that option, there are other jobs one can get, and working one's way through college is not all that unusual. Were that option unacceptable, the writer might have sought a job in a real public school, where the pay would probably have been better.

When I saw teachers from wealthier backgrounds stay in the profession, I had to remind myself that they, through their family or connections, could more easily tolerate a teaching salary knowing they would always have access to a lifestyle my family and I could only aspire to.

Yes of course. After 30 years as a teacher, I'm thinking of breaking into the stock market. Maybe I'm the next Wolf of Wall Street.

And though my salary was enough to give me a comfortable lifestyle, and save a decent amount of money, it did not make me feel like I had used my education to pursue a career that was reputable, a career that made my family’s legacy “better.”

This sort of says the important thing is to be wealthy, and that your family won't respect you otherwise. I used to work as a musician, and my dad always asked when I would get a real job. As a teacher, he asked when I would get a better job.  I guess if impressing your parents is the most important thing in your life, this career is not for you.

And frankly, that speaks to your personal limitations. Sure, it would be nice to be paid more. It would be great if America respected education enough to improve conditions. Still, whatever color you may be, I'm not sure that a core value of abject materialism makes you an ideal role model. I'd rather make sure kids have the tools they need,  encourage them to do what they love and figure out how to go with it. I'm lucky enough to love teaching, and I can tell kids, from firsthand experience, that it's worth pursuing what you love.

I don't believe this Ivy League TFA/ charter school two-year wonder has what it takes to be a teacher.

I'd much rather hear from those who do.

TFA Becomes Scab for America

I've read a lot of criticism of Teach for America over the last few years. For one thing, they provide a scant five weeks of training, and that's clearly insufficient preparation to teach in urban schools. This is particularly true when you compare it to student teaching, which is basically a full year shadowing and experienced teacher.

But when there are teacher shortages, TFA is the tip of the iceberg. I myself was recruited via a subway ad, with no experience at all. And I watched for years as the DOE conducted intergalactic searches, taking anyone in the universe who could occupy a wooden chair in front of kids.

I don't fault non-career teachers who wish to give back to the community, or even pad their resumes en route to doing something else. If there is a need, and they are filling it, they are helping, even if they have to learn on the job.

But when faux Democrat/ Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fires thousands of teachers and hires TFA grads to teach kids, that's something else altogether. In fact, TFA is now enabling the unemployment of working people. They are making their likely idealistic young college grads into scab labor. Their insane defense, that the jobs were eliminated and they are taking newly created jobs, is nothing more than a semantic game, unworthy of anyone capable of serious discourse.

The more nonsense I read from reformy types like those who have the audacity to muster such an argument, the more I think that objectivity is overrated. In fact, it's reasonable to present both sides of an argument. But like many other things reformy, this is indefensible. The argument is so weak it's ridiculous, and does not merit consideration.

If we're really going to help our kids, we have to raise them to differentiate not only between, say, fiction and non-fiction, but also between logic and BS. Because they're going to need that skill more than ever in the brave new world where people can scab and claim it's "for America."

Reformier and Reformier

The Daily News is all excited about the advent of the Common Core. Never mind that it has never been tested anywhere, ever. The vital thing is that we implement it immediately. Doubtless the editorial writers, should they ever fall ill, would want to be treated with experimental medicines that have never been tried on anyone, and hope for the best. Because that, in fact, is pretty much what they're advocating for our children, amazingly, as "just what" they "need."

The hero of their story is reformy John King, who's not afraid to do whatever it takes to bring more testing to our children. The villain, of course, is that awful teacher union, which wants to delay it. Apparently, NYSUT, full of radical unionists, is not of the opinion frustrated unprepared children are a net plus.

The News, though, says King is "fighting the good fight."

It is conceivable that the pass rates could fall well below 40%, with some local districts down even into the single digits.

And this, to the minds of the Daily News editorial board, is somehow helpful. Of course, since teachers are now to be judged by test scores, it could be. If your goal is to dump as many unionized employees as possible, you could really give your cause a head start. Doubtless kids will be better off without all those teachers anyway, what with TFA McTeachers available at a moment's notice to take their place (at least for a couple of years). 

The reason will be that although the kids are as smart as they always were, they are nowhere near as smart as they need to be.

Apparently, to the minds of the Daily News editorial board, test scores represent how smart kids are. It does not represent how many answers they have memorized, or how well they can guess. I'm just a lowly teacher, but I'd argue it is not our job to make kids smarter. I'd argue it's our job to inform and prepare them. I'd argue it's our job to awaken or inspire their passions. I'd argue it's our job to make them love this great gift that is our lives.

Of course, I'm not John King, I haven't got his three years of teaching experience, and I'm not in any position to make decisions about education. I'm not even permitted to grade the tests John King makes my students take, the ones that represent the good fight, the ones my kids will fail, and the failing of which will somehow make them better-prepared for college.

All I can do is ask this--if these tests are so wonderful, so vital to character-building, why on earth doesn't bold, innovative John King see them as suitable for his own child?

Increase in Homeless Students Attributed to Bad Teaching

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg commented on the increase in homeless students over the last few years.

"Clearly the teachers are not doing their jobs," pointed out Mayor Bloomberg.  "Why didn't they warn kids about the danger of being homeless? Sure, it may not be part of the curriculum, but it's common sense."

Mayor Bloomberg promised to lobby for any teacher with a significant percentage of homeless students to be labeled "ineffective" under the new rating system. "Schools with a lot of homeless students ought to be closed," commented the mayor. "There are plenty of up-and-coming charters that could use that space, and I guarantee you the students they pick will not be homeless. This is why, here in New York, we offer school choice to absolutely anyone who wins a lottery."

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said homelessness was unacceptable, and vowed to "do something to" teachers of homeless students.

Asked for comment, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, "This is a step in the right direction. It's about time we made teachers accountable for the plights of their students. If teachers can't correct things like homelessness and poverty, they need to be replaced, hopefully by young, idealistic, non-union TFAs who can be hired cheaply and replaced every few years. Ideally we'd have natural disasters like Katrina to wipe out unionized systems like we did in New Orleans, but meanwhile I'm grateful we have visionary leaders like Michael Bloomberg. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the billionaires who fund DFER for hand-picking me for this gig. Where else but the US would someone with a failed program as miserable as the one I enacted in Chicago be able to advance so rapidly?"

President Barack Obama listened carefully to Secretary Duncan and added, "It's vital to our national interest to have someone to blame for things like homelessness. After all, we've extended Bush tax cuts for billionaires, so we really don't have the money to deal with things like that, or poverty, or job creation. There's no way I could snag that second term if people blamed me for this stuff.  Therefore, from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to thank teachers for being convenient scapegoats, and I'd particularly like to thank them and their unions for supporting us no matter what outrageous crap we take part in. Where else could you praise a Rhode Island school for firing all its teachers and still get the support of national teacher unions? God bless teachers, God bless their unions, and God bless the United States of America."