Deasy Encourages Myth That Teachers Cause School Failure

The Los Angeles Times had a piece last week about the 1,000 tenured teachers who have been displaced as a result of restructuring at some of LAUSD’s worst performing schools. Known as reconstitution and offered as one of several options for low scoring schools under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), several LAUSD schools have opted to fire all or most of their staffs under the delusion that hiring 80-90% new people will somehow bring up test scores.

Why anyone buys this malarkey is inconceivable. It is difficult to hire the best candidate for just a single position at a school or any business, let alone 50-100 positions simultaneously. Furthermore, one of the most important in-school factors for student success is the development of meaningful and supportive relationships with adults, something that is undermined when the vast majority of teachers are given the boot. Also, low academic performance is tied much more closely to out-of-school factors, particularly students’ familial wealth, than to the quality of teachers. It is no coincidence that every one of the schools being reconstituted is in a low income neighborhood. A much more effective tactic would be to replace 80-90% of the kids with affluent ones or, better yet, eliminate poverty.

However, the main issue discussed in the LA Times piece is that most of the displaced teachers not only have tenure, but seniority, too, requiring the district to find positions for them at other schools, which has been difficult because of the stigma attached to having worked at an under-performing school. The entire basis for reconstitution is the assumption that schools fail because of the teachers: the teachers are just plain bad at teaching, or they have an attitude problem, or they have created a negative culture that opposes reforms. Many principals share these misperceptions and thus do not hire teachers who come from low performing schools. However, LAUSD superintendent John Deasy has exacerbated the problem by publicly saying "We must all work together to ensure that teachers who do not belong in our district are dealt with through the disciplinary and dismissal process," [and are not simply moved from school to school], implying that many (if not most) of the 1,000 displaced teachers have no business working in education.

Let’s look at the problem in a different way. Many young, enthusiastic teachers deliberately go for jobs at tough schools because they believe that is where they are most needed and can make the biggest difference. I was one of them and recall how dedicated our young staff was to the students. Most were excellent teachers, too. The school was reconstituted 14 years ago. The good teachers continued to be good teachers at other schools, but my school did not get better. It remained one of the lowest performing schools in the district (and one of the poorest). And some of the good teachers did not get rehired and left the profession in disgust, which is exactly what is happening in Los Angeles and across the country.

What incentive is there for the best teachers to work at low performing schools if they must work longer and harder hours to bring up test scores with no extra pay for their troubles AND risk losing their jobs? Many also risk lower pay and bad reviews if their district has implemented merit pay or evaluations based on student test scores.

What have the unions done about this problem? Virtually nothing. While they criticize NCLB, they have taken no direct action to resist it and its punishments. They criticize reconstitution but likewise take no direct action against it. Of course it is not easy to get thousands of teachers to walk off the job to protect a few hundred who have been reconstituted, but Los Angeles teachers have plenty of other reasons to strike, like ongoing furloughs, stagnant pay, school closures and charter conversions, the imposition of Value-Added evaluation schemes and court-ordered undermining of seniority rights and collective bargaining.

It teachers want to stop the attacks on their profession and working conditions, they will have to take a stand. The question is how much further must they get pushed before they are willing to fight back?

Blue Ribbon Panel Comes Up With Innovative New Ways to Destroy Public Education

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The Blue Ribbon Panel on teacher Accreditation is recommending that new teachers spend less time in university classes and more time in k-12 classrooms to get more “clinical” training, like in the medical profession. What the panel neglects to acknowledge is that doctors spend years in medical school before they start their clinical training so that they have some understanding of what to look for in their patients and how to treat it. It seems self-evident that more classroom practice (i.e., observing and critiquing other teachers and student teaching) should be beneficial to teachers in training. However, if this comes at the expense of sufficient training in curriculum and content, educational philosophies, pedagogy and history, new teachers will lack a theoretical basis for their clinical practice. They will lack a basis for evaluating curricula and education policies and will simply become uncritical automatons that go through the motions of “good” teaching.

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

According to the panel, “school districts will have a more significant role in designing and implementing teacher education programs, selecting candidates for placement in their schools, and assessing candidate performance and progress.” As a result, districts and individual schools will be forced to compete with each other to create the most “exciting” or “state of the art” “clinical” programs to attract new teachers, taking resources away from existing programs and classroom instruction. Academic freedom and creativity may also suffer, as new teachers will be much more easily molded to the desires of local school districts, thus stifling innovation and dissent. It will also result in bloated district bureaucracies.

For years there has been a growing cry to hold teachers accountable for their students’ test scores, completely disregarding the well-documented socioeconomic factors that have the greatest influence on student achievement. Now they want to extend this blame to both student teachers and their education schools and professors. The panel recommends that all programs use “data-driven accountability based on measures of candidate performance and student achievement, including gains in standardized test scores.” While this does not go quite as far as Reed Lyon had hoped when he argued that we should blow up the teacher colleges, it does imply that teacher training colleges will be punished if k-12 students fail their standardized tests. One likely result will be a dearth of teacher training schools, as more and more lose accreditation. The vacuum will likely be filled by private for-profit schools such as American College of Education (started by Bush cronies Reid Lyon, Rod Paige and Randy Best). There will also be a dearth of qualified teachers as candidates who fail to bring up test scores will fail to be certificated.

The panel makes many other dubious recommendations. For example, they “urge states, institutions, and school districts to explore alternative funding models, including those used in medicine to fuse funds for patient care and the training of residents in teaching hospitals.” Schools are already running on bare bones budgets. Without extraordinarily large increases in school funding, this recommendation will result in money being reallocated from teacher compensation and classroom instruction to teacher training programs.

Eight states—California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee—have already signed letters of intent to implement the new agenda. The two biggest teachers unions helped draft these proposals. They have accepted the sky is falling hysteria of the pundits and politicians and hope to quell the attacks on the teaching profession by collaborating with the bosses. Rather than supporting the teaching profession and their members with sane, workable improvements to teacher training and evaluation, the unions are selling out their members and their constituents, the students. In the end, the attacks on teachers will continue, as will the demands for more accountability, merit pay, charter schools and evaluations based on student test scores.

When Johnny Can’t Read or Write No More

When Johnny Can’t Read or Write No More

(To the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home)

Huck.Konopacki Labor Cartoons

When Johnny can’t read or write no more 

Hurrah! Hurrah!       

We’ll send him to Iraq once more

Hurrah! Hurrah!

He’ll be useless as a wage slave

Or wind up in an early grave

When we attack our public ed-u-ca-tion

When Johnny can’t think or problem-solve

Hurrah! Hurrah!
He’ll end up with a lousy job

Huck.Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Hurrah! Hurrah!
He’ll be overworked and underpaid

Or scraping by on government aid

When we attack our public ed-u-ca-tion

But, if teachers are allowed to teach

Hurrah! Hurrah!
Free from tests and corporate reach

Hurrah! Hurrah!

The kids will grow, they’ll learn and strive

Their future is better when they’re alive

When we support our public ed-u-ca-tion


Thanks to EdNotes Online for inspiring me with their reposting of the Cathy Black Attack parody

Walk Through Schmalck Through--Admin is Never Wrong

3 Minute Walk-Through: The Latest in Educational Deform

Marshall Rhee came in on her white steed to clean up a D.C. school system overrun by outlaw teachers. Under Rhee’s rein, D.C. schools lost over half their veteran teachers. Many were replaced by young teachers from Teach for America who shared her simplistic view that good teaching trumps poverty and home life. Teach for America places recent college grads with little training into high poverty schools. One consequence is a higher attrition rate than for fully credentialed teachers. Problem #1: Firing large numbers of “bad” teachers cannot improve overall teacher quality because there just aren’t enough replacements who are qualified and experienced.

In order to rid the system of these terrible teachers, Rhee implemented a novel evaluation system, IMPACT, which she claimed could definitively distinguish good teachers from bad ones. Under this system, administrators observed teachers 5 times per year, in unannounced 30 minute visits. During this time, teachers were to demonstrate 22 elements of good teaching, such as tailoring their teaching to at least 3 different learning styles and instilling student self-confidence and self-efficacy. The number was later reduced to 10 elements of good teaching, but even this is a lot to demonstrate in such a short period of time. It is also very subjective and open to abuse. As a result, some teachers figured out how to game the system. Problem #2: the main problem is not the criteria or method by which teachers are evaluated, but that evaluators seldom have the time and often lack the expertise to do it well.

Administrators across the nation have bought into the notion that a whole new set of criteria must be adopted for evaluating teachers. Many are implementing “Walk-Through” models, where they show up unannounced for brief observations and sometimes use novel criteria that have not been adequately evaluated, let alone explained or negotiated with teachers. Much of the impetus for this movement comes from The 3-Minute Walkthrough, by Carolyn Downey, a former administrator and a professor emeritus at San Diego State. Her “50 Ways to Close the Achievement Gap,” focuses entirely on what teachers must change about their instruction and includes nothing on addressing the socioeconomic factors that have the greatest influence on student achievement. The Walk-Through model was based on a Hewlett-Packard supervisory model, and is yet another attempt to impose business solutions on public education. The Walk-Through model is, at its core, about improving worker productivity and getting more bang for the taxpayer’s buck.

Like many school reforms, the Walk-Through observation does have some merits. When done in a non-evaluative context by peers it could help teachers get new ideas and inspiration. Peer observations could also yield insight into habits and methods that are unproductive. Educators might also gain insight into the type of academic culture that prevails at their school, trends in learning or teaching styles, or other useful data that could help with internal reform efforts. When done in small groups, teachers can later debrief their observations and brainstorm together. It can also be productively used by administrators as an evaluation tool, particularly if it motivates them to visit classrooms more often and only if it is used in conjunction with other forms of evaluation in order to gain a more complete picture of a teacher’s skill. Like most forms of evaluation, the Walk-Through model can be abused and manipulated to punish and harass. Some teachers have even filed suit against their administrator for abusing Walk-Through evaluations.

The Walk-Through model also has numerous limitations. As an evaluation tool, one or even several observations cannot give a complete picture of the quality, skill or creativity of a teacher. There are many things that go on outside the classroom that are important, such as collaboration with peers, communication with parents, student interactions and support at lunch or after school. These would be missed during classroom observations, but could be demonstrated through portfolio assessments, where teachers present a body of evidence addressing specific teaching standards. Likewise, piecemeal non-evaluative observations may yield an incomplete picture of the trends at a school. Immediately following a school-wide professional development day, for example, observers might see many more teachers using a new technique than at the beginning or end of the year. Does this reflect a common practice shared by most teachers, or curiosity and experimentation with a newly learned technique that may or may not be used again?

There also may be biases inherent in the process. A good teacher may buck the latest reform efforts pushed by their administrators and get a bad review, yet still get excellent results in terms of student engagement and learning.  Lecture, for example, is routinely discounted as an antiquated, teacher-centered method that alienates students, yet a really good lecturer can engage an entire class, have them up and moving around, while incorporating a wide variety of teaching and learning styles. Non-evaluative peer observations can also be biased. When debriefing is done with administrators present, observing teachers may be less inclined to speak freely. Even when observations are ostensibly non-evaluative, administrators could later use the data for evaluations. Therefore, teachers should be cautious not to get sucked into a collaborationist role with their administrators where they are facilitating disciplinary attempts against their colleagues by critiquing their teaching in front of administrators.

Walk-Through evaluations consume time and money. In order to observe peers, teachers must be pulled from the classroom or give up a prep period. Removing teachers from the classroom costs money in sub coverage and reduces student access to their teachers.  Further, administrators and teachers need to be trained. Many schools and districts are hiring consultants and purchasing support materials. Publishers are already rushing to grab a seat on this new educational gravy train, providing advice, widgets and multimedia tools to help administrators in their walk through observations.

Massachusetts Teachers Illegal Strike?

Massachusetts teachers in the King Phillip Regional School District, Norfolk County, are protesting a contract dispute with their district over pay, class size and a faulty grading system, by declining to write college recommendations. The district has filed a petition with the state’s Department of Labor, claiming that the action constitutes an illegal strike. In Massachusetts, it is illegal for teachers to strike.

The strike is one of the most powerful weapons workers have in their ongoing struggle with bosses. Without this weapon, workers are significantly limited in the effectiveness of their actions. On the other hand, workers must also recognize that the legality of their actions should not limit their use. Unions themselves were once illegal. Thousands of workers have been jailed, deported, beaten or killed in this country taking illegal job actions in the fight for better pay, working conditions and respect.

If their action is ruled illegal, it would imply that few, if any job actions are legal for teachers under Massachusetts law. This would completely eviscerate their union. Collective bargaining is only as effective as the tactics of protest. If a bargaining team makes a demand and the bosses say no, the members must take a job action powerful enough to force the bosses to give in. If all job actions are considered illegal strikes, Massachusetts teachers will have no choice but to break the law in defense of their wages, working conditions and dignity.

An Injury to One is An Injury to All

The ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) shut down the Ports of Oakland and San Francisco yesterday in solidarity with the family of Oscar Grant, who was killed by BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle. Grant was unarmed and laying face down when Mehserle stood over him and opened fire. In a typical travesty of justice, Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, arguing that he had meant to fire his Taser. Mehserle is white. Grant was black.

ILWU members were joined by teachers, nurses, city workers and other unionists. Teachers, you ask? What does this have to do with education?

Everyone has an interest in justice.

As times get tougher economically and our civil liberties and freedoms grow thinner and weaker, it becomes more important than ever to support our brothers and sisters, neighbors and fellow workers in shows of solidarity. After all, just because it wasn’t me this time, doesn’t mean it won’t be me next time.

Protesters carried picket signs that said, “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.” The implications of this fundamental principle of solidarity should be obvious to teachers.

When pay or benefits are cut, it becomes harder to recruit and retain the best teachers. This is harmful to our students. When budgets are balanced by firing teachers, class sizes go up, programs are cut, and students suffer. When the feds force schools to convert to charter schools, cut funding, or impose curriculum, teachers are forced to do more with less resources and time. This causes both teachers and students to feel overworked and stressed.

Cuts to welfare, drug rehab, mental health services and housing all have profound effects on families. They increase uncertainty and anxiety, and cause children to come to school hungry, tired, sick, ill-prepared, and sometimes ill-behaved. Test scores and graduation rates correlate more closely with wealth than any other variable. Therefore, poverty and the disintegrating safety net are education issues.

Militarism causes some parents to go abroad and not be at home for their children. War increases the anxiety and stress some children bring to school. However, all children are affected by the trillions of dollars wasted on murdering civilians in other countries, money that would be much better spent providing housing, healthcare and better equipped schools for our own children. Therefore, militarism and war are education issues.

The foreclosure crisis has thrown families and children into the streets, shelters, floors and couches of friends and family. Bailing out Wall Street bankers allows the top 1% to continue to earn more than the bottom 120 million of us combined, but it comes at a price we will all have to pay. The wealthy are demanding a reduction to the deficit and they are unwilling to pay for it themselves, which means more cuts to social services and increased taxes for the rest of us. Therefore, the foreclosure crisis and bailouts of the filthy rich are education issues.

How can educators join together with other unions and movements to fight for their collective interests when we are all so overworked?

The solution is to do less at school. Just because someone says a new reform or curriculum will help students, doesn’t mean it will. We don’t have to pile more on our plates because our schools are in program improvement, under the NCLB gun, low income or low performing. When we try to be everything to everyone we become more stressed and burned out, and less effective as teachers. If a reform seems sound and worth undertaking, we need to sacrifice something else and not just add more to our already overloaded schedules. We need to carefully assess new reforms and not just accept them uncritically. Consider costs versus benefits. Analyze the data, if any exist, and consider whether it really stands a chance. How many students will benefit? How much will they benefit? We need to stop buying into the bogus argument that even if test scores don’t improve, it is good pedagogy and still worth implementing, or that even if it is designed to help one small subset of our students it will really benefit them all. Maybe it will, but enough so that it justifies the extra time and labor?

No martyrs. No oppressors.

An Injury to One is an Injury to All

Rotten Unions Protecting Rotten Apples

Most teachers are not bad, but the constant harping about bad teachers has created a mass hysteria that our schools are filled with incompetent teachers who are crushing our children’s enthusiasm and causing them to fail or drop out. It has become so pervasive that I’m even hearing teachers echo it now.

The delusion that unions protect bad teachers is based on a gross mischaracterization and misunderstanding of tenure. While tenure does provide some job security, it does not guarantee job protection for life, especially not for really rotten teachers. The worst, of course, are the teachers who abuse children. Thankfully, these are rare and they are easily fired. Teachers who are lazy, incompetent, or who simply don’t care, are also relatively uncommon. The pay just isn’t that good and the demands are too high for most self-respecting shirkers. The job is so demanding, in fact, that most young teachers don’t last more than five years.

Tenured teachers can be fired for a number of reasons. Many districts are firing tenured teachers because of budget cuts and NCLB allows schools to fire their entire staffs if they fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress for four years in a row.

The main purpose of tenure is not to guarantee a job, but to protect academic freedom and free speech. Good schools foster ongoing collaboration between teachers, staff and administrators. True collaboration only works when people feel comfortable speaking freely and honestly. Tenure makes it much more difficult for administrators to fire teachers arbitrarily, vindictively, or because they disagree with them. Without this protection, teachers would be less likely to speak openly at faculty meetings and during collaboration.

What about teachers who are well-meaning, but just aren’t that good? Aren’t they a dead weight holding back schools that are trying to improve?

The short answer is that bad teachers can be fired, but it is the job of their bosses, the administrators, to collect the evidence and make a compelling case through the evaluation process, like in most jobs. Like other unionized jobs, the union provides legal and grievance support for members who believe they are being wrongly punished. Not surprisingly, in the highly contentious arena of education, there are often disagreements between teachers and administrators, personality conflicts, prejudices and power struggles. Occasionally an administrator attempts to subvert the evaluation process to get rid of teachers who are good at their jobs, but who annoy the administrator. Having union support under these circumstances is not only good for the teacher, but for students, too, as it helps keep a good teacher at the school. A bigger problem is that administrators rarely have the time to adequately observe and evaluate teachers. Thus, a teacher who truly isn’t doing a good job can easily slip through the cracks.

A more nuanced answer should take into account that a well-meaning teacher might benefit from and desire professional development opportunities to help him improve. With shrinking budgets and growing demands on administrators and teachers, this is seldom happening. One should also ask what we mean by “bad” teacher. I have worked with teachers who were unreliable, disorganized and annoying as colleagues, and not particularly effective with their classroom instruction, but who were fantastic mentors and advocates for their students. I would argue that a teacher like this should not be tossed away like a broken appliance, but respected for the good they bring to the school and supported in the development of those skills they are lacking.