Since the theatrical release of The Cartel, I've hosted countless director Q & A's about public education policy and become quite familiar with the establishment's talking points. One of them is that there are thousands of great public schools and great teachers. I know that. I went to public schools, and my mother was one of those great public school teachers. But I also know that there are many cases of abject educational dysfunction, rarely acknowledged by the "throw more money at the problem" crowd.
How do the status quo defenders respond to calls for reform? With expositions on the great "concerns" posed by any particular reform. (To the establishment, even the worst failing schools never foster the same level of concern as the mildest of reforms.) Moreover, these expressions often represent a striking blend of two seemingly incompatible states: self-righteousness and failure.
I must admit a fascination for the cognitive dissonance involved. Can people really fail miserably at something while asserting superiority?
It turns out, yes. And the historical and cultural antecedents tend to be delicious. Consider:
So hubris and failure, it seems, do occasionally make a joint appearance. And we can usually laugh it off. But there's a troubling difference when adults practice the education version of this combination: They pass it on to students. As a life lesson. Because it serves their interests.
This pernicious practice was first famously reported in Charles Sykes' 1996 book, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add. More recently, Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for 'Superman' reiterates the same idea. Today, U.S. kids rank 25th in the world in math, and first in confidence about test performance.
Like union, like student, eh?
So when I hear excuses from defenders of the establishment, I can't help thinking to myself, don't they know what the rest of us are thinking? Don't they know how we're finishing their sentences for them?
There will be the public part of their statement, then the other part they believe, but intentionally leave out.
And if they do know how the rest of us have been completing these sentences, I've wondered, shouldn't they have been addressing the perceptions of these second halves of the sentences, rather than only repeating the first halves?
Between The Cartel, Waiting for 'Superman', A Right Denied, NBC's Education Nation, Mark Zuckerberg's appearance on Oprah!, and the announcement of National School Choice Week, the conversation has changed. And it has all happened in less than a year!
You see, I used to have to convince people that "it is near impossible to fire a teacher -- even one accused of a crime, drug addiction or flagrant misbehavior." But not anymore; now New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says it for me.
Still, many of the establishment defenders have been running a couple of grade levels behind. Their anti-reform rhetoric has read like a tired old textbook, willfully ignoring the game-changing developments that I just listed.
Until now. News flash. They've come to a realization: Reform is the new black.
Teachers unions just announced that they're going to hold the first ever "Summit to Stifle Education Reform." Or the "Make it Look Like We're For Reform, While We Come Up With Ways To Kill Reform, Summit." Okay, I made those up. But they've actually acknowledged the need for a big national conference on education reform. Have they finally understood the shifting winds? Have they finally gotten a clue? Or is it a publicity stunt? For more information you can read the announcement.
Excuse my cynicism. But teachers unions have had many years to reform themselves and their approach to education, and they never have. Now we're supposed to believe they're on board? Right. I think it's more likely they'll pass something like a "Teacher Accountability Plan" that contains 50 new ways to prevent teachers from being held accountable. We'll see.
One thing's for sure. There will be people in that room fighting for the status quo. Hard.
I hope their ideas suffer the fate of the Black Knight.
1. There is no teacher tenure. There is a guarantee of due process. When administrators do their jobs, bad teachers can and are let go.
2. Blame the unions if you must...but then you must explain why non-union states have low "achievement" as well.
3. Studies show that American students from well-funded schools who come from high-income families outscore all or nearly all other countries on international tests. Only our children in high poverty schools score below the international average. Our scores look low because the US has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries (20%, compared to Denmark's 3%). Our educational system has been successful; the problem is poverty.
4. ...the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.
John Dewey,the Goodmans,and who`s responsible for fuzzy math instruction, have done a fine job with their opinionated indoctrinations of instruction that is founded on ideology rather than n research.Even Dr.Sally Shaywitz (Yale)with MRI imaging proofs cannot dissuade these
Professors who churn out teachers annually without ever considering what the empirical research has to say-after all-a half billion dollar research study at the NICHD payed for by U.S. tax dollars has convinced me.We know how to teach most kids to read-we just refuse to do it.
What is it?Reading First tried it- a scandal broke out-I imagine the lobbyists were involved in the destruction-the scandal-Chris Dougherty,aware of the declining literacy catastrophe
in the U.S.told Dr.Reid Lyon they had to find a way to not fund any whole language curriculums-Oh My,what a terrible thing-they had to bury the whole thing.
Instruction methodology is directly related to successful reading-PERIOD-Instead,let`s give them apricot pits.
The research is clear-a-Phonemic awareness-link that to the picture of the sound-Phonics-do it explicitly and systematically-do it to reading Fluency-voila-comprehension.
Let's say that I could walk into an inner city high school and outperform an existing teacher in the field of US History? Let's say I was more engaging, motivated, interesting, and willing to work for less to boot.
Tell me a moral reason why I shouldn't be able to at least try out or compete for that job.
Tell me why we have this absurd notion that signing up to teach should guarantee you a job for life?
Tell me why a group of teachers shouldn't be able to start a small school and grow it into a bigger, successful school that does a better job of educating kids?
Why shouldn't good schools and good teachers "drain resources" from bad systems?
Justify this awful, expensive, dysfunctional, and ultimately unreformable system.
___
No one wants to, nor can they, 'destroy teaching.' The premise behind your comment is the "teaching" is defined as a closed and protected class of public employees with benefits extracted based upon political power.
All of us are teachers. Content is everywhere. Knowledge and learning are falling out of the sky. It is the political power of the the incumbent system that needs to go. It is this system that is destroying "teaching."
This is the type of power-mongering, hubris, and tone-deafness that plagues the entire sector of public employment, and education in particular. They can purchase politicians, demand unsustainable perks, payroll, and pensions, and bleed your state or your district dry, but unless you become one of them, just shut up.
Sorry Tracey, but I think that power relationship is starting to shift, and hopefully, it is your side that is forced to "zip it" while we work to create more charters, free independent teachers from this awful and unmanageable system, and have the money follow the child, not the greedy grown-up interests.
If things like tenure and seniority can survive in a dismantled and rebuilt system of dramatically independent content providers, them fine. If not, we, as a nation, have better things to do than go bankrupt propping up a system that is failing in many places, and costing way too much where it isn't failing.
Tracy D. writes: Tenure merely guarantees due process. Teachers can be fired; it's a myth that they can't.
Each side can point to their "evidence" here. Rhee fired teachers, and rubber rooms are a reality, and their recent phase out merely caused the lemons to show up somewhere else.
http://thehiddencostsoftenure.com/
Listen to what you're saying. Whatever happened to the boss making a conclusion that "it just isn't working out."
It's not about the adults, or at least it shouldn't be. It's about the kids. And the best standard, for the kids, is that no standard is too high.
Unions are the problem? Than why aren't Mississippi and Alabama leading the nation?
DOH
Why not do an honest "apples to apples" comparison. Take Unionized Washington DC schools and compare their outcomes with Unionized Montgomery County MD schools - both are unionized, but one produces far better outcomes! How inconvenient for you!
See, the difference isn't the teachers, it's the parents (you don't seem to be one), and parents who prepare their kids for school "somehow" find their schools are good, while parents who take no interest in their kids early literacy or education "somehow" end up with failing kids. How odd!
You want to reform education, I have a solution that will work in 90% of the USA:
STUDENTS - go to school every day, behave in class, do your homework.
PARENTS - prepare your kids for a lifetime of literacy from day one, get your kids to school ready to learn, make sure they behave in class, always side with the teacher, and make sure your kids do their homework.
Try THAT before you start ruining public education based on bad results in inner cities.
Hope that helps!
:-)
The second part of your post answers that question. Highly unionized states have higher scores than MS and AL for simple, and obvious, reasons. They have richer populations with higher socio-economic status (SES). The same "phenomenon" that makes suburbs outperform cities works state-to-state as well.
Corrected for SES, pay and spending have no effect on outcomes. Further, while I argue that unions are part of the issue, I think that the entire system is the problem, not unions alone.
LAUSD? CPS? The entire notion of a "district" that size in an absurdity that gives the lie to the union talking points about "good neighborhood schools." The concept of a school district is an artifice to create a facade of "accountability" when the entire system is designed to pass the buck (and the referendum) and boost employment. It is YOU who have "privatized" education.
As for your point about the parents, who could disagree (and yes, I am a parent of a 20 year old)? While we all want more involved parents, I notice a tinge of hypocrisy on the part of most defenders of the status quo.
Access to charters, transparency for union/admin contract BEFORE the signing, scholarship/vouchers, virtual charters, robust curriculum? All vetoed unless it comes wrapped in the Union/District/Funding/ wrapper.
You want parental rubberstamps, not real involvement.
Although I like your point about "unionized" Montgomery County vs. "unionized" DC schools, I have trouble with your analogy. For one, I think you're making too many assumptions about the parents. Secondly, success is not a validation of the method used because it doesn't appropriately capture the opportunity cost: what is lost, or given up.
In your example, I could argue that Montgomery Co. could be producing much better results without the unions [though I really don't know since I live in Cicero, Illinois].
Regarding your "solution," I agree that student attendance and homework, along with parental involvement, is going to dramatically increase student performance: in both the unionized and non-unionized systems. So socioeconomic factors have to be considered.
Truth be told, there's actually a simple instrument you can use to calculate whether the public model, or private model works best; or whether teachers' unions help, or hurt, education. And even if they (teachers' unions) were proven to help education, they might again hurt it when the financial threshold is, again, exceeded; and people have difficulty affording the unions' demands.
And that instrument is a linear regression model:
http://www.economics.uiuc.edu/docs/seminars/the-effect-of-teachers-unions-on-education-production.pdf
I can't decide if your posts are for real, or whether Bowdon created you to prove his point -- that unions keep repeating their talking points,
For example, those of you who say he's "trashing" or "hating" teachers -- yet we can all read that his mother was a teacher -- we can also read that he wants merit pay for "the most talented, hardest-working teachers" and their "exceptional efforts." He simply wants to distinguish teachers -- reward the good ones and fire the bad ones.
If you were for real, you'd have the courage to answer the original post directly. Why does Joel Klein say it's virtually impossible to fire a teacher because of all the red tape the unions have created? Why don't teachers unions ever criticize excessive levels of administration spending that take money out of classrooms, (which many rank & file teachers acknowledge all the time)? And if reform were truly so unnecessary, why are the unions now planning a reform conference themselves?
Look, it's a free country. If you'd just rather stick to your age-old talking points, claim reformers hate all teachers, and resort to ad hominem attacks, go right ahead. You have that right. I'm just saying wake up and look around: that approach isn't working anymore. Barack Obama, Bill Gates & the Director of An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore, and Mike Bloomberg all support charter schools. Let me guess -- they all hate teachers too? :
Bill Gates? He cannot make a good OS or Internet Browser - what does he know about education?
I've seen so much hymnal singing here and elsewhere that there's no need to invent sock puppets. It's an a-choired taste, but it is legion and reeks of defeat. I feel bad for the many teachers who don't subscribe to it, and I feel worse for the kids toiling in its wake and their families who are not getting what they need.
"If you were for real, you'd have the courage to answer the original post directly."
Don't hold your breath on this one. That page was torn from the hymnal. Middle-finger pointing, dismissing all concerns as "teacher bashing," declaring a Reform War, and that cognitive dissonance spoken of in the article are the big hits in rotation at present.
"Look, it's a free country. If you'd just rather stick to your age-old talking points, claim reformers hate all teachers, and resort to ad hominem attacks, go right ahead. You have that right. I'm just saying wake up and look around: that approach isn't working anymore."
It sure isn't. And it never has. That's a big part of the problem right there. But instead of examining how they greased the chute for so much of what they are against, for many it will just lead to a rabid rinse and repeat of the whole cycle. Maddening.
Defenders of the status quo, therefore, deserve "bashing," not because they are necessarily bad people, but because they defend a bad system. The "oil" metaphor is especially hilarious, given that the political power exercised by Teachers Unions, Administration lobbies, and the encrusted greedy interests that suck dollars away from children, are more powerful, and more corrupt, than any oil or tobacco interest out there.
They have their fangs on over $550 billion of public dollars, and they will never unclench their jaws. Their jaws will have to be broken, and if you aren't up for that political fight, write checks to someone who is.
Fund Children, not Bureaucracies, not Unions, not buildings, not districts.
There continue to be different ideas (allegedly based on research) about child-rearing. Why isn't he out declaring that parents are doing a horrible job because they don't subscribe to his personal choice of child-rearing approaches? Doctors can't even agree for three consecutive years on whether newborns should sleep on their front, back, or side. Perhaps we should celebrate teachers and their unions for refusing to allow their profession to flap in the wind to every new reform breeze that comes out. Is it really inappropriate to demand thoroughly researched reforms based on the experiences of career teachers (instead of former teachers looking to make a buck consulting or writing books)?
F&F
How many professions do you know of where you can't be fired for doing a bad job, where you are guaranteed that job no matter how terrible your performance? Where your compensation is not based on said performance? How many professions do you know of where you get cadillac benefits and step and column pay raises and seniority priviledges? I don't think the teachers who end up in the rubber rooms are being "arbitrarily or vindictively fired" ....they can't be fired at all!
Blame the teachers, not the nitwit parents who do nothing to prepare their kids for school.
Which students are they failing?
How come the white, middle class students get a great education in most public schools?
Isn't the biggest difference in the parenting?
Why use NYC schools? New York is a ungovernable mess that represents nothing about the education system in the USA.
Also just to annoy whatever mod is keeping a lid on criticism of Mr. Bowdon (who has appeared on Mark Levin's show FFS!!)
That is what this "director" has done.
I simply don't understand why this is so difficult for some people to grasp--the whole system needs to change. Forget the unions. They may be part of the problem, but even if they are, they're a teeny tiny portion of it. You've got a ripped jugular and you're looking for your band-aids? I mean, come on!
Hmm. Advocate for NCLB, complete turnaround in search of a different "pet issue" down the road . . . this reminds me of someone. Funny, instead of being called on the carpet, this someone is deified as a "true reformer," and a champion for teachers. Interesting.
You are obscene. What you said it basically unbelievable. Teachers who have worked all their lives for kids are trashed like criminals. Parents, teachers, and students will unite to destroy this cancer you are bringing to the public schools. At least, your posting tells the world just how far the deformers will go to destroy public education.