Please explain to me, a F500 business woman, Chamber of Commerce member, and parent, how firing 6-10 percent of teachers annually will improve the quality of education in our nation?
That's the formula for success being championed by the Department of Education and its apparent sleepwalking cast of reformers.
Identifying and targeting so-called "ineffective teachers" each year based upon high stakes standardized bubble tests -- which repeatedly prove to be flawed with a margin of error upwards of 27 percent -- is the plan!
Consider this from a practical perspective if you don't choose to agree conceptually.
From a bottom line perspective: This formula won't work! It's a recipe for disaster if implementation is attempted. The DOE states that roughly 270,000 teachers leave via attrition annually -- they choose to leave, resign, retire, etc. Demographics show we have more baby boomers retiring and that attrition will increasingly climb to over 300,000. Now, let's add the Hanushek Theory of How to Improve Schools, and fire another 6-10 percent of existing teachers annually. Principals must then weed through their dwindling staff of teachers to target another 240,000 -400,000 to terminate. Where is the army of teachers coming from to fill the 515,000 - 700,000 that they plan to lose each year?
Someone please buy the DOE calculators for Christmas!
The number of U.S. college graduates earning bachelor's degrees is estimated to be approximately 1.5 million. According to this whizbang theory, every other college student graduating must enter teaching. Really?
Wouldn't it make more sense to give existing teachers tools, techniques, and additional training to enhance their skills and protect the investment we already made in the hiring decision if possible? Even Corporate America knows to protect their investment in hiring decisions wherever possible.
According to the Department of Education, our nation is now overrun by hundreds of thousands of ineffective teachers. And, of course, they claim unions are protecting them all with contracts that must have been unilaterally crafted while their State DOE counterparts slept.
Pinpointing ineffective teachers as the sole reason for academic decline in our nation, the DOE's strategy is to fire between six and ten percent of the bottom tier annually. Alakazam! This will magically remedy the achievement gap, the graduation rates, the remediation rates, and miraculously, the narrowed curriculum currently devoid of Social Studies, Civics, Arts, Literature, Geography, PE, etc.
Note: This narrowed curriculum replete with test prep, drill, practice, and bubble tests for just Math and Writing is courtesy of eight years of No Child Left Behind gone wild. It is not teachers who charted this course or who plotted to drill for hours on bubble tests.
Statistically and realistically, our nation's declining performance is directly related to NCLB's obsession with bubble-filled standardized test scores and the high stakes associated with it. Everyone held their breath until a new President entered office -- one who promised to fix this issue. Instead, this Secretary of Education put NCLB on steroids and built divisive initiatives on top of it. This is a house of cards. And, everyone knows it -- everyone! Who will have the guts to stand up and say no more? A mistake was made -- we're on the wrong path -- all the evidence points to this -- admit that and regroup.
This supersonic version of NCLB is proudly designed to fire teachers and shut down neighborhood schools -- to dismantle public education in America. Certain gung ho reformers believe they will fire their way to better education.
To market this head-scratching concept, I suppose, a frontal assault was launched on the teaching profession. You cannot open a magazine, a newspaper, glance at an online article or listen to Morning Joe or Oprah without hearing about the glut of 'bad' teachers in our nation. Let me interject here: I am not a teacher -- never was. I am not a union member -- never was.
From an organizational change perspective (I am a F500 Organizational Change consultant): I don't profess to be an expert on how to run public schools. I've spent about 15 years volunteering in them. But, I can tell you that no corporation ever achieved greatness by demoralizing its employees. No corporation ever successfully sustained organizational change without the buy-in from those on the front lines expected to implement that change! You will never gain endorsement from your front lines while you repeatedly demonize them. This is a Harvard School of Business Case Study-in-Disaster waiting to be written.
Having spent more than a quarter of a century in the corporate world, corporate business models cannot be uplifted and retrofitted into the K-12 teaching arena. You cannot control your environmental factors. Children are not widgets, nor can they be fired. Teachers -- the front line managers -- can't fire their students' parents either. Teachers can't alter student's learning disabilities nor their homeless statuses. In many places today, teachers no longer even possess the ability to supplement the pre-scripted lesson plans or which days to deliver that lesson. Teachers are being robbed of the flexibility to teach each student the best method they know how. In many states teachers are being micromanaged by robotic-like software guides or DOE officials reaching into the classroom to dictate unanimity.
Schools require collegial relationships in order to develop a child's learning ability. High stakes tests forces a competitive arena for teachers which ultimately hinders the whole child learning experience. This simply is not corporate America where competition can make sense.
Our nation is closing schools right now because the children (despite their English language learning ability, learning disabilities, poverty stricken home lives, etc.) did not pass a bubble test. How does this improve the quality of our nation's education system? In corporate America if the product line or a division is considered to be a failure, the senior manager is fired, not all the workers. Does any of this make any sense whatsoever?
There are days when I imagine a child in school who procrastinated writing his paper. The day it's due, he grabs an old paper someone else wrote and submits it as his own. Sometimes I imagine that must have occurred with Secretary Duncan. President Obama said to Arne Duncan, "Quick, I need that new education plan we discussed." Secretary Duncan must have dashed down the hall to a filing cabinet and yanked out the NCLB Supersonic Version and breathlessly charged back into the Oval Office with it. Yes, that's what happened, I'm sure of it! Because absolutely nothing else about this makes any sense to me.
When will common sense prevail?
Follow Rita M. Solnet on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ritacolleen
By streamlining education, you're helping kids to get a better, more standardized learning experience and opportunity, and you're saving money. Win-win. Computer-based education is also easier to update and keep current, much more economical than the textbook empire.
By teaching kids with computers, you're also teaching kids ABOUT computers, a job skill they will need and use later in life. And, when you balance the cost of letting go one unionized 100k/yr instructor or school administrator, vs. 100k worth of automation equipment for student use, which one will ultimately bring more benefit to the kids?
It's the 21st century, this technology is NOW, use it, or lose it, 'it' being whatever marginal edge we still might have in the world today. Make sure that education monies actually get into the classroom, vs in someone's retirement account etc. It's good that they pay teachers more in this day and age, but only the bookkeeper knows for sure where the money goes, anymore.
They have been systematically going after this revenue stream and to tap it, major reforms in education must be delivered. Clearly, if this source is to deliver profits to the top 2% of America in the form of obscenely large compensation packages, inconvenient barricades like teacher's unions and middle class-like salaries for teachers must become relics of the past.
The constant drumbeat of badmouthing public education in America must continue, and I am saddened that some of it utilizes Huffington Post when "liberal" bloggers applaud the policies of Rhee or ugly films like "Waiting for Superman." Of course, these usually liberal bloggers are not educators, just as the "reformers" are never educators, either. However, I am "progressive" and I do believe that we must have a menu of ideas from which to select, discuss and debate if we are to have a working democracy. So, in that sense, I thank Huffington Post for permitting a flow of varying viewpoints.
However, the faux reform movement plays directly into the hands of Wall Street and folks like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee are the pawns.
I'll stick my blame right here: a monster financial crisis, and fixit billionaires with a clueless understanding of education holding millions under the noses of desperately bankrupt states, who are willing to do anything to get that money. It is sickening. And yes indeed, demoralizing. - Mark
Anyway, thanks. I like your comment.
Imagine the profits of a half-trillion dollar annual industry in the hands of billionaires who have absolute control over their workers -- even to the point of their immigration status.
I highly recommend reading "Waiting for Superfraud" on www.susanohanian.org
This article makes it quite clear that Wall St. is (and has been) interested in making money off of the lucrative K-12 public school market in this country. Right now it is estimated to be a $700 billion market.
In order to succeed, it is necessary to increase the number of charters and break the teacher's unions. The constant drumbeat of disparaging commentary on public education in this country is gradually creating the conditions that will facilitate a "Wall Street" takeover of American education. When this happens, costs will be streamlined to ensure that huge profits travel to the CEOs and the stockholders.
This is the way of Wall Street in this country today and no one is doing anything about the fact that we have not had a concentration of wealth in the hands of so few since 1929. In actuality, the wealth concentration in the hands of the few is slightly greater than it was then. This money is being pumped out of the middle class by people who really don't care about us, our children, or their educations. They only care about increasing profits and compensation packages. People like Michelle Rhee are their minions and they reward them nicely for playing a supporting role.
We really should be taking back our country, not enabling Wall Street bankers.
Should be mandatory reading for all (I hesitate to use this term) stakeholders.....
I would be quite surprised if most people would be in favor of living a life of fear. Wouldn’t you? So why is playing upon or instilling fear so prominent as a management/improvement tool? Responsible action is not placing people who lack the required understanding and who rely on fear in positions of authority over our educational system; just as responsible action requires not placing sharp objects in the hands of children!
Seemingly we are blinded by our single-minded focus of attention to results. This fixation actually keeps us from understanding that results are the effects of a system or process. We don’t see systems or processes we only see results. (see http://www.forprogressnotgrowth.com/2010/11/30/a-matter-of-results/ )
What’s missing is in the offered solutions is an understanding that results are the effects of a process/system. They are not reflective of systems thinking, statistical thinking and critical thinking. Without a method for learning about the system itself a hope for better results is merely wishful thinking. I am reminded of the adage, a narrow focus of attention leads to a larger measure of heedlessness.
paid to student success and how much they enjoy learning. If the teacher is engaging, the students will learn. As a teacher, I feel my success as a teacher is shown by how well my students perform. Some students get it the first time, but my time and efforts are then focused on the students that
are still struggling with a concept. Sometimes the information has to be put in much more simple
terms that these students can understand. Class review in simpler terms can be effective. If they
still don't get it. I have them attend tutoring after class. When I worked for the public school system after class tutoring was a challenge or not possible as many students rode the bus to school and
were unable to stay after school for tutoring. Community based schools may be the answer to this
problem. Some children are on the bus for over an hour each way to school. They would
sometimes fall asleep due to rising at such an early hour and getting home late. Instead of forcing children to commute, it makes more sense to allow children to attend community schools with an option to go elsewhere if they so choose.
Reducing the number of teachers is NOT a solution. Reducing the number of ineffective teachers
and replacing them with interesting and effective teachers seems more practicle.
FYI-I am a teacher. I had a very rough couple of first years. By your logic, I ought not be teaching now. Guess what, I am, and my students are successful. It was because I was given help and mentored that I succeeded, and made me a prime candidate to be a mentor for others. Had I just been fired, as you suggest, the three people who I have since mentored would not be in teaching either-thus doing what you oppose-reducing the number of teachers.
/snark