From My Archives: October 2011

I was cleaning out some old files and came across this from back in 2011. 

Challenges We Face:

•  NYS is tightening the purse strings, and so are local districts. The impact is most noticeable in classrooms. Money that districts “Raced to the top” for went largely to the regional and administrative structures that will be used to evaluate the job we do, as opposed to supporting the local structures.
•  Teachers are expected to do more with less on a day to day basis. Not only are staff numbers down and class sizes up, but the most needy (and sometimes difficult/disruptive) of students are in regular classrooms with fewer supports because districts are not willing to spend dollars on additional staff/support systems.
•   The record keeping burden on teachers continues to rise, along with the expectations. “Accountability” is here.
• Not only has the burden upon teachers increased, but compensation for that burden and respect for their training and experience has decreased. Districts are less willing to pay for teachers to seek out development in their profession, and more likely to pull them out for training during the school day-giving a substitute teacher control of their classroom.
• Teachers have had little say in how to best address student needs. This is not new. The top-heavy bureaucracy, the wordy and vague standards, the ever changing testing system with the convoluted scoring system…teachers could have worked together and done this better a decade ago. Instead, “reform” has included more state and regional bureaucracy, testing and publishing industries, and fewer resources at the local level.

Few people would say that the way to make something work better is to take resources from the people doing the work, then hire highly paid people far away to come up with ideas about the work. Control that that is too top-heavy is the epidemic weakness of our economy and our education system and has taken from the strength and flexibility of local decision making.

What We Need to Do:

• Work collectively. If districts are going to gather in regional and administrative teams to come up with ways to deal with inter-district staff as a group, then staffs between those districts should consider themselves a group. Staff will be lost as districts find ways to share people and spaces, so we need to be protecting our numbers now.
• Share contact information, and important dates. Consider showing up to BOE meetings in not just your own school, but at others to support some of your fellow county teaching staff. The silent presence of numbers can make school boards more thoughtful. Stay in touch, and stay aware.

NY Ed Reform Commission Says What???

From Part Two, Great Educators Enable Great Students

     New York’s schools have many high quality teachers and school leaders.  We must find ways to leverage their skills to improve the work of the entire educator workforce.  To retain excellent teachers, we must ensure that each school is led by a highly effective principal with the skills to support teachers’ development and create a culture of collaboration and high expectations.Career ladders that recognize effective teachers should be developed, providing educators with opportunities to grow over the course of their careers.
     Unfortunately, coherence, collaboration and professional leadership do not systematically characterize American educator preparation programs today - particularly given the fragmented nature of the larger system and stakeholders involved.

A recent (Jan. 22) tweet by @BetsyS48 said:


Can't find any funding for teacher centers in #nystatebudget2013 Can anyone else?


The Teachers' Center, at least in my area, has historically been the place where teachers gathered after hours, on the weekends and over the summer for collaborative learning and projects. It  provided new teachers with awareness of curriculum and familiarized them with the materials available. It familiarized all with recent strategies in instruction and management. It gave chances for teachers with vast and varied experiences, skills and talents to share. Invariably, almost everyone who attended a Teachers' Center offering walked away with new strategies, new ideas, new professional contacts. Sure, it could be a hassle spending a Saturday or a nice summer day "in school", but I was never sorry about my time spent. Many critics of public education, teachers, and their unions have no idea about the extra time teachers do spend and are willing to spend on the job, but "off the clock".

     Lately it seems our policy makers feel it's more important to take that time and those resources away-structuring teacher "collaboration" around how to subject themselves and students to incredibly time consuming data gathering assessments and schedules. State tests, local tests, benchmark periods at various points in the school year, "value added" measures and teachers along with their students as numbers instead of people is the paradigm being forced upon public schools by those who live outside that world and imagine themselves above it. They don't collaborate, and have demonstrated through policies and threats that working with those who know what teaching in the real world with real-world students is like is not on the agenda.

How are educators in NY to collaborate and build on connections- increase the coherence of their curriculum and instruction if the Governor's policy is to undermine them first? Should he be allowed to hobble schools and the ability for educators to collaborate, and then squander funds to create a report criticizing educators for not being as collaborative as they should be.

Who knows better how to utilize their scant resources and time to collaborate, invent, create and put into practice strategies and materials to address the ever-changing and developmentally inappropriate demands of policymakers and their State Ed enforcers/accountants?

It makes no sense to take trust from dedicated career educators and place it instead with a wealthy, disconnected political opportunist who knows essentially nothing about real-world needs, sound practice and realistic goals in economically struggling schools.

Print up, package and try to sell that fancy report that does little more than illustrate the damage policymakers have done.

What Does Success Look Like?

     I believe in academic goals. I believe that there are developmental benchmarks that can be agreed to and then those goals can be worked towards. I think that work can be part of reasonable teacher evaluations. The difficulty I have with current reform, and the standardized testing-as-teacher-evaluation push, is a more significant aspect of education in America is being ignored.

     Last November I posted about more vital learning standards because I believed (and still do) that we are failing our students and ourselves by allowing a tiny percentage of citizens to use their economic and political influence to define our roles and goals. The people I know; people I meet; my own family-my own children; my students...I gauge success based much more on their approach towards the world and their role in it. There is no standard for that. It's different for every person and is based on the gifts they bring as an individual to the team (family, class, neighborhood, world...).

     That's why onerous standards that lead to tests that then lead to judgments regarding the value of a person are galling and unjust. Especially when pushed by people who live free from the fears and burdens bore by more and more families who suffer in the "competition" driven market controlled by the tiny percentage. I refuse to accept their definition of success as either the obedient and correct filling of bubbles and silently sitting in seats, OR as their pampered entitled lives that allow them to profit from such injustice while sheltering themselves and their own children from it.

     So what should be called success? I will be working with those "standards" I wrote to try and clarify them and maybe come up with goals/performance indicators...but help me. What do you want to see in our future citizens? What do you feel good about students being able to do?

Just Imagine

     Just imagine you are a teacher in a school where many families live below the poverty level. Transiency is high, and some students leave to go to another nearby school and then return in the same year or very next year as evictions, arrests, and relationship issues tear up the homes and families- or as an increased focus on a family raised by concerns in school puts them on the move once again.

     Just imagine that the students coming out of these situations (as difficult as it is for them to succeed within the structure of the regular classroom and the school day) feel that the school, their classroom, classmates, teacher, the daily routine...that these things are the security in their lives; that this is where they feel the most loved even. Imagine that the bulk of their lives has been spent surrounded by poor choices and poor models of behavior, language and education outcomes. Imagine that, as the teacher, you see these kids off for Christmas vacation and the summer break and many won't let go of the hug: they are in no hurry to go home.

     Not surprisingly, these students often don't conform to behavior expectations and have difficulty meeting academic goals. For teachers, professional development over the past couple decades had morphed with society to an increased focus on behavior management-even going so far to give teachers a "heads up" on A.R.T. (Aggression Replacement Training) as a possible skill-set for handling difficult kids. This intervention/training is one used by police officers, in prisons, juvenile facilities...apparently our classroom teachers are now expected to fulfill the roles of arresting and corrections officers. Now professional development time is more likely to be consumed with compliance and survival within an accountability model that ties the value of teachers to the academic progress of students on standardized tests.

     Despite the fact that this reform movement is pushed by people who don't want school to be standard or equitable (they preach "choice"), don't expect the economy to be equitable (they preach "competition"), they want to pretend that standards and benchmarks are the way to enforce progress on the back-end, as opposed to supporting success on the front end. It's a convenient way to ignore the obligation to promote success (because it may cost something), while profiting from policy-making that punishes the lack of success. 

     As struggling districts have fought to operate under the force of increasing mandates and dwindling budgets, students are less likely to receive the supplemental or support services that they could benefit from. That forces the regular classroom teacher to spend instructional time addressing their students' parental/social/behavior/physical needs in order to get to the academic charge. The number of roles and the bulk of their responsibilities outside of the academic expectations is ever-increasing.

     It's not that this multi-role reality didn't always exist. There have always been students needing the teacher's gift to be all these things at different times for different reasons. But the recent reform movement, and the belief that standardized tests can properly or fairly determine the value of teachers (to a school, student, or society) is the most preposterous and blatantly disingenuous proposition possible. The reality everyone understands, reformers included, is that these burdens are continually increasing-especially in areas when the free market and "trickle down" economic practice have failed communities.

Just imagine that, if instead of trying to violate our economy and our public institutions, lobbyists, corporations and politicians got behind the job of promoting true success the way teachers in public schools try to do every day.
Critical as reformers are of public education, they sidestep with the "no excuses" mantra the undeniable correlation between poverty, domestic stability, family support/experiences and academic success. The reason for this is clear: advocating for more equitable economic policy would not get you invited to those fancy political/lobbying parties. It's much easier to pretend that if teachers just taught harder, everyone would be wealthy and successful.

Priorities Apparent

     I am saddened by the lack of voices in debates on some very vital issues.

     There is a need for a conversation on guns, and what we need to do about citizen access to certain types of weaponry. I understand that. It makes me sad; it makes me angry; the level of senseless violence is hard to wrap a reasonable mind around as explanations are grabbed at-but few conclusions can be made.

     But our society as a whole has other systemic and damaging conditions that pose even greater dangers.Education has become finance/industry's favorite kick-bunny, and politicians have happily jumped on board-rolling out reforms that serve to do little but deteriorate the mission of education. While public schools for the many are being reformed into production lines of a compliant and standard low-wage working class of consumers, our media keeps those minds busy worried about what Honey Boo-Boo thinks and what we can do about feeling 40 instead of 20, or having restless legs, wispy eyelashes or some other superficial concern.

     A tiny, very privileged class is distracting the nation with misdirection and denial, avoiding their patriotic duty to support our nation-its people and places, NOT its domination of the world and its resources.

     Yet, the silence is deafening.