TEACHER ACCOUNTABILITY PROBLEMS

Teacher "accountability" is the latest thing among politicians of both stripes. Democrat or Republican they both want to insure teachers are held accountable. But held accountable for what?

No doubt teachers should be held accountable for their technical skill, subject matter knowledge, effort, fairness, personal integrity and helpfulness. But holding them accountable for student outcomes as measured by high stakes test results is far more problematic.

That is because teachers typically do not control all, or, in some cases, even most, of the things that influence these test scores. Teachers do not control the effort students put into learning, for instance. Sure, a skilled teacher can increase the motivation of some students and hopefully, as a result, increase their effort. But even the most skillful teacher cannot motivate every student to do his or her best — or even just try. This is especially true if one teaches in a school that serves a community torn apart by violence, unemployment, poverty, drug addiction, dysfunctional families, etc. Even the most skillful teaching cannot reach kids who are sufficiently scared, angry, impoverished, malnourished, high, drunk, neglected, or abused to care about school.

Teachers do not control the general school climate not the amount of backing they get from central administration and the building principal when it comes to maintaining the discipline necessary for learning.Teachers do not control the overall physical condition of the school nor the degree of clerical support they receive. Teachers do not control the amount of time they are required to spend on non-instructional tasks; nor do they control how fairly students with instruction disrupting problems are distributed. Teachers often do not control which teaching materials are chosen nor the fairness with which they are parceled out. Teachers typically do not control the equity of room assignments with some getting stuck in classrooms that are ovens while others are in freezers.

Most important of all, teachers cannot control the quality of parenting kids go home to. Are those parents supportive of the teacher's efforts? That is up to the parent(s.) Do they read to their kids, teach them their letters, numbers and colors when they are young? That is up to the parent? Do they even try to set a good example for their youngsters? That is up to the parent.

O.K., you say, but can't all these things be dealt with by only comparing the results achieved by teachers of the same grade in the same school? No, because no two classes are the same. But what about comparing these teachers over several years? Won't that deal with this problem? No it won't. Suppose, for example, 7th grade teacher A gets an unfair share of students with problems because 7th grade teacher B is friends with the secretary who makes up the class rosters. This favoritism could last for many years. Would it be fair to compare their student test scores? Suppose the school secretary does not like first grade teacher A, but is buddies with first grade teacher B? MIght that not determine who gets supplies and photocopying? Suppose the principal does not give teacher A what she needs because she is old and unattractive, while being overly generous with teacher B because she is the young and hot? These sorts of things can also last for years.

The plain fact is that before we decide to hold teachers accountable, we first have to determine what they can fairly be held accountable for. We also have to consider increasing their control over key variables that influence teaching outcomes. But most of our politicians prefer skipping those sticky steps. They just want to hold these overpaid public servants feet to the fire, hoping all the while that no one carefully considers how fair or wise that might be.

To consider other aspects relating to the evaluation of teachers see http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Delegitimating.html

TEACHER JOB SATISFACTION: at all-time low

Years of dumping on teachers, blaming them for outcomes that are beyond their control and throwing them under the bus have taken their toll. Teacher job satisfaction is the lowest it's been since the Reagan years.

The 28th annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, found that 44 percent of teachers are "very satisfied" with their jobs. That's down from 59 percent in 2009. The last time job satisfaction dipped this low was in 1989 — which was the final year of Ronald Reagan's teacher-bashing Presidency. Worse still, 29 percent of teachers say they are likely to leave the teaching profession within the next five year. That's up from 17 percent in 2009.

Simpletons compare superior standardized test scores from nations such as Finland with weak kneed American scores and blame the deficit on US teachers. They never bother to compare Finland's superior social environment with that of the US. Nor, more importantly, the stringent requirements for becoming a teacher, Yet when this is done the unhappy comparisons are striking.,

Another reason U.S. teachers leave the profession is that that they often are only casually committed to begin with. The entry price is so low that casually committed candidates make it all the way through. In Finland only the best and brightest are selected for training and then it takes years of graduate study to qualify. Here you're in if you can pee a hole in the snow.

For more on U.S. teacher preparation see www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/HeyBuddy.html

THE LITTLE RED MADHOUSE: Should Corporal Punishment Be Revived?

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Paradoxically, kids from less 'humane' cultures than ours often long for the relative safety of their homeland. They are more terrorized by the disorder in their inner-city American schools than they were by the threat of corporal punishment in schools back home. 

A teacher recently told me that her elementary ESOL students are uniformly repulsed and frightened by the disorder in their Philadelphia elementary school. One day, when the sound of cursing and fighting grew so loud in the hallway that her ESOL kids could barely hear their teacher, a quiet little girl from Ghana suddenly said, "These kids are just so bad. In my room (meaning her every-day classroom) I cannot learn!" 

She paused, then said longingly, "In Ghana they hit you if you're bad." The ESOL teacher asked, "Did that make Ghanaian kids behave?" "Oh yes," the girl replied, "it wasn't anything like this place!" "Do you think kids in this school would behave if they got hit?" the teacher inquired. "Yes!" the girl replied, momentarily brightening, "Oh yes, I'm sure they would!" Then her smile faded as she realized this was not going to happen.

When we compel children to attend school we incur a non-negotiable obligation to insure that they are safe and that those who want to can learn. This must take precedence over everything including well-intentioned social reclamation efforts, racial pride building, condom distribution, and the thousand and one other non-academic things schools are unwisely charged with doing.

Similarly, teachers must be free of the threats and assaults of disturbed or malevolent youngsters. Likewise, no one should be allowed to destroy their lessons. In short, serious disruption, threats, bullying, extortion, and predation, simply must not be tolerated if schools are to fulfill their function.

To restore order, however, school officials must command meaningful sanctions that tough kids respect. If this can be accomplished without inflicting physical pain on bullies and budding sociopaths, so much the better. But what if resources are inadequate for a more refined approach? Or what if we can't find a more refined approach that works reliably? Should we continue to compel well behaved children to attend unsafe schools where they are bullied unmercifully and denied the opportunity to learn? Should we continue to prate about holding teachers accountable when they are not even safe in their own classrooms?

In the "good old days" if you made other people's lives miserable or learning impossible it cost you a red behind and a one way trip out the door if you persisted. Today, these options have pretty much been ruled out. What has taken their place? Pious sermons, ineffectual detentions, suspensions that the kids view as vacations, forced transfers that spread the chaos, and, more recently, structured efforts to persuade sociopaths not to use the violence that pays off so handsomely for them. All of this is well intentioned. But all too often sneering recipients of these social services continue to lay waste to everyone's safety and learning.

In the best of all possible worlds, pain would never have to be inflicted on anyone for any reason. And a lot can still be done to make schooling more palatable and more effective for a broader range of kids. But the world is far from perfect, school resources are strictly limited and order is necessary for any reforms to take hold. Tough penalties, then, are still required. 

Educators relied on corporal punishment for nearly 6,000 years. Must we now revive what has only recently been set aside? Is there an affordable alternative that tough kids won't laugh at? Perhaps. But in the meantime far too many children — good kids who would dearly love to learn — are compelled to attend mad houses rather than school houses.

For more on this see http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Singapore.html

TO TOP

TEXTBOOK CONTROVERSIES: intolerance speaks

The remarkably heterogeneous nature of American society makes it very difficult to establish consensus concerning anything of consequence. And nowhere is this lack of a agreement more obvious than when we select public school textbooks.  Consider the example of states like California or Texas which establish a list of approved textbooks.

When public hearings are conducted on this matter a farrago of fundamentalists, feminists, European origin ethnics, New Agers, native Americans, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, Latinos, Chicanos, pacifists, civil libertarians, tea party true believers, fundamentalists, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, Asian-Americans, environmentalists, animal rights activists, Muslims, even vegetarians (not to be confused with ovo-lacto vegetarian crowd) lament bias and register non-negotiable demands for the insertion of their values and a  favorable depiction of their cause and heroes.

This is how textbooks are neutered. There are so many competing demands that in attempting to meet them publishers end up with sterility. So be it. Textbooks debates, even textbook sterilization, are an unavoidable part of the rough and tumble of life in a heterogeneous democratic society. The alternative is domination by one group or another.

Verbally duking it out over textbooks, or the entire school curriculum for that matter, is a very American process. This is not my concern. My concern focuses on the elements who short-circuit this diaglogue by un-democratic tactics and by their absolute refusal to even consider that those who oppose them are operating in subjective good will. No, these true-believers will never concede that their opponents might be doing what they think to be right. Those who desagree with them are always immoral, perverted, licentious, atheistic, agents of Satan, pornographers, child molesters -- perhaps even traitors.

Because their cause is so urgent, so patriotically holy, true believers of every stripe commonly assume that their ends justifies any means. This is how anonymous hate mail, terroristic phone calls, unsigned and untruthful pamphlets, acts of vandalism, even death threats become standard features of true-believer textbook campaigns -- particularly at the local level. 

This is how textbook content campaigns, and curriculum content campaigns for that matter, come to feature character assassination, half truths, outright lies and non-negotiable demands. Tactics such as these destroy communication and make democracy impossible. Colloquy becomes confrontation when the compromises necessary in choosing a text are transformed into the politics of the end-time. In this realm everyone is required to reveal their "true allegiance" by choosing between God and Satan, America and treason.

The concern here is NOT with legitimate expressions of difference within the democratic dialogue. It is with those who enter this process with a very real intent to subvert it because they are in possession of THE TRUTH. To maintain an exchange -- whether it be about texts, curriculum or politics -- truth and values must be dealt with in a tentative and tolerant fashion. Reason and evidence must not be subordinated to any group's ideology. Opposing points of view must be accorded the same respect you expect for your own and not be ignored, surpressed or subverted.

Granting any religio-political view a special exemption from these obligations is not only ruinous to public schooling; it places the entire democratic process in danger. Our democracy has never required the celebration of common ends; but it does  require respect for common means such as compromise, tolerance and civility.

See http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Textbooks.html for more on this topic.

TOP-DOWN SCHOOL REFORM: trashing teacher morale

One of the most troubling aspects of school reform is that the would-be reformers never bother to ask teachers what they think. They imagine there is no need to ask. They think they can just ram change, however unrealistic, down gagging teacher's throats. After all, they're mere peones.

The chief problem with this approach is that it simply doesn't work. Way back in the 1970's a Rand Corporation study clearly demonstrated that successful introduction of innovations in any organization requires willing, highly motivated participants. And this is particularly true of teachers because the vast bulk of their work is accomplished outside of immediate administrative oversight. When teachers close their classroom door they generally achieve the latitude to do what works.

Why do those in charge ignore this need for teacher willingness and positive motivation? It's because would be reformers have long treated teachers with an insufferably arrogant style of management. This style dates all the way back to the era when classroom teachers were long-suffering females and the power holders were smug, self-satisfied males. Nowadays it's not just posing and preening  posing and preening politicians of every stripe trying not to actually improve education, but merely to widen their market appeal.

Some say that teachers stand in the way of needed reforms. That reality requires the imposition of non-consultative change. But resistance to change is hardly restricted to teachers. In fact, resistance is an inevitable response to major change in any organization. And when those changes are being pushed by the very same people who look down on you, ignore your hard-won knowledge and can't tell their pedagogical ass from third base, resistance is sensible.

Nevertheless, posing politicians and the state and federal officials who must do their will, show a complete disregard for the negative impact their imperial actions have on teacher morale and the recruitment of anything but docile, dimwitted sheep into the profession. In other words, these would-be reformers have long-ago lost all concern for the effect their "reforms" have on those who must carry them out  if they have any chance of being successful. And that lack of concern on the part of the reformers guarantees the long-term futility of their reforms.

For more on this subject go to http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Domination.html

THIS SCHOOLING IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY ...

Well we've taken another giant step down the road to the commercialization of public schooling. School boards have begun selling ad space in their buildings. Pennsylvania's Pennsbury School District, for instance, is selling advertising spaces as large as 5 by 10 feet in all of their 16 schools. Ultimately 218 ads of various sizes will appear on walls, floors and even shrink-wrapped over lockers and cafeteria tables. One wonders, if the Superintendent happens to be female, has the school board considered marketing the space across her behind. Instead of the ever popular "Juicy" or "Pink" the message might read "Post-It Notes!" or "Dick's Sporting Goods!"

Yes, the Pennsbury school board recently signed a contract with a national advertising agency that should boost their annual budget by as much as $424,000. All they had to do was sell access to the 10,950 children and teens entrusted to their care.

To be fair,  the great recession and massive cuts in state aid, caused the district to be $6 million in the red. Those cuts were initiated by Republicans, by the way — the very same political party whose most "conservative" elements plan to eliminate "government schools" entirely. (They're socialistic, don't you know?)

These same die-hard "conservatives" assure us, there is nothing the government can do, that private enterprise can't do better. I can't wait until MTV Networks takes over our public schools. Lady Gaga could teach home economics! Lil' Wayne could teach poetry. Hell, even their CEO could get into the act. He could introduce the youngsters to the principles of American government — corporate style.

For similar considerations see http://www.newfoundations.com/Carpenter/SchoolChoice.html

THE SORROWS OF A LONG-TIME TEACHER EDUCATOR

I have been preparing future teachers for forty two years and have belatedly concluded that I'm in the wrong line of work. Absolutely no one of influence gives a crap if this job is done well or not.

When I began my career I chose to teach at a Catholic college run by a religious order allegedly devoted to teaching. I reasoned that this bode well for teacher education at the school. Unfortunately, I failed to adequately consider that it was a liberal arts school. In that environment the education department was Thursday's child. And filling our classrooms with too many marginally committed halfwits generated more tuition than allowing us to restrict entry in the same way as any professional school does as a matter of course.

Nearly half a century later the Education Department has won some credibility. But the resources we have to work with are embarrassing. Most of the revenue we generate disappeared into the general fund. Proportionately little is reinvested in properly equipping our programs. Consequently, I teach in a classroom equipped in exactly the same way my first grade class was in 1946 except the desks are bigger.) It lacks even a bulletin board. Imagine teaching in a medical school lacking every feature of modern medical practice. Well I teach in the equivalent.

I really shouldn't fault the college though. They would be foolish to invest more heavily in teacher education than their competitors. Besides, few give a damn about teacher preparation to begin with.

This indifference is aggravated by meddlesome state education officials who, without any meaningful consultation, seek to idiot proof the process. For instance, they mandate literally hundreds of provisions that must be met before a college can secure middle school teacher program approval.  What is the result?
It's as if some crazed bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur was given several reams of paper, locked in an office and given the following instructions, "We are dealing with nuckle heads who haven't a clue about preparing teachers. Idiot proof the process by creating hundreds of requirements that leave them no latitude whatsoever."

You might think, "Well, at least they are getting tough." Oh yeah? Then why, at the same time are these half-wits  also creating pathetically easy "alternative routes" into teaching at the same time?

Oh, and lets nor forget President Obama and his totally unqualified Secretary of Education. When it comes to teacher preparation the two of them just jumped down the rabbit hole with Alice. How so? They recently decided to classify teacher interns as "highly qualified teachers." Why would they do a crazy thing like that? So that states like California, who use hundreds of interns to fill classrooms in their educational Calcuttas meet the No Child Left Behind requirement that all teachers be "highly qualified." Surely this is the first time in human history that interns have officially been declared "highly qualified." It's 1984 all over again!. War is peace! Love is Hate! and Interns are Highly Qualified." What a joke!

If I could start my career over I would choose something the American people really care about. Perhaps I should have learned how to make napalm stick more tenaciously to babies, or something of the sort. The nation has long been eager to invest in that sort of thing. But like I said at the beginning, absolutely no one of influence gives a crap if teacher preparation is done well or not.

For more on this subject see www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Cannonfodder.html