Currently, American public education may be in the beginning
throes of extinction as it experiences unprecedented and calamitous reforms in
regard to testing, teacher accountability, and curriculum reform. Teachers are overburdened to the point of
becoming incapable of doing not just all that is asked, but anything that is
asked. I imagine there was a time in
education when teachers could plan, teach, assess, and interact with
students. Those days are long gone and
beyond the reaches of memory for most teachers working today.
Testing has gotten so far out of control that a school
district can have some sort of assessment going on just about any given
day. In Miami-Dade County the district
uses 154 of the 180 days of student attendance for some sort of testing. Even though any individual student may only
be testing for a total of 8 hours on any state-mandated test in any given year,
that student will also be given an assortment of district-issued assessments in
order to address legislation that mandates interventions to get students up to
speed. Tests are not the exception, they
are the norm. They occur continually and interfere with instruction to the
point instruction becomes almost impossible at times.
For example, during the first weeks of school a district
typically has students take diagnostic tests in order to determine baseline
scores and benchmarks in most core subjects.
As the year progresses, these students are then called back to test each
quarter to gather data to identify areas of need and to see if progress toward
mastery is being made. In ed-speak this
is called “progress-monitoring.” In English classes, for example, districts
mandate writing tests in addition to reading tests so students can be given some
sort of mandated test more than 3 times in any given quarter, for a single core
subject. As the legislature lowered the penalties for
the class size amendment, districts are cutting teacher positions and are
filling classes to the brim with students.
Core classes are being reported to contain student counts over 30 and
electives as big as 40. Computer labs
are not large enough to accommodate classes of such size so testing for any
given class may be broken up over the course of two or three days. What this ultimately means is that
instruction can be impeded for up to 3 days while testing occurs, and a teacher
cannot teach a class fully when at least a third of that class is not
present. If this happens three times per
quarter, instruction is basically lost for up to 9 days per quarter, which
amounts to more than 20 percent of instructional time. This is not to mention the other resources
lost to testing. Usually it is the
guidance counselors who end up administering these tests, so students are also
losing essential guidance in addition to classroom instruction. In short, schools are not providing the basic
services they were designed to do. They
are intentionally being set up to fail (https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3286777759911046485#editor/target=post;postID=7551337420457621865;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname
Besides dealing with the interminable testing (not to
mention having a portion of salary based upon student tests even if that
teacher doesn’t teach a subject in which his/her students are being tested)
teachers are also being forced to collaborate at unprecedented levels. Many districts are forcing teachers to
collaborate in Professional Learning Communities which meet for at least one
hour per week. Apparently management
felt that teachers weren’t already doing this and therefore mandated it. These PLCs occur in addition to faculty
meetings, department meetings, district meetings, parent conferences, and
weekly academy meetings. The inherent
problem with such excessive meeting is twofold: first, teachers are unavailable
after school for tutoring and providing extra-help and second, teachers now
have less time to plan and grade.
Between testing and meeting, teachers have very little time on the job
to actually do the job, but ironically are held more personally accountable than
ever before by holding a portion of the paycheck ransom to test scores. It’s a
veritable educational catch 22 if you will.
Seemingly the rationale behind PLCs seems to be only that
someone in upper-management had an all-expenses paid trip to observe a
model-school and needs an end product to justify the expense or it’s that someone
just simply read about a district in Singapore that has high test scores and
figured “what the hell, let’s try this.”
The truth is upper administration really seems to have no real reason
other than it seems to work in some other places. “Let’s try it,” they say and if you question
the merits of any new initiative you’re labeled out of touch, old-fashioned,
and unwilling to change with the times.
In district level meetings they set the agendas and the “norms” of the
meetings, keeping negative criticisms and any real thorough analysis of the new
ideas at bay. The new idea in education is always the best
idea if you are in middle or upper management.
But the problem with adopting such practices is that American
districts don’t adhere to a full and complete adoption of foreign
practices. For instance, in Singapore
and Shanghai, teachers spend 10 to 18 hours per week with students. In America teachers spend 25 to 32 hours on
average with students. And by adopting
the PLC collaboration model but not doing a single thing to lessen other
burdens, management only creates more hindrances upon the teachers. They
don’t initiate real, substantive change.
They don’t really care about making real change because if they really
wanted to it wouldn’t be done in such a half-assed manner. They fling shit at the wall to see what
sticks. They piggyback on precursors by
plagiarizing and imitating. There is no
actual concern about these ideas actually working because those who initiate will
have moved on by the time they fail and the next movement comes along. And even worse, recent research has shown
that there IS ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT FROM DISTRICT MANDATED TEACHER
TRAINING. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/study-billions-of-dollars-in-annual-teacher-training-is-largely-a-waste/2015/08/03/c4e1f322-39ff-11e5-9c2d-ed991d848c48_story.html)
To an outsider, this issue is far more complicated than this
verbose explication can ever clarify and address so perhaps a simple analogy
might be more apropos. Sometimes the new shiny thing isn’t always the
best thing and my point can probably be clarified most simply with some images related to
American popular music. They say a
picture is worth a thousand words.
Sometimes, images can leave you speechless. Somewhere back in the late 1980s a few rock
and roll bands involved in the West Coast music scene began garnering attention
and filling clubs. The full clubs soon translated to records sales and the
dollars began flowing into the record labels. Soon record label management signed everyone
and everything they could market and exploit. Established, credible acts with reputations
built upon artistic merit and tenure in the industry were even forced by
management to move in the direction of the new, alluring tide. Veterans of the industry KISS, Ozzy Osbourne
and Alice Cooper were not immune.
It doesn’t take too much to get the point. Grown men in
bands, some with previous artistic integrity, had been forced by the free
market and executive desire to exploit the next, new, fresh idea. Looking at these pictures should illustrate
just how asinine this is. And doing the
same in education should be looked upon in just the same fashion. You can’t hide behind a bad idea and use
children as your shield. I cannot count
the times I’ve heard management say that each new directive and initiative is
for the children. And if you resist a
new idea because you realize it’s not going to be effective you’re labeled as
being selfish and uncaring. But it’s not
about the children; it’s about politics, career advancement, and money. Teaching isn’t a mystery and it doesn’t take
any modern miracle or reform to help. We
need some common sense, some latitude, and some funding. It’s a very simple formula. And if you REALLY
want to reform education, you address poverty in America because that’s the
number one factor when looking to the cause of student failures. You can’t put a turd of an idea in a shiny
jacket and make it glamorous. Some
people prefer the lipstick on a pig idiom but I think calling these ideas turds
is more suitable since they are all stinkers.
PLCS, Merit Pay, Wall to Wall Academies, technology in the classroom,
Florida’s Best and Brightest Scholarship, word walls, Race to the Top, No Child
Left Behind, FCAT parties and carnivals, classroom libraries, Marquez, Marzano,
Criss, and Foundations….all of it is just simply plain crap with no substance
to it, pure drivel without intent…. but dressed up in a glitzy jacket with hair that will set your pants on fire.
