Open Letter from the 2015 Clay County Teacher of the Year

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

To my colleagues, friends and neighbors in Clay County:

     Justice Louis Brandeis’ famous quote came more than a hundred years ago as the United States was in the middle of trying to clean up the effects of the Gilded Age.  The Gilded Age was a time period that saw politicians and corporations manipulate laws and secrecy to keep the American people in the dark and rake in massive amounts of public money for their own wallets.  Through reformers like Justice Brandeis, President Theodore Roosevelt and many others, sunlight and transparency was restored to our government and America built the largest middle class the world had ever seen through most of the 20^th century.

Unfortunately my friends, we are now in a new era of forced darkness as those in leadership are aiming to keep us, the working people of Clay County, in the dark so they can manipulate our tax dollars for corporate greed and personal wealth.   One of the chief organizations that they are using to accomplish their twisted plot is our elected School Board.

The putting up curtains to keep the sunlight out of Clay County started in 2012 when election rules were manipulated to ensure that nearly half of Clay County voters would effectively not have a say in their elected superintendent.  Once elected, the superintendent and those who support him continued to fight to keep Clay County teachers, parents and voters in the dark.  You can see this manipulation on several issues whether it was using tax money to support groups with radical interpretations of US history, hiring of supporters with little experience, or money for lobbyists.  Due to arbitration that keeps opposing viewpoints out of county email, the superintendent is able to Their goal is to keep the working voters of Clay County out of the process to enrich themselves and their supporters.

Why this is important to keep in mind is because this same pattern has been and is continuing to be applied to the teachers and their contract in Clay County.  As a now former Clay County Teacher of the Year, I feel that it is my obligation to speak on behalf of my friends and great people that I met throughout Clay County Schools. 

In the last 8 years, student performance and achievement has continually improved throughout Clay County Schools.  Some like to claim that public education should be more handled like the real world, and in any other industry those responsible for the increased production would be rewarded financially.  However, the teachers of Clay County have received ZERO raises over the last 8 years.  In fact, with increased contributions for decreasing health care benefits, for their success in the classroom, Clay County teachers have received a significant PAY CUT. 

At the same time this has been happening, teachers have seen county-level administrator positions increase with pay raises, thousands of dollars to educational programs and countless amounts of money kicked back to the charter school industry. Now, the district is claiming poverty and making those responsible for the achievement in Clay County schools balance the budget out of their paychecks.  Even though an appointed, impartial arbitrator agreed that small teacher raises are reasonable, the leadership of the School Board is now pushing forward to ignore those rulings. 

In the discussion about the contract with the arbitrator, it was the belief of the superintendent that my leaving Clay County for a neighboring county was anecdotal and not related to School Board policy regarding teacher contracts.  However, that is completely false.  I left Clay County because as teachers, my wife and I felt that another county did a better job of taking care of its teachers.  In my 8^th year of teaching, I will finally see my first raise as a teacher, our health care costs will be dramatically lower with a growing family and after three years of successful evaluations, I will have contract protections that I could only have dreamed about in Clay County.  These are all measures that the Clay County School Board has had the option of enacting to support their teachers, but have consistently declined.

Again, in an opportunity to keep Clay County’s working voters and teachers in the dark about what is going on, they have scheduled this meeting in the middle of a workday.  This is consistent with their way of handling questions that are in the public interest.  They want to limit questions and criticism from those who they were elected to represent and protect.

A hundred years ago reformers throughout the United States came together to shine a light on elected officials and institutions that were demonstrating values that were un American.  In their handling of the teacher contracts and other issues within the school district, the School Board and its leadership has demonstrated the same values of the Gilded Age bosses of a hundred years ago.  I hope that with my letter and the concerns of other parents and teachers in Clay County, we can begin to shine a light on these injustices, as Louis Brandeis says, disinfect our system and return to Clay County a more perfect union.

Thank you for your time.  I will always have a special place in my heart for Clay County and the great people I worked and live there with.

David W. Fields, M.Ed

2015 Clay County Teacher of the Year

The GLAMorous World of Educational Reform

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.