Who is making $8,400,000,000 off of our kids?

Here’s some news I am not sure everyone has. Did you all know that we have more than just the usual culprits in the privatization of Public Schools? It goes beyond charters and hedge fund owners. It even goes beyond Bill Gates.

There is huge business in developing new software tools that are designed to “tailor learning to each child. To achieve that sort of customization, the software may collect and analyze a vast array of details about the habits and activities of individual students.” Of course there is the usual issue about what happens to that data.

Guess what that business is worth? “These apps and sites represent a small but growing segment of the overall market for prekindergarten through 12th-grade education software, estimated at about $8.4 billion last year.”

Quotes are from NYT article by Natasha Singer in today’s business section. “Tools for Tailored Learning May Expose Students’ Personal Details”

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Rethinking the way teaching is thought of.

Barry Schwartz’s piece in the August 30, 2015 NYT titled “Rethinking Work” touches on many issues that teachers have been talking about for years.

Contrary to the belief that has been governing work since Adam Smith, he says,

“We want work that is challenging and engaging, that enables us to exercise some discretion and control over what we do, and that provides us opportunities to learn and grow. We want to work with colleagues we respect and with supervisors who respect us. Most of all, we want work that is meaningful — that makes a difference to other people and thus ennobles us in at least some small way.”

Substitute the word teachers for we.

He refers to the 1998 book, “The Human Equation,” where “the Stanford organizational behavior professor Jeffrey Pfeffer found that workplaces that offered employees work that was challenging, engaging and meaningful, and over which they had some discretion, were more profitable than workplaces that treated employees as cogs in a production machine.”

Isn’t that what teachers have been saying we need and want to do our jobs?

“You enter an occupation with a variety of aspirations aside from receiving your pay. But then you discover that your work is structured so that most of those aspirations will be unmet…. Maybe you’re a teacher who wants to educate kids — but you discover that only their test scores matter…. Pretty soon, you lose your lofty aspirations. And over time, later generations [of teachers] don’t even develop the lofty aspirations in the first place. And when this goes on long enough, Adam Smith’s prophecy comes true. Smith said, in one passage, that, “routinized work typically made people ‘stupid and ignorant.’”

How can we not only improve learning, but also teacher’s “productivity”? “By giving them more of a say in how they do their jobs. By making sure they are offered opportunities to learn and grow. By encouraging them to suggest improvements to the work process and listening to what they say.”

By simply listening to what we (teachers) have been saying for decades.

“THE PRIZE” MAY BE A PRIZE.

This morning I stared at the NY Times Book Review section, as I do most weekends and asked myself, “Should I or shouldn’t I browse through it.” Most of the time I don’t find anything of interest but today I decided, “What the hell, I might as well.”

I am glad I did. My eyes did a “what the?” when I hit page 9 and saw this headline: Getting Schooled: What happened when two politicians and a tech billionaire set out to reform a city’s schools. It was a full-page review of THE PRIZE: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools by Dale Russakoff.

Now my interest began to peak as that title looked to me as if the book might be a critique of the corporate/foundation/political top down attempts to take over public education. So I started to read the review.

After reading the first couple of paragraphs that set the stage for the book’s content, I thought, hmmm, this might actually be critical of the attempt of the three (Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg) powerful men who wanted to use Zuckerberg’s “gift” of $100,000,000 to “not to repair education in Newark but to develop a model for saving it in all of urban America.”

My next clue about why I want to read this book followed shortly thereafter.

“Russakoff, a longtime Washington Post reporter, had the good sense to recognize the potential power and import of this story early on, and so embedded herself in Newark, winning access not only to the key players — Booker, Christie and Zuckerberg — but also to some remarkable teachers and students whose stories serve as a reality check to the maneuverings of those commanding the reform efforts. A lesser reporter might have succumbed to the seduction of such intimate access to the rich and powerful, but Russakoff maintains a clear eyed distance, her observations penetratingly honest and incisive to what she sees and what she hears. I suspect some may have regretted letting Russakoff in.”

The writer of the review, Alex Kotlowitz, subtly pointed out how the book exposed Booker’s and Christie’s pro charter and anti teacher positions and Zuckerberg’s naivety. He points out the significance of the hiring of “Cami Anderson, from the New York City schools, whose unbending management style only affirms teachers’ and parents’ worst fears,” and “like the other main characters in this effort, seems tone-deaf to the demands of the community to be involved in the process.”

“It’s the irony of ironies. Public education is the bedrock of democracy — and yet when it comes to repairing our schools the democratic process is too often ignored. What ultimately derails this grand experiment is the unwillingness of the reformers to include parents and teachers in shaping the reforms.”

Finally, I was sold on this line. ““The Prize” may well be one of the most important books on education to come along in years. It serves as a kind of corrective to the dominant narrative of school reformers across the country.”

Finally.

WE MUST TAKE BACK THE NARRATIVE LANGUAGE OF EDUCATION

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@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @valeriestrauss, common core, education, Educators, High Stakes Testing, schools, students, teachers

Corporate Education Reformers and their ilk have usurped the positive language of education.

Positive public perception is key to successfully getting across our message. If we are against things people perceive of as positive then we lose.

We must regain control of the narrative. We must take back the message.

For example, let’s assess, not test.

“What is assessment? That depends on whom you ask. When I was a kid in school, we were never assessed. We were tested. We took in-class tests, IQ tests, and entrance tests to specialized high schools, and, of course, those other standardized tests: the New York State Regents and SATs. I taught for over twenty years before I was introduced to the term “assessment,” when I first heard Grant Wiggins speak about “Authentic Assessment.” “Holy Cow,” I exclaimed, “I didn’t know I had been doing that for so many years.”

“Ever since I started teaching, I was trained to “assess” how my students were doing at reaching the outcomes I had laid out for them. Teachers, need to know if students have gotten the “its” of the lesson then let their students know if they have or haven’t. Additionally, we must have the means to give them the best feedback, to either tell them they have it, or that they don’t. Most importantly, if they don’t have it, our feedback, based on the results of the use of authentic assessments, must tell them how to get it.”

“There is a huge difference between being data driven and data guided.   Assessments of all types, not just fill-in-the-bubble, multiple-choice tests, must be analyzed to see how students progress with particular skills of various levels and content. Essays, projects, group projects, research, and class participation are all assessment, as well as teaching tools. Teachers are only as good as their students’ understanding of how good they are doing.”

“Good teachers constantly reassess methods and assessments. Are they appropriate? Are they challenging without being too hard? Are the assessments too hard? They better not be too easy. That is condescending. Is there clear linkage between objectives, outcomes, goals, methods, questions, and assessments? Do the students understand why they are doing what they are doing, as well as what to do and how? That is also important. Are they assessing the wrong things? Are they authentically assessing what they should? Do they match the lessons? Do the lessons match them?”

‪Christine Zirkelbach‪, a New York parent says,

“Parents and students want fair, informative, reliable assessments that provide real time information as to a student’s abilities, strengths and weaknesses. We do not want pointless, grueling, expensive, uninformative tests with cut scores that are manipulated to serve a political agenda.

Successful examples and protocols are readily available throughout the State (NYS) by sharing of best practices within schools, districts and between them. 
Parents want tests that provide real time information, with questions and answers that are open for review and discussion and where students get information that provides action items for true growth in learning. They actually want to know that their kids’ teachers KNOW their kids and understand how they learn, their strengths and weaknesses and how to motivate them.”

“In a September 19, 2010 op-ed piece in The New York Times entitled “Scientifically Tested Tests,” Susan Engel of Williams College noted,

‘As   children, teachers, and   parents sprint, slink, or stumble into new school years, they also find themselves laboring once again in the shadow of standardized tests. That is a real shame, given that there are few indications that the multiple-choice format of a typical test, in which students are quizzed on the specific formulas and bits of information they have memorized that year, actually measures what we need to know about children’s education…. Instead, we should COME UP WITH assessments that truly measure the qualities of well-educated children: the ability to understand what they read; an interest in using books to gain knowledge; the capacity to know when a problem calls for mathematics and quantification; the agility to move from concrete examples to abstract principles and back again; the ability to think about a situation in several different ways; and a dynamic working knowledge of the society in which they live.’

Dr. Engel. Teachers have been using these types of assessments for years. They don’t have to be come up with them; they already exist.”

We must take back the word assessment. In addition, there are other words we need to take back.

How can we be against a word that means: courage and resolve; strength of character, fortitude, resolution, determination, perseverance, and endurance. That word is grit.

Reformers began using “grit” and we responded by making it a curse word. What do Americans think of the word grit? As Diane Ravitch pointed out, “The commonsense idea that is summarized as a four-letter word is that character, perseverance, and determination enable children even in the most difficult of circumstances to overcome obstacles and succeed.”

Who would disagree? Ms. Ravitch appropriately disagrees with a scale used to “measure it” but asks if we think it can be taught in schools. I, for one, think it can be.

Moving on…

“Learning standards are concise, written descriptions of what students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education. Learning standards describe educational objectives—i.e., what students should have learned by the end of a course, grade level, or grade span—but they do not describe any particular teaching practice, curriculum, or assessment method (although this is a source of ongoing confusion and debate).”

They should be painted in broad strokes allowing for teachers’ flexibility based on their students needs, their creativity, and school resources.

“Following the adoption of a variety of federal and state policies—notably the No Child Left Behind Act, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965—all states now use standardized assessments designed to evaluate academic achievement in relation to a set of learning standards. Until the development and widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards for the subjects of English language arts and mathematics, and more recently the Next Generation Science Standards, learning standards in the United States were independently developed by states, usually as part of a collaborative committee process overseen by a state’s department of education that included educators and subject-area specialists, as well as public-commentary periods (although both development and adoption processes varied from state to state).

When investigating or reporting on learning standards, it is important to know how they were developed, what knowledge and skills they describe, and how they are actually used in schools. “

Are having standards as defined here bad? NO. Are they bad as pushed through via Federal Law, the use of CCSS etc.? Yes.

Again we must grab the words back.

AND then there is this term.

“The term college-ready is generally applied to (1) students who are considered to be equipped with the knowledge and skills deemed essential for success in university, college, and community-college programs, or (2) the kinds of educational programs and learning opportunities that lead to improved preparation for these two- and four-year collegiate programs. The college-ready concept is typically motivated by the belief that all high school graduates should be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and aptitudes they will need to pursue continued education after graduation, and that a failure to adequately prepare adolescents for collegiate learning denies unprepared students the option to pursue a collegiate education, should they choose to do so, either immediately after graduation or later in life.”

I can agree with that? Can’t you?

But again because the corporate clowns of Education reform took the term, we oppose it.

It is time to take it back.

“The term rigor is widely used by educators to describe instruction, schoolwork, learning experiences, and educational expectations that are academically, intellectually, and personally challenging. Rigorous learning experiences, for example, help students understand knowledge and concepts that are complex, ambiguous, or contentious, and they help students acquire skills that can be applied in a variety of educational, career, and civic contexts throughout their lives.

While dictionaries define the term as rigid, inflexible, or unyielding, educators frequently apply rigor or rigorous to assignments that encourage students to think critically, creatively, and more flexibly. Likewise, they may use the term rigorous to describe learning environments that are not intended to be harsh, rigid, or overly prescriptive, but that are stimulating, engaging, and supportive.

In education, rigor is commonly applied to lessons that encourage students to question their assumptions and think deeply, rather than to lessons that merely demand memorization and information recall. For example, many educators would not consider a fill-in-the-blank worksheet or multiple-choice test rigorous.”

For years we used that term as a synonym for challenging, now we are challenged to accept it because it too was usurped.

Let’s usurp it back.

Why have the corporate marketers stolen our language? “There is money to be made. A lot of it. A couple of years ago, estimates of the global education market topped $4 trillion. Currently, the US education market alone is worth over $700 billion. A large chunk of this is tax money, disbursed to schools by local and federal government, and the business world wants a piece of it. Last year, transactions in the K-12 sector totaled nearly $400 million. There’s clearly still a lot of money to be grabbed and privatizers are doubling down on their efforts.”

“We see the education industry today as the healthcare industry of 30 years ago,” Michael Moe, who leads the investment and consultancy firm GSV, has said. Their website explains that “GSV stands for ‘Global Silicon Valley’—emphasizing our belief that Silicon Valley is no longer just a physical place, but also a mindset that has gone viral…. A key part of our mission is to re-imagine what education is—with a bias toward innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, and others who look at learning differently.” The keynote speaker at their last summit was former Florida Governor (and current Presidential hopeful) Jeb Bush. In attendance were representatives from nearly 300 companies, including AT&T, Netflix, and media conglomerate Graham Holding Company.”

“The emphasis wherever you look is on more and more technology in schools, what they’re calling “edtech.” As the TechCrunch website declares: “with better digital video solutions storming into every classroom, learning is actually becoming an enjoyable experience.”

Privatization in this form may be less overt than a corporation running a whole school, but it’s an equally effective way for business to profit from education – all under the guise of benefiting students.

Finally, our last word, charter.

“As a former teacher from New Jersey put it, the charter school movement has been “transformed from community-based, educator-initiated local efforts designed to provide alternative approaches for a small number of students, into nationally funded efforts by foundations, investors, and educational management companies to create a parallel, more privatized school system.” Like so many initiatives started as local alternatives to global capitalism, the charter school has become the perfect mechanism for private companies to insert themselves between the government and the people, siphoning off tax money into their coffers.

Right now, education policy is changing rapidly and is disproportionately influenced by private interests, worldwide. In the US, corporate-backed ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) has been pivotal in drafting education legislation across many states.”

They and their cohorts have stolen our language of education in order to steal public schools to make them profit schools.

We must steal it back and steal our schools back.

The Founding Fathers Are Turning Over In Their Graves.

The First Amendment of The Constitution of the United States says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The Fourteenth Amendment adds, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (including the first amendment)

So how well has Republican presidential hopeful and Governor of Ohio John Kasich defended the first amendment?

As the Ohio Republican explained it, he believes teachers congregate and, while talking among themselves, express concerns to one another about lost benefits and pay cuts. Kasich “apparently sees this as a problem – not the threat of lost benefits and pay cuts, but rather, the fact that teachers have these ‘negative’ conversations, driven by “the unions.”

He said, “I’ll tell you what the unions do, unfortunately, too much of the time. There’s a constant negative comment to, “They’re going to take your benefits,” “They’re going to take your pay.” And so if I were not president but king in America I would abolish all teachers’ lounges where they sit together and worry about how “woe is us.”

It seems, therefore that Governor Kasich wants to prohibit “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” in teacher’s lounges as well as in unions, and wants to end the freedom of speech to say, “woe is me” and to therefore to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also seemed to have issues with the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of parents via his proxies NYSDOE Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch and Commissioner MaryEllen Elia who said, “The opt-out issue is very problematic.” She added, “The law exists so that there could be ramifications.”

So parents are being threatened with ramifications for their use of the First Amendment rights to “free speech” and “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

All of this is taking place while the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision to say, “Spending is speech, and is therefore protected by the Constitution — even if the speaker is a corporation.”

The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.

WE HAVE THE POWER

by T. Jameson Brewer and David Greene

In the last few years, Teach For America (TFA), has seen a massive increase in critique levied at the organization. One of the most recent complaints about the organization is its terrible track record for dealing with critique and criticism. Late last year, the Nation reported on a leaked internal memo that outlined TFA’s obsession with covering up critique and marginalizing critics while simultaneously seeking to expand – a similar corporate disposition that recently put TFA in the crosshairs of NonProfit Quarterly where, when confronted with criticism, TFA is said to have a “self-protective reaction [that] can breed certainty and hubris.” Yet, while there is undoubtedly more than can be said from a critical perspective on TFA, here we outline a “wish list” for real changes that can be affected.

Instead of TFA’s hype we need solutions. And since TFA’s typical response to critique is hype, to us, the real power for change is in the hands of school districts that decide to hire TFA Corps Members (CMs).

Overall, districts should first hire credentialed new teachers who have had sufficient teacher training and student teaching internships. Districts should only use TFA staffing when there is both a shortage of qualified teachers and the only alternative is to hire uncertified and emergency teachers or substitutes. This, however, should never be the case when staffing teachers in special education. CMs are not skilled in general education, let alone, special education law and issues of remediation.

Moreover, districts should not request or require TFA’s to write grants, tutor kids after school, coach, sponsor clubs or assume “extra” duties during their first year. They are trying to figure out teaching and that alone consumes their time.

Again, since it is unlikely that TFA will enact meaningful change in the face of criticism, we contend that the school districts that have the power to decide to partner with TFA or not begin to set those changes into motion.

Here are a few things that districts can do now:

• Tell TFA to provide you with people who see teaching as a career, not just a stepping stone or an altruistic act of community service.
• Tell TFA you want a true financial partnership to develop career teachers where money is not flowing out of the district in the way of finder’s fees to TFA but where TFA is investing money directly into the districts – rather than bolster its marketing coffers.
• Tell TFA you want the 5-week Summer Institute to become obsolete. TFA would instead partner with school districts and with universities in their regions. New CMs would live on campus (saving lots of money in places like NYC) and be enrolled in a special yearlong training program followed by the rest of a revamped two year, field-based MAT program to gain permanent state certification. No graduate classes should be taken the first year. First year teaching is far too rough as it is.
• Tell TFA to require a longer commitment from its CMs that begins with the first year (while still Seniors in college) composed of valuable education courses, student teaching, and being paired up as an assistant to a veteran teacher who might be a more experienced CM. Additionally, require that CMs teach for more than two years, preferably five. TFA often suggests that such a requirement would decrease their application rate. That’s fine. We only want those who will commit. We want this to be a part of an overall commitment to developing career teachers as we do career lawyers. Check the Finnish model. It can be done.
• Tell TFA you want a dedicated mentor program with veteran teachers or field specialists to mentor TFA CMs and have this duty as their full-time job. An hour daily can really save someone’s day when there is a venting opportunity with an action plan attached. Use the money and veterans in your own system or get them from university programs. These veteran educators have not lost their passion for teaching and were never dull, so they can model effective teaching practices in TFA classrooms, build trust, and support Corps members off hours.

TFA will never give in, you say? It will never give up a good thing. Exactly. This will be hard to do because TFA is extremely attached to its power, long-range plan to dominate and influence policy, and growing the organization to further achieve those ends. That is why the onus is on school districts to demand these changes.

And while these district-led changes will afford TFA the opportunity to discard its arrogance and facade of righteousness, more importantly, we believe that the changes will certainly have the capacity to improve and mend TFA’s impact on students.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of T. Jameson Brewer and David Greene.

T. Jameson Brewer is an advanced Ph.D. student of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a M.S. in social foundations of education from Georgia State University and a B.S.Ed. in secondary education from Valdosta State University. His research focuses on the impact(s) of privatization/marketization of public schools by way of charters, vouchers, and Teach For America. He is co-Editor of the recent book “Teach For America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out.” Follow him on Twitter @tjamesonbrewer

David Greene is a former 38-year Social Studies teacher and coach. He is also a program consultant for WISE Services, an organization that helps high schools create and run experiential learning programs for seniors. In addition, the author of “Doing the Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks,” is Treasurer of Save Our Schools, and an active blogger and speaker. His blogs have appeared in Diane Ravitch’s website, Education Weekly, U.S. News and World Report, and the Washington Post. You can visit David Greene’s blog at https://dcgmentor.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter @dcgmentor

http://www.edcircuit.com/school-districts-have-the-power-to-change-tfa/

“Losing Ourselves”

Tags

@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @valeriestrauss, education, High Stakes Testing, schools, stress

“Losing Ourselves” by Rachel Wolfe (NY high school senior)
Powerful video made by a student at one of America’s high achieving public high schools, in Scarsdale, N.Y.

I taught at Scarsdale HS from 1990-2008. The concern by many teachers, parents and students about student stress, even before CCSS, NCLB, and RTTT, etc was palpable. I heard each of those comments by so many kids in every year I was there. It has unfortunately moved down to elementary schools as a result of all the state tests.
We (teachers like my former colleagues and friends seen on the video) worked together to try to do many things to lessen that, but the pressure by parents and peers on SHS kids to take SATS in the 7th grade, PSATS, SATS, ACTs, and of course as many APs as possible to get into college was HUGE.

In fact SHS became the first public HS in the nation to drop ALL AP designated courses.
The Rat Race to get into the most prestigious colleges was rampant. There were many students who didn’t fall into that trap was a fairly significant group, but the highest achievers were often driven to tears.
Rachel’s video tells that story so the whole country can see and hear it. Those comments are timeless in high pressure districts. Now however they have become part of our national fabric, thanks to privatization.
By the way, Since 1993 Scarsdale HS ends its senior year 6 weeks early so that every senior can do something they have a passion for, discover a new skill, build stuff, explore a career path or hobby, or make a film like this. (I will find out if in fact that is what took place.) This Senior Options program (an offshoot of The WISE Program) is a model I wish all High Schools had. Contact me for info.

Kids intrinsically know work can be FUN! All we have to do is give them the chance.

IS THIS THE FUTURE?

Tags

#amazon, @anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @valeriestrauss, education, Educators, High Stakes Testing, teacher, teachers

Some lyrics of a song released in 1983 by the Fatback Band (written by a very talented Junior High School class and band mate, Gerald Thomas).

 “We can put a man up in space

But on earth it’s just a rat race.

Is this the future?”

 

                                             “We got people workin’ 9 to 5

                                         While over 10 percent are trying to stay alive.

                                        Is this the future?”

 

                                          “Worked years perfecting my craft

                                           Now my boss is giving me the shaft.

                                     Is this the future?”

 

                                     “Can it be? Are you tellin’ me

                                   This is the future?”

Apparently it is.

Today’s NYT (8/16/2015) reports in detail about the new algorithm Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is using at its “white collar” work places.

“At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others.”

“’You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.’”

Is this the future?

“In Amazon warehouses, employees are monitored by sophisticated electronic systems to ensure they are packing enough boxes every hour. (Amazon came under fire in 2011 when workers in an eastern Pennsylvania warehouse toiled in more than 100-degree heat with ambulances waiting outside, taking away laborers as they fell. After an investigation by the local newspaper, the company installed air-conditioning.)”

Is this more like the Triangle Shirt Company prior to the 1911 fire?

Is this the past?

“In 2013, a former Army captain who served in Iraq joined Amazon. After she had a child, she arranged with her boss to be in the office from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day, pick up her baby and often return to her laptop later. Her boss assured her things were going well, but her colleagues, who did not see how early she arrived, sent him negative feedback accusing her of leaving too soon.”

“’I can’t stand here and defend you if your peers are saying you’re not doing your work,’ she says he told her. She left the company after a little more than a year.”

“Ms. Willet’s co-workers strafed her through the Anytime Feedback Tool, the widget in the company directory that allows employees to send praise or criticism about colleagues to management. (While bosses know who sends the comments, their identities are not typically shared with the subjects of the remarks.) Because team members are ranked, and those at the bottom eliminated every year, it is in everyone’s interest to outperform everyone else.”

Is this the future?

“Each year, the internal competition culminates at an extended semi-open tournament called an Organization Level Review, where managers debate subordinates’ rankings, assigning and reassigning names to boxes in a matrix projected on the wall. Often called stack ranking, or ‘rank and yank’—it can force managers to get rid of valuable talent just to meet quotas.”

“’You learn how to diplomatically throw people under the bus’ said a marketer who spent six years in the retail division. ‘It’s a horrible feeling.’”

“The mother of a stillborn child left Amazon. ‘I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,’ the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored “to make sure my focus stayed on my job.”

Is this the future?

1984 and Fahrenheit 451 have nothing on Amazonian practices. Even in the cutthroat world of high tech, Facebook and Google are doing rather well by understanding what humans need to work hard and creatively. Data driven tyranny is not the only way, unless you are a tyrant.

The use of high stakes testing and VAM to evaluate teachers is having this same Amazonian effect on the education workplace. People are quitting in droves after trying their best to succeed in this newly cutthroat world being created in schools. The difference is that because of these very actions and other factors, education is not drawing enough new young teachers dedicated to a lifetime of teaching. Where collaboration was once Queen, it seems competition has become King, especially in States run by Tyrants and maybe even friends of Amazon Emperor, Jeff Bezos.

What else has Bezos been up to regarding Education policy? Alternet reports:

“Bezos gave $100,000 to support charter schools in a 2004 referendum. Supporters raised more than ever before, mostly from a handful of wealthy individuals, and had a 10:1 financial edge.”

“Bezos’s mother and stepfather gave a total of $1 million in 2012 in support of a pro-charter education initiative that narrowly passed. The measure will allow up to 40 charter schools to open in Washington State during the next five years. Supporters raised more than ever before, mostly from a handful of wealthy individuals, and had a 10:1 financial edge.”

“Meanwhile, None of Amazon’s 90,000 American workers are unionized.”

Is this the future?

Finally, “Bezos has turned his eye to the latest cause célèbre for the capitalist class: school privatization. The 2011 financial disclosures for the Bezos Family Foundation reveal a $15,000 donation to New York City-based Education Reform Now, a group founded primarily by finance industry titans that advocates for charter schools.”

“There are also significant contributions directly to various charter schools, school privatization groups in Oregon and Washington State, and hundreds of thousands of dollars logged in support of Teach For America, which in recent years has made advocacy for charter schools and high-stakes testing a core part of its mission.”

Now he owns The Washington Post. Will Valarie Strauss still have her job?

Is this the future?

That’s Rich. Across Country A Scramble Is On To Find Teachers: (NYT 8/10/15)

Tags

@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @valeriestrauss, education, Educators, schools, teacher, teachers

This is no surprise. For years we have been predicting the demise of a great profession because of so–called “reform”. Ms. Rich writes a great deal in this article about this shortage but neglects to point out how changes in education over the past 15 years created this problem.

I’ve drawn on quotes from my book (Doing The Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks (published in December 2013) or posts that are at least a year old to show the point.

• Barbara Tuchman, in her 1984 book, The March of Folly, from Troy to Vietnam, defines folly as the “pursuit of public policy contrary to self-interest, where people pursue the same failed policies and expect different results.” What better example of folly is there than current public education policy?
• Reformers live by the standard of industrial America developed a full century ago by Frederick W. Taylor. Captains of industry (robber barons) supported scientific management, as it was called, in order to make their employees more productive. Today’s policy makers want to turn teachers into industrial employees, churning students out like Ford workers churned out Model T’s.
• Our nation’s media, conservative and liberal alike spread misinformation. They vilify the teaching profession, regardless of how successful many teachers are with children of all ages. Our politicians implement laws and plans based on that misinformation. Foundations give huge sums of money based on that misinformation. Corporations profit from that misinformation.
• Instead of “getting rid of bad teachers,” more good and excellent teachers are leaving. Teaching colleagues, who three years ago said they loved their job and would stay until someone carried them out, are now saying they can’t wait until they are eligible for retirement.
• Teaching must be more of a profession for our most creative and ambitious 20-somethings. We must market the opportunities to become an autonomous, creative professional with room for growth.
• The best kind of education is about distinctive and impassioned teaching, the kind that will engage and excite students. Often, it is the least orthodox that are the greatest teachers.
• Well-trained classroom professionals can more than adequately decide what techniques and methods to use to reach a wide variety of students based on authentic and varied assessments.
• We need wise teachers, not scripted robots. “A wise person knows when to improvise. And most important, a wise person does this improvising and rule-bending in the service of the right aims.” – Barry Schwartz, Practical Wisdom
• “Temping” is a word I’ve been using to describe what school districts now seem to want to do, using budget crises and taxation issues as excuses, and then making the changes permanent.
• Great teaching is an art, not to be controlled and censored by scientific management. Teaching is to be cherished, not lost and mummified. Our students should not become guinea pigs in a Fahrenheit 451 world of mathematical schema and “data-driven” engineering.
• Why are the voices of many of the best teachers ignored, or worse, chastened by non-teachers? What other profession does that happen in? Law? Medicine?
• The best school atmospheres are supportive and self-directing and that develop a sense of professionalism and camaraderie among colleagues.
• The most successful districts are not that way simply because they have the “best” students. They draw and hire the best teachers. These districts have common characteristics: supportive administrations, mentor-teacher programs, inter-visitation, collaboration, academic freedom, higher pay with good benefits, and mentoring by master teachers and supervisors in their areas of study.

WHY ARE SO MANY MORE TEACHERS “RETIRING”? June 2014

“When I began teaching in 1970, and throughout almost all of my 38 year career in NYC and suburbs, teaching was a lifelong calling. Many, like me, started right out of college, grabbed a Master’s degree on the way to get permanent certification, and taught until retirement age or near it if an early retirement deal was created by boards trying to save labor costs.

Nationally, in 1990, 20 years into my career, the average length of service was 15 years. Of course that counted those who never were granted tenure and those who realized for a variety of good reasons, that they wanted to do something else. It also, by the way, included second career teachers who started at 40ish and worked fewer years to reach retirement age.

Now the average, as most people know is less than 5 years. This is because of a number of reasons. But more and more a rising factor has been the degradation of the profession and the increased lack of control over what teachers do as a result of NCLB, RTTT, High Stakes Standardized Testing, Common Core, and the overall takeover of education policy by corporations like Pearson and Achieve Inc. via the support of campaign fund needy politicians.

The results are more and more articles like this one in the Baltimore Sun where we read sad stories like,

After 22 years of teaching in Baltimore County, JoAnne Field says she will be leaving her third-grade classroom this year. She loves the children, has a principal she believes is “wonderful and supportive” and is committed to public education.

But because of the rapid changes to the county’s curriculum for elementary schools, she doesn’t feel she has been as successful with her class this year as she should have been.

“If I do what … the county is now expecting me to do, I can’t look at my children in the eyes. I know I am not giving them what they need,” said Field.

Yesterday I counseled a young woman who just finished her student teaching experience and was curious about what to do to find work as a high school English teacher. Sadly I told her that there will be lots of opportunities to teach because of what has happened in Baltimore and all over the United States. But, I told her, to have a  long career, she has to try to get hired in a progressive district that does not kow-tow  to the corporate agenda.

And from this Chapter: “Who Will Teach”?

“A new survey paints a troubling portrait of the American educator: Teacher job satisfaction has hit its lowest point in a quarter of a century, and 75 percent of principals believe their jobs have become too complex.

The findings are part of the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership. Conducted annually since 1984, the survey polled representative sampling of 1,000 teachers and 500 principals in K-12 schools across the country.

“Only 39 percent of teachers described themselves as very satisfied with their jobs on the latest survey. That’s a 23-percentage point plummet since 2008, and a drop of five percentage points just over the past year. Factors contributing to lower job satisfaction included working in schools where the budgets, opportunities for professional development, and time for collaboration with colleagues have all been sent to the chopping block. Stress levels are also up, with half of all teachers describing themselves as under great stress several days per week, compared with a third of teachers in 1985.”

Given those numbers, who wants to teach besides TFA Corps Members who know all they have to do is last two years then go on their way to their real vocations? Teaching must be more of a profession for our most creative and ambitious 20-somethings. We must market the opportunities to become an autonomous, creative professional with room for growth. In addition, there needs to be obvious material incentives.

Finance and law draw many potential great teachers away from the profession. The highest, state average, starting salary for a teacher is approximately $40,000. The highest, state average salary for a teacher of any experience is approximately $65,000, the average, starting salary for a first-year lawyer. A first-year analyst in investment banking averages double that, and a third-year associate with an MBA averages $350,000 in compensation (careers-in-finance.com). At the same time, the top 10 percent of teachers in the country have an average salary range from $75,190 to $80,970.

Even in Scarsdale, one of the highest-paid teaching staffs in the nation, the average salary was $95,840 back in 2006-07 (Source: 2006-2007 Contract Analysis conducted by the Negotiations Clearinghouse, Putnam, Westchester and Rockland Counties). It is now over $100,000, but that still doesn’t come close to the figures attracting the best and brightest to the private sector. Apparently, our best and brightest prefer the big bucks to job prestige in national rankings. Why? Among the elite, the prestige is in making the big bucks. Good teachers often tell their students and their own children not to join the profession. Why are teachers paid so little in comparison?

Without big bucks, and no military draft to avoid (yes, that did bring a large number of very talented baby boomers to teaching in the late ‘60s), the number of good, talented teaching candidates will continue to decline. But unlike then when the vast majority stayed teachers, today’s college students are apt to go the quick temporary route via TFA. They cannot get good jobs anymore and use their brief experience to pad their resumes before they leave to go on their eventual career path. After their two-year stint, only about 20 percent of TFA Corps Members were still teaching in public schools in 2010. [Now that good jobs are more available even TFA recruitment has gone down.]

The major problem is strictly the supply and demand of good replacement teachers. What are the chances of replacing retiring or a bad experienced teacher with a better, inexperienced one?

Who do we want as teachers? As Emeritus Columbia University Professor Frank Smith has observed, “the best kind of education” is about distinctive and impassioned teaching, the kind that will engage and excite students. Often, it is the least orthodox that are the greatest teachers. As one of my great teachers told a class of mine in high school, “Think about what outstanding really means… standing out from and being above the crowd.” What is an exceptional teacher? Exceptional has come to mean best or brightest, but doesn’t it really mean to be the exception? The one who stands out from the crowd? Those are the great teachers–the ones we remember. Teachers teach. Well-trained teachers teach better. Great teachers change lives.

Weren’t your best teachers those who had practical wisdom? Weren’t they the ones who had character, along with certain principles and virtues that you may have not appreciated at the time? Weren’t they the ones who obviously loved their work and you as a result? And weren’t they the ones who almost always seemed to do the right things for the right reasons, the right way? Scripts and rules and models strictly followed cannot replace what the best teachers have most…practical wisdom. There is no substitute for it.

I recently had a conversation with someone who strongly believed and argued, “Lower student scores are produced by students with poor teachers, and higher student scores are produced by students with good teachers.” I simply asked her one question. “Did I become a better teacher when I changed jobs from a Bronx high school with poorer test results to Scarsdale High School?” She was clearly stumped, but refused to change her mind.

We predicted this shortage. As Linda Darling Hammond was quoted by Ms. Rich, “Other nations create incentives and supports in order to be able to fill the needs in a much more deliberate and conscious way.”

I guess that beats Presidential candidate Chris Christie’s idea of “punching them in the face.”

Professor Yong Zhao unknowingly pitches WISE.

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@anthonycody, @dianeravitch, @valeriestrauss, education, Educators, schools, students, teachers, WISE Services

In March of 2015, Luba Vangelova wrote an article entitled Standards: Why Realizing the Full Promise of Education Requires a Fresh Approach for KQED News in the Bay Area of San Francisco. It is an affiliate of both PBS and NPR.

You can read the full article here. http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/03/09/standards-why-realizing-the-full-promise-of-education-requires-a-fresh-approach/

She describes her article as a two-part conversation with famous University of Oregon Education Professor Yong Zhao. I admire Dr. Zhao and have read a number of his pieces but what makes her article so interesting is that it makes his “unknowing” support of our WISE Program www.wiseservices.org crystal clear.

For 40 years, WISE high school seniors of all ability levels have created individualized real-world experiences (WISE projects), exploring their passions outside the traditional classroom.  Over 40,000 WISE graduates at over 100 high schools have learned to collaborate and to work independently, developing organizational, research, writing, and presentation skills as they ignite a lifetime of personal growth.  WISE also offers local community agencies and businesses the opportunity to tap the diverse talents and energy of their high school seniors.   WISE Services (WISE Individualized Senior Experience, Inc.) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization established in 1991 to assist schools in developing WISE programs tailored to their own local needs.

High school students increasingly need real-world skills to succeed in college and careers in order to take on a dynamic, ever-changing world. The WISE Program is the start.

According to Professor Zhao:

“We need to start with the individual child, instead of what others think [that child] should become.”

 “Individual differences are not flaws to be fixed; the emphasis instead is on helping all students to identify and develop their areas of interest, and to build on their strengths.”

“The most fruitful form of education—and the one with the best chance of empowering children to overcome poverty and other disadvantages—offers each child the opportunity to pursue his or her own goals, in a stimulating and supportive environment.”

“Schools that provide a learning environment that supports individual needs benefit greatly from harnessing their students’ intrinsic motivation, because they don’t have to work hard to try to overcome resistance to learning.”

“Is the teacher the only instructor, or can students help? How about using resources beyond the school, like the community or parents?”

 “If people are driven by their own goals, that are meaningful to them, and feel a sense of accomplishment and self efficacy, then they really want to learn.”

 “Teachers should be human mentors. Children can take ownership of their learning, but inevitably they will encounter setbacks. Do teachers help develop their social, emotional and physical well being, and challenge them and push them forward?”

Professor Zhao describes what WISE does for students to a T and emphasizes what The WISE Program has been doing since 1973 for over 40,000 students.

www.wiseservices.org