We Hate You, Teachers, the School Reformers Said

Hello, teachers. We are the people with all the great plans to fix America’s schools. Did you know we hate you?

Yes, we do.

We are not the children you teach. Nor are we their parents. (In terms of ethics and honesty, the public rates you just below nurses, doctors and pharmacists.) It doesn’t matter to us. We hate you still.

Who are we? We are reformers who, in our insufferable arrogance, insist you must save every child. When you cannot—because no ever has—we denigrate your efforts. We question your professionalism. We are men and women who will not teach, or teach only briefly. And yet, somehow, we know it all. We are the Guggenheim’s and Bloomberg’s and Gates’ who have solutions for every problem in the public schools, but send our children to private schools.

In ways you can never fathom (probably because you aren’t very smart) we care more about children than you do.

We prove how much we care by offering up bold plans to save every child. You must implement these plans, of course. We are too rich and important and busy giving advice—and did we mention how smart we are?

If our plans fail, it can’t be our fault.

It has to be you.

Who are we? We are the politicians who hamstring your every move. We want you to save every child by piling up data. Data will save them all! Pile that data high!

Now pile it higher!

We want you to give plenty of standardized tests because lobbyists pay us to insure we push for more tests. We want you to stop complaining in your teachers’ lounges, even if we change our minds every August about which tests you must actually give. We tell all our friends your unions are the main problem in education today. We say dealing with you is like dealing with terrorists.

We want to punch you in the face.

We are the pundits who insult you daily in newspapers and on TV. We are authors of books about teaching, people who never taught, but we know exactly what we would do to save every child if we were in your shoes. Indeed, we blame you for every problem America faces today. We mock you.

We hate you, too.

But who are we, really? Sometimes, we wake in the middle of the night, and we think about what we’ve done. And we know in our hearts that we are cowards. We toss and turn because we know we have asked you to do all the fighting that must be done to save the children. We don’t save a soul.

We criticize. We don’t act.

We weren’t there at Sandy Hook when you and the children were slaughtered like sheep in a pen. We weren’t there when Colleen Ritzer was murdered in a bathroom at the school where she taught. We weren’t there to tackle the gunman at Chardon High. We have no plan to address violence in schools and don’t really care what happens to you. We are the fools in Congress, whose approval rating hasn’t topped 20% since September 2012. We are the governors and state lawmakers who hold out our hands to receive fat contributions from corporate education interests. All you do is hold the hands of traumatized Chicago second graders, or scared Nevada middle school kids who have just seen blood spilled, on the way to, or at their schools.

We are the men and women who act like we know more about saving children than you do, even if you have spent six years, or sixteen, or thirty-six in a classroom, working with kids. We have spent no time in a classroom, most of us, or labored only two or three years. Then we tired of the challenge. We realized we were better suited to giving advice and piling up fat speaking fees, often by lambasting you. “Here is what you need to do,” we insisted, “if you want to save every child.” But we don’t think you do. We tell everyone you are lazy, and protected by tenure, and stupid, too.

We are the bureaucrats who put together studies no one, save other bureaucrats, will ever read, who pile data in giant heaps. We say you can never have enough data, not when it comes to saving kids. We are the types who become U. S. Secretaries of Education without ever saving one child.

Who are you, teachers? You are nothing to us.

But who are you, really? Your students think you matter. Their parents do, too. You are the educator who teaches the painfully shy five-year-old to speak in kindergarten for the first time. You are the third grade teacher who consoles the boy who just found out his parents are going to file for divorce. You are the teacher who helps the fifth grader who weeps one morning at school, after his drunken mother shaves large patches in his head the night before, who sends him to the counselor. You are the counselor and the school nurse who cut off the remaining, random tufts of hair, so the poor young man will feel a bit better in the end.

You are the foot soldiers of education. The battlefield is your classroom, where all the fighting takes place. It is there you labor without respite to fire great kids from fine homes with a passion to excel. And on that same battlefield you try to save the sixth grader who comes to class smelling of urine because he and his mother call a rusted out station wagon home. It will not be easy saving this boy. You know that—even if the people who criticize you so cavalierly do not.

(Or perhaps they know, and don’t care.)

Who are you? You are the special education instructor who must help autistic twins fit in with the other kids in the seventh grade. You are the junior varsity track coach who motivates girls to run harder than they ever thought they could. You are the tenth grade Language Arts teacher who can spot the unnecessary word in any sentence, in any essay you receive, a word like a wart on a beauty queen’s nose, and convince a young writer to cut it out.

This is who you really are. You deal with teens every day, kids who belong to gangs, gifted teens, teens who are contemplating suicide and want to know if you have time to talk. Many of you have been fighting for young people almost your entire adult lives. You have embraced the challenge. You have not wavered or quit. But you are more frustrated than at any time in your careers.

You are sick of the haters who have no earthly clue.

You are the art teacher who fuels a fire of creativity in your fourth grade kids.

You are the middle school band instructor who turns bleating trumpet players into future professional musicians.

You are the health teacher who reaches that obese kid and shows her a path that will help her lose weight.

You are the biology teacher who inspires a young woman who goes on to Ohio State and to graduate school at Yale.

You are the math teacher who feeds the thirst for knowledge of a future Rhodes Scholar.

You are legion. You are men and women who give up evenings every week and Sunday afternoons to call parents, work on lesson plans, attend concerts and games, and catch up on tall stacks of ungraded papers, projects and artwork.

Really, who are you? You are the people who labor long and hard to save every child.

And, really, who are we? You do all the fighting. We talk and talk. We are shirkers in the fight to save children.

We hate you in the end because when we look in a mirror, we see what we truly are and what we are not.


MY BOOK ON TEACHING--ABOUT WHAT REAL TEACHERS KNOW--IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.

No standardized tests necessary!!!!!

Ohio Charter Schools Suck: GOP Lawmakers Still Love Them

Here in Ohio we are blessed, I tell you, with a governor and lawmaking body that love charter schools. Why? Because our representatives love children? Because charter schools do a better job, measured by standards mandated by that very same lawmaking body?

Nope. Try again.

Here are how regular public schools measured up, with charter schools listed separately, in this year's state report card:

(CHARTERS IN RED, ABOVE.)

Well, then, do our GOP representatives love charters because they devote more resources to helping kids who need help?

Fat chance.

(CHARTERS IN RED, ABOVE.)

As the chart above shows charters tend to pay school founders and school leaders well for their less-than-stellar efforts. And why not? Isn’t education about profits?

What? You say it’s not?

Someone probably needs to break the news to David Brennan. Here in Ohio and elsewhere Brennan operates White Hat, a charter school chain, with almost fifty franchises. No, I mean schools. 

Brennan cares about dollars. No, no, I mean kids. That’s why he has a $6 million mansion down in Naples, Florida. Ha, ha, because Brennan cares about living in lux…no, about kids. In fact, he loves kids so much he is willing to go out of his way and host fund-raising dinners down in Florida for Ohio hard-working GOP politicians.

Another neat White Hat trick, when franchises...no, no, no...control your sarcasm...when schools fail...is to close them down and reopen them with cool new names, in the same buildings, with much the same staff, so that profits for Mr. Brennan are almost impossible to kill, kind of like zombies.

Kids. Sure. Brennan loves ‘em.

How to show this love? According to the Akron Beacon Journal this summer Brennan and his wife Ann contributed more than $3.8 million to fifty-one politicians between 2004 and 2012. Those who gained the most in these transactions?

Ohio’s school children.

Ha, ha! I’m joking!

Actually, the main beneficiaries included Ohio Senate President Keith Faber, Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder, the Republican Party—because no one loves kids more than the GOP (unless they need health insurance)—and, of course, good old Governor John Kasich, who never saw a fund-raising dollar within reach he didn’t want to grab.

It probably comes with his Wall Street background.

So, try again. Why do our leaders love charter schools?

Well, let’s just say they have 3.8 million reasons to love them—even if charter schools really, really, really, really suck.

You can’t say those  bought-and-paid-for legislators haven’t earned their money, though. When Brennan’s chief lobbyist sent lawmakers a list of changes his boss hoped to see in one school funding bill the Ohio General Assembly partially or fully implemented nine of eleven proposals Brennan had deemed “most important.”

As noted in a story by the Columbus Dispatch, Brennan did even more to help lawmakers do right by the children of the state: “Later, [his] lobbyists prepared actual legislative wording to carry out their requests. House staff members frequently checked with the lobbyists to make sure the evolving language and later amendments were acceptable.”

In fact, before you could click your ruby red slippers together three times and say, “Can I have some more campaign cash, please?” Tom Needles, White Hat’s chief lobbyist, was providing pre-written amendments to be included in the proposed legislation. 

Well, did it work—all this helping lawmakers—so that lawmakers could help Brennan—so  Brennan could help kids?

You bet it did. 

The Beacon Journal noted recently that under a new Ohio Senate proposal, charter schools in the state would see a $22 million increase in funding for this school year, even if enrollment did not change. 

Meanwhile most regular public schools—with less effective lobbyists—and less ready cash to dispense—were seeing cuts.

Hey, don’t worry, though. Here in Ohio the operators of charter schools…no, I mean, politicians…no, I mean, the school children...are doing great.

Addendum: 

A variety of sources can be consulted to verify statistics show in the graphs, including this article from the Columbus Dispatch.

Even better, these grades do not include the 150 Ohio charter schools that have closed in recent years for financial or academic reasons.

See:  Innovation Ohio for original graphs, including the on administrative spending.

How Many Reformers Does it Take to Really Fix a School?

In honor of Betsy DeVos, perhaps the most clueless of all clueless school reformers in the history of cluelessness, I am running the blog post again.

Four years since I wrote this and we still have to listen to political leaders and so-called experts who know nothing about actual teaching. So here is my old post:

IF YOU’RE AN AMERICAN TEACHER it’s likely you’ve noticed a depressing trend. Deep into a second decade of all-out school reform, or third, depending on who's counting, we’re still going nowhere fast.

“Backward” doesn’t count.

School reformers seem baffled; but baffled school reformers don’t stay baffled long. When one reform plan doesn’t work they conjure up another plan. They’re school reformers for god sakes. That’s just what they do.

Perhaps we need to look at schools like automobiles to grasp why it is we’re not speeding down the intellectual Interstate like the reformers say we must. Imagine that there are three autos, all broken down alongside I-10, in the Arizona desert. The drivers are three real teachers. Each has been carrying five passengers, five students. One car is a new Lexus LX 570. The second is a 2006 Honda Civic. The third is a battered 1972 Chevrolet Impala.

None of them will run.

A bus load of school reformers heading for a convention in Las Vegas sees them stranded by the side of the road and screeches to a halt. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan climbs out to survey the dire situation. Other famous passengers include Michael R. Bloomberg, mayor of New York, and Joel I. Klein, his one-time school chancellor. (Klein got worn out after trying for eight years to fix the city schools. Now he’s back in the cozy corporate world, earning millions, giving Rupert Murdoch legal and education-related advice.) Michelle Rhee is a passenger, too, and there are all kinds of politicians and lobbyists and sales persons for big testing companies filling the seats. Sadly, none of them knows a pile of shit from a spark plug when it comes to car repairs.


What could possibly go wrong
when Rupert Murdoch, left, and Joel I. Klein, right,
go to work to fix America's public schools?

Duncan is first to suggest a solution to the problem of the three stalled-out cars. “We are going to paint the Impala red to make it run.”

“We will call this plan ‘Race to the Garage.’ We will offer states $4.35 billion in federal aid if they agree to paint all their cars red.” A call is made, and at great expense, apparatus is brought out to the desert, and the car is painted red. It still won’t run.

Arne scratches his head.

Arne will point the way.
And, no, Duncan never actually taught.

Michelle Rhee pipes up next. Even the other reformers roll their eyes. After hours spent together on the bus they realize this lady’s favorite topic is herself and her second favorite is Michelle Rhee.

“I say we make these drivers apply for new licenses.” she sneers. “If you had better drivers the cars would surely run. I once taught for three years. So I know everything there could possibly be to know about saving children. These drivers must be terrible. Every child deserves an excellent driver. I am thinking... someone pretty much like me.” 

“Yeah,” Mr. Galt agrees. He was behind the wheel of the Civic until it died and he has thirty-three years of experience in the classroom. “Paved roads don’t matter…or guard rails…or laws against drunk driving…or bridges.”

Rhee misses the veteran’s sarcasm. Galt continues: “Or turn signals…or windshields. Hell...not even wheels.”

Suddenly, Rhee suspects she’s being mocked and shoots Galt a look.

Rhee now cashes in on her three years as a classroom teacher.
Trust us:  She doesn't offer free advice.

No matter, because Mayor Bloomberg is quick to agree with Rhee. “The problem in U. S. education is that we hire drivers from the bottom 20% of their graduating college classes—and not of the best schools.”

 The Harvard-educated billionaire informs everyone that the driver of the Honda will have to go. Another call goes out and a graduate of Teach for America is brought to the desert. The young professional gets behind the wheel and tries twice to start the engine. When it won’t turn over, the Teach for American kid exclaims, “Well, I only signed up for two tries. My work is done, my resume is padded.” The car she arrived in is still idling by the side of the Interstate and she jumps back in, saying to the driver, “Take me to the nearest law school, and step on it. I never planned to make a career in education anyway.”

Joel I. Klein, who never taught a single solitary minute in his life, offers up another plan. Of course he does. “I have a plan! And my plan is sure to fix the problem. We grade the cars. Then parents can choose the best cars for their children and all mechanical problems will go away. He gives the Impala an ‘F’ and the Honda gets a ‘D+.’ The Lexus gets a ‘B’ because it went a hundred yards farther down the highway before its engine coughed and died. Klein slaps bumper stickers with grades on all three cars.

They still don’t run. 

A Tea Party governor speaks up. It’s John Kasich. (Kasich knows all about schools because he used to be an investment banker.) “We are going to require drivers in failing cars to take tests,” he explains to his reforming buddies, “and prove they know their subject matter. We are also going to give that third grader in the back of the Impala a reading test. If they fail—we will fire the driver and hold the kid back. In Ohio this will be known as the ‘Third Grade Reading Guarantee.’ I will be the hero who saved the Ohio schools and maybe get some fat campaign contributions from lobbyists!”

The three drivers mutter darkly and the third grader stares at the governor in disbelief. Kasich hands the driver of the Impala and the kid the requisite tests and tells them to sit in the shade, if they can find any, maybe behind the stalled-out vehicles.

Kasich decides it’s too warm outside for him and jumps back on the air-conditioned bus. It’s hot and heading for 100° as the sun climbs high in the noon sky. The teacher and the student wipe their sweating brows and finish up their tests.

Sadly, when they’re done, the cars still don’t run.

Charles and David Koch are next to have a say. They’re not school reformers at all; but they love to lobby politicians. They want states to pay for vouchers, allowing more kids to go to private schools, and want corporations to take over whatever public schools manage to stay alive. The brothers hand out five-figure checks to lawmakers and governors seated on the bus. Naturally, Kasich and Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin get their share. The brothers can afford to spread around a little extra cash. Each has a personal fortune of $31 billion and now—money dispensed—they expect some action.

Walker agrees to take union protection away from all the drivers in his state. Calls are made to lawmakers back home and the necessary law (already written by a shadowy “non-partisan group” called the American Legislative Exchange Council, which the Koch brothers just so happen to fund) is enacted quickly. The drivers are ordered to get back behind the wheel and crank the engines or they’ll be terminated.

Regardless, none of the cars comes close to starting. 

The Koch brothers don’t really care about education, generally, or the children stranded in the desert, specifically. They hate unions—because unions usually back Democrats for political office—and what the Koch brothers really care about is political power. And taxes. Those boys loathe paying taxes on their personal fortunes.

Taxes make them mad.

Their wealth has actually increased since 2011.
They can afford to buy a few politicians.

A representative of Pearson Education offers up yet another plan. “What we need are more standardized tests, which my company will be happy to provide for a small fee, just a few million dollars, every year, from every state. We test students in all subjects and grades and maybe charge for scoliosis testing.” She opens a large briefcase filled with tests and all fifteen kids are ordered to get to work again. They complete this new set of tests and turn them in and the Pearson representative hails the next passing auto and climbs inside. She’s taking the tests to the nearest testing center for grading. “I’ll send you the bill,” she calls out cheerfully to Mr. Duncan. Then she’s gone.

Tired of all the delays—not to mention the failures—the various reformers fall to arguing. One insists that if they added new technology to the Impala it would run. Technology, he insists, will save us. A second says the problem with the cars comes down to owners’ manuals. What is needed is a Common Core Standards Owners’ Manual, the same for every car in our great land. A third expert says, no, we need charter garages. If we park a car that doesn’t run in a charter garage it’s sure to start right up—or something.

It’s now a donnybrook and bold plans are flying in all directions.

Suddenly, Rhee exclaims: “I’m late for a speech I’m supposed to give about the future of American education, during which I will hint that I am the savior everyone must follow. I can’t miss out on this. I’m being paid a $50,000 fee.” She jumps back on the bus.  

“I’m a brilliant billionaire,” Bloomberg reminds the others. “Surely no one can expect a man as important as me to stand here in the desert and cook my mega-brain.” He climbs aboard the bus. All the politicians and lobbyists and testing company execs follow and off they go.  

“Good luck, kids,” a former Texas governor named George W. Bush shouts from an open rear window. “No Child Left Behind!”


Bloomberg might try teaching;
we know he's more than smart enough.

THE THREE TEACHERS AND THEIR FIFTEEN STUDENTS watch as the bus disappears into a glorious red and orange and yellow Arizona sunset. They’re on their own again. Ms. Beasley, the driver of the Lexus, turns to face the others. “The key to moving forward in any car or any school,” she says, “comes down to just one word.

“That is: ‘motive.’”

“Like ‘motivation?’” asks Wanda, one of Beasley’s better students. 

“Yes,” Ms. Beasley agrees. “If we expect to get out of this desert it doesn’t make an ounce of difference what color the cars might be or what kind of garage we’re going to park in once we arrive. We’re going to have to put our backs into it and shove.”  

Rick, a high school senior who had been riding in the Civic, immediately grasps her point. “The key part of ‘automotive,’ is not ‘auto,’ but ‘motive.’ The car can’t move without some source of motive power.”  

“Looks like we’re going to have to do some sweating if we expect to move these cars along,” says Shaquille, who was riding in the Impala. “If we expect to get anywhere in education we, as students, are going to have to push.”

“Teachers must push, too,” Ms. Beasley notes. 

They all look off down the highway. Only twelve miles to go to Tucson and it isn’t going to be getting any easier. Still, even Carlos, a first grader, has the proper attitude. “Well, I guess we better start,” he says and prepares to put his fifty pounds of muscle to work. 

He thinks a moment, though, and adds:  “It would have been nice if all those people on that bus had stuck around to help.”

The three drivers give each other knowing looks. Then all the teachers and all the students lean in together and do their part.


FELLOW TEACHERS:  IF YOU AGREE THIS ANALOGY IS ACCURATE PLEASE SPREAD IT TO COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS.

TIME TO STAND UP TO THE INEPT REFORMERS WHO ARE SO BUSY RUINING AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY.

P. S. Answer to the title question: NONE.


ADDENDUM:  Several of my administrator friends have read this post; to be fair, I should include a principal who comes looking for the missing teachers and students and gives one of the cars a tow.

In the real world, we should also keep in mind that not ALL teachers and not ALL students are really anxious to push. Again, motivation becomes the key.

The key in education is always motive power.
School reformers don't get it. They think the key is some new plan.


******

If you liked this post, you might like my book about teaching, Two Legs Suffice, now available on Amazon.

Or contact me at vilejjv@yahoo.com and I can probably send you a copy direct, a little more cheaply. My book is meant to be a defense of all good teachers and a clear explanation of what good teachers can do, and what they cannot do.

Two Legs Suffice is also about what students, parents and others involved in education must do if we want to truly enhance learning. 

An Education Expert Goes to the Doctor...

IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE A TEACHER you’ve probably noticed something strange about education reformers these days.

You could pile up their combined experience in teaching and add a stack of baloney sandwiches and still not have the equivalent of one thirty-year veteran in a first grade, or middle school science, or high school Latin classroom.

So, whenever we hear Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg or Michelle Rhee or various governors talking about what they would do to fix schools, if they were doing the fixing, it’s like asking me or my father to talk about what we would have done if we had ever been in combat. My father was an officer in the Army Air Corps during World War II; but he did duty as a weatherman and never left the States.

In keeping with family tradition, I enlisted in the Marines in December 1968. After boot camp I wasn’t sent to Vietnam. I was sent to supply school and did my “fighting” behind a desk in California. I was more likely to get sunburned at the beach on weekends or die inhaling “White Out” while correcting typos than to be hit by bullets or step on a booby trap.

It would be the height of arrogance to style myself a “hero.”

Unfortunately, humility never stops the non-combatant types in U. S. education from portraying themselves as Medal of Honor winners. They don’t do any fighting but love to tell the combat veterans what they ought to do to win the war to fix the schools.

Just imagine what might happen if these bold reformers lived in a world that operated on similar principles. It would be a world where no experience was required to qualify an individual as an expert, in education, heart surgery, or airplane maintenance.

First, let’s send Mayor Bloomberg to the doctor. He’s having heart trouble. So he drops in on John Sears, the plumber. John taps his chest a few times with a pipe wrench and says the mayor needs a valve replaced. “We’ll run 1/2 galvanized piping while we’re at it,” Sears explains.

“My god,” replies the billionaire businessman, “do you know anything about heart surgery?”

“As much as you know about teaching,” Sears retorts.

Meanwhile, Michelle Rhee heads for the auto repair shop because her “check engine” light is blinking. She’s driving a Ferrari, purchased with a few of the fat speaker’s fees she earns by talking about fixing schools. She pulls into a McDonald’s and asks the acne-faced young lady at the drive-thru to step outside and consider the problem. The teen rolls her eyes; but when Rhee offers $100 merit pay agrees to do what she can. The teen studies the matter briefly then tells Rhee she needs oil and pours two gallons of used deep fry fat into her gas tank.

“This is going to be great,” Rhee says as she speeds away.

Finally, several governors and members of state legislatures board a 747 bound for Tahiti. A company that runs for-profit charter schools and another company that designs standardized tests are paying all expenses and sending everyone to a conference on education reform and a week’s vacation in that Pacific paradise.

Ohio Governor John Kasich is nervous before he flies and asks about pilot experience. “Don’t worry,” a flight attendant tells him. “U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is at the controls. He hasn’t ever flown a plane before but he has watched planes take off. Besides, he went to Harvard.”

Suddenly, Kasich feels better.

His seatmate, Chris Christie, isn’t quite convinced. The governor of New Jersey is kind of wedged in his seat, anyway. “Uh, who’s the co-pilot, just in case?” he wonders.

“Not to worry, sir,” the attendant smiles reassuringly. “Our co-pilot is Snooki, of Jersey Shore fame.”

“Ah, a solid citizen and a constituent,” Christie replies. He feels better and asks the attendant for an extra bag of peanuts.

Sitting across the aisle, the majority leader of the Wisconsin Senate is hard at work. He’s wearing one of those Cheeseheads, which he thinks might come in handy as a flotation device should the plane go down over water. Obviously, he knows just about as much when it comes to airplanes as all the passengers aboard, combined, know about teaching. But he’s drafting new legislation on his laptop—actually, he’s cutting and pasting language provided by the American Legislative Exchange Council—which will fundamentally alter public education in his state.

“May I ask,” he says, “who did the pre-flight safety check? I hope they knew what they were doing.”

“Only the most knowledgeable mechanics are allowed to work on our planes,” the attendant assures him. “Glenn Beck, who knows everything, signed off on engine maintenance. And that new kid, from Teach for America, checked flight controls.”

“Does the new kid actually know how to do a safety check?” the senator wonders.

“Of course not,” the attendant admits. “But she’s really smart. Besides, what do any of you know about how schools really work? Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll exit before takeoff and go back to my real job. Trust me. You’ll be fine.”

“What do you normally do for a living?” asks Governor Christie. His words sound a little garbled because his mouth is full of half-chewed legumes.

“I’m a special education teacher from Newark, your home state. Twenty-four years in the classroom, if you care, devoted to helping kids with serious problems. Well, gentlemen, have a safe trip. You’re in the same good hands as American education reform today. And if there’s any trouble, don’t worry, there are plenty of parachutes.”

“You might need two,” Kasich says, poking a bit of fun at the chunky chief executive from Jersey. “Who did you say packed those parachutes?” Mr. Kasich asks more seriously.

“We hire out that job to the Vile Anvil Company of Lima, Ohio, sir. Remember? Non-union workers. People earning minimum wage. You gave the owners a huge tax break to bring anvil-making jobs to Ohio and promised they wouldn’t have to worry about a lot of government safety inspections. What can possibly go wrong? You’re in the hands of anvil-making experts.”

The special education teacher smiles knowingly as she gathers personal items and heads back to the boarding gate.

The only fighting I did in the Marines was against germs.

Forsooth: Shakespeare Doth Explain School Reform!

The author speaks 
in terms we still might grasp.

I originally posted this in 2012; it seems the flaws in school reform remain unchanged, the newsest school reformers no wiser than the last crew, most of whom have moved on to new pursuits.
I’M A RETIRED TEACHER. Perchance too much idle time doth rest upon my hands.

I’ve been trying to read every Shakespeare play there is. And it doesn’t take long to see the Bard still speaks to us today.

If you haven’t noticed, politicians seem to put forth new plans to fix the public schools almost daily. These plans are stupid, generally, and at least one Republican governor I might name fits this description from England’s beloved poet:

“He hath not so much brain as ear-wax.”

Meanwhile, more and more state lawmakers answer to the beck and call of deep-pocketed, far-right conservatives like Charles and David Koch, and do the bidding of the American Legislative Exchange Council, which the brothers doth graciously fund. As Shakespeare might put it:

“They say if money go before, all ways do lie open.”

Even politicians who slavishly follow the Koch brothers might sound cool if they spoke with the same power as England’s greatest playwright. Imagine, for example, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, saying to teachers of his state:

“Your hearts I’ll stamp out with my horse’s heels
And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.”


WE’VE ALL HEARD A HUNDRED TIMES that business methods and business leaders can bring great improvement to the schools. So, here’s an idea. Why not apply the principles of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to stores and factories and hedge funds and see what happens?

Here is how it might play out. Starting in 2014 every boss would be responsible for the quality of the work of every worker—just as teachers are now accountable for the work of every student. Businesses would run on the same principles as public schools. First, they would no longer be allowed to ask job-seekers to fill out applications. If a worker entered the factory gate they would have to hire him. It would be up to them to turn him or her into a productive member of society.

Secondly—of course—they couldn’t fire anyone. Public schools like businesses; businesses like public schools.

Imagine a future where government woulds’t measure how every company fareth and requireth each company to increaseth yearly production. Productivity woulds’t be measured according to work done by thy employees of all different racial categories and sub groups and failure by any group woulds’t be proof of failure by thy business as a whole, just as schools are judged presently. Here’s how the Bard might tell the tale:

Much Ado About School Reform:  Act 1, Scene 1:

Falstaff, a fat government agent, visits Koch Industries and delivers bad news to the billionaire brothers. 

FALSTAFF: As I’m sure you doth know, after reading this year’s standardized reports, production here at Koch Industries hath been deemed “unsatisfactory.” Thou must know that thy workers with learning disabilities are faring poorly. Forsooth, we’re going to have to fire you, sir, and you.

CHARLES KOCH: Hast thou no feeling? What must we do with that girl, Juliet? She doth take drugs all the livelong day, in sooth on Mondays and Fridays most oft. Yesterday didst she driveth yon forklift over yon supervisor’s left foot.

FALSTAFF: Subtle be thy words, sublime thy excuse. We of thy government stand unmoved.

DAVID KOCH: Marry thee, I can’t get that fellow, Claudio, to show up at all. By my troth he hath called in sick 49 times this year! Under No Worker Left Behind, you won’t let me dispossess him of robust employ!!

FALSTAFF: Oh sighs! Oh groans! If you had but created a more stimulating environment employees might have been motivated to come to work.

CHARLES: Idle knave! I beseech thee to be realistic. What about that Hamlet fellow? His criminal record is long and deep in breadth. Last week the shift manager tried to tell him to get busy and he didst punch him and cracketh his jaw.

Can’t we fire him, at least?

FALSTAFF: Verily, he’s covered under the Workers with Severe Emotional Disabilities Act. Thou art the boss and if the bees doth not gather nectar, and thy factory isn’t functioning to capacity, if any worker doth not produce, who doth thou think we ought to blame?

DAVID: Hamlet?

FALSTAFF: ‘Tis absurd of you to sayeth!

DAVID: I asketh but a fillip of understanding. What say thee of that poor homeless varlet who wandered in off the street but yesterday? Doubt not, he be touched in the head, betimes. We tried to tell him how to run the stamping machine and he started talking to some imaginary co-worker, or, perchance, the Ghost of Christmas Past!

FALSTAFF: Thou doth confuse thy famous English authors! Dost thou not know what the law requires? Every worker must be productive by 2014.

CHARLES: Some workers are but lazy sots. You make us take all and we can fire none. How doth you expect us to get that girl, Cressida, to do anything? I but turn my but minutes and she doth disappear and we find her on yon factory roof an hour hence, sound asleepeth.

FALSTAFF: I care not for thine hollow wordlings! Thou art the motivator. It ‘ist thy job to turn that worker round.

DAVID: Sometimes it seemeth the law is setting bosses up for failure. Six months past we had to take on that Moor, Othello, darkly doth he look, a man who speakest not a speck of English. We try to tell him what he needs must do; but he utters only grimmest mutters.

FALSTAFF: A creative boss findeth creative solutions. A creative boss knoweth even a second language is no barrier. A creative boss seeth it as a challenge. I’m sorry. We’re going to have to let both of you go.

CHARLES: You whoreson cur!

DAVID: I will beat thee into handsomeness. Your guts are made of puddings!

Exit Falstaff Flying.

Governor Kasich and His Mullet: What Next in Education Reform?

WHAT'S NEXT? The return of the mullet? I mean, we all know that Republicans miss the glory days of President Ronald Reagan. But who dreamed they'd be leading Ohio schools back to those halcyon days of 1988?

What have Ohio lawmakers got up their sleeves now to fix the schools? If you've been too busy catching up on last season's episodes of Game of Thrones to follow the news you might not know the Third Grade Reading Guarantee is back.

Governor John Kasich:
Education reformer extraordinaire.

Perhaps you're too young to remember what happened when a previous generation of lawmakers "guaranteed" the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. It's a guarantee. That's good, right? Well, it sounds good if you're standing on the floor of the Ohio Senate, talking smack about a subject you don't understand.

No doubt about it. The "guarantee" looks fine on paper when you say that no child in Ohio can move to the fourth grade until they can read at the third grade level--because you want to help every Buckeye boy and girl succeed in life and reading is the key.

It looked good two decades ago, too, when we first tested out this concept.

Almost as fast as the guarantee was implemented, our noble politicians lost their nerve when they discovered that setting a hard-and-fast standard and trying to stick to it was going to rile up a whole lot of parents.

We mean, of course:  voters.

Teachers had been expressing doubt all along; but when do politicians ever listen to teachers? Educators warned that it might be counterproductive to hold kids back who were good in other subjects, who were working hard in school, but still behind three or four months in reading. They said it might not work to hold back kids who had chronic absentee issues, unless you addressed that problem, too. They cautioned that it might be hard to "guarantee" reading levels for kids who spoke English as a second language and pointed out that if you held back kids in grade three and any other grade thereafter, when they were older they tended to drop out with alarming regularity.

With problems multiplying, the Third Grade Reading Guarantee proved to be an unworkable failure and it was scraped before voters could unleash their wrath on the hacks who came up with the idea and teachers shook their heads. Now it's back again, as good as new, or just as bad as ever, and just as likely to live a long and healthy academic life.

(I give it three years.)

BUT WAIT, AS THEY SAY on TV game shows, there's more! On a second front, Governor Kasich (and    who doesn't think our chief executive would look fantastic in a mullet) and his allies in the legislature have turned back the clock to a time when Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston were still putting out hit records and the Bengals were Super Bowl contenders. Now we will require the teaching, in grades 4-12, of "founding documents," including the Declaration of Independence, the Northwest Ordinance and the U. S. Constitution, ordering teachers to turn to the "original documents."

Again, this might be brilliant--if it was 1988 and we had lost our collective consciousness. But if you remember those days, you remember that school reformers were bragging about plans to fix schools then too. You might recall that the State of Ohio created a battery of what were called the "Ninth Grade Proficiency Tests" to implement their master plan. New curriculum standards were put in place and suddenly teachers were required to teach about the Northwest Ordinance, the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

As a history teacher, I always focused heavily on the U. S. Constitution and Declaration, anyway. But the Northwest Ordinance? Not so much.

Now, I developed an entire lesson on the Ordinance; and ended up having fun linking land sale provisions of the law--$1 per acre--and additional legislation which followed, culminating in the Homestead Act in 1862 (land for free)--to development of the "American Dream."

Like a dutiful soldier, following orders and charging up the hill, I increased coverage of government, as State mandates now required. Soon I was giving my seventh graders a test over government (state, local and federal) consisting of 150 questions, an exercise designed to take two entire days of class. I made all my students memorize the 84-word section of the Declaration below. And we even defined the words in caps, to start.

Teach a little vocabulary, you know:

We hold these truths

 to be SELF-EVIDENT,                                                       

that all men are created equal;

that they are ENDOWED                                                   

by their Creator

with certain UNALIENABLE RIGHTS;                                                         

that among these

are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;                  

that, to SECURE these rights,                                           

governments are INSTITUTED                                          

among men,

DERIVING their just powers                                             

from the CONSENT of the GOVERNED;                            

that, whenever

any form of government

becomes destructive

of these ends,                                                                  

it is the right of the people

to ALTER OR ABOLISH it,                                                 

and to INSTITUTE                                                 

a new government.

Then I tried to make sure every person in my class could answer the following questions:

1. Government gets its power from ___.

2. If government does not work we have the right to ___.

3. Governments are set up to ___.

4. If government works as it should everyone will be treated ___.

5. Certain basic rights cannot be taken away from you by ___.

6. Government should leave you alone to enjoy ___.

SO, WHAT CAME NEXT? To put it in a legislative nutshell, State proficiency tests didn't really do the trick. The federal government stepped in next, with No Child Left Behind, passed in 2002; and now we had a new Grand Plan to fix the schools.

A new State of Ohio curriculum was drawn up to meet the challenge of  the new rules coming out of Washington--and pretty much eliminated all mention of the Northwest Ordinance. There was certainly nothing about the "American Dream," an omission I found then and still find, odd. And now you could score perfectly on the new social studies section of the new "Ohio Achievement Test" (created after much study and at great cost) if you could write one crappy five-sentence paragraph and include any two ideas found in the Declaration of Independence.

I had been spending three days on the Declaration and its import, including the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers, who failed to adhere to founding principles.

Suddenly, a student could be declared "proficient" by the State if he or she could write an essay no more impressive, intellectually, than this:

"The Declaration of Independence was important in American history. This is since it says "all men are created equal." Americans are required to live by that idea. It says governments must protect our rights. John Hancock signed it really big."

Across the state social studies teachers focused on preparing pupils for the brand-spanking new Ohio Achievement Test (OAT). We went to meetings and learned the little tricks to help students write five-sentence paragraphs, and studied the new curriculum with care, and tried to adapt lessons to what we were told we absolutely had to cover. But it costs a lot of money to give all these standardized tests and grade them, too, and besides, the social studies section of the Ohio Achievement Test turned out to be very, very badly designed, which I could have told you the first time I saw it, and saved the State of Ohio millions of dollars in the bargain.

The social studies section of the OAT, implemented with great fanfare in 2004, died an ignominious death five short years later.

NOW THE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the Ohio General Assembly and our great leader in the Governor's Mansion want to lead us backward in time to "success" again.

I'm retired from teaching now. Maybe I shouldn't let this get me riled up. But I'd like to sit a few of those lawmakers down in my old class and make them learn about the history of stupid legislation, at both the state and federal level.

IT MIGHT be fun to turn to original documents. It might be cool, too, to require all our lawmakers to grow their hair out in mullets.

Really, what have we got to lose?

Stupid, Stupid Ohio Teachers and Struggling Schools

Look!  I actually own a few books.

 
WELL, WHO KNEW? I certainly didn't. But then again, that's no surprise. I'm just a retired teacher and a stupid one to boot.

Yep, that's right. Ohio lawmakers have zeroed in on the one big problem they must address when it comes to education--and that problem is stupid teachers.

I'm so dense, so dumb, so clueless, I never knew during my 33 years in a classroom that my colleagues and I were the problem. And if you don't know today, well, you know what that means. Yeah. Sad but true.

You're probably stupid, too.

If you're an Ohio teacher and you can read, which our lawmakers apparently doubt, perhaps you saw the recent article in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Starting September 1, Ohio bureaucrats will rank all schools according to standardized test scores. Teachers in the lowest performing schools, the bottom 10%, will be required to take tests to prove they're not morons. Or as Governor John Kasich (a staunch friend of public education, who sends his own children to private schools), explains it:  “Struggling schools need to be sure teachers are competent and fully capable of teaching their assigned curriculum.”

I know I'm feeling pretty much as dumb as a turnip right now; but maybe we need to start by asking Governor Kasich a few questions. What, for example, does a struggling school struggle against? Is the building being choked by teachers? Is it locked in a brick-and-mortar wrestling match of some kind?

Is a school struggling--and are test scores low--because teachers don't know how to teach? Or do many students have severe problems with absenteeism? Are some Ohio kids growing up homeless or nearly so? Are we seeing teens in the upper grades who are regular drug users?

Does this mean the school is struggling?

Call me obtuse, but was the school struggling, up in Chardon, a few days ago, when one misguided teen shot and killed three peers? Or was society or the family struggling and were the "stupid" teachers left to try to pick up the bloody pieces?

Certainly, we can have a healthy debate about the impact poverty has on children in schools. Let's be honest, though. Almost every "struggling school" is going to turn out to be in a poorer neighborhood and that's true across the nation too.

I was very fortunate to teach in an affluent suburban district. So a law like this would not have touched me. That doesn't mean this law isn't an insult to every member of the profession. I may be dumb, I suppose, but never once did I say to myself, while I was working, "Wow, those teachers in those poor inner-city schools? They must be dimwits. That has to be the main reason student test scores are low."

I've been working on a book about education for three years and I find some tendencies impossible to ignore.

Not long ago, I came across a study of high school graduation rates (based on 2005 data), showing huge discrepancies between inner-city schools and surrounding suburbs. Only 38% of Cleveland Public School students graduated in four years. Yet, suburban districts around Cleveland averaged 80%. Baltimore was second worst in the nation with a 41% four-year graduation rate. Surrounding suburbs graduated 81%. The difference between Columbus, Ohio city schools and Columbus, Ohio suburban schools was 38 percentage points. For Milwaukee it was 35 points, Nashville 33. For New York City the spread was 29. For Chicago the difference was 28.

So:  Let me try to explain in simple terms (because I must be a simpleton) that teachers are not the only factor, and not even the primary factor, impacting standardized testing scores. Let me explain this all to our brilliant governor and all the geniuses in the Ohio General Assembly. I will call it the "Bean Soup Tautology."

Let's say we want to figure out what's wrong with Ohio or even U. S. public schools. Suppose Ohio University graduates 200 teacher candidates in 2012. Akron University does the same. Ohio State sends out 300. Miami University adds 150. The University of Cincinnati rounds it out, so that we have 1,000 job candidates. We mix up all the young men and women who want to teach, like beans in a pot. We cook them up and serve them out to districts across the Buckeye State. In some fashion the soup we serve the poor districts tastes terrible and the students who eat it get food poisoning and almost die.

STRANGER STILL, THE SOUP SERVED out of the same pot to surrounding, affluent suburban districts tastes fine and students who eat it feel great, go on to college, get good jobs, and settle down in affluent neighborhoods themselves.

How is this possible? Oh great, good, and glorious Governor Kasich, can you explain? Is there some cosmic force at work, some power I don't have the mental capacity to grasp? Are smart teachers magnetized, so that they are drawn to some districts and repelled by others?

I know Ohio doesn't have any Indian reservations, but I've been reading in the New York Times about widespread problems with alcoholism, crime and unemployment on reservations out West. And what do you know!

Native-Americans have the highest dropout rates of any ethnic group in America.

If the problems in schools, in Ohio, or anywhere else for that matter, comes down to a few stupid teachers, what are the mathematical probabilities that all the stupidest educators ended up on Indian reservations?

You don't see differences just between one district in Ohio and another. You see differences between states. If problems boil down to teachers, and their lack of mental capacities, how explain that smart teachers migrate to states like Vermont where the public high school graduation rate was 86.6% (students finishing in four years) and Minnesota (85.6%) and dumb educators head south to places like South Carolina (53.9%) and Nevada (47.6%)?

Beating up on public school teachers today seems to be education reformers' sport; but if we ever want to make significant improvements in U. S. education we need to avoid this sort of one-legged analysis. We need to stop pointing every finger at the people at the front of the classrooms. We need to remember something chimpanzee expert Roger Fouts once said: “Good science is parsimonious—it seeks the simplest explanation.”

So what is the simplest explanation? Magnetized teachers? Not likely. The simplest explanation is that most problems in education are still poverty related, in the inner-cities, on reservations, and stratified in rich suburban districts.

THIS DOESN'T MEAN A CHILD IS DOOMED if he or she is born poor. It does mean the child's problems are not all related to teachers.

Even a stupid, retired teacher like me can grasp this simple concept. Family dysfunction often causes families to fall into poverty. So the problem is not poverty, as such, but the dysfunction that caused the family to fall to that condition. Dysfunctional families tend to end up in poorer neighborhoods in larger concentrations, because--well--Governor Kasich--because they're poor.

If mom and dad are both alcoholics, you, the child, are much more likely to be born with fetal alcohol syndrome, as 1 in 4 children on some reservations are. You are far more likely to struggle in school and end up in poverty, too. If dad abandoned the family and won’t pay child support and mom uses drugs, you, the child, are much more likely to end up in poverty, living in a poor neighborhood, with no one at home you can count on to help every afternoon after school. If you, the impressionable teen, live in a gang-ridden inner-city area where streets are unsafe, you will have a far harder time focusing on studies, not to mention a harder time staying out of harm's bloody way. That's why cities have higher murder rates than suburbs. It's not because of stupid cops. Poverty, in and of itself is never disabling. That doesn't mean that problems related to poverty don't make a child's life much harder and complicate everything teachers try to do. Even life expectancy is significantly reduced for people who are poor.

Are they going to stupid doctors, too?

When you start with the premise that schools are struggling because teachers are stupid, every teacher in Ohio ought to be insulted.


SEE ALSO: I Hate Teach for America