School Reformers Cry “Wolf!”

What’s wrong with America’s educators these days? Why don’t they believe school reformers when they say they have plans to “fix the schools?”

Maybe it’s because real educators want nothing more than to work, unimpeded, with actual children.

Maybe it’s because the reformers have cried, “Wolf!” once too often. Or twenty times too often.

Doubtless, millions of educators across the country could add examples to this kind of story. But I’ll start with Rod Paige, Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush. You may recall that while serving as superintendent of the Houston City Public Schools, Mr. Paige won acclaim for the “Houston Miracle.” On the strength of his walk-on-water powers, he followed Mr. Bush to Washington in 2001, where the Texas duo promised to duplicate miracles on a fifty-state stage.

Simply stated, Mr. Paige claimed to have reduced dropouts in many inner city high schools to zero.

Yep: zero!

It turned out later that the “Houston Miracle” was less miracle and more a matter cooking the books. One Houston high school, for example, managed to classify all 462 dropouts as “transfers.” Unfortunately, by the time everyone realized Mr. Paige couldn’t turn water into wine he was ensconced at the U. S. Department of Education.

On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law. Now it was the turn of Congress and the president to shout “Lupus!” Once this blockbuster legislation was implemented, they promised we could erase all racial gaps in academic performance. Follow the rules and regulations and every child in America would be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

So, what really happened? Rules and regulations spread like kudzu. Standardized testing and test prep overwhelmed everything. Time for art, music and physical education were slashed from the curriculum. Data-collection dominated the lives of frontline educators and took time away from doing what they truly needed to do. Days and weeks and in some cases months that should have been devoted to meaningful instruction were wasted. The National Assessment for Educational Progress would report in 2009 that racial gaps in reading and math were not closing. Despite all the time, effort and money poured into testing, scores in reading and math at the fourth and eighth grade levels rose no faster than they had before No Child Left Behind passed, when educators were still free to work with students in their own creative fashion.

Millions of educators on the frontlines of learning knew testing wasn’t working. What they knew didn’t matter. More and more reformers, most of whom had never bothered to teach, added to the cacophony.

“Wolf,” blundering billionaires like Bill Gates shouted, insisting everyone should listen to them because they had so much money. They knew what was “best” for the children and demanded all kinds of new “standards” for public school students. They said teachers had to be “held accountable” for test scores and prodded like dumb cattle to advance in the direction the reformers had charted. But they had no idea what was good for those teachers, and more importantly, no idea what was good for all those public school children. Frankly, they preferred to send their offspring to private school where educators were treated like adults and professionals.

“Wolf,” snarled Michelle Rhee, for a time the nation’s most famous school reformer. Rhee actually taught for three whole years but spent the rest of her time in education clambering to the top of the bureaucratic ladder. In 2008 she took over the Washington, D. C. schools. Appearing on the cover of Time magazine that fall, she promised to raise test scores or raise hell for teachers and administrators. Over the next three years several hundred educators who failed to raise scores were fired.

Others, who did raise scores, received fat bonuses. Then Rhee skipped town just in time to avoid responsibility for a massive cheating scandal. It turned out raising scores was easy if you knew how to ply an eraser.

Across this great nation, bold reformers like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein continued to put forward their new plans. Yes, they promised. They could “fix schools”—in this case, in New York City. So Bloomberg and Klein “graded” schools. And they closed “failing” schools. And they opened up lots of charters.

Sure enough! Graduation rates rose! The racial gaps in performance narrowed! Test scores went up!

At first, there was celebrating in the ranks of the reformers. But it turned out schools under intense pressure to raise graduation rates simply made graduation easier. It didn’t matter that 1-in-5 New York City kids was chronically absent and that this wasn’t actually the fault of educators. Dennis Bunyan, a senior at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem, was typical, admitting he was absent so often from his senior English class that he “basically didn’t attend.” Yet, through a special program of “credit recovery,” he was allowed to do three essays in ten hours and gain a full Language Arts credit. “I’m grateful for it,” he told a reporter, “but it also just seems kind of, you know, outrageous. There’s no way three essays can cover a semester of work.”

Next, it turned out that the racial gaps in performance hadn’t narrowed at all in New York City.

Frontline educators knew that most “racial” gaps had far more to do with poverty than race or any other factor. Yet, when they tried to point this out reformers shouted, “Wolf!” all the louder.

In any case, when the State of New York phased out tests tied to No Child Left Behind and new tests tied to Common Core were implemented, New York City’s “progress” turned out to be evanescent.

Scores in the city (and across the state) plummeted.

With the election of President Obama and the appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education new voices joined in all the shouting. Mr. Duncan promised to lead a “Race to the Top” and tame the sharp-toothed beast. The wolf, he assured everyone, wouldn’t stand a chance once he took office.

Something was still wrong, however, and frontline educators knew it. Like Secretary Paige, Secretary Duncan first won acclaim for fixing big city schools, in Mr. Duncan’s case, the Chicago Public Schools. Oddly enough, after he left the Windy City, the schools he “fixed” didn’t stay fixed. Gang violence, to cite just one terrible example, continued to plague the city. School-age kids were cut down by the hundreds  and a focus on testing did nothing to staunch the blood.

After Mr. Duncan moved to Washington, a fresh reformer joined the fray. Mayor Rahm Emanuel claimed—what else!—to have a plan to tame the wolf. He turned many schools over to private corporations to run as for-profit charters. He hand-picked a new superintendent. Meanwhile, one Chicago charter chain made headlines by charging misbehaving students $386,000 for discipline packets. The new superintendent decided to hand over $23 million in no-bid Chicago Public School contracts to a former employer. In return, company officials promised a huge signing bonus whenever she left her CPS post and rejoined their operations.

It turned out there were huge profits to be made by those who shouted “wolf” in the most vociferous fashion. In New York City, in 2013, sixteen top executives for sixteen charter chains “earned” more than the chancellor of the New York City Public Schools. Deborah Kenny of Village Academy led the big cash parade with $499,146. In Columbus, Ohio, seventeen charters went out of business in a single year, but not before founders walked away with large stacks of taxpayer dollars. Across the country, 2,500 charter schools closed their doors and went bust, founders often taking everything, including the last rolls of toilet paper with them. K-12 Inc., an online charter operation, to cite one especially egregious example, paid five top executives $34 million in just two years, 2013 and 2014, and devoted $26.5 million, most of it taxpayer cash, to advertising in 2010 alone.

And what about that “Race to the Top,” touted so loudly and so often by Mr. Arne Duncan?

It turned out that real educators and real students were forced to wade through an ever deeper quagmire of rules and regulations and devote days and weeks to test prep and test-taking, for no real purpose.

After listening to reformers shout, “wolf, wolf, wolf,” reading scores for high school seniors were lower in 2013 than twenty years earlier.

Billions had been wasted on tests and test preparation. Math scores for seniors—after a decade of misguided reforms—rose no faster than before all the “school reforming.”

After all the focus on testing the racial gaps—actually, the poverty gaps—still refused to close.

And, even though more students now graduated, ACT scores remained flat from 1990 until now.

And SAT scores in reading, math and writing (that third test added only in 2006) all declined.

It never mattered. The reformers kept up the shouting. The people who actually worked with America’s youth kept doing the best they could. Here in Ohio, lawmakers said we had to prepare students for tests in reading, math, science and social studies. “Wolf,” they cried in 2002. Educators were fooled into believing. But the tests in science and social studies proved expensive to grade. They were poorly designed, too. So the people who cried “wolf” said, “never mind.”

Those two tests were killed in 2009.

In 2010, Ohio lawmakers decided all the tests tied to No Child Left Behind were useless. Educators would have to be on the lookout for a wolf of a different color. Suddenly, legislators in Columbus and more than forty other states cried out in favor of Common Core! This time the tests politicians were demanding and paying fresh billions to have created would fix everything!

Only this wolf, too, was a figment of the imagination. In 2014 lawmakers in Ohio and in many of those same states that voted to implement Common Core rubbed their eyes—and the wolf they feared was no longer there—and they decided Common Core was a terrible idea.

But wait! Was that another fanged monster approaching? The tests used in Ohio in 2014, and tied to Common Core, would be tossed. New tests would be created—at new cost to taxpayers. Teachers and students would again be required to prepare for a battery of tests they had never seen, even though a decade of testing had resulted mainly in damaging the process of learning.

“Wolf!” the reformers cried yet again.

Only now, educators no longer believed them. The educators grumbled and cried and cursed at all they had been put through, at all the time lost when they could have been helping children.

Parents, too, began to understand. The people who kept shouting “wolf” had fooled them far too often.

John J. Viall is the author of Two Legs Suffice: Lessons Learned by Teaching, a book about what good teachers can be expected to do, as well as a look at what others must do if students are to achieve a well-rounded education.

The story is based on his 33 years of experience in junior high and middle school classrooms.

Now available Amazon.com.

Common Core: Brave New World in Education

We visit a typical American classroom in the not too distant future:

April 1, 2025:  Two highly paid consultants, one from Wireless Generation, a leading company in the sale of education software, the other from Pearson, a major player in the testing industry, are seated in the back of John Galt’s seventh grade American history class. Neither consultant has ever taught. Yet they are here to assess how new technology, guaranteed to boost standardized test scores and company profits, is functioning. Did we just say, “Boost test scores and company profits?”

We meant: “To enhance true learning.”

Several surveillance cameras, all set to follow Galt’s every move, are running in the room. This is part of the push to improve schools by holding teachers totally accountable. Because, let’s face it. The only person who matters in the room is the teacher.

That’s what school reformers like to say.

In this class every child a computer—purchased from Amplify, a division of Wireless Generation. (Corporate motto: No Dollar Left Behind.) Galt and his students are hooked to a series of electrodes. Today, the class is trying to hold a decent discussion about the battle for women’s rights in the 1800s.

“Mr. Galt,” a student named Dagney inquires, “I’ve been wondering. Who were the leaders in the fight for equality?”

“One would be Susan B. Anthony,” Galt responds gingerly. He consults his computer to be sure Anthony is specifically mentioned in the Common Core Curriculum. She is. “Susan B. Anthony may be on the standardized test,” Galt says. “The other leader, who will not be on the test, would be Eliz…”

Before he can finish his sentence the electrodes attached to his scalp deliver a powerful shock. The smell of singed hair fills the room.

(He was going to say: Elizabeth Cady Stanton.)

Every student receives a flashing red warning on their screen:  DANGER! MATERIAL NOT INCLUDED ON STANDARDIZED TEST! DANGER!

A voice similar to HAL, the deranged computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, delivers the message verbally, as well.

Joaquin, seated in the desk closest to the door waits for Galt to recover. He raises a hand to add to the discussion. “I can’t understand why women weren’t granted equal rights when the U. S. Constitution was first written. My grandmother told...”

The poor boy should have known better!

A loud buzzing noise, followed by Joaquin’s spastic jerking, and another computer warning, teaches Joaquin and all his curious classmates an important lesson. If it can’t be tested…it isn’t education.

Carolyn wants to know:  “What year did women finally win the right to vote?”

ZAPPPPPP. Another shock for a foolish student. Again, computers flash the warning:  DANGER! MATERIAL NOT INCLUDED ON STANDARDIZED TEST! DANGER!

Galt wants to answer. He wants to say “1920,” and note that his mother was in kindergarten by the time men got around to deciding that women were capable of voting. He wants to say to the girls in the room, “Just think. In all the long centuries of human history the dumbest man walking the face of the earth had more rights than any of the women.” Galt used to use this line—before Common Core—and remembers how it always riled up the ladies and got them interested. But now he knows if it’s not on the test, it doesn’t matter. Considering that Ohio enacted laws in 2013 to tie teacher pay to test scores, maybe it’s for the best. Still, he’s a professional. He wants his kids to learn.

“It wasn’t just women who couldn’t vote,” he says. “Poor white men.…”

That’s as far as he gets. Another shock is administered and Galt jumps where he stands like a fish on an electrified line.

He’s a stubborn man where learning is involved. He tries again, disguising his reply: “No vote. Pale skin. Poor…” ZAPPPPPP. The computer gets wise to what he’s up to and delivers a jolt.

The consultant from Pearson makes a note: “May need to increase voltage.”

Perhaps in his confusion, Galt forgets where he is—in a modern U. S. classroom—with all the reforms of recent years welded firmly into place. He forgets he’s expected to follow what is virtually a script. He is going to tell students that in the summer of 1964, Congress debated a massive civil rights bill designed to guarantee equal treatment to people of all races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds. He is going to explain that Representative Howard W. Smith from Virginia stepped forward to block the legislation. Smith feared a world in which blacks might win equal rights. (Galt is also thinking he may bring up the Loring v. Virginia case, which overturned state laws against interracial marriage three years later.) So Smith devised a clever ruse to derail the bill. He suggested on the floor of the House that the word “sex” be added to the bill.

Surely, he imagined, no sane person could vote for a bill which granted equal rights to blacks and women! 

Galt is going to tell this story because he thinks it reveals the ludicrous nature of prejudice in all its forms. He tries to get it out by talking fast—telling the story at preternatural speed—and the cameras and electrodes and the computer are baffled for precious seconds. He gets in “summer of 1964” and “Howard W. Smith” but when he mentions the word “sex” the system catches up and gives him a mighty shock.

When the smoke around his head clears Galt sees a brave seventh grader in the front row put up a hand. He wants to ask a question about gay marriage and discrimination. But he decides it’s not worth the risk and lowers his hand.

Galt tells the class he needs to sit. You know: recover his wits. He consults his materials, prepared over the course of forty-five years in the classroom, and tries to figure out what he’s allowed to cover. He has a lengthy reading prepared on the fight for women’s rights—but realizes that on a standardized test there won’t be more than a single question on this topic. Should he then include extra material? If his classes learn—but what they learn isn’t tested—does that count as learning?

If someone asks a question in the forest and the tree falls on his head and no one hears the answer does it matter?

Isn’t that how the riddle goes?

Maybe there’s still some way to slip this reading past the Common Core censors. He knows, over the years, that students have always found it interesting.

It reads in part:

The ideal woman [in the 1800s] was a wife and mother. And wives must be content within this sphere. One expert on women—a man, by chance—argued that bed-making was “good exercise.” He continued:  “There is more to be learned about pouring out tea and coffee than most young ladies are willing to believe.”

“A woman is a nobody,” one newspaper commented. “A wife is everything.”  

The handout Galt has always used before continues in the same vein for ten pages. One writer compares men to elm trees and women to ivy vines. They need a man to lean on for support. The husband controls all property, including his wife’s paycheck (if any). Judges uphold the right of husbands to beat their wives for nagging.

A Massachusetts judge does order a husband not use a stick any bigger around than his thumb!

At this point—in an era before standardized everything, standardized tests, standardized texts, standardized humanity—Galt would have illustrated the point by picking up his pointer and whipping it through the air. The “whooshing” noise would make it clear how much damage a rod of such thickness might do.

Now, Galt knows better. Too much depth. Depth has nothing to do with Common Core Curriculum. Depth of knowledge can’t be tested.

He remembers how he used to tell classes about the writer in 1850, who compared men to elm trees and women to ivy vines, in need of a man to lean on for support. Without a man the woman was doomed to fall in the dust.

The girls who played sports always laughed at that story…but again, it’s not going to be on any Pearson test.

No sense telling it now.

Then Galt thinks about all the damage fools who claim to be fixing education do and it makes him angry to the core. (Irony intended.) Like all good teachers, he has dedicated himself to imparting all the knowledge as can. He is determined to broaden today’s discussion. He will tell his classes how it was for women in this country even in the 1960s and 70s. He will explain how his old high school tried to start a girl’s track team in 1967, and how everyone thought the idea was absurd. Only two girls showed up for tryouts. Galt will emphasize how much attitudes—what we think we can do and what we think we cannot do—shape our lives. He believes this is a lesson he can impart to students. He feels it in his bones.

He feels the lesson matters.

They will discuss the idea that women were once considered too delicate to run long distances. He will throw out the example of Paula Radcliffe, who set the record for women in 2003, running the London Marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes, a pace of 5:09 per mile. He will circle back again to the idea that women are weak like ivy vines.

He thinks he can plant a seed, hint to all the girls that they should take on any challenge …and Galt will make it clear the same attitude equally applies to boys.

“When I was in high school,” he begins.

ZAAAAP.

“They said girls were too weak.…”

ZAAAAAAAAAAP!

“Paula Radcliffe.…”

ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!

Student computers are now blinking wildly:  DANGER! NON-STANDARDIZED LEARNING! EVILTEACH! HORRORKNOWLEDGE! ACADEMICKILL! DANGER! DANGER!

By now Galt is prone on the floor. He looks bad. He raises his head slightly and gasps. “Women…not…ivy vines.…”

ZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!

The consultants shoot each other knowing looks. The Pearson rep makes a note to include one question on the standardized test about Susan B. Anthony. After all, you want the tests to align with the Common Core Curriculum.

Oh hell, who cares! Pearson is making hundreds of millions of dollars annually designing more and more standardized tests.

The consultant from Amplify is happy, too. Galt is out cold. Now the kids have no choice but to rely on their computers for some warm student-machine interaction.

It’s U. S. education for the future.

The testing companies really care about children?
Right?

POSTSCRIPT

In a recent story, the Washington Post reported that between 2009 and 2014, the four biggest corporations in the “standardized testing market” had spent $20 million on lobbying of state and federal officials and politicians, “as well as sometimes hiring them—to persuade them to favor policies that include mandated student assessments, helping to fuel a nearly $2 billion annual testing business, a new analysis shows.

It’s that old saying, of course: you have to spend money to make money. Right! I mean, $2 billion dollars’ worth of tests generated annually—that’s not chump change, my friends.

(Then again: if you wanted to truly help children, you could use that money to send 400,000 kids, at $5,000 each, to pre-school.)

Teachers Anonymous: A Twelve Step Program for Frontline Educators

This student thinks you're a good teacher. 
But school reformers will insist you're not.

LAST WEEK, I SEARCHED my soul and faced a harsh truth. I was a bad teacher. That realization was hard to accept.

True, listening for years while Secretary of Education Arne Duncan bashed our entire profession helped pave the way to the truth. Reading articles and books by leading school reformers also helped me plumb my pedagogical depths. 

Those reformers pretty much believe all teachers are stupid, lazy or do a terrible job. 

When I posted my full confession a few days ago (now: three years ago, as I update my post), I was heartened to learn I was not alone. Thousands of bad teachers felt a need to confess their own classroom crimes and sins. Many have spent years in education working with all types of kids. Like me, they loved teaching (I am retired) or do.

Like me, they thought they were good.

All that delusion—it hit me like a punch in the nether region. Suddenly, I knew teachers needed a Twelve Step Program, like AA. If I could come up with proper language, perhaps I could help others face their demons too.

Here, then, are the Twelve Steps of Teachers Anonymous. If you would like to offer suggestions feel free to comment on this blog. From what I can see from the safety of retirement, the job of teachers is only getting more difficult.

Still, together, I know we can recover.

NOTE: Participants in AA place their faith and fates in the hands of God. For our purposes (below) the higher powers—capitalized accordingly—will be School Reformers, Authors of Books about Teaching, Who Never Taught, etc.. 

In updating this, I have added Betsy DeVos, the Grizzly Killer, to the recovery mix. 

THE TWELVE STEPS

STEP ONE: Admit that you are powerless in the face of Testing Companies. Your life has become an unmanageable mess due to paperwork.

This isn’t AA, so if at any time you feel the need, pour yourself a stiff drink. You may need to make it a double these days.

STEP TWO: Admit that only a Greater Power can restore you to sanity and health. Such as: the Grizzly Killer or a U.S. Department of Education Bureaucrat.

STEP THREE: Make the decision to turn your life and your will over to the care of the Testing Companies because tests rule over you and your students. Not to mention: Testing Companies donate millions to Politicians.

STEP FOUR. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of your faults. Feel free to use extra paper; according to the School Reformers you really do a terrible, terrible job.

This is a tough one. If you claim poverty harms kids, making it harder to learn, go back to Step One. 

If you dare hint that terrible parents are sometimes the biggest problem in kids’ lives, go back to Step One.

If you think any of the problems children face today cannot be solved by requiring them to take more standardized tests...you guessed it...back to Step One. 

STEP FIVE: Admit to all Politicians and School Reformers, and Authors of Books, Who Don’t Teach, and most of all to yourself, the exact nature of your wrongs.

You think you’re really helping kids in your class succeed? Come on! You’re terrible. Members of Congress and Lobbyists and Highly Paid Executives heading for-profit charter schools, those are the people who care about kids!  

STEP SIX: You must put your fate in the hands of Authors of Books. They know how to fix education. They will show you the defects in your character and your classroom techniques.

Suggested readings include:

Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools by Joel I. Klein: who basically says, yes, we can fix the schools by firing most of the teachers.

Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools by Steven Brill. He offers the same message as Klein.

The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They got that Way by Amanda Ripley: the story of how kids in Finland kick ass in school because teachers in Finland aren’t dumb, whereas teachers in America are.

(Total teaching experience of the authors above: 0 years, 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.)

STEP SEVEN: Humbly support all current and future Secretaries of Education no matter what policy they choose to implement. Ask only that they help you overcome your professional shortcomings.

And yes, you must listen to the Grizzly Killer even though she never taught, never attended public schools and never sent her children to public schools.  

It doesn’t matter; you must admit the Grizzly Killer knows more than you! Can’t do it you say? Pack to Step One and try it again.

STEP EIGHT: Make a list of all the persons you have harmed and be willing to make amends.

Stand on your school lawn. Shout: “If any child has not succeeded in school it has to be entirely my fault. I am sorry the promise of No Child Left Behind was not fulfilled. I am sorry for pretty much anything that goes wrong with the U.S. economy, because I have failed to prepare kids to compete in a global economy. I admit fault in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, in the spread of Ebola and for the inability of the Cubs to even make the World Series.

(Note: that last issue has been resolved.)

STEP NINE: Make direct amends to all those you harmed wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Tell your former principal you are sorry he or she got fired when test scores didn’t rise fast enough, even if the tests were later replaced by other tests, because the School Reformers, Testing Companies and Politicians had better ideas about how to fix the schools.

STEP TEN: Continue to take personal inventory and when you are wrong (which is always, according to the School Reformers), promptly admit it.

Say it now: I was wrong! I thought I could teach. I was wrong! So wrong! I was wronger than wrong! I was the wrongest person in the entire field of education!

STEP ELEVEN: Seek through prayer or meditation to improve your conscious contact with Secretary Duncan (now: the Grizzly Killer) and all School Reformers, praying for knowledge of their will and the power to carry it out.

If they say we must have tests tied to No Child Left Behind then you must love those tests! If they say we must have new tests tied to Common Core, you must love those tests instead. If various states revoke their decision to participate in Common Core and go back to state standardized tests—yes, love those tests too! Love any and all standardized tests.

STEP TWELVE: Having experienced a spiritual awakening, carry this message to other teachers, all who think they are doing good work in the schools. Practice these twelve principles in all your affairs.

And remember. This isn’t AA. So feel free at any point to have another drink. 

Keep giving those standardized tests, too, even if you don’t think they’re doing any good, and even if you fell they are doing actual harm to real kids.

                                                                                                Yours truly,

                                                                                                A Bad Teacher

Confessions of a "Bad Teacher:" I Loved Teaching like a Crack Addict Loves Crack.

I thought I was a good teacher. 
(I also thought the Bengals would win.)

MY NAME is John, and I have a problem. For thirty-three years I was a bad teacher. And I thought I was good.

Denial. That’s all it was.

 

Then, Sunday, I stumbled across an excellent article by Dr. Michael Flanagan and his words gave me strength. You see he’s a bad teacher too.

 

Dr. Flanagan had to battle through the same agonizing process I must now endure, although he does admit there were sometimes “free bagels and donuts involved.” And I am a complete sucker for donuts.

 

(I’m sorry. When I salivate, I digress.)

 

 

FOR NINETEEN YEARS he taught, successfully, or so he thought. Oh, sure, he heard school reformers say that the big problems in education boiled down to bad teachers at the front of too many rooms. Still, he refused to face the truth. Like me, he kept pretending he was good. He’d get awards for excellence…and he’d believe those awards meant something too. 

As for me, I’d be grading papers at 11:30 on a Wednesday night and I’d tell myself, “John, you’re doing a good job.” I had an addiction you see. 

Grading papers was a crutch, like a bottle of booze to a drunk. 

I’d go to work on Monday, and students would tell me they loved my class, and I’d delude myself and think they were telling the truth. I would arrive at school early and let kids come in for extra work and I’d skip lunch to help and stay late too. I was hooked.  

I thought I was good. 

Sure. There were times I wondered. I’d pick up the New York Times and read what the latest school reformers had to say. These reformers didn’t have the same problem I did because they always avoided trying to teach. But I wouldn’t listen, not even when Brent Staples said schools did a terrible job of screening and evaluating teachers, so that they hired “any warm body that comes along.” I heard what Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told an audience at M.I.T., that the big problem in schools was too many teachers were plain dumb and still I refused to face the demons. 

I’d go right back to my phone. I’d call Vicki’s parents and say, “I love having your daughter in class.” Too late now, I see that call was a cry for help. I loved teaching like a crack addict loves crack.

 

REFORMERS constantly tried to show me I was wrong. Michelle Rhee bashed teachers every time she opened her mouth. Campbell Brown hinted that teachers were sexual deviants, protected by powerful unions. Arne Duncan, Steven Brill and Joel I. Klein all agreed that tenure and unions must go. Yet, I kept going back into my classroom day after day. I had to have that fix. I had to keep helping kids. 

I know one step toward recovery is admitting a problem and trying to make amends to anyone you hurt. So let me say I’m sorry. I apologize for spending most of my adult life working with 5,000 kids. 

I’m sorry, Steven Brill, that I called your book, Class Warfare: The Fight to Save America’s Schools, a steaming pile of donkey dung. I should have known you were fighting harder than I did, just not in an actual classroom, or with actual kids. I should have known that you and Wendy Kopp, who founded Teach for America but never taught, were going to fix the lives of children with bold words. 

I’m sorry for so much.  

I’m sorry for doubting politicians when they passed No Child Left Behind more than a decade ago. Now I see that lawmakers in Washington knew exactly what they were doing all along. I’m sorry I said that law was flawed from the start.  

I’m also sorry that No Child Left Behind is totally dead.  

I’m sorry I don’t believe Common Core will work. I’m an addict, as I’ve said. I’m sorriest of all because I doubted politicians in 2010 when they said they supported Common Core and doubted them again in 2014 when they said, never mind, we’re not for Common Core after all.  

In fact, Governor Bobby Jindal I apologize particularly to you.

 

I’m sorry I didn’t face my problem when it might have meant something to all the wonderful young people I taught. I’m sorry for saying the standardized tests I saw during my long career were weak. I’m sorry I thought the social studies portion of the Ohio Achievement Test (OAT), implemented in 2004, and the last standardized test I saw before retiring in 2008, was a farce. I was wrong to think you couldn’t prove anything with a single fifty-question test if it covered three years of material (grades 6, 7 and 8).

 

I’M NOT JUST SORRY. I’m sad. I’m sad the State of Ohio spent millions designing that social studies subject test as part of the OAT – and then dumped it in 2009 – and will soon dump the whole sorry OAT and start from scratch again. Common Core is coming you know, or maybe it’s not. I’m sorry I said when I heard this kind of news that lawmakers in Columbus had absolutely no clue. 

I’m sorry I once brought in fourteen veterans (from five wars) to talk to 700 Loveland Middle School kids. I realize now, too late, that nothing they said could help any of those teens when it came to a standardized test. 

Especially now, since all those old tests are kaput.  

Today I understand. It wasn’t just me. I hung out with other junkies who thought they were good. We had an outstanding band director at Loveland Middle School who thought it mattered if he turned teens into musicians. We had great art teachers who imagined that if they taught kids to sketch beautifully, they were passing on value. We had a great drama teacher, who for some reason felt drama was worthwhile, and a French teacher who expected kids to speak French with skill, and we had fine coaches, who were all in denial too. Those coaches thought that teaching young men and women to work hard, to strive to improve, to win with character, might help them in life. 

Poor souls – trying to help kids who were bullied – counseling pregnant teens about choices they’d have to make – wondering how to help a boy who lived with an abusive father at home. Who were my colleagues trying to kid? 

Now I know we were all addicts, blind to our own flaws, and I look back on my career and theirs and think, “How sad!” 

But I do feel better today. I’m getting this off my chest and see I’m not alone. I can finally admit I was a “bad teacher” all along.  

I imagined that learning could be enhanced in ten thousand ways. And I was wrong. If it can’t be tested, if it can’t be reduced to A, B, C or D, it’s not learning at all. I have looked in a mirror at long last and have seen reflected an image I cannot like. Still, I can hope my colleagues and millions of public-school teachers will get the help they need. As Dr. Flanagan has shown, it’s never too late. We can all be “good teachers” if we choose. 

The politicians with all the bold plans, those zealous reformers with their millions of words, they’ll show us the way. 

They’ll show us all how to teach.

 

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IF YOU LIKED this post, you might like my book about teaching, Two Legs Suffice, now available on Amazon. 

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. 

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

The back cover provides a sense of what my book is about.