eduskeptic

Recently, on an Oprah show, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, said that one of the problems with our current educational system is that we “…are still on an agrarian calendar…”. The Eduskeptic has written Mr. Duncan regarding this urban myth. One of the biggest problems we in the educational field are facing seems to be a plethora of urban myths. On top of that, no one in the national leadership positions seems to have a clue about what reforming the educational system actually means.

The largest “reform” effort appears to be an attempt to force standardized tests on everyone. It’s a one size fits all approach that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for underwear, and it doesn’t work for the school systems in the US.

The changes that are needed are not related to any kind of calendar, agrarian or otherwise. The current educational system is directly related to the industrial revolution. In fact, it hasn’t changed that much since masses of farmers moved into the cities in the late 1800’s. What is missing from the national educational reform movement is any actual reform or understanding of the entire system.

Insisting that teachers and tenure are the problem, that the test scores are the problem, that our rank in comparison to other countries is the problem, is simply to ignore a much larger reality.

Teacher tenure isn’t an issue. Tenure merely grants due process rights to teachers, generally after 3 years of at will employment. Those who want tenure thrown out are merely disguising an economic attempt to make it possible to get rid of those who make the most money. Young and energetic doesn’t equal competent, good, or better. It equals cheaper.

Standardized test scores are not an accurate measure of much of anything. In our system, everyone is tested. Learning to fill in the blanks on a multiple choice scan card doesn’t measure learning, except for maybe being a good bubble meister.

Comparing all of our students with only the elite in other countries is like comparing the local football team to the Super Bowl champs. In order for this kind of comparison to be valid, one has to take the time to compare the same kinds of students to one another. That currently isn’t being done. It doesn’t make for good political grist.

None of these things make much difference when the core foundations and frameworks aren’t rattled. All of the speeches, the sound bites, the posturing by various 15 minutes of fame talking heads creates not much more than enough hot air to fill a good sized balloon. Painting an old wagon might make it look better, but it won’t function better. That’s what is going on. Window dressing to satisfy the need to appear to be doing something, anything, that looks like things are being done.

The school day, and to some extent, the school year, are welded to industrial time clocks. The manner in which we educate our children is the same as it was over 100 years ago. Start at around 8am, stop by about 3pm, 5 days a week. We continue to put students of all ages into chairs, and for about 50 non-stop minutes, attempt to get curricula into them. Then, it’s on to the next lesson.  Somewhere around 1130 the lunch break starts. After lunch, it’s back to the desks. This goes on for around 180 days, with several breaks centered around traditional holidays. This is the predominant model that is used in the US.

Absolutely nothing that the Eduskeptic has heard addresses changing the model itself. There may well be a good reason to continue with the system as it now exists. Rapid change in the real educational world rarely happens. We are, after all, working with children. But what is being broadcast by those who seek their version of change is that change must happen, rapidly, and right away.

Changing the actual foundation, the bones of the system, may be the best thing to do. Possibly, it’s the worst. If, however, the system is as broken as it is reported to be, the foundation, the daily routine, must be reinvented. What exactly is the continuing reason to stick to the educational day and week that we now have?

What if the day started later, ended later? What if children were taught according to their ability, not their age? What if we actually paid attention to the developmental processes that all children go through, and taught accordingly. What if we had ungraded classrooms, with a team of teachers in them? What if teachers were paid like doctors and nurses? What if we recognized that education does not take place only in the classroom, during the scripted school day? What if we recognize that the bell curve cannot be defeated? What if we really did extend the day to include child care, health care, with sports and art for all? What if we actually found a way to pay for all that? What if we took 2 years to revamp the entire system, no holds barred?

Take a little extra time and watch the video at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. Sir Ken Robinson says it much better than I.

If the need is so pervasive for change, let us get to the changing part. The painting of the old wagon won’t do it. Assume nothing, verify everything.

Perhaps politics and reality just don’t go together very well. Again and again political sound bites are launched into the electronic ether and gain a life of their own. One doesn’t actually have to offer credible data or statements, backed up by actual research or time spent investigating an issue. One merely needs to push a load of mush onto the airwaves, and the speed of the Internet takes care of the rest.

When this is done by national figures, or state figures who are currently in the news, it is particularly inexcusable. Simply throwing stink bombs of useless sound bites onto the ever needy network news shows does nothing except get the throwers name into the news.

Perhaps this is the reason for the toss in the first place. Eventually it seems as though the corporate teams hire who ever is in the news on a regular basis. After all, they must know what they are talking about, they are in the news. This leads to a very nice salary with accompanying benefits and perks.

After 36 years in the educational arena, as a teacher, the Eduskeptic has seen plenty of the mildly talented but uber driven launch themselves out of the classroom and into “leadership” positions. Sometimes it’s with a school district, sometimes a district office or county office of education, sometimes it’s with a think tank or non-profit outfit. It’s always for more money and less contact with children.

The amount of positive changes that have been realized from these marginally talented but driven “leaders” is depressingly small. Non-existent may be a better choice of a descriptor. In the Eduskeptics experience the actual leaders are pretty unconcerned about appearing on the local or national news shows. They simply, and steadily, work for change, not recognition and a better paycheck.

When you hear about yet another supposed educational change artist charging toward glory, promising to really shake things up, put your hand on your wallet. Assume nothing, verify everything.

Since the beginning of recorded history educational systems have been scrutinized. Rightly so. It is important to understand that education is a constantly evolving art. It cannot be any other way.

Educators live this reality every day in every classroom on the planet. Nothing is ever good enough, never has been, and never will be. It’s the nature of evolving, and education needs always to evolve.

The current cry du jour for re-inventing education is centered around merit pay, teacher evaluations, and how to remove marginal teachers from classrooms. The current systems for evaluating teachers aren’t much good. As the Eduskeptic has pointed out, they are infrequent, staged, and one dimensional. Something else has to replace what is currently used. There will hopefully be some well thought out and funded ideas that will be evaluated, and possibly be put into use, sooner rather than later.

Some issues have to be addressed. First, there has to be some sort of base line established, for the superintendents, principals, teachers, and students. Progress can be measured relative to the baseline. Currently, there isn’t one.

Here are some issues that should be addressed and included in order to fairly evaluate how a teacher is doing:

How many children are in the classroom? What is the boy/girl split? What is the range of socio-economics of the children’s families? What are the chronological ages of the children? How many children are from intact, functioning families? How many are from split families and bounce between parents on a regular basis? How many are from functioning single parent families? How many children are latch key children? How many spent most of their pre-kindergarten years in day care? What kind of day care? How many children have verified learning disabilities? How many children have a nutritious breakfast prior to school? How many have a nutritious lunch while at school? How many have a home to go to after school? How many have any verified history of abuse? How long have individual children been at the school? On the days of the classroom observations, have these factors been taken into consideration?

The reason for all these questions, and probably more, is that the situation that a child exists in cannot be summarily discounted or dismissed relative to success in school, regardless of what the teacher is, or isn’t, doing. Somewhere around at least 95% of the time, the environment that a child lives in will win. The differences between young boys and girls are real. It isn’t sexist, it’s just reality. The implications of these issues relative to success in the classroom are enormous.

The teacher in the classroom has no control over any of these. Yet none of these is part of any teacher effectiveness evaluation. The best any teacher can do is to make sure that there is positive consistency in the classroom, and make certain that the time the children are in class is safe, supportive, and educational.

There is a great deal of research on social economic status and poverty and their relationships to learning. The research that is available is real. It is longitudinal, replicated, data based research. Anecdotal musings by teachers, principals, and superintendents simply don’t count as research. All one need do is put the terms education, learning, poverty, social economic status, in any combination, into a search bar. It will take some time to go through all the data that springs up.

What is clear in the research is that the circumstances a child lives in, and with, and the community the school is in, do impact how that child learns. Apparently this isn’t a common sense issue, something that should simply be clear and taken into account. Proof of this is that it is ignored in evaluating a teachers effectiveness.

None of this is to say that children from poor families or dysfunctional families cannot learn, that schools in high poverty areas can’t educate the children entrusted to them. What it does say is that children from depressed circumstances have more problems learning than children in more fortunate circumstances.

Reading the statements from politicians, big business types, and very large urban school district superintendents regarding teacher evaluations and merit pay is an interesting experience. Very little of what the Eduskeptic has read or heard from the politicos, business types, and the very large districts acknowledges reality in classrooms. Perhaps behind the scenes someone is putting together an inclusive evaluation system, and a method for rewarding excellence with merit pay. The public side of their pronouncements about education sadly don’t seem to do so.

That the system needs to change is clear. What we currently use for teacher evaluations does nothing more than evaluate a performance on a particular day. There is no relevance to longitudinal excellence or lack of it in the classroom. A comprehensive, ongoing, multifaceted process is desperately needed. The effectiveness of principals and superintendents need to be rigorously evaluated as well.

The really big question is whether we have the political and financial will to make it happen. Of course, we could use the Wall Street Hedge Fund Model: I get paid a lot, no matter what. That doesn’t sound very appealing, unless of course, you’re the one being paid a boatload of money just because you show up.

The process of evaluating teachers varies across the U.S. What the Eduskeptic is familiar with is the process in his district, in California.

California is a very large, very diverse state. Teacher evaluations differ from district to district. There are over 1,000 school districts in the state. Anyone studying for an administrative credential goes through different models of evaluating teachers. They learn how to set up, take notes, offer criticism at the post-observation meeting, and how to officially write it up, using current eduspeak. The document becomes part of the teachers permanent file.

Here is what the Eduskeptic is familiar with, how the observations and evaluations actually took place, over 26 years in an elementary classroom.

At the beginning of each school year all teachers who would be observed for that school year would be notified. There would be 3 observations  during the school year. Evaluations were every other year, and then moved to every third year.

The principal would ask for a list of times that would work for each teacher. He would suggest curricular topics (math, language, science). The aim was to observe an actual lesson.

On the appointed day, the principal would show up. The teacher would have the class greet the principal and then begin the pre-planned, carefully staged lesson.

The teacher would teach, the principal would observe. When the lesson was over, the principal would leave, the teacher would continue with the day.

Within a day or two, the principal and the teacher would get together in the principals office. The principal would go down a check list of what occurred, guess at the main focus of the lesson, detail observed teaching practices, ask the teachers input at each observation point, and the suggest a way, or ask for a way, that it could have been done differently or better.

The teacher could add his or her own agreements or disagreements with whatever the principal said. The principal would add suggestions for continued success and the document would be signed by both parties. The teacher would get an official copy of the document. This would happen 3 times in a school year, and then repeat in 2 or 3 years. Helpful? Not very. Accurate as to the competency of either the teacher or principal? No.

Teachers would plan for the evaluation lesson. Quite often, this snapshot into how the teacher taught had nothing to do with the real, every day lessons. Teachers would put on  dog-and-pony shows that were designed to impress the observer.

The principal, who didn’t enter the classrooms on a consistent, casual basis throughout the year, used these 3 days to evaluate the effectiveness of the teachers.

The Eduskeptic, when it was an evaluation year would simply tell the principal to show up when it was convenient for him, during station time. He was provided with a list of station times throughout the day, and throughout the week. He could observe any station, any time, any day, as often as he wanted to.

I did nothing extra for these visits. No special props, no extra help, no putting all the fast learners in the observed group, no hiding the difficult ones in another station or out on the playground, no special dress up clothes. I simply did what I did each and every day. I taught my Kindergartners as well as I possibly could, each and every day.

Is this a good system? No. It’s what we had and we all did our best to make it work. Other districts have other systems, equally as flawed.

What’s wrong with it? It’s one dimensional, infrequent, and there’s too much of a subjective nature in it.

To be fair, at least in our small school district, there was constant scrutiny by grade level teachers, of curriculum, best practices, problem solving and a very real belief that no matter what, we could do better. There was constant  collaboration between grade levels to make sure that the children were learning what they needed for the next grade level.

When gaps were pointed out, or scores weren’t where they needed to be, there was exhaustive review of teaching practices and curriculum delivery. Nothing was static. Improvement was the goal. As a staff, throughout the year, we were candid, sometimes brutal, in our critiques of what we did. The principal was a definite partner in this, the superintendent nowhere to be seen.

The need for a different system for evaluating teachers, principals, and superintendents, is very real indeed. We all require the same intensity of scrutiny.

It’s not the teachers. It’s the whole team, the whole system. So far, the principals and superintendents (“chancellor” in some areas) have been blissfully left out of the equation.

What we have is not good. It’s just what we have. Something much more robust, much more inclusive is sorely needed. Something that takes in the whole child and the whole system. Anything less will just be more of the same, inadequate dance that we contend with now.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Tenure is a misunderstood term. The common misconception is that it literally means lifetime employment. It doesn’t.

New teachers are on probation for at least the first two years of their contract. During this time the school district can dismiss them for any reason. After the probationary term is over, tenure is granted.

Tenure simply provides due process rights for the teacher, nothing else. It grants the teacher the same rights as other employees in other companies. The tenured teacher cannot be fired at will. A legal hearing process precedes any disciplinary action. The outcry by the politicians regarding tenure is a false front, and serves no good purpose.

The history of this is simple. Prior to the tenure laws, teachers were at risk for losing their jobs for non-job related causes: politics, religious views or affiliations, not contributing money to a pet cause, sexual issues to name a few. If the superintendent, principal, or their spouses ,didn’t like what the teacher did or didn’t do, the teacher could be let go.

Tenure does not mean lifetime employment and never has. About 1% of probationary teachers are released from their contracts each year in California. The national average is around 0.71%. In California, 2% of teachers who have gained tenure are let go each year, which equals about 2 per hundred. The national average is about 1.4%. The reasons for dismissal vary. Mostly its because of a legal issue, or they just plain can’t teach. It’s not popular for the politicians to go to far into the facts.

California is a large, diverse state, and what happens here is often reflected in other states, on a more compact level. In addition to the 2% who are dismissed, 50% of new teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching. That is, according to most of us who teach or who have taught, before they even get out of the rookie stage. The reasons are many. The most common one is that the dream of teaching doesn’t square with the reality of teaching.

The national media has a penchant for sound bites from “experts” who decry the due process it takes to get non-performing teachers out of the classroom. These pseudo experts simply do not have any connection with real teachers, good or bad. Too many of the sound bites also ignore due process and the complexity and reality of K-12 teachers and classrooms.

Moving poor teachers out of classrooms is important. It always has been, and will continue to be. The issue that is paramount is the the process whereby teachers are evaluated. So far, no one has come up with a solution that works well. Firing masses of teachers because the superintendent is “ passionate” leads to legal issues that are expensive, and aren’t good for anyone.

All evaluations that the Eduskeptic is aware of are either flawed in their design (value added model comes to mind), are too infrequent, or are performed by administrators who are out of touch with the classroom setting.

Educators and administrators work with what they have. Moving to simply fire large numbers of teachers (a la M. Rhee, Wash. D.C.) and claiming success is dishonest at best. The protection of known incompetent teachers is equally, or more, dishonest.

A comprehensive evaluation system of teachers, administrators, and superintendents that is fair, multifaceted and meets due process requirements is sorely needed. Administrators and superintendents (chancellors in some districts—same thing) must be evaluated as intensely as the teachers. It is an absurd proposition to hold only one part of the system accountable.

What education needs least are kneejerk bulls in the china shop passing political aspirations off as reform.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

As established pseudo experts continue to beat the school system and all those in it for failing everything, the schools still turn out educated students at every level. It is hard to find anyone standing up for such a statement these days. It is much more politically expedient to blame educators for all that is wrong.

There is method in this approach. All of the posturing and passionate speeches by the politicians diverts a good amount of attention away from other societal ills. Everyone who has a barb to throw does so without much actual fact behind them. It doesn’t matter. In today’s wildly connected universe, once it’s out there, it stays out there.

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, doesn’t hold a teaching credential, has never taught a day in his life, and hasn’t any real connection to any real classroom anywhere. His cabinet is sorely lacking in actual teacher expertise. His job isn’t to teach anyone. It’s to run a large governmental bureaucracy. He is responsible for the overall direction of national education policy.

This doesn’t stop him, or any of the rest of them, from expounding on how actual classroom practice could be improved. The Eduskeptic retired at the end of the 2010 school year, with 36 years of teaching behind him. I know about teaching and classrooms. I know about children, teacher unions and associations, school boards, school budgets and how districts run. I don’t know anything about running either a district office or something on the scale that Duncan oversees.

The biggest issue with those who have no practical experience in the classroom attempting to define what constitutes good practice is that they have no actual basis for knowing what the reality in a classroom is. It is entirely possible that someone could come up with a great idea about how things might work better or more efficiently, just as it is possible that the Eduskeptic could come up with something that would make the Department of Education work better. The odds are against it, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen.

Everyday experience over time does matter when it comes to defining good practice. Teaching is a complex endeavor. Sound bites on the news about educators are nothing more than fluff spit out for political purposes. In the teaching profession it is generally agreed that it takes about 5 years to get past rookie status. It is that complex. If a teacher makes it through those first 5 years, they may actually be a teacher, one who has some potential. It is no surprise to those of us who have taught for long periods of time that the dropout rate for new teachers is so high. It is good for the schools, students, and the profession in general, that most of those who can’t cut it, quit.

Rather than spending time bashing educators and education with gross generalities about how to get rid of all the bad teachers, the national agenda might be more productive if there were more time put into the positive building of a better educational system. The one thing that we may all agree on is that education must be an ever evolving task. It would be best to include some of the people who spend their time every day in real classrooms, across the broad spectrum of urban, suburban, and rural schools, in this very important endeavor. To ignore the expertise that is available is to invite division and failure, on a national scale.

The noise surrounding the process of evaluating teachers is varied and loud. It is the same noise that has surrounded this issue since the beginning of teachers. It is a long history.

Most recently, the national Department of Education, under Arne Duncan, has been advocating for a process to grade teachers, leading to merit pay. It is a difficult process, and no matter how it is done it will infuriate some, and make others think we’ve finally reached the land of milk and honey.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which, all by itself is larger than some cities in the United States, and has more operating expenses as well, released a report grading 6,000 teachers. Of the 6,000 who were graded, or evaluated, 1,000 were deemed to be good. The other 5,000, not so good. The report’s author is Richard Buddin, a Rand Corporation Senior Economist. It is 21 pages long, and can be downloaded as a pdf. The link to the article which has the pdf link is here. The Los Angeles Times did it’s own study of the 6,000 teachers, and released the names of the teachers.

Releasing the names of 6,000 LA Unified teachers has been on the controversial side. Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, when asked his opinion about releasing the names, stated that he had no issues with doing so. “What do they have to hide?” Arne, who has absolutely no experience in the classroom except as a student, is pushing for merit pay, and national standards for evaluating teachers.

It is difficult to understand how 5,000 teachers out of 6,000, in one district, spread out over the entire spectrum of schools in this very large and complex system, can be in the not so good column. On the face of it, it seems to be questionable, at best. It will take some time to figure out exactly what the criteria were for this outcome. What kinds of students, what ethnic, socio-economic mix, percentage of intact/broken families, special needs, ages, and more, were involved in the evaluations, and over what time period?

Ed in the Apple writes about the methods and has quite a bit to say on the subject. The dialogue about the structure of any kind of study is, and will continue to be, intense. It is very important for any study of this kind to be completely transparent. Who paid for it, who established the criteria, and what and who, exactly, were studied to come up with the data?

Years ago, in a notebook/sketchbook, the Eduskeptic,  while sitting in yet another staff development day at the elementary school where he ended up teaching for 24 years, wrote, “Here we go again, taking officious leaps into the void, led by someone who has not been there, and it’s getting late. Now what?” This was on Aug. 29, 1989. This describes Arne Duncan, and apparently his entire staff of non-teachers, quite well. It’s not that Duncan is not without passion, as he is full of it. He’s just someone who has no idea, at all, what it means to be a teacher in a public school. Duncan would not make it.

The qualities that make a good and effective teacher are, perhaps, not all that quantifiable. The complexities of making judgements about teachers based on how students perform on standardized tests are great indeed. While complex, it is a job that still needs to be done. It will not happen overnight, and no matter how much the politicians want it to happen during their tenure, it won’t. Schools don’t lend themselves to overnight change, at least not very well. Perhaps if the good Secretary would tend to putting together a set of qualified people, teachers and non-teachers alike, to make this happen, it would. It still won’t be on his timetable though, no matter how many sound bites he appears in.

The Washington D.C. school system has not enjoyed the best of reputations over the years. The local school board hired Michelle Rhee to turn the system around. Rhee holds a teaching credential, but taught just 3 years before abandoning the classroom for a more corporate setting. Her opinion of how well she did seems to be more than a bit inflated. Her claims cannot be verified (Google it, find out for yourself), and the D.C. board didn’t and doesn’t seem to care. Perhaps it just doesn’t matter in the case of the D.C. school system.

There are more than a few administrators who couldn’t handle the stress of the classroom. All whom I have spoken with are pretty up front with the reasons they chose administration over teaching. Each job demands a certain personality. This isn’t to say that one is better than the other. On the contrary, those who leave the classroom to become principals and various kinds of superintendents are wise to do so. Teachers who aren’t suited for the admin roll are wise to admit that as well. The jobs are very different, and not at all necessarily connected in any real and meaningful way.

Managing a school system is a complex endeavor. Small school districts are just as complex as big ones. They are all multi-faceted entities. Without a sure and steady hand at the district level, things could spiral out of control very quickly, likely resulting in a trip to court, with smiling lawyers all around.

The issue that seems to be the sand in the gears is when the admin types summarily decide that they know more about teaching in a classroom than classroom teachers. Put aside that they either left the classroom due to burn out or common good sense, or that they were never in one to begin with (a la Arne Duncan), and that premise seems totally unfounded. There is stronger language to use of course, but to what point?

Michelle Rhee seems to take pleasure in the ability to fire teachers. She recently let 245 or so in the D.C. district go. Fired, actually. This is not to say that some of them just absolutely didn’t belong in a classroom. Some of them probably were pretty sad as teachers. What isn’t noted is the criteria used in firing them. This is where teacher evaluations get into some pretty rough territory.

The Eduskeptic does think that teachers need to be evaluated. Over a career that spanned 36 years, the evaluations that I received were few and far in between. None of them was rigorous, and there was, as far as I can tell, nothing in the evaluations that did much more than allow the principal and the Eduskeptic talk about how the lessons went, and how well they were, or maybe weren’t, done.

It would have been obscene for anything like this to be used in deciding either merit pay, or retention in the teacher ranks.

If the available information about Rhee’s 3 years in the classroom is anywhere near the truth, she may well have had to fire herself, were she in charge back then.

Body counts do nothing to further the betterment of teachers, administrators, or children. Rhee’s, and the D.C. school board’s, apparent sense of divine right to make history by firing as many teachers as they can in the name of making things better is just plain misplaced.

What would be good is to know the criteria they used. The D.C. teachers union is surely looking into that, and it will be good to know what they come up with, as that criteria is bound to be an issue when the first lawsuit is filed.

The school year for 2010-11 has started, or is about to, across the nation. Some states and districts will begin the day after Labor Day. Others started very close to the beginning of August, a horrible thing to do of course, but there you have it.

The school year is starting off under staffed, under funded, and largely under prepared to deal with the lack of support for education in general. In previous posts, the Eduskeptic has pointed out that, in most instances, schools are opening with fewer teachers, which results in larger class sizes. There are fewer librarians, library aides/techs, library hours, or libraries at all. Music, art, and sports have all taken massive hits.

Some districts have chosen to simply eliminate libraries at their schools. This has happened across the US. In having to cut back, due to a lack of funding, districts have had to make some very difficult choices.

From Kindergarten to third grade the focus is on skills, reading being the one that is given the most emphasis and press. It is a simple connection: if a child cannot read, or comprehend what he or she is reading, everything past that point stops. What teachers in these grades are aiming at is automaticity. A child who has letter recognition and sounds internalized, who doesn’t need to decode each and every letter, sound, and combinations thereof, is likely to be able to understand what the sentence is about. This is called automaticity, and understanding the meaning of the sentence or paragraph comes along with it.  A child who is struggling to put the letters and sounds together gets to the end of the sentence with just about nothing but a jumble of letters and sounds, disconnected completely from the meaning of the sentence. It’s a simple premise.

Oddly, one of the best ways to reach a level of automaticity is to read constantly, or listen to others reading. In order to do this, one needs magazines, and books. Last time the Eduskeptic checked, these items were housed in the library.

Children, most of them anyway, love libraries. Teachers of young children know this. They, and the Eduskeptic is one of them, tell children that the entire universe is in the library, that they may learn anything, or travel anywhere, just by opening a book. It’s true. While the Eduskeptic has just retired from teaching (36 years, 24 in Kindergarten), the joy that is obvious when young children get to the library is still quite stunning. Those who don’t read yet make up their own stories looking at the illustrations. Those who do read use the illustrations to further their enjoyment of reading.

There is a very short time to get all of this across to the young ones. If it isn’t done by third grade, it probably won’t get done. Children who are behind in reading at this point face a very steep climb to automaticity and understanding. Fourth grade is the first content based grade, and reading is a stone cold requirement here.

It is incredible that in the United States, arguably one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on this planet, that schools are forced to choose between keeping teachers in classrooms, with ever more children, or curtailing or closing the school libraries. The pure stupidity of it defies reason.

School districts across the United States are struggling to keep up with the budgetary realities of the day.  It is difficult to maintain a level of educational excellence in the face of a budget that forces more children into each classroom, and cuts more programs that have been good for children, K-12. In California, and across the nation, the task is disheartening in many ways. Laying off over 20,000 teachers in California is not an easy thing to do, nor is it likely to be ignored by anyone with an agenda regarding unions, seniority, and the educational establishment in general.

In an article in the Sacramento, California, Bee newspaper, July 6, co-written by Diana Lambert and Phillip Reese, it is pointed out that, in general,  schools with the most troubles, economically, behaviorally, academically, have suffered the most from teacher layoffs. The reason is relatively simple: the staff at these schools tend to be younger, less experienced teachers. The general rule is last hired is first fired. This may or may not be true in all districts across the United States.

The article points out that a newer teacher, with a PhD in education (doesn’t say from where the PhD is from), who has written about education, and was teacher of the year for his district, was given a pink slip, which has since been rescinded. His take on the layoff business is that it should be based on performance. Perhaps it was, and that is why he still has a job. To assume that it wasn’t is simply naive.

School districts, at least in California, are paid based on the actual attendance of the students enrolled in the district. Absences equal a loss of money to the district. There are no excused absences anymore. If a child is absent, it costs the district. Every district has to make a guess about how many children will be attending school the next school year, and about what the attendance percentage will be, in order to figure out a budget.  March 15, in California, is a day when districts have to notify teachers of potential layoffs. Chief financial officers generally give the superintendents a conservative number regarding the number of potential students for the next year. The incoming Kindergarten class, subtracted from the outgoing 8th grade class, or 12th grade class in a unified district, equals the number of students lost, or, perhaps gained. Based on this number and the number of children each class will carry, teachers will be laid off, or more will be hired. It’s pretty simple. The Phd teacher of the year might want to look into this prior to making assumptions about the process.

The younger, less experience teachers are the ones who take the biggest hit in this scenario, no matter where in the district they are teaching. Teachers with tenure, those who have made it through 3 probationary years, are less like to actually lose their jobs. They do get pink slips. Teachers who have been teaching for 8 or more years have been getting pink slips. Most have been rescinded, but for a large number of teachers, the pink slips have turned out to be real. Tenure is not, as is commonly misquoted and believed, equal to lifetime employment. It means that a teacher cannot be fired, or laid off, without due cause. The reason for this is pretty straightforward.

This writer has written about this, in this blog, before. Prior to the tenure laws, teachers were fired at will for any number of reasons: having different political views from someone on the board, not financially supporting a pet project of a principal or board member, not working for free, having the termidity to argue with a principal, the principals wife, or board member, getting married or pregnant if a woman, not buying the correct clothing at the correct store, being old, not putting up with sexual harassment or assault, even thinking about joining a union, being of a different nationality, color, and the list just keeps going on and on. Tenure laws exist to protect the civil rights of teachers. It is not, and never has been, a ticket to lifetime employment.

The newspaper article, and others like it, point out that a disproportionate number of teachers at difficult schools in difficult areas are laid off at a higher rate than teachers at better schools, because the teachers in these schools tend to be the newest, least senior. Nowhere in the articles that this teacher has read has anyone taken the time to figure out that the older teachers in the districts paid their dues a long time ago. They have already been at the difficult schools with the difficult students in the difficult areas of town. They have been through the grinder and have transferred to less stressful situations. There are not many teachers who can sustain the daily assault on civility, the lack of community support, the mind numbing stress of teaching in such situations, over the long haul. Some can, and do. After a few years though, most teachers in these positions, when offered the opportunity to go to a different location, and preserve what is left of their sanity and health, do so. Not very surprising, really.

The newer teachers are also the ones who are most likely to teach anywhere they are sent, without question, who are most likely to do the involuntary “volunteer” work that principals and other administrators come up with, who won’t speak up too freely about conditions, or 3 hour staff meetings, simply because they fear for their jobs. A colleague of this writer gave up a Saturday to “volunteer” at school for what was called an ADA make-up day. The reasoning? Fear of being laid off.

Nowhere in the press, with all of the focus on the under performing schools having such high numbers of layoffs has anyone pointed out that other teachers filled those slots. The districts put more children in the classrooms, and transferred other teachers into those low performing schools to teach. These transferred teachers are the more experienced teachers. The articles and opinions on the op-ed pages would have the general public believe that the children in these difficult schools are just cast afloat, which is a patently ridiculous position.

The teachers, young and old, are not to blame for the financial mess that the schools and states find themselves in. There is no rejoicing in the teacher ranks when the young and talented are told their services are not needed for the next school year. The more experienced teachers know full well that there is a great need for young, enthusiastic, and energetic teachers to enter into, and stay in, the teaching ranks, and it is they who most profoundly feel the loss of these good young teachers. A good mix of the experienced with the inexperienced in the teaching ranks is what is needed.

No crisis will ever be left untouched for political gain by politicians. What seems to have floated to the top of the pool in this mess is a thinly veiled assault on unions, mounted by politicians who think now is the time to point to the teachers and their civil rights as a cause for the layoffs of good, young teachers. Instead of figuring out how to get the schools back on a stable financial footing, they begin to blame the unions, and all senior teachers. It is, of course, much easier to do this than to actually fix anything. It also does nothing to help children and schools do anything at all.