eduskeptic

When the greedmeisters in the hedge fund/securities/mortgage/bank/realty industries threw everything off the cliff, with many willing participants going with them, our government threw out a safety net: ” too big to fail” was the name of the net. The net belonged to us, the average citizens of the country. What, you thought someone else was going to pay for it? Silly.

The large corporations made out just fine, with much of the billions, we think, having been repaid.  The world economy didn’t spin out into a black hole, never to be seen or heard of again. Too big, too important to fail. My, my.

Over the last few days, the local paper has been reporting on an effort, now deceased, to throw a safety net to the educational entities around the U.S. In California alone, about 22,000 teachers have actually received real pink slips: no job for next year. Local districts are scrambling to figure out how to make it through the next school year with drastically reduced funding. Even if you believe that the school system as a whole is over-paid, the magnitude of what is happening across the U.S is staggering.The economic hit of 22,000 teachers out of work, on top of everything else, is enormous.

The smaller class size movement in California, and anywhere else it was implemented, is rapidly slipping into nostalgia land. Although as a teacher, this writer can say that the smaller class size has been good for all concerned, there is no research to prove it. The jump to 20:1, K-3, was made so quickly that no one thought about research, control groups, and all of the planning that goes into preparing to study a major shift in class sizes. Many districts in California have simply abandoned all pretense at smaller class sizes. There is no money to support it. With larger class sizes comes a lesser need for teachers. It is an inverse equation. Many thousands of teachers across the U.S. have lost their jobs.

A district in New York advertised for 8 teaching positions. They had to wade through 3,100+ applications for the positions. The applications came from everywhere across the U.S. A district in New Jersey needed 7 teachers: 1,065 applications, again from everywhere in America, flooded in. For a few special ed positions in a district on the east coast, twice the number of applicants threw there hats in the ring: 650+. A small, rural, district in Northern California, up in the mountains, needed 1 teacher: 130 applications, again, from areas spread far and wide.

Think about it. These applicants, all, one must assume, meeting the credential and educational requirements of the districts that advertised, were willing to move, perhaps 3,000 miles, just to find a teaching job. The saddest part of this whole miasma of lunacy is that the bulk of the now jobless teachers are the good, young, educators that we need in the system to propel everyone forward in this ever changing world. This writer is 64, and my energy level, and willingness perhaps, to jump back out onto the tip of the educational leadership spear, is not the same as a much younger teacher in his or her 20’s or 30’s. In the near term, some of the laid off teachers will hang on, hoping that, due to retiring teachers, or some magic influx of funding, they might get back into the classroom. The newest of the new, just graduating University, have next to no chance at a classroom of their own.

The Democrats in Washington mounted an effort to put a few billion into the funding stream so that the school system would be able to keep teachers teaching, and children learning, in a sensible educational environment. Today, May 31, 2010, the local paper reported that the effort has been abandoned. Politically not a good idea right now it said; there’s no support for it they said.

We apparently are not too big to fail. We apparently aren’t doing much of anything to warrant much consideration at all. Fail, though, is what we will experience, and what the children will experience, as class sizes grow, and class diversity in content shrinks. A large increase in the standards that we expect children to reach, especially younger children, with a concurrent decrease in teachers to provide a quality classroom experience, is just plain nuts.

We should have mortgaged everything in sight when we had the chance.

On Saturday, February 6, NPR interviewed Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education. Coincidentally, or not, the New Yorker magazine ran an article about Duncan in the January 4 edition. Both are illuminating.

This column has written about Secretary Duncan and his complete lack of teaching experience or credentials on more than one occasion. I have opined that perhaps having a background in education isn’t the primary requirement for someone to run the Department of Education. The Secretary doesn’t actually teach anyone anything, and I rather doubt that it’s part of the job description. Secretary Duncan oversees a bureaucracy of several thousand and a budget that is, as he has said,  bigger by a function of a lot than anyone else in his position has had. This is especially true of the discretionary funds that President Obama has allocated to him.

In an earlier article on this forum (Oct. 31, 2009), Secretary Duncan’s staff and their credentials were researched. There weren’t any teaching credentials to be found. This is what was found: of the 31 people listed as assistants to Mr. Duncan, 1 has direct experience with k-12 education, 1 has an MA in Education, and 2 are listed as having taught at the University level, which requires no credential, but may require an MA or Phd. The thought that he was being advised by people with actual experience in the education field, at more than the rookie level, went right out the window. The reality of running the United States Department of Education is related more to that of a large conglomerate than any school, especially any elementary or secondary school.

Which brings us back to the article in the New Yorker Magazine. Duncan has been allotted over 70 billion dollars in economic stimulus funds. He says that this amount is greater by a “factor of a lot” than any other Secretary of Education has ever had. His mandate is probably greater by the same factor than his predecessors also. This column has been openly skeptical of quite a few of the policies and claims of the Washington education bureaucrats.

This writer has also been very open to the idea that something should change in order to improve the delivery of education to students in our schools. The job of Duncan and his managers is to guide the process along, to identify things that, on a national level, don’t seem to be doing any good, and to assist in the business of changing them, and to identify those things that are working, figure out the reasons they are working, and duplicate and improve on them. For people who haven’t any in-depth classroom experience it seems an exercise in pure experimentation and lobbying for career points, especially to those of us who have been in the classroom for many years. What other profession regularly has non-professionals in their field telling them how to do their jobs?

What is important in this entire spectrum is that the need for change is constant. Change doesn’t always come from within. It is just as possible that the impetus for change, the mechanism that will move things forward, will come from just about anywhere. Arne Duncan, while not having any teaching experience, with a deep group of advisor’s who don’t have teaching experience, has said what those of us in the classroom have been waiting for. This is from the NPR interview:

“And I would argue quite frankly that this department has been part of the problem. We have been this big, compliance-driven bureaucracy. I’ve said repeatedly that the best ideas are never going to come from me or from Washington. They’re always going to come from great educators at the local level.”

In the midst of running the Department of Education, perhaps Secretary Duncan could take some time, without the press and photo op corps, to spend some time with those of us who actually teach. It’s just as possible that one of us will demonstrate or say something that will move education forward, a direction that it always needs to aspire to.

Ever wonder who is running the education debate in the U.S.? We hear quite a lot from Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, about the need for changing how we educate children in this country. It seems as though that is one of the key phrases for most politicians. Oddly enough, it’s a good thought. Education cannot stand still and be successful. If it doesn’t evolve, it most surely will  become less and less relevant and successful as time goes on. I doubt that there will ever be a time when we as educators, or as a nation, can quit insisting that our educational systems get better.

Who, however, is in charge of this thrust? Arne Duncan, as has been pointed out many times before, is not and never has been, a credentialed teacher. He does have a senior staff though. I have taken the time to read all of their online bios. I am very curious as to who is advising Mr. Duncan. There are 32 Senior Staff listed, Mr. Duncan included. Of those, 21 have a link to their bios. Twenty-six have links to their home pages. My theory was that, among Mr. Duncan’s advisor’s, there must surely be a solid mix of professionals, with educators well represented. It is after all, the national Department of Education. I read all the online biographies. This is what I found:

Of the 31 listed Assistants to Mr. Duncan, 1 has direct experience with k-12 education, 1 has an MA in Education, and 2 are listed as having been a teacher at the University level.

Russlyn Ali is the Assistant Secretary, Office of Civil Rights. Her bio states that she was a teacher. She has taught at USC, and UC Davis. There is no indication that she has k-12 experience, nor does it indicate what she taught and for how long.

Gabriella Gomez, is the Assistant Secretary for Legislation and Congressional Affairs. She has a Masters in Education from Harvard. There is no indication that she has taught anywhere.

Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, is the Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education. She served as an assistant and deputy superintendent and chief academic officer at Pomona Unified School District, Pomona California. She also served as Superintendent of the district. Her bio states that she was an educator, for 5 years, in the Montebello and Pasadena Unified School districts, where she held various positions, including being a teacher. There is no indication of how long she was an actual teacher in a classroom.

John Wilson is the Executive Director White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He held a position as an associate professor of education in the Graduate School of Education at George Washington University. There is no indication that he has any k-12 teaching experience.

That’s it. Four out of 32 (12.5%) has some direct connection to education, and out of that group, only one (1.3%) is listed as an actual teacher in the k-12 arena. The rest of the Assistants are predominantly lawyers, with a good showing of CEO’s, membership on various boards, trusts, and educational think tanks.

Perhaps it is because I have spent the last 34 years teaching that I think that there should be a solid core of actual teachers advising Mr. Duncan. After all, I would prefer that the person who performs a medical operation on me be a board certified surgeon, not the CFO or CEO of the hospital. I hope that the person sitting in the pilots seat of the airplane I’m riding in is a qualified pilot, and not the president of the airline company.

Maybe that’s the point here though. Perhaps the business of running the nations schools is best left to lawyers and business people. It just could be, that in the minds of the national and state “education secretary” Gliteratti, that teachers are simply irrelevant to the process of better education.

My theory, as stated at the beginning of this piece, has been proved wrong. Apparently there is no solid core of educators advising anyone. The lawyers and business people are the advisors. I don’t know if this is good or bad, as these people all have advanced degrees. That is, fundamentally, very different than being an experienced teacher. I hope that at some time, some of these people talk to actual teachers about the realities of the k-12 classroom experience. It might be helpful in the discussion of what needs to be done. Maybe.

In a recent Harpers magazine article, the thinking of several speakers and writers about education and national policy has been explored. In short, according to the article, there exists among some the stance that we educate simply for return on investment (ROI). The author, Mark Slouka, makes the point that by dehumanizing the educational process, we short change ourselves, and manage, in the process of doing so, to provide a vast disservice to the children we are educating.

Slouka makes a strong case that the business of education has become the business of business. If you have a child in school, regardless of the grade, you will by now have heard that what we have to do in the classroom is get these children ready to be productive once they leave school. The unspoken, and sometimes spoken, part of that statement about productivity is that they will be productive in the workplace. If one listens well to the news regarding the state of education in America, one could easily believe that that is the point of education: get them ready to compete in the global, national, or regional marketplace.

Consider this statement by District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee: “This is exactly what life is about. You get a paycheck every two weeks. We’re preparing children for life.” Really? That’s what education is all about? There’s more. Brent Staples, a New York Times editorialist wrote that the the system is failing “to produce the fluent writers required by the new economy.” It just may be that good writing has more value than that. Slouka goes on to quote Thomas Friedman, who wrote about a speech given by Bill Gates, in which Gates says that our high schools are obsolete, that even when doing what they are designed to do, they “cannot teach our kids what they need to know today”. Friedman goes on to further quote Gates, “If we don’t fix American education, I won’t be able to hire your kids.” Slouka has an entire article full of this kind of corporate view of what American education is doing, or not doing.

What are these people thinking? This writer teaches with the idea that his Kindergartners will leave his classroom at the end of the year with a better understanding of the world around them. This writer, a Kindergarten teacher for the last 23 of 34 years teaching, isn’t, by any stretch of the corporate imagination, preparing his students to be pay-check-every-two-weeks robots. With such an outlook on education, why is Michelle Rhee still employed by the District of Columbia School District? Has Bill Gates lost his billions of marbles? Thomas Friedman, whose writing I admire, seems to have adopted the company line as well. Evidently, so has President Obama. Arne Duncan is not an educator, never has been, and probably has no plans to become one. He played a bit of professional basketball in Australia, and is a business man. These are probably the skills he needs to be the Secretary of Education. Would a deep background in education, in the classroom, make a difference in his outlook? It couldn’t hurt.

The purpose of education must be much more broad than this twisted corporate view. If our children are to be leaders and innovators, now and in the completely unknown future, they have to be able to work together, understand history (let’s see–Viet Nam/Afgahnistan/Russia, hmmm), create things that don’t yet exist, engage in civil discourse, and be ready and able to stand up for their reasoned, researched positions. Democracy isn’t an easy road to be on. One can only hope that a well rounded education, strenuously applied, will keep it alive. Narrowing the focus to a paycheck every two weeks ignores the care that a functioning democracy demands. What are these people thinking about?

I have been teaching for over 30 years. In that time I have been through seven superintendents and about ten principals. Six of those principals I worked with in a teacher/principal relationship. The other four, or maybe five, I worked with as head of the Teachers Association. Some of these administrators were wonderful to work with. A few were, and probably still are, just plain rotten. Had I the authority to fire them, I would have. I’m equally sure that some of them would have loved to fire me too. I did carry on a professional relationship with all of them, either as a teacher, or as an association representative. I have been approached more than once over the years to consider becoming an administrator. I have chosen to stay in the classroom, for reasons I will get to in a short bit. In a recent article, Margaret Gaston wrote about the declining numbers of teachers pursing administrative credentials. It is an interesting article. In it, she says that only “… 48 percent of California principals say they plan to stay in their jobs until retirement, compared with 67 percent nationally, and only 22 percent of California’s secondary principals plan to do so.” Briefly, she notes that it is important to strengthen recruitment and retention of the administration portion of the school systems. A study by Ken Futernick of California State University, Sacramento, mentioned in the same article, points out that “…42 percent of teachers who leave the field cite ‘an unsupportive principal’ as a reason for leaving.” He says that 52 percent cite poor administrative support at the district level.

The job of principal, or superintendent, is vastly different from that of a teacher. The job of principal is one of administration, one of managing. In these days, at least in California, that job has gotten to be very complicated. Now, I think that anyone who wants to be a principal should be required to spend a minimum of five years in the classroom, if for no other reason than to get a basic understanding of what it takes to be a teacher, full time, in the classroom. Without that experience, school management shifts into the realm of magical thinking. Past that point, principals don’t teach, nor should they be expected to, any more than I should be expected to perform administrative duties.The principal has quite a full plate without attempting to be the “educational leader” of a school. I’ve not met one yet who is. I’ve met a few who thought they were. They weren’t.  I know teachers who think they know how to run a school. They don’t. Certainly, the principal must be the administrative leader of the school, the person who provides direction, support, guidance, and when necessary, discipline, for staff and students.The principal must keep up with the myriad of laws, deadlines, and edicts that govern a school and a school district, an Alice in Wonderland type of experience. I depend on my principal to keep all of that away from my classroom so that I am able to do my job, which is to teach. The principal at my elementary school somehow manages, in addition to everything else, to visit every classroom several times a year to present science lessons. He becomes the Principal of Science on these forays. It is an amazing effort, and something the children enjoy and learn from. He doesn’t pretend to be the educational leader. He’s a great Principal of Science though. Earlier, I said that I chose to stay in the classroom. The reasons are many. The principal at my school gets there before I do, and leaves after I do. His contracted days are longer than mine. His nights and weekends are full of school things, while mine are not. While I spend my days with the complexity of the behaviors of very young children, and other teachers deal with the craziness of middle school or high school students, the principal spends his days with parents, who are either happy with or disgusted with, something that happened at school/on the bus/at the bus stop/on the internet, legal issues about everything, deadlines for forms, meetings, money, clubs, curricula, student and staff problems, maintenance, and the district office.  If this person, the principal, doesn’t have adequate training for administering this mishmash of issues, he or she will fail. It is important for the principal types to have support and continuous training in not only in the business end of running a school, but in the people end as well. Teachers are not altogether easy to manage, even under the best of circumstances. It’s a difficult mix to master, and when it isn’t, some teachers, especially the young ones, leave the profession as a result. The screening process for gaining an admin credential should be rigorous, just as it should be for teachers. We cannot afford poor quality on either side of the equation. The last thing a teacher needs is a principal who is incapable of being honest, human, supportive, and knowledgeable. Now, on top of all this, the principal simply doesn’t make enough money for me to have jumped into that pool. It is a complex and demanding job, just as mine is. It is not a surprise to me at all that the number of teachers wanting to go into the administrative ranks, or stay there, is less than robust. One thing that I want to point out, which is a different from what Margaret Gaston says in her article: school leadership is not vested in the principal, or any other single source. It is a partnership between teachers and principals. Educational leadership is in the classroom, not the principals office. Administrative leadership is in the principals office, not the classroom. The success of a school results from a working relationship between the two.