Is it just me, or is this a faulty headline?

I was arrested by the headline to this article: "Most teachers favor inclusion for autistic students!"

Then I read further. Let's see if you spot the problems that set off alarms for me:

The majority of general education teachers support the notion of including autistic children in a regular classroom environment, a small new survey suggests.

Overall, the eight general education teachers surveyed expressed positive views of inclusion for children with autism, but they felt additional resources would help ensure success in a mainstream classroom.

Survey co-authors P. Rosen and E. Rotheram-Fuller, of Temple University, and D. S. Mandell, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, are scheduled to present the findings Wednesday at the International Meeting for Autism Research in San Diego.

The teachers surveyed worked in a single, large urban school district. Each had between one and four students with autism already present in classrooms that catered to an average of 25 students. The majority of the autistic students spent at least half a day enrolled in a general education setting, according to a meeting news release.

On average the teachers had more than 10 years of experience, although specific work with autistic students ranged from none to 15 years.

The preliminary results revealed that all the teachers shared a positive perspective on including autistic children in an otherwise standard classroom setting.

Doing so was completely appropriate for 44 percent of students, and somewhat appropriate for 33 percent of students, they said. And as a whole, those surveyed indicated that they felt most of the autistic students (66 percent) would do well to remain in their current classroom situation.

However, for 22 percent of students, inclusion was considered somewhat inappropriate, and for one-third of students, a different, more restrictive environment would be better, the teachers said.

Regardless of their views, the teachers generally expressed confidence in their ability to handle autistic students, while at the same time observing that not all of the children were adequately prepared for the demands of a general education environment.

Overall, the participants suggested that more resources were needed to help promote social interaction between autistic students and their healthy peers. Also necessary: continued support from special education teachers and training in how to meet the demands of individual education plans, they said.

Research presented at meetings is considered preliminary because it has not been subject to the scrutiny required for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Okay? Now here's what I see:

Eight general education teachers in ONE large urban school district is hardly the basis for a sweeping statement about all teachers. And this study hasn't even been peer-reviewed yet.

How in the world can one extrapolate widespread support from such a small sample from one school district? What subjects do these teachers teach? What grade levels? Is this school district also majority-minority and economically disadvantaged beyond what is common in a typical school district in America?

Now, it may be that most teachers DO support inclusion of autistic students in regular classrooms. I personally support the inclusion of any exceptional student in my class if they receive adequate support from special education professionals and if they do not detract from the learning environment to the detriment of other students. This includes my advanced placement classes, as long as they can maintain the level of scholarship necessary for an advanced placement class. I have had several students who have been diagnosed within the autism spectrum, and some placements have worked well.

Some have not.

But I would prefer to see the study authors cast their nets a whole lot wider before such sweeping claims are made.

Thoughts?

Switching places

So, you know, I taught middle school for many many years before I transitioned up to the high school level. I now have a child of my own in middle school, and boy, have things changed!

I just went to a parent conference, and one of my kid's teachers stated that he was concerned about kiddo being distracted in class since the first day of attendance in his class several weeks ago. And yet, not ONE phone call have I received from this person, nor even an email. And I teach in the district. It's not like it's hard: simply type my name in and the email automatically gets sent with a minimum of effort.

Now, when I was teaching middle school, it was expected that we would be proactive and contact parents early, especially about situations like this where it may not be obvious from checking grades online. Instead, I got a surprise comment about behavior after allowing the situation to fester for weeks without a word. It is infuriating! I no longer teach middle school, and I STILL proactively contact parents about any concerns I have. What in the world is going on down there?

The principal there was not there when I was, so I wonder if he has simply decided that this is acceptable. I mean, look, I would blame myself if there was a GRADE issue I could have seen online, but this is different, since teachers don't post evaluations of effort and behavior until the end of the grading period-- too late for me to do anything, again. This is not the standards of progessionalism that I would expect were I an administrator. It sets up an adversarial relationship with some parents as well if they feel that teachers wait until conferences to play "gotcha."

You know, when I am acting as a teacher, I always try to think about what I would hope to know if I were the parent of each of my students. I guess I'm just an old fossil.

Of Layoffs, Seniority, and Bad Teachers: An Educational Bermuda Triangle

News junkie that I am, I was reading Newsweek (a shadow of its former self, but that's a gripe for another day because I have to have my fix) and ran across this article. Please note the paragraphs that I have placed in boldface. There may be a quiz later. (Oooh, I AM getting back into the swing of things! Maybe I should go lay down till this passes..... nahhh.)

Education reformers were feeling optimistic. With President Obama’s Race to the Top competition, which offers financial rewards to states willing to hold teachers accountable for their students’ performance, they’ve made real progress in weeding out poor teachers.

But now the reformers have spotted a dark cloud on the horizon. State budgets, particularly in badly managed big states like California, New York, and New Jersey, are out of control. Although Congress managed to avoid massive teacher layoffs last year with federal aid, the stimulus money is running out, and congressmen do not appear to be in the mood for more deficit spending. That means teacher layoffs are coming—perhaps more than 100,000 nationwide. In most states, union contracts or state law requires they be done by seniority, so the newest teachers are pink-slipped, no matter how good they are. “ ‘Last in, first out’ virtually guarantees that all our great, young teachers will be out of a job, and some of the least effective will stay in the classroom,” says Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago.

Such layoffs disproportionately hurt students attending the lowest-performing schools, because they tend to have the highest proportion of new teachers. In some Los Angeles schools last year, such cuts wiped out 50 to 70 percent of the faculty.

One surprising solution may come from Knowles’s home city of Chicago. The state of Illinois is one of the worst-run in the country, rivaling even California for its unwillingness to take the steps necessary to stanch the flow of red ink. As a result, Chicago is facing pressure to cut 900 teacher jobs. Under the usual union contract, the last hired were to be the first fired, competent or not.

But the Chicago School Board, handpicked by the Windy City’s tough-minded Mayor Richard M. Daley, has interpreted a new state law as giving it the power to fire the city’s 200 most incompetent teachers first.

While this might seem like common sense, it’s heresy to Karen Lewis, the newly elected head of the Chicago teachers’ union, who is considering going to court to fight the attack on seniority. “I admit, this is a great PR tool. Why not lay off the bad teachers first?” she conceded in an interview with NEWSWEEK. But on closer inspection, she says, there is no way of doing it fairly. In Chicago’s troubled urban school district, 99 percent of the 23,000 or so teachers are rated “excellent” or “superior,” while less than 0.1 percent are rated “unsatisfactory.” Employing some creative logic, Lewis asks: “Why are the worst evaluations believable, but the best are not?”

Reformers scoff at the union boss’s arguments. “While principals may not be consistently evaluating their teachers to the extent that they should, they certainly know who the worst teachers are in their buildings and have been using all sorts of tricks of the trade over the years to get these teachers to move to other schools,” says Kate Walsh of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a reform advocacy group.

Largely because of the carrots dangled by Race to the Top, a growing number of states, including Colorado, Tennessee, Delaware, and Oklahoma, have changed their laws to make teacher performance a factor in tenure and firing decisions, but very few can use it to make layoff decisions. The District of Columbia’s public-school system is one place that can. Arizona has gone the furthest, making it illegal to consider seniority in layoff, tenure, and even rehiring decisions. But defying the unions is hard going. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to back away from layoffs based on performance and shoot for an across-the-board pay freeze.

Analysts say that states’ money troubles will continue to shrink budgets over the next year, and school districts that have already cut to the bone will have to find new ways to make less go further. Weeding out the weakest teachers and keeping the most effective “is the only policy that makes sense for districts to implement in tough times,” says Walsh. After all, when student needs bump up against adult needs, is there any question whose should come first?

Okay, now let's attack this logically. I will deal with boldfaced item number two first-- I will circle back to the boldfaced part of paragraph 1 later.

So, "all our great young teachers will be out of a job...." Now, use of the word "all" usually sends up red flags for me in statements like this. But then again, I want to point out that not all of any age cohort is either "great" or incompetent, so there will also be some rotten young teachers who will be out of a job when using seniority as a basis. And there are some great young teachers, and some rotten young teachers. Just being a young teacher doesn't guarantee that you are "great." I am and will continue to be troubled (and enraged) by the assumption that those of us who have been in the classroom (mumble) years are either lazy lovers of the sinecure of tenure or at the very least losers who may have some skills but if we were really talented we would have demonstrated the gumption to get out of the classroom ghetto and out into the really important arena of administration of policy-wonkiness. Running throughout the criticism of public school teachers is a strong dismissal of experience in the classroom. This criticism runs from the greenest 23-year-old assistant principal (we had one who had spent a grand total of six months in an actual classroom before making the jump into hyperspace faster than you can say "Chewie, get us out of here!" He didn't last long as an AP either-- he's now teaching in a school of education somewhere. Ah, irony!) to people like Michelle Rhee (3 yrs in TFA before she got the heck out of Dodge) and Arne Duncan (0 years teaching experience but several years of playing basketball with President Obama which has stood him in good stead). Since many of these people felt little to no desire to really attempt to BE the lion tamer, they denigrate anyone who has the willingness to do so. No, they just want to stand outside the ring and claim that since they've been to a lot of circuses, they KNOW how to be a lion tamer-- it's just that they've got more important things to do. There must be something wrong with anyone who is sucker enough to be an experienced teacher, and it must be that incompetence and having nowhere else to go must explain this refusal to move up and beyond. Supposedly, school reformers want great teachers, but those great teachers shouldn't stay for more than three years, or there must be something wrong with them.

Second, I am deeply troubled by the fact that only .1% of Chicago teachers are rated as "unsatisfactory." Something smells here. Now here is where the next item comes in. So let's look at the most troubling quote of all, which bears repeating:

"While principals may not be consistently evaluating their teachers to the extent that they should, they certainly know who the worst teachers are in their buildings and have been using all sorts of tricks of the trade over the years to get these teachers to move to other schools."

Here is where the outrage starts for me. Let me be very clear: I DO NOT WANT INCOMPETENT TEACHERS IN MY PROFESSION. And I have taught next to some real doozies. But my next bit of outrage has always been this: how did they get there to begin with? In this discussion, there is some definite incompetence being overlooked, all right. We have incompetent teachers in the classroom because we have incompetent administrators who refuse to get up and enforce very clear policies. And this has gone on for years.

Let's break it down. Although "tenure" means very little in a "right to work" state such as those I have lived in all my life, there is nonetheless a process for evaluating teachers. In my district, a new teacher is supposed to be evaluated twice a year until their "probationary" status ends after five years. That's ten evaluations at a minimum. And if there are signs of trouble, there can be more. There should be more. And if administrators are doing their jobs, AND if they truly know what good teaching is (another big if given the paucity of teaching experience of the administrators themselves), then tenure should never be an issue. But there's not. Why is Ms. Walsh so dismissive of the incompetence demonstrated at this crucial step of the process by administrators? It seems that, when it comes right down to it, it's not necessarily incompetent teachers many reformers are after: it is simply the bugaboo of tenure on the way to privatizing public schools. The term "incompetent teachers" as a propaganda tool serves an important function for those who want to privatize public education, in the same way that the hot-button term of "abortion" serves an important function for Republican policy-makers. Both are far too valuable to ever really be gotten rid of, because these phrases shut off thinking and cause many people to react viscerally, often against their overall interests.

This is all too often the way. Some examples: Conservatives (in both parties) claim to hate illegal immigration, but the businessmen who write the checks for their political campaigns love that cheap labor and its depressing effect on wages across the board for American workers. So they rail against illegal immigration on the one hand, but then frantically fight the enforcement of laws already on the books which make it illegal to hire illegal immigrants. Take away the economic incentive if you really want to end "illegal" immigration.

Or this: States pass involuntary confinement laws for the most dangerous sexual predators, which are not only probably a violation of civil liberties, but (do not think I have ANYTHING but loathing for sexual predators) ALSO COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY. If we sentenced sexual predators with the severity their crimes deserve, they would never serve the ends of their sentences, and we would never have to resort to locking them up AFTER their sentences are served.

Okay, now, those were some very emotionally powerful examples, and we could talk about those all day. But we are here to talk about firing incompetent teachers. If we just shrug our shoulders at the refusal by administrators to do their duty and truly evaluate teachers, WHY should we give those same people the right to fire any teacher at any time at will? Do we really think that such a sweeping power should be entrusted to people who can't be bothered to come out of their offices and perform one of their primary functions? In fact, isn't that a far more dangerous idea than simply abolishing "tenure?"

As discussed before, "Race to the Top" often requires the use of a flamethrower where a surgical strike would be more apropos. There are a few school districts in my general vicinity who have finally been taken over by the state due to their utter failure to provide educational opportunity for their students. But rather than firing incompetent administrators and teachers, what usually happens is that all of the teachers-- all of them-- are fired, regardless of tenure, and the administrators are retained. The most that may happen is that they are shuffled around to another position in that same failing district. A teacher's real competence does not matter. There must be someone to blame when a school district fails-- and it so much easier- yes, easier!- to fire all of the teachers rather than to realize that just as there are often bad teachers even in good schools, there are also great teachers even in bad schools. But "Race to the Top" does not provide for any such subtlety in thinking, and often, as we see, it is already just accepted that teachers' good evaluations should be dismissed as untrustworthy. You may think, "Well, the good teachers will always find a job." In the most recent case in my area, however, teachers were left in limbo until THIS WEEK to find out that they had been summarily fired, and by now, there are no openings for the coming school year-- except at the schools in which these teachers already taught, of course. And we've already pointed out that the assumption is, if you teach in a poorly performing school, you must be an incompetent teacher. (And they wonder why the most highly qualified teachers often aren't willing to teach in the most high-risk schools? Really? Think, people!)

Finally, "Race to the Top" will not result in having better teachers in the most broken schools. If teachers are going to be held accountable for their students' test scores without any other consideration (such as poverty levels, community support of schools, student willingness to learn or, yes, even tenure) then why would any sane teacher take the risk of going to a school where test scores are going to be abysmal for all of those other reasons listed above? Especially if I wish to teach for my career rather than be an administrator or a policy-wonk? If Michelle Rhee really single-handedly raised her students' test scores so much during her three years in TFA, why didn't she see how heroic it would have been for her to remain in the classroom year after year and perform a true miracle for the thousands of students she should have encountered during a log a fruitful career? She could single-handedly have ENSURED that thousands of children could have been raised out of ignorance and poverty! It would have been a SURE THING. Right?

I will close with a true story. I have actually witnessed the firing of an incompetent teacher on a (very) few occasions in my career. But except in one single case, a part of the deal was that the administrators would provide a neutral recommendation in place of the honest evaluation that should have gone into this person's file. That simply passed the buck on and allowed that person to continue to seek employment in the field of education-- usually in some high-poverty, urban school district that is looking for ANY warm body to fill a slot at some of the most at-risk schools. Which brings us back to the problem of school districts like Chicago. Somewhere, this circle has got to be broken. Shouldn't student needs trump those of adults? Incompetence at both the teacher and administrator level serves the purpose of no one.

Or does it?

What is the point of teacher evaluations?

As a crusty mmmmmph-year veteran of the classroom, I am always amused when it comes time to go through the whole teacher- evaluation sham each year.

Whazzat? Did I just pronounce this tedious process a sham? Why yes, I did.

Here's why: because the administrators have been trained like a set of circus seals tooting wee horns not to write anything actually specific on these forms. Our highest level of evaluation is entitled "meets expectations." Whoa. Glad to know that I am busting my hump and that that "meets expectations." I mean, I have a colleague who actually saved a kid's life by doing artificial resuscitation on the child after collapsing, and what did his evaluation say? "Meets expectations." And sure, I bet we all expect people to attempt to perform CPR on a child if called upon, but really? Couldn't there have been a tiny shout-out in the yearly form for acknowledging that most teachers (thankfully) are NOT called upon to actually breathe life back into a student's body, and so really, she had EXCEEDED expectations at least in this area?

So yeah, there can be no mention of excellent feats we have performed-- like persuading the kid with school phobia to show up every "tomorrow" or raising test scores a full stanine and single-handedly breaking up 2 shouting matches before they became actual fights, and teaching non-stop from thirty minutes before school starts to an hour after school ends and all of the million things we do RIGHT IN FRONT OF ADMINISTRATORS. But they are not to mention these things in our evaluations, because then someone would actually have to pay attention. This timidity on the part of the human resources honchos also explains why I am implacably opposed to merit pay, by the way, because the real teachers of merit tend to go about their business and tend to be too busy to ingratiate themselves to administrators.

And then, there's the other end of the spectrum. Weak teachers also benefit from this spinelessness-- er, I mean, "lack of exactitude"-- because the administrators are uninterested in doing the real work that is required to make sure that they are not sued should they actually attempt to terminate a teacher who is not getting the job done-- like the guy who borrows everyone else's lessons but perks along under the radar because he is pressed and well-dressed at all times and he hangs out in the principal's office during his free time (and frankly, he's got a lot of that). Add the fact that he has administrator certification, so not only does he know how to play the game, but he is also protected by his potential status as a future administrator (and he'll probably make it, too, since like calls to like.)

So here are the darling identical pieces of paper handed to me as my evaluation, all those boxes checked "meets expectations." I am personally thanked, and my administrator really does sound grateful for helping him out by taking care of my own discipline and such-- but we can't put that down in the actual evaluation. I do appreciate him at least being willing to acknowledge me verbally, though.

I also appreciated him telling me that when I started teaching he was eight years old. THAT was special.

But when my records are perused years from now, you will not be able to discern any difference between them and those of most of my colleagues. So really, what's the point? We will all still carry on. Some will work harder than others, some will coast, and the grindstone of evaluation shall not grind either of them differently.

Professional! Abso-friggin'-lutely!

Given that the muckity-mucks in my district think that we should mimic Australia in all things (no offense to Australia-- I would love to visit, and I think Nicole Kidman, Olivia Newton-John, the young and sane Mel Gibson, and Cate Blanchett are just fabulous, although I have a hard time forgiving you for the Wiggles) I thought this was interesting, From Australia:

A "HOON" (definition here) teacher banned for tailgating a school bus, swearing at children and allowing students to stand on tables says he deserves another chance to front a classroom.

Alf Hickey, 36, hopes to overturn a Victorian Institute of Teaching ban through the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Tuesday.

Mr Hickey, a woodwork teacher, was deregistered in February over a long list of bizarre behaviour during a six-month stint at Vermont Secondary College in 2007, the Sunday Herald Sun reports.

A VIT hearing found Mr Hickey turned up 90 minutes late on his first day, left classes unsupervised and said "f---" when yelling at students.

It also found Mr Hickey let students stand on tables in class, did not call in sick when he failed to arrive and tailgated a school bus on a year 9 camp to Phillip Island. Mr Hickey admitted to the Sunday Herald Sun doing "wheelies" in a school car park and that a colleague had called him a "hoon" over his driving on the school camp.

But Mr Hickey said he did not do anything wrong, despite saying at the time there was "so much dust the bus driver could not have seen us".

"If I'm a hoon, they are a bunch of goons," he said.

Mr Hickey said he was "abso-friggin-lutely" a good teacher.

"If you outshine people when you come to a school, people will try to knock you down," he said.

The VIT panel has allowed Mr Hickey to reapply for his registration at any time.

But Mr Hickey said the VCAT action was a separate matter to clear his reputation.

VIT would not comment.

Mr. Hickey thinks his current situation is the result of professional jealousy and backbiting. Okay, uh-huh.

Here in the US, we are so desperate for shop teachers, I imagine that a lot would be overlooked if Mr. Hickey were to come on over. I personally have been stunned by some of the language used by coaches around here toward their players, so I'm not sure that cursing on the job is looked at seriously unless one is unsuccessful in what one does. Not that I'm okay with that, but it's simply a statement of fact.

Here is a man who can't control a classroom. A classroom filled with dangerous equipment. Why is it not obvious that he should be doing something else?

Reciprocity

According to federal law, students have definite privacy rights. However, teachers who work with students are allowed to know information regarding student discipline and behavior. Somehow this second part gets lost a lot among many administrators. I believe that this tendency is extremely counterproductive if not potentially dangerous not just for the teacher involved but for other students.

Case in point: A class was discussing youth law issues, and the school behavior guidelines and district policies regarding the possession of weapons was exhaustively discussed. In the midst of several hypothetical scenarios, a student wanted to know what would happen if, upon coming to school, he realized that he had his weaponry and ammunition from a weekend hunting expedition still within his vehicle upon arriving at school. He (and twenty-two other students in the class) was told that he should approach the school resource officer and immediately let that officer know that weapons had inadvertently been brought to school, and the officer would then secure the weapons so that the student would not potentially face severe consequences for his oversight.

One week later, this same student was caught with weapons upon school property. Oh, and drugs, but that is neither here nor there. His teachers were informed that the young man was suspended but not why.

One week after that, the teacher involved in the discussion was informed about why exactly the young man was suspended. This teacher then informed the assistant principal about the conversation. Here is the assistant principal's response:

"Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?????"

Let's see, because the teacher had no idea why this kid was suspended. Because the AP failed to follow the law. Because the AP treated her staff as if they are not professionals who should be kept informed because she didn't trust them as professionals. Because if teachers reported every single conversation held in class, nothing else would ever get done. Because there is obviously an adversarial situation being created by the AP in regard to her staff, rather than a cooperative one.

Credit the teacher with gently pointing this out.

By the way, this same teacher was berated by another AP for not disclosing that a kid who lives in the teacher's neighborhood who was suspended was thrown a party by her mother in celebration of said suspension.

Until school administration works with the teachers rather than against the teachers, the school will never function well. Administrators need to value teachers as colleagues and acknowledge that teachers spend far more time during the day with the students and have all kinds of knowledge that could be a resource for the administrators in the effective discharge of their duties.

It just requires reciprocity and respect.

Teaching in Cali (and everywhere): Not really a surprise

New teachers in California have a rough time feeling that they can really sustain a decent life while in the profession:

Teachers stifled by bureaucracy and blocked from making decisions in their own classrooms are leaving teaching in droves, according to a new study by Cal State University's Teacher Quality Institute.

Nearly 22 percent of California teachers leave teaching after four years, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. With this type of exodus, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning projects a 33,000-teacher shortage in California by 2015.

At high-poverty schools, one in 10 teachers leaves each year, either for a different campus or a new occupation entirely.
"It's students from our most challenging schools who suffer the most," said Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of schools. "We really do have a revolving door."

The 1,900 teachers surveyed by the institute said they left mainly because of the endless amounts of paperwork, constant interruptions and fruitless meetings that take time away from actual instruction, said Ken Futernick, principal author of the study and director of K-12 Studies at the institute.

"Those kind of things aren't just driving people crazy, they are driving teachers out of the classroom," Futernick said.
Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Association, said the study echoed the union's concerns.

"We need to have more say at the local level. We have bureaucratic-ed ourselves to death," Kerr said. "Teachers are feeling like they're not able to use the knowledge they have."

Read the whole thing. And there's more here.

It seems like a lot of people running school districts around the country seem to have a scornful attitude toward the teachers who do the work that schools are there to do. When administrators denigrate and devalue teachers, student and parent attitudes will follow. Then administrators wonder why the discipline in the school has become so unmanageable.

Like it or not, the way our capitalist society demonstrates the value it places upon one's work is directly related to the salary one can earn doing that work. Our culture claims to care about children, and yet we pay the people who work with them, educate them, and care for them a fragment of what other professions may attain. And when more tasks are piled upon you with no compensation, that actually equals a pay cut-- further eroding the value of teaching.

I guess the situation won't resolve itself until they can't find any warm bodies to throw into the classrooms of America.

Teacher tricks number 2: Bias: like a liver, everyone's got one

I got the nicest complement from several of my students today. They said that they thought I was the least-biased teacher in the social studies department.

I was honestly touched. They're wrong of course, but I still was touched. Bear with me, now, while I explain.

A few weeks ago, I was called into another class where a discussion was going on regarding teacher bias. The sub in the class was a retired colleague of mine who adores stirring things up. He excels at classes that are dependent upon discussion, and then he probes and challenges students' assumptions and knee-jerk reactions. They may get heated up at first, but later they realize that they have been forced to actually consider their positions. It's an ancient teaching technique-- I believe a fellow named Socrates (pronounced "Sock-rat-ees," NOT "Sow-krayts," if you please) was a master at it back in the day, REALLY "Old-School." Of course, this teaching method did not end happily for him, which is why I personally do not believe it to be a wise way to conduct one's business, but to each his or her own, I always say. At least the students in the class couldn't get their hands on any hemlock anytime soon, so I guess my friend is safe, at least for the time being.

Anyway, the kids in that class asked if teachers should be biased. I answered that that was not the correct question. The correct question should be, "Should teachers force their biases upon their students?" And my answer is "Absolutely NOT."

Here's the thing: back at the turn of the century, many historians believed they could write objective history and strip all agendas or biases from their work. Just the facts, Ma'am. The Sergeant Joe Friday school of historicism.

One of my young colleagues walked by, and they asked him the same thing. "Teachers should not reveal their biases in the classroom," he opined (see?). "I keep my opinions to myself when I teach."

Those Progressive historians (and my young friend) were kidding themselves. Everyone is biased. One's biases and preferences inform a thousand small decisions one makes every day. There is no such thing as a non-biased person. I am sure MYF doesn't realize it-- because he honestly believes that he doesn't opine while in front of a class full of semi-eager young minds.

But he does.

The KEY is to recognize one's own biases, and compensate for them so that one presents a balanced picture to allow one's students to truly examine what they do or do not believe, and evaluate for themselves. I know my biases, and I know my tendencies. I deliberately and continuously labor to compensate for them when I am teaching. It helps that I hold mostly moderate view-- which doesn't mean I don't have opinions (Hahahaha! That's a laugh!), it just means that I decide different issues upon their own merit rather than through slavish adherence to some overarching, externally imposed label. For instance, I am certainly opposed to illegal immigration, but I'm not an advocate of slamming the torch of Lady Liberty across the harbor, either, as long as people follow the law. We all came here from somewhere else, after all. But illegal immigration depresses wages and allows the illegal immigrants to be unable to demand equitable treatment from their employers.

But when we discuss immigration in class, I present both sides of the argument. I don't pretend there isn't an argument, however-- that's ridiculous. The two sides of every story don't need to be sensationalized: just present them, answer any questions the kids have, and get out of the way and let the students think about it for themselves.

So, yes, it is important to me that I never try to present just one side of the story. But it's dishonest not to continually examine yourself, whether liberal, moderate, or conservative, and make sure you are really being "fair and balanced" in the classroom.

This will keep me off the blog list of NEA Today forever....

...but I'm going to do it anyway. It is time to speak out.

Incompetent teachers should be fired. No ifs, ands, or buts.

I was reading the debate about proposition 74 in California, which comes up for a vote soon. Prop 74 would, among other things, increase the amount of time necessary to gain tenure as a public school teacher to five years from the current two years. But increasing the lagtime for tenure is only one tiny piece of the puzzle. Unspoken is the fact that those teachers were hired by someone, observed by someone (supposedly), and rehired by someone. Bad teachers do not pop out of nowhere. I don't see laws addressing these facts. Instead, I see yet another attempt to demonize teachers, while leaving untouched the larger issue of making teaching an honored and valued profession.

I'll say it again: incompetent teachers should be fired. However, I hope people understand that simply raising the years until teachers get tenure will hardly end incompetent teachers in the classroom.

First of all, the hiring process needs never to be based on nepotism and cronyism. I remember well sitting in a human resources office in a chichi district, listening to the director talk about how he was going to hire the son of so-and-so for this spot-- then he tried to hire me as a $12K a year assistant so that I could hold the hand of Junior. One of the most incompetent teachers I know was hired because he was a graduate of the high school at which I taught. And he's still teaching.

Second, teachers need to be evaluated by someone who knows what to look for in establishing judgments of competence and incompetence. This means that administrators should get out of their offices and be cognizant of what is going on in the classrooms. If they are too busy to do this-- which would seem the most important job of all-- then work should be reassigned so that administrators can do this. This should be their primary job, not number-crunching or stating the obvious ("There's an achievement gap!"). If administrators did this, it wouldn't matter how long it took to get tenure-- because they would know what's going on.

If there is a problem, they need to provide feedback and guidance to give the teach a chance to improve. They need to have the knowledge and experience to be able to provide this feedback and guidance. They need to amass documentation to use in getting rid of the deadwood. I knew an AP who falsified observations for 4 years-- she hadn't been in a classroom to observe since Clinton's first term. And it took the other administrators 6 years to figure this out. Might I point out that that is more than the amount of time it would take to get tenure under Proposition 74?

But you don't hear about passing laws forbidding these types of practices-- because it doesn't make teachers look bad, it makes administrators look bad. It doesn't allow the continued myth that there are a multitude of rotten teachers in our schools.

If a teacher is fired, they should not be given a good recommendation to go quietly just to make things nicey-nicey legally-- that just passes on the problem to some other school district, and betrays our sacred trust. And as Redhog says in his post of October 28, teaching IS a sacred trust.

We teachers have our part to play in this. We must not remain quiet when we see a problem. We must be able to trust that if we report a problem, it will be acted upon. School districts and teachers must demonstrate the will to get rid of bad teachers-- we know who they are. There's not a lot of them, but there are some. We need to understand that we teachers have an investment in this-- after all, the guy who reads the paper every day instead of teaching may well be the administrator of tomorrow.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up-- IEP horror stories

So my district didn't make AYP, partly due to the scores of IEP students in communication arts.

Whoa, big surprise there!

For instance, there was Ringo*, whose IEP said that ANY work he turned in should be counted as extra credit. Not regular credit, EXTRA credit. But I never had to actually enforce this provision, since he never wrote anything that I saw-- unless the lyrics to Marilyn Manson's alleged "song" "Tea and Sympathy" counts. By the way, his mother tried to hand me work of his-- in her handwriting-- in the local grocery store while I was shopping-- she said she saw me go in and went back out to her car to get it for me. STG!

Then there was George*, whose IEP decreed that a 5' by 5' enclosure be constructed in the classroom for him to retreat to should he become overstressed. This was not the first time I'd seen this legally required remedy, by the way. A couple of years back, all the classes that Petula* attended had to have a study carel for her to sit in to minimize distractions for her, which wouldn't have rankled so much if I hadn't been trying to shoehorn 29 other distractions-- oops, I mean students-- into that same small room.

John*'s IEP was about 15 pages long but he was remarkably successful both in class and emotionally, with a B plus average, a sweet sense of humor--until his parents decided they wanted to send him to a private school, but they didn't want to pay for it. So they took him off all his prescriptions and changed therapists (the week before testing, although that's not the most important thing here.) He became deeply depressed, curled himself into a ball under his desk, couldn't sit still, and started scratching at his cuticles until they bled copiously and constantly picking his nose. When the school began calling the parents with our concerns, the parents filed suit to force the school district to pay John*'s tuition to the private school, alleging that we were maliciously failing to meet his needs under IDEA. And because of NCLB, the poor kid still had to test, and I got to sit in a room with him for four hours a day for two weeks (while a sub tested the rest of my students) and try to entice him with the liberal use of chocolate payoffs to finish the damn tests while he wanted to tell me about the bugs crawling beneath his skin and how his dead grandmother came to visit him in the night.

Paul*'s IEP stated that he could not be in the hallway during passing time-- we found out it was because he had a distressing but entrenched habit of shoving smaller kids (and since he was six feet tall in the 6th grade, that was most of them) headfirst into trashcans. So the IEP ordained that I was to walk him down two flights of stairs to his next class after the next class period had started. This, by the way, meant that I was to leave the 25 kids in my next hour class unsupervised (and, by the way, not receiving instruction) for five minutes each day.

But, hey-- the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, right? Isn't that what IEPs have gotten to be all about?

Mick* was a great kid whose IEP stated that he was to take all quizzes and tests in the resource room. He came back with a quiz that he got a 92 on-- but in class, he volunteered the wrong answers to the very same material. So asked him to take the quiz again at the end of class-- and he got a 7. Percent. It was interesting to see how fast his caseworker ran to my room to try to explain what had happened after school that day. He averaged about 75% on work he did in class, and he worked hard. Y'know, if she'd just have given him the answers to 70% of the quiz, she probably would have gotten away with it.

By the by--Almost as bad are the forty or so kids I've had over the last few years who are doing great, have high GPAs, who refuse to receive any minutes of service from a special ed teacher, and whose parents openly admit that they have kept them under the terms of an IEP solely so that they can get extra time to boost their scores on the ACT and the SAT, not to mention the six AP tests they take each year. How is this not cheating? But it's okay, because at least their scores help raise the chances of us meeting AYP for students receiving special ed services.

And this is just the tip of the ol' iceberg, baby. I'm sure there are a million more stories in the naked city. We are required by law-- remember education is a right, not a privilege or a responsibility-- to take ALL comers. Kids with FAS. Kids with mental disabilities. Kids who used to have behaviors labelled BD, but God only knows what the latest euphemism is for it, because I can't keep up and they keep changing the name for the syndrome every month until it's gotten to be like the judge's famous definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it."

And by 2010, all of these kids are supposed to be performing at grade level on a standardized test with forty-two constructed response items. Yeah, right.

So I just have ONE question for Rod and now Margaret and George:

HOW?

*- names have been changed to protect the innocent, although I should out the idiots who wrote the IEPs-- but I won't.

Back in the saddle again....

School’s – Back – in—Session!!! BAH BababaBAH bababaBAH bababaBWABWAH!

All Apologies to Alice Cooper (and Kurt Cobain), but we’re back in it.

I have accomplished everything on my to-do list, making sure I got to:

1. Justify my teaching bona fides to administrator who taught for an amount of time just longer than it took Han Solo to program the jump to lightspeed? CHECK.

2. Humiliate myself in front of all my colleagues and district employees in school-year kickoff skit? CHECK. (If only laughing your butt off actually worked….)

3. Made sure I got punished for being able to get through last year without being screamed at by last year’s sensitive-and-misunderstood boy by being given his two siblings since I “seem to be able to work with the family?” CHECK.

4. Spent tons of money on supplies for my classroom because we each get only $70 and we don’t get paid for four weeks? CHECK.

5. Got the news that our district didn’t make AYP because of kids with IEPs and communication arts—like that is a surprise when you’ve got IEPs that NEVER attempt to move kids toward meeting the standard of writing on grade level? CHECK.

6. Found out that during the summer, the tech staff arbitrarily changed all of our passwords to the school server to make us not use the default (who ARE these people??) and now have to deal with the fact that we are only able to change the new default passwords on machines that run an operating system that none of us have? CHECK.

Ahhhh, yes. Glad to be back!

That's MRS. Old School to you

So I wandered on back to the ol’ schoolhouse to check my mail and see if my AP scores were in. And there was a copy of some new rules/procedures for the upcoming hitch. One that caught my eye was a clarification of our new definition of gang activity.

I am stunned. I didn’t know it before, but apparently I and my fellow teachers actually belong to a gang, which is defined as two or more individuals who:

- Create a climate of fear and intimidation within the community/school. The power to write referrals or use a red pen is the power to destroy. Some are better at this than others.

-Claim a neighborhood or geographical territory. Well let's see.... There's the social studies wing, the math wing, the science wing, the counselor's office, the business wing, and so on. And we are territorial about it.

-Wear distinctive types of clothing or exhibit distinctive appearance. We're got the special staff oxford shirts, we've got the wrinkles and the bags under our eyes, and for the most part, our pants aren't sagging off our butts (if they are, it's an anatomical oddity, not a fashion statement) which certainly makes us stand out from the kids.

-Use a name, a common identifying sign or symbol, or has an identifiable leadership. Teachers take turns sitting on the BLT (Building Leadership Team), practically all of us carry coffee cups for survival, and everyone knows the principals.

-Have a high rate of interaction among members to the exclusion of other groups. Ever taken a spouse or a date to a staff get-together? Do they have the slightest idea what we talk about? Do they care?

- Communicate in a peculiar or unique style. Repeat after me: drop, overfill, paradigm shift, authentic assessment, performance assessment, differentiated instruction, Fry Readability Graph, graphic organizer, IEP, ISS, 504, IDEA, NCLB, K-W-L, LEP, multiple intelligences, Howard Gardner, assertive discipline, Family Math, manipulatives, textual intelligence, fishbowl, diamante, cooperative learning, normed score, standard deviation, site council, sheltered English, Title I, differently abled....

Yep. We got 'em all. We're a gang. And now that I think about it, let's look at the last descriptor, which I was willing to give ourselves a break on:

- Commit criminal acts (including violence, drug use or distribution, and acts of intimidation) or exhibit antisocial behavior on a regular basis. Well, I would hope that most of us were not committing criminal acts, but it’s that second part that gets you. Is valium or extra-strength Tylenol really a drug, or is each merely a survival tool? Antisocial? Talk to me when the February doldrums roll around, and everyone is suffering from seasonal affective disorder, or during last minute cramming for NCLB-mandated tests....

Just something to think about. Happy end of summer!

Are Middle Schools bad for kids?

Yes and no. Middle schools aren't-- the "Middle School Philosophy," worshipped unquestioningly, definitely is.

What brought up this question is the article in Time magazine's Being 13 special edition. Sez that several districts across the country are switching to K-8 schools--of course, to raise test scores as one of the main reasons.

I spent more than a decade teaching 13 and 14-year-old kids. I taught in a K-8 parochial school and in a public middle school. Here's what I saw:

If a student had a "failing" grade-- not that that meant anything, since there was no retention-- even after you had mentored and encouraged and voluntarily stayed after school with them on your own dime to tutor them, after you had sent notes home to the parents, after you had repeatedly called the parents (keeping a log of the discussions if you knew what was good for you), after you had spoken to parents in face-to-face conferences, after you had taken countless late assignments and given them six more copies of every paper they ever lost and given them four textbooks since they lost those too (and you knew those books were gone forever because you weren't allowed to charge the kid for the lost books but you had no money to order new ones)-- at the end of the year, you were asked what more you, the teacher, could have done.

With a straight face.

By an administrator who either spent two years in a classroom or who last stood in front of a class 25 years ago. If you said "Nothing"-- which was safer than sarcastically making a remark related to doing their work for them or wiping their "noses"-- then the kids were socially promoted. If you actually could think of something else you could have done-- I had one colleague who actually went to one kid's house and woke him up in the morning, fercryinoutloud-- then the kid was promoted to the next grade because it was really the teacher's failure, not the responsibility of the kid.

It is completely verboten to consider that perhaps the student had some part to play in this drama. By consistently demonstrating no concern with learning, the student learned nothing. And even when she is passed along to the next grade, she still has not learned that material. Which might be useful as a building block for learning in the next grade. And the next.

Not to mention that the student HAS learned that he is a passive player in their own education-- which is the most dangerous lesson you can teach someone.

All in the name of an alleged "Middle School Philosophy" which spurns intellectual rigor and academic achievement in favor of "affective development" and -- my favorite-- "self-esteem."

I say that in today's society, kids don't have three years to spin their wheels intellectually while educators focus on helping them love themselves. Many kids love themselves so much right now that they brook no thought that they could do better and they have no shame when doing wrong.

We have created and celebrated a culture of adolescence in modern society which always tries to make things come easy-- which means nothing. Adolescence is a very recent concept, really developed only in the last few decades. It is no coincidence that bar and bat mitzvah and confirmation-- rites of passage into responsibility and the beginning of the path to adulthood-- have been traditionally scheduled for millennia at or about the age of thirteen. Middle schools infantilize students at the expense of their education. Young people should be transitioning into being responsible for their actions, not being cocooned from every pitfall.

Middle schools and their adherents demonstrate their lack of faith in students to learn. They assume that kids can't do it by coming up with the hit-parade of excuses. Guess what? If you have real rapport with your kids, when you talk to them they will cop to the fact that they didn't work hard enough, and that they deserve their grade.

Although it would be easier if I didn't, I fiercely love my students. I am such a sap that when I see those "Eureka!" moments with my kids, or when I get hugged by gawky former students, I get tears in my eyes. Really. It's very embarrassing. And the kids know I love them when I demand their best effort, nothing less.

I manifest that love by expecting them to learn-- to read, write, contemplate, to wrestle with ideas like Abraham wrestling with the angels. Letting them off easy is, unfortunately, the middle school way. And it's not working.

Failure by any other name...

I love to read the news; in fact, I'm a news junkie. Friends of mine know this and send me little snippets they think I'll like. So I'm sure many of you have seen this one lately (July 28, 2005).

According to the Guardian newspaper, it seems a retired teacher in the Professional Association of Teachers in the U.K. recently put forward a motion that would "delete the word 'failure' from the education vocabulary and replace it with the concept of 'deferred success.'"

Said Liz Beattie, sponsor of the resolution: "I feel very strongly about this. For most of my teaching career I have been upset by seeing some children give up on themselves. If dropping the word 'fail' from our educational vocabulary could help, isn't it worth a try?"

Let's try this out, shall we, and see if it works:

The Boston Red Sox baseball team's delayed success in the World Series endured for eighty-eight years and was attributed to the "Curse of the Bambino."

What we have here is... delayed success to communicate!

If only we could fix everything by just making words go away... no, wait! Isn't decreasing one's vocabulary a BAD thing for educators to do?

But then again, what a fabulously Orwellian concept, one that Winston Smith's superiors in the Ministry of Truth would love! If we have no word for failure, then it won't occur! Right?

Right?

Here's the problem. No matter what we as teachers try, some students are going to fail. No matter how we try to paper over the lack of attainment of skills or knowledge, most of the students know they've failed, too. Grown up people-- teachers, coaches, principals, parents-- who try to duck the pronouncement at the moment of truth are doing the kids no favors. First of all, the kids know you're not being honest with them, and secondly, deep in their hearts, they don't appreciate it, either. Once you start down the dark path of euphemisms, kids know they can't trust you to give an honest assessment.

And that's what grades are or should be-- an assessment. Not a lifetime sentence. Not an identity. Unless, of course, you keep excusing away the failures as they pile up. What about the kid who buys your load of tripe, and thinks that nothing is wrong? Eventually, the lesson, the unit, the semester, the school year will end. Eventually, the students will expect to be able to go to the next lesson, the next unit, the next semester, the next grade, or eventually out in the world and do something with the knowledge they are supposed to have attained. Will they be able to do it?

Think of it, to twist the words of Pink Floyd, as a wall. Together, teachers and students are trying to build a wall of skills, knowledge, and facts that is going to have to support students' endeavors and aspirations after graduation. Honest assessments lead to the chance to correct flaws and mistakes before they become crippling weaknesses in that wall, before they pile atop each other. Students who face and recognize their failures get a chance to mend their failures. But what happens if students are allowed to stumble blithely on? Riddled with gaps and holes and in some cases yawning chasms where knowledge and skills should be, will their education collapse under the weight of ignorance at the first challenge?

In our frenzied quest to enhance "self-esteem," we are teaching our kids that it is okay not to do your best; it's okay not to get it right. We are taking away that inner sense of disappointment that encourages us to get it right the next time, and so there is no "next time." What kind of education are we giving our students if they are not held accountable for ever learning material that they have failed to attain previously?

By excusing or obviating failure, we are saying that we don't believe in our students. We are saying that we don't believe them CAPABLE of learning. We are saying we don't believe they can do better. And no matter how much people like Ms. Beatty think they are demonstrating their advocacy for children, by wanting to protect them from sometimes harsh truths, really all they are doing is ensuring that the failures will continue.

Oh, by the way, the motion to do away with the word "failure" itself-- failed to pass! Let's hope that this notion doesn't experience any "delayed success" any time soon.