is the title of this widely distributed blog post by Joe Nathan, Director of the Center for School Change at Macalaster College in St. Paul, MN. He begins by writing
I was stunned. There were more than 36 million responses to a Google search for the phrase “teachers get no respect.” At the same time, a respected national poll shows widespread respect for teachers. And given the chance to reduce their taxes, thousands of Minnesota voters instead responded, “yes” to maintaining or increasing their tax levels.
(Nathan feels that most Americans respect teachers, but that perhaps some teachers do not respect parents.) Yet despite the the data which shows strong national support for teachers, many teachers increasingly express their frustration that they, their profession, and the work they do is not respected. Nathan responds to this by writing
Let’s acknowledge several things:
- Creative, effective teachers deserve all the praise we can offer.
- Teaching can be very demanding and difficult.
- Some politicians, parents, journalists and others criticize teachers in ways that seem unfair.
I suggest you consider reading Nathan's entire piece before proceeding, so that what I write in response, at the suggestion of several people who know both Nathan's work and mine, will make more sense.
Let me set the frame in which I response by noting the following
1. I am well aware of the data Nathan cites, particularly that from the annual Phi Delta Kappan poll, which shows strong American support for teachers
2. I agree that there are some teachers who do not respect parents and students - were it up to me, I would counsel them out of teaching, but there are not as many as some critics would have us believe.
3. the level of criticism towards teachers has, despite the poll data, increased greatly in the past few years, in a way that not merely devalues and demoralizes teachers, but also weakens public education
4. the generally accepted ideas about "reform" in education are contributing to a devaluing of teachers and teaching
5. this is the result of organized and deliberate efforts, some intended to have such effects, others of which that seem willfully blind to the effects they are causing.
I invite you to keep reading
1. the data - if asked in isolation most Americans will express sentiments supportive of teachers. But many do not directly express that support in a way that makes teachers aware of their attitudes. Those attitudes are not reflected in how educational policy is being made, certainly at a national level or in increasing numbers of states, sometimes not even at the level of the school system or the individual school. Thus perhaps those few teachers who read the surveys that offer the supportive data can gain some solace, but for the vast majority their experience is rather one of criticism and lack of support. This is in part because as noteworthy as the data is, the regular media rarely features it - or even mentions it - while trumpeting the latest data that seems to imply all of American education is broken.
2. Nathan's remarks about some teachers not respecting parents is almost irrelevant to the main thrust of his article. Those remarks seem almost included as to prove that he is offering a balanced response. In fact, the number is not all that great, except in situations where an atmosphere of hostility has been deliberately fomented and/or allowed to continue. The danger of such remarks is that some will seize on his words in an attempt to "prove" that teachers are the major problem in schools (which they are not). Remember this, teachers have little control over the hiring or firing of other teachers. That there are those who should not be teaching? We would all acknowledge that. Some are there because they have been certified, and legislation gives the school a higher rating for an incompetent or destructive fully certified teacher over one who is more skilled and/or caring but not fully certified. One last point on this - please don't raise the straw man about teachers unions being the obstacle, since their primary function is equivalent to what the Bill of Rights does for the American people in the criminal justice system - ensure that those subject to accusation are afforded full due process.
3. Despite the data from the Phi Delta Kappan poll, which shows increasing support of teachers, the meme most of us experience is the increasing criticism of teachers and teaching. We can see this in several way. First, there was "Waiting for Superman" which attempted to make heroes of the likes of Geoffrey Canada and Michelle Rhee while demonizing those who disagreed, for example, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers. Second, the "reformers" have falsely argued that the greatest impact on student learning is teachers, and people in general have begun to accept that, even though the data makes clear that while teachers are the greatest in school factor, teacher and school effects are still dwarfed by the impact of family and community. Third, the unfortunate runaway freight train pushed by Race to the Top is demeaning teachers and teachers by requiring that a significant portion of their evaluation be tied to student performance on external tests. This pressures teachers to the less effective strategy of teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, and turning students off to learning. There is no data to support that such an approach works. In fact, the earlier generation of tests imposed as a result of A Nation at Risk and Goals 2000 are part of the reason that our academic performance has in some places deteriorated and students have become resistant to the dullness of the education they are receiving. It is interesting that on the one hand we have 'reformers' pushing their agenda on the basis of international comparisons, yet on the other they ignore how different what they are doing is compared to those nations that perform well on international tests, such as Finland, who take an entirely different approach to teaching and testing.
4. I have touched on how "reform" is devaluing teachers and teaching. We see programs like Teach for America, which provides their cohorts with only 5 weeks of preparation and where most of their candidates are not committing to education for the long term. The clear implication is that if you are bright enough and from the right college you will be a better teacher than someone who has gone through a more traditional and complete teacher preparation program. I am not arguing that how we prepare teachers cannot be drastically improved - that is a subject i continue to address on regular basis not merely by writing, but also in serving as a mentor to student teachers, in advising policy makers and people in university settings of some of the issues I think need to be addressed. But it is worse than merely the lack of preparedness of TFA "teachers." Too many of the seem to think that their two years in a classroom makes them experts - they then move on to policy positions, which further distorts the policy about schools, teachers, and teaching. What is missing in most of the "reform" approach is important voices, starting with those of teachers, but also, and this relates to the second point, those of parents. I will return to this. For now let me also note one other thing - much of the "reform" agenda is hostile towards teachers and especially their unions. Those advocating such an approach want to limit the flexibility of individual teachers, impose standardized approaches driven by tests, remove job protections for teachers (often by breaking their unions). They claim data that supports their approaches, although often the studies they cite are not peer-reviewed, or are seriously flawed, while they ignore or belittle the research that demonstrates the problems with the approaches they advocate. It is interesting to note two things about such reformers - first, many of them have little or no experience of the reality of classroom teaching, and second, those that have children will rarely have them in schools that are subject to the kinds of "reforms" they want to impose on the children of the rest of America.
5. What we are seeing is deliberate, and definitely organized. One can look at the money behind promoting "Waiting for Superman" as just one example. If one examines the funding of much of the "reform" movement in education, one finds many of the same foundations involved again and again, the likes of the Walton Family Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and so on, what Diane Ravitch has appropriate labeled the Billionaire Boys Club. That is not to say that all of the initiatives supported by such foundations are necessarily wrong: the Gates Foundation occasionally supports some positive things, but even a blind squirrel can find the occasional acorn, and a stopped clock is right twice daily. What is of greater weight is that such foundations often either start with preconceived notions, or else grab what might be a good idea and then push it without understanding how it should be done, in the process poisoning the public for an appropriate implementation of what could be a good approach. In the latter case, the Gates Foundation poured tons of money into their small schools initiative, without paying attention to the careful work that had been done by the longtime advocates of such an approach. Gates finally admitted their approach had not achieved the success they had expect and began pulling the plug, in the process further disrupting schools that had been drawn in to the approach.
But these are not the worst. There are those who view teachers and their unions as political obstacles to be eliminated by any means possible. They may say so directly, or they may take an indirect approach such as loosening certification requirements (in this regard, there are multiple on-line alternative certification programs just in Texas), or attempting to eliminate any collective bargaining for teachers (Wisconsin), empowering administrators to break previously negotiated union contracts, or expanding (often with little or no oversight as to quality) charters while freeing them from any labor agreements in effect in the public system, thus empowering principals of such charters to have absolute control over their teaching staff, even if they do not know anything about teaching.
Yet even that is not the worse. There are groups that are outright hostile to public schools. There are other groups that want to profit from the tax dollars in public education, by selling canned curricula, tests, etc.
VOICES - I said I would return to this issue. If one looks at the voices that have been driving much of the 'reform' effort one sees economists, think tanks, politicians, testing companies, certain non-profits that have inserted themselves into the educational discussion. What one rarely sees or hears about is the voices of either parents or of teachers. Yes, the two national teachers unions are occasionally part of the mix, but as often as not as whipping boys. Besides, even those of us who are active in the unions (I am the lead union rep for 114 other unionized teachers in my building, and am in regular communication with the leadership of both NEA and AFT as the result of my visibility online) do not think that they speak for us on all issues. Why is it that the first phase of the creation of the Common Core State Standards included think tanks and the like but not the relevant professional organizations such as the International Reading Association or the National Councils of Teachers of English?
It is good that some school boards, state and local, now include student representatives who may not vote on personnel matters, but ensure that the concerns of students are at least considered. I have had students who have been the student members of both our local school board and our state school board. I know of no school board that has, even as an advisory member, a representative of teachers.
Heck, even the U. S. Department of Education has its Teacher Ambassadors, some full time for a year some remaining based in their classrooms, who serve to ensure that the perspective of the classroom teacher is included in the shaping of policy. To be sure, it is included but perhaps not always heard.
Teaching should be a profession. It will not be seen as such unless teachers have more control over the definition of their work. Other professions have some say over who gets admitted and who can be dismissed. By and large teachers don't. If we say it is sufficient to have 5 weeks of training and no supervised teaching experience and yet be considered "highly qualified" even if the subject one is teaching is one for which one lacks the requisite background, then we effectively say that teaching is not a profession. If we continue the spread of canned curricula, things that have rigid pacing guides and lesson plans that are to be followed exactly, we are saying that we do not need a skilled person to deliver them, just the equivalent of a worker on an assembly line doing rote work. I might mention that such an approach is far more than destructive of teaching as a profession, it is also demeaning of the students who are the targets of that approach, ignoring their individual needs and interests.
I am a teacher. I am one by choice, having left a more lucrative field (data processing) that required far less effort and time for far greater pay. In America we unfortunately tend to value people either by visible rank (how many stars do you have, General?) or more frequently by how much money they make. Thus those who make a great deal, even if in the process they are destroying the economy for many of the rest of us (hedge fund managers, anyone?) perhaps cannot be criticized for thinking that their wealth entitles them to make decisions about things they do not understand, such as schools, teachers and teaching.
IF we really respect teachers, we would reexamine why it is that to make good money one has to leave the classroom and become an administrator. We would value teaching enough that people with families would not feel that economic pressure.
If our society truly respects teachers, perhaps those who are responsible for interpreting policy to the rest of us, the media, would be more open to including the voices of teachers. I do not mean merely having one town hall meeting as part of the first Education Nation at NBC, but having teachers as parts of the panels - as I noted at the time, the panels had people from groups that were profiting from education, but basically no actual teachers.
I don't want people to think that I am rejecting all of what Joe Nathan wrote. It is important to thank teachers. Just as it is important for those of us in the classroom to thank parents and- yes - students. I ask a lot of my students, and sometimes what I ask is a challenge for them. I thank them for trusting me and trying even when they do not fully understand what it is I am asking of them, or why.
I am luckier than most teachers. I have great flexibility in how I teach. I regularly receive thanks for what I do from students, parents, administrators and the community. Compared to some teachers around the nation, I am paid decently (albeit no where close to what I could with my skill set make in the private sector).
But I also see what is happening to the teaching profession, and am concerned, or at times even appalled. It is one reason I continue to speak out and write about such issues.
My response is much longer than Joe Nathan's brief post. I respect Joe's commitment to public schools and public school students AND TEACHERS. He has a lifetime of work that demonstrates that commitment. In writing this response I am not criticizing Joe personally. Please understand that.
We do need to rethink American education. Hell, I have been writing about there here at Daily Kos for more than 7 years. But we will not fix the things we need to fix either by focusing solely on schools and teachers - our increasing economic inequity is a major contribution to the problems of our schools - or by excluding the voices of professional teachers - and also parents - from the conversation.
Thanks for reading.