School Information System: The Key To Saving American Education: Retrain or Replace Teachers?

March 14, 2010

The Key To Saving American Education: Retrain or Replace Teachers?

I'm excited for the opportunity to "debate." The term violates my traditional sensibilities, but I'll try to get over it. What resolution should we discuss? Resolved: "The problem with education is teachers," as one online headline for your story read. Resolved: "The best way to deal with underperforming teachers is to fire them." Resolved: "Much of the ability to teach is innate," as the lead story in your package declares.

My reporting for The New York Times Magazine turned up counter-arguments to each of these declarations. But it also turned up many facts that appear in your story. Here are some premises we can probably agree on: The quality of teaching plays a major role in determining whether children learn. An upsetting number of teachers are not helping children learn as much as we want them to. A smaller group of teachers are actively impeding learning. It is insanely difficult to fire these bad teachers, and the teaching profession at large is an insanely isolated one in which it is not unusual for the only people who ever observe the professional at work to be 9 years old.

That said, the overwhelming conclusion of my reporting is that efforts to change this picture must go beyond simply firing the lowest performers. One reason is just plain money. Firing employees--in many professions, not just teaching--brings a lot of legal hurdles and therefore costs a lot of money. The bill is especially high for firing teachers; to fire underperforming teachers in New York City, Chancellor Joel Klein invested $1 million a year in a fleet of fancy attorneys tasked solely with this responsibility. In the two years the project has gone on so far, the city only fired three teachers charged with incompetence.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 14, 2010 2:18 AM
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When will the media wake up and realize that we have mini Bernie Madoff's running our schools and that the bad teaching is what deflects that they are mini Bernie Madoff's and makes you trust them? They create an atmosphere that promotes bad teaching and that punishes principled and talented teachers so the public will direct its anger at the teachers, not them, the thieves at the top. They dupe the public this way just as good ole Bernie duped the public with phony reports. Those of us insiders call what is going on "White Chalk Crime," white collar crime that is unique to education. Part of what it includes is the use of bad teaching to hide their embezzling and other dastardly deeds behind. Just ask those of us award winning teachers who were cleansed from the system behind the public's back! Teacher abuse is their core tool; they have teachers so terrorized you won't hear this from anyone wanting or needing to work!

Could our society be so foolish to debate bad teaching as if those in charge have little or nothing to do with it? Unfortunately, the answer is yes because as Harry Markopolos said in his book about how he tried to report Bernie Madoff for ten years, "No One Listened," NO ONE LISTENED. Try listening to us at EndTeacherAbuse.org and become educated so you can get our schools out of the hands of those needing political playing teachers who look the other way as they follow orders detrimental to children and put our schools back into the hands of those really wanting to educate our children. Look at the hands in control. There lies your answer! Read about Joel Klein in White Chalk Crime: The REAL Reason Schools Fail; there are 17 pages detailing his involvement with White Chalk Crime, which includes paying millions to hold dedicated teachers in a Gitmo like room, the rubber room, to pretend teachers are the problem.

Wake up folks. Our children's futures and the future of this nation is at stake! The solution is following this trail of White Chalk Crime and putting real educators in the place of the mini Bernie Madoff greedy thugs. For the most part, the teacher are simply following orders to be bad as selling one's soul and following in lockstep is the only choice if they want to remain employed. And the rest of them are so disgusted that they are trapped in this evil system, they have lost their spirit to teach. Yes, there are some who cannot teach well, but very few who would not blossom once we lift this veil of White Chalk Crime that has destroyed their ability to really teach. The key to saving American education is listening to the whistleblowers who up until now could blow their whistles only into a well constructed vacuum constructed by these thieves and kept in place by a media that for some reason has totally failed us. This is a vacuum vaster than the one constructed by those trying to hide what the priests were doing to boys for thirty year! We are ready and able to hand you the key. Just come to EndTeacherAbuse.org and request it. Our testimony will astound you. It will give the public its schools back.

Posted by: Karen Horwitz at March 14, 2010 8:47 PM

Ms Horwitz got it right! The evidence is there. Where have all the wonderful teachers gone? Answer: they were pushed out by the thousands, and in the most egregious manner, deprived of their right to due process in a way that no minority would tolerate. Principals run schools in too many places, as their private fiefdom, and they have broken the law so many times, that they have come to believe they are the law.

While the public blames the unions for supporting the bad teachers, the truth is that the unions have sold out the senior teachers, the mentors and let the administrations accuse, condemn and fire them.

The top tier of schools systems, like the banks are scamming the public, so that public education will be replaced by for-profit institutions. The corruption is rampant and invisible...for now. However, as the 'kids' turn into unproductive ignorant Americans, their malpractice will motivate the Attorney General to ferret out the enormous corruption.
and by the way:
The emphasis on 'teaching' has misdirected the national conversation away form LEARNING. The National Standards (remember them?) were about The Eight Principles of Learning" (the Harvard thsis by Lauren Resnick...google it!).
Here was third level research that confirmed the 'ingredients' that need to be in place for a child to learn! Yes, several were about practices that good teachers must demonstrate, like a strong content knowledge and understanding of pedagogical practices like management and organization, and they must offer kids clear expectations, and rewards for accomplishment, and put into place GENUINE EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT (not "tests") so a teacher can plan.
Standardized tests WERE NEVER A PART OF THE PRINCIPLES IN THE STANDARDS RESEARCH!

NEVER!

So WHY areTESTS SYNONYMOUS WITH STANDARDS?
Ask the publishers of tests and test prep. Zillions in their pockets and failing schools as the outcome! BECAUSE IT IS ALL ABOUT LEARNING... the way the brain acquires knowledge, through THINKING, not merely memorizing and regurgitating!

But the rest of the ingredients were principles for that support learning in the classroom, and without which KIDS FAIL TO LEARN! THAT is why schools fail!

A quiet, safe environment would mean that schools need effective disciplinary routines, and smaller classes in a physical plant that is conducive to LEARNING. Current technology and materials must be provided by administration, and THAT means that teachers do not have to spend their own money to supply classrooms with necessities. Programs and policies that support teachers include helping parents to grasp what their child brings to the school, because evidence is abundant that early childhood deprivation impacts future learning.

How can a teacher make up the lost language that a child might have brought to first grade if someone had read to them and modeled critical thinking skills when their young brains were building the neural pathways for learning.

Teachers in the room are the grunts on the line. It is their voices that have been silenced, as Ms Horwitz notes, because the BEST ones refused to replace tried and true pedagogy with anti-learning curricula that served to enrich publishers and privateers, and left all children behind.

If everyone who proposed a 'reform' was required to teach in a real classroom, then things would change.

And by the way, I was the NYS English Council's Educator of Excellence in 1998, and my practice was studied and applauded by the Pew researchers for the Standards reform. In NYC, for 8 years, my practice produced students who had the highest reading and writing scores, and who were accepted at top high schools. I was four times in Who's Who Among America's teachers, THAT did not stop the powers that be from harassing me into retirement, charging me with (you guessed it) INCOMPETENCE.

Why?
Because, in NYC where the top honchos run the show for their own power and profit, they COULD do as they please. They wrote the rules, and the bogus 'criteria' for evaluation and documentation. They ran the 'investigations." They ran the best teachers out of the system.

Moreover, now, they are preventing young teachers from obtaining tenure. It keeps the budgets low to have a constant influx of novice teacher-practitioners. In three years, 50% are gone, In five years, 80% are gone! I did not make that up.
Instead of training the novice, and investing in supporting them, they railroad them out of the careers for which they trained. Their education and energy are wasted. Who would want to teach if they knew the truth!

Where are the top teachers? If they are like me and Karen Horwitz and David Pakter and...well thousands of others, they are GONE!

The loss is beyond understanding!
The corruption that causes it is CRIMINAL. It is indeed, "White Chalk Crime!."

Posted by: Susan Lee Schwartz at March 18, 2010 5:34 PM

I'm so tired of more "debates" and yet more discussions about how to "fix" teachers, but nobody wants to look at the reality of poor shabby "administration", notorious public officials and the MEDIA who's job is to perpetuate the myth that all our education system is failing so pathetically because of TEACHERS.

The blame game - it's all the teachers' fault. More of - "How can we fix the teachers?" Of course it's never about the people at the top who fire and hire. Those people with no educational training, experience or credentials, and who know nothing about education, but EVERYTHING about planning discussions, debates, costly seminars, legal firing procedures, outrageously priced "studies" and "research" debates that we are informed about by empty "talking heads" and robotic new writers what they have been told to say(since we have no more journalists")

It's all about spewing out their "enlightened" philosophies about teacher improvement, theorizing "what can we do about teachers" yet the evaluators never look in the mirror.

It's all about the blame somebody else game. Yeah, "Save America" guys, then sell me Real
Estate in the swamp land in Chinal! Your game is getting tired.

Posted by: Dina at March 19, 2010 4:00 PM

Thank you to Ms. Horwitz and Ms. Schwartz for drawing attention to White Chalk Crime. One cannot ignore its ravishing effects after reading Ms. Horwitz's extensive book. Sadly, we won't get far in education reform -- and will continue spinning our wheels and wasting money -- until we resolve the root of the problem: the corrupt officials who chase out quality teachers and strive to maintain the status quo while they remain comfortable at the top. Wake up, America! Do you REALLY think that schools are exempt from corruption? You're sadly fooled. One may be intimidated by the length of Horwitz's book, but it is the first place one should go when desiring solid education reform. Our children depend on us seeing through the propaganda and getting to the truth.

Posted by: Veronica Piechotte at March 19, 2010 4:05 PM

The politicians can't spank the parents/voters who fail their children/students by not creating a secure and supportive environment for their children/students at home, so they attack the teachers who are employed by public organizations/school districts.

Politicians can't deal with the roots of the problem of education because they fear the voters that put them in office. So the problem will get worse before it gets better, and America will lose its competitive edge to governments that can make the difficult decisions about what society needs from its populace, even if those decisions seem to infringe upon citizen rights.

Our society has a detrimental focus on rights over responsibilities, so there is no organization that is allowed the authority to say, "This is what is expected of you...and this is what the consequences will be for not meeting the expectations." For example, students are moved forward through their elementary school years here in Los Angeles, despite failing reports from teachers. They continue to be moved ahead through middle school with failing reports. Only once they reach high school with elementary school reading levels and no concept of grammar, along with a lack of basic arithmetic skills, does anyone say, "You shall not pass." And then, the administration says, "We need to boost our graduation rate, or we look bad." Or, "Your students are not passing the CAHSEE, or CST, tests, and we look bad, and are in danger of being taken over by an outside organization."

At my particular LAUSD high school, we have at least 4 specially designated "open house" events to encourage parental participation. As a teacher, I send calls home to each of my 110-150 families(depending on the year) in my classes. I have never had more than 20 families attend. My most recent event brought only 10 families to school to meet me. We have translators for various languages, and the student to translate, but few make the effort.

If you ask teachers, there is no mystery behind poor test scores and lack of student motivation. There are social problems that freeze the context of learning in our public schools so that the efforts of teachers, whether "good" or "bad", tend to be neutralized for many of the students they work with. Even as a successful and popular teacher, I find that 80% of my job is truly social work, and only because I recognize and work with that fact, am I able to use the 20% remainder to teach.

Society needs to refocus the conversation to take in: the disintegration of families; lack of sound and solid decision-making regarding immigration, leading to the unavailability of support services for--in addition to a lack of stricter requirements on-- immigrants such as mandatory language training in English, since that is still the core academic language that binds our society and is the major problem; a lack of training and options for students not intending to go to college; and a general and widespread lack of priority placed on education.

The constant barrage of attacks on teachers is undermining to any long term solutions to the problem. No one seems to be asking where these amazing teachers everyone wants for their schools will come from. Who will replace all of these "bad teachers"? Where will they come from? The same universities that produced the ones replaced? Is there some magic formula that has been discovered to take someone with a true desire to spend 8 hours a day with other peoples' children in an attempt to educate them to fill necessary roles in our society and make them appealing and successful for each individual student without support from the families, communities, and governments they serve?

Ultimately, despite what is said in the mainstream about its importance, education is suffering more from a diminished importance in our society, shown by statistics like funding and policies that, for instance, promote failing students to high grades, and attacks on teachers, than it is suffering from any plague of "bad teachers" as suggested by articles such as this one.

Posted by: PS in LA at March 31, 2010 5:45 PM