How Not To Fix Schools

I know I'm writing a lot about education these days, but 'tis the season to crap on teachers!  Here in Boston, the teachers are mad at the superintendent for signing on to this incredibly cynical manifesto  in the Washington Post about how to "fix" schools.

Have you clicked through?  Well, either way, let me address some of the stupider parts of this.

"The glacial process of removing an incompetent teacher."  Sigh.  Okay. There are really bad teachers out there.  And there is a process that is not at all glacial for how to remove them.  Here's an example from my own experience.  In one school where I worked, there were two really incompetent teachers: one was a barely-functioning alcoholic who would frequently come to school under the influence, and another had some sort of mental illness that made it impossible for him to teach. (One of my students who had this guy said he had spent an entire class period leaning back in his chair with his shoes sitting on his desk, inhaling the aroma.).  Both these men had taught for decades, and it wasn't until the principal was getting ready to retire that both were fired.  They received unsatisfactory evaluations, had a hearing, and were dismissed mid year.  Why? Because the principal, with his retirement in sight, decided he was going to take these guys with him. In other words, he bothered to do the evaluation.  In my first year of teaching, I received an evaluation that said I was perfect because the administrators hadn't bothered to visit my classroom three times.  Out of nearly a thousand class periods I taught that year.  

So look--the process isn't glacial. Administrators just have to actually do it.  Moving on.

Merit pay is brought up here.  I think it's probably okay to look at seniority rules , particularly the ones that allow senior teachers to bump staff from other buildings.  But please refer to my previous post--are the rich people scrambling for merit pay for their teachers tied to standardized testing?  They are not.  So why would this be a good idea for public school teachers?  The fact is, teaching is as much art as science, and it can only be evaluated subjectively. 

I was encouraged when the article mentioned how hard it is for teachers to be effective with classes of 25 or 30.  But they duck the obvious answer--reducing class sizes, which they know damn well has a positive effect on instruction.  Instead they plug online learning.  Please note--both things cost money.  So what these public officials are calling for here is not additional money to hire more teachers--they are actually calling for additional money to be funneled from the public sector to the private companies who provide online learning "solutions".  The cynicism behind this is really sickening, especially coming from people on the public payroll. 

Finally, we come to more charter schools--because we need excellent schools now, and we can't wait for regular schools to improve.  Again, this is incredibly cynical, because the authors know as well as anyone and better than most that charter schools are not welcoming to students with special needs and students who don't speak English as a first language. Boston Superintendent Carol Johnson knows that most of the charter schools in Boston don't graduate up to, and in some cases beyond, fifty percent of the students they enroll.  Shame on her for signing this.

Nothing at all is mentioned about poverty, drug addiction and the problem of children coming to school not ready to learn. I don't care how great your teacher is--if you come to school not ready to learn because you don't have a place to live or your parent is absent due to addiction or the need to work two or three jobs, or you are hungry--well, you get the idea--you're not ready to learn, and you're starting the game several squares behind everyone else.  Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't see how standardized testing, merit pay, charter schools and online learning are going to fix this.