How Did Being a Public School Teacher Become So Controversial?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/education/how-did-being-public-school-teacher-become-so-controversial

I began this book in early 2011 with a simple observation: Public school teaching had become the most controversial profession in America. Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, and even the Democratic governor of deep blue Massachusetts, sought to diminish or eliminate teachers’ rights to collectively bargain. Teacher tenure was the subject of heated debate in statehouses from Denver to Tallahassee, and President Obama swore in his State of the Union address to “stop making excuses” for bad teachers. One rising-star Republican, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, even became a conservative folk hero after appearing in a series of YouTube videos in which he excoriated individual public school teachers—all of them middle-aged women—who rose at public events to challenge him on his $1 billion in education budget cuts, even as he cut $1.6 billion in corporate taxes.

No other profession operates under this level of political scrutiny, not even those, like policing or social work, that are also tasked with public welfare and are paid for with public funds. In 2010 Newsweek published a cover story called “The Key to Saving American Education.” The image was of a blackboard, with a single phrase chalked over and over again in a child’s loopy handwriting: We must fire bad teachers. We must fire bad teachers. We must fire bad teachers. Wide-release movies like Waiting for “Superman” and Won’t Back Down, funded by philanthropists who made their fortunes in the private sector, portray teacher tenure and its defender, teachers unions, as practically the sole causes of underperforming schools. Everywhere I traveled as a reporter, from the 2008 Democratic National Convention to the 2010 meeting of former president Bill Clinton’s Clinton Global Initiative, powerful people seemed to feel indignant about the incompetence and job security of public school teachers, despite polls showing that the American public considers teachers highly respected professionals, nearly on par with medical doctors.

Anxiety about bad teaching is understandable. Teachers do work that is both personal and political. They care for and educate our children, for whom we feel a fierce and loyal love. And they prepare our nation’s citizens and workers, whose wisdom and level of skill will shape our collective future. Given that teachers shoulder such an awesome responsibility, it makes sense that American politics is acutely attuned to their shortcomings. So I want to begin by acknowledging: It is true that the majority of American teachers have academically mediocre backgrounds. Most have below-average SAT scores and graduate from nonselective colleges and universities.* It is also true that one large review of practices within typical American elementary school classrooms found many children—and the majority of poor children—“sitting around, watching the teacher deal with behavioral problems, and engaging in boring and rote instructional activities such as completing worksheets and spelling tests.” Another study of over a thousand urban public school classrooms found only a third of teachers conducting lessons that developed “intellectual depth” beyond rote learning.

[blkmusclmachine]

1. Race To The Top (Obama's For-Profit Model of Corporate Dittohead Education)

[Orlandodem]

2. Obama stabbed public school teachers in the back.

I honestly don't care if teachers abandon the Democrats. Hillary better vow to end his policies or many teachers will not vote. I am a single issue voter. The first party that understands the testing craze and attacks on teachers must end will get my vote.

[Recursion]

3. School teachers spent decades opposing any sort of meaningful evaluation system

So they got stuck with one that's not very good being imposed from on high. DC's public school system had an "evaluation" regime that rated 96% of teachers as "excellent". What the hell does "excellent" mean in that case?

[kwassa]

17. This is a popular myth.

Touted far and wide.

Two things:

1) Not all school sytems are the same. Compare DC to the suburban systems immediately around it. Some of these are among the best public schools in the country. Lumping them together a commonly used logical fallacy in discussions about education, as if one size fits all. The real problem in DC is poverty, which is a problem for government to solve, not public school teachers by themselves.

2) Most school systems DO have meaningful evaluation systems already, and always have. I would also point out that many of the states with highly ranked school systems also have strong teacher unions.

[Enthusiast]

4. Kicked and recommended!

Thank you, xchrom.

[Ken Burch]

5. It really goes back to the refusal of some people to accept the basic idea

of universal public education.

A lot of those who teacher-bash(not all, but a lot)would STILL like to drag us back to the 19th Century, when education(including basic literacy)was a luxury for those whose parents could afford to pay for their education out of pocket and who could afford to let those kids spend their days going to school rather than working in a mine, a field, or a sweatshop.

[awoke_in_2003]

25. In my opinion

it goes hand in hand with union busting (and not just the teacher's unions). One of the side effects of the labor movement is that a lot of families began to be able to afford to send their kids to college. Sometimes educated people ask questions that are not comfortable for the powers that be- hence, the 60's. A lot of change happened in that decade, with a lot of support of the younger, educated generation spawned by the boomers. I agree that they are trying to drag us back to the day where only the privileged are educated.

[yeoman6987]

28. We have kids graduating from high school

Who have to take remedial classes in college just to begin a somewhat average curriculum. Until teachers teach, they will have this reputation. Universities have begun screaming about a third of the students needing remedial classes. Huge problem!

[Ken Burch]

29. You're assuming it's all the teachers' fault, though.

The problems are in how the whole system is structured, and in things like the overcrowding of classes. It goes without saying that you can't give kids as good an education with 40 kids in a class as you could with 18 or 20, especially not if you're trying to do it with out-of-date textbooks(or damaged or missing textbooks)and with everything, other than the pay of administrators, badly underfunded.

That's why private schools all have small class sizes and up-to-date teaching materials.

[MissB]

42. This, exactly. My kids are getting

an amazing education at their public high school. We live in an affluent area, so the high school is well funded and well supported by the parents. Our school literally spends twice the amount of state support per student.

And for spending that much? Our kids get class sizes of 20. In any of the English courses, that's huge. The teachers can assign many papers each term because the teacher can actually read them and provide individual/in-depth feedback. With larger class sizes, there is no way to keep up given the sheer numbers of kids/papers. Double the class size and you can't possibly provide feedback for five or six papers per term.

Math is the same way - with 20 kids you can encourage discussion and with lots more you are just doing crowd control. Their tests are more in-depth because the teacher can take the time to grade 20 papers and figure out where a student is going wrong.

It's a college prep high school- most kids go to a four year college and many of them go to selective colleges. So many of the kids earn college credits while in high school that it would be unusual to not earn 8-12 credits at a minimum. (My oldest has 16 currently and is only halfway through high school - he will likely have at least 30 more by the time he graduates in two years.)

If only this country would invest more money in education than wars.

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. One need go no further than this:

>>>They care for and educate our children, for whom we feel a fierce and loyal love.>>>>>

No only do the effete dilettantes that are pushing this meme NOT have a "fierce and loyal love" for public school kids... they don't even KNOW any. They've never even BEEN to an American public school.... in the vast majority of cases.... much less sent their kids to one.

Starting with prep school President Punahou.... all the way on down.

This is very much a class issue. Classical *private* education for the privileged like Gates, Bloomberg, Duncan et al. and their own children.... and this sickening, bureaucratic, barbed-wire ,corporate crap that they insist on foisting on the rest of us.

[TBF]

7. Since the neolibs/neocons saw another union

they wanted to break in order to depress the wages of more of the masses.

[kmlisle]

13. I agree with this - Follow the money

If you look at a public school district budget the biggest expense is wages and benefits. So that is the biggest pot of money to steal from and in order to do that you have to make the recipients of that money undeserving. If you can do that it also silences the voice from the classroom about how schools are run because they are not worth listening to. while we are at it lets take away their due process rights so they don't dare open their mouths. So the people working with your children everyday don't dare speak up about problems in the classroom and if they do their ideas are dismissed. If you break the idea that teachers are professionals you have a huge pot of money to raid.

And this is also a raid on our democracy. A classroom with a dis-empowered teacher is a model for the children in that classroom of what their workplace and world are supposed to be like.

And the idea implied in this article that if you don't graduate from an ivy league school your education is somehow unfit for public school teaching is classist. How many of you know a person with a public university education who is thoughtful, insightful and excellent at their profession? And then look at some of the assholes who have graduated from Harvard and Yale. I personally know teachers who are the first in their generation to graduate from any college, who are consummate professionals and connect with the children in the classroom who need teachers the most on a level that would be difficult for someone without their life experiences. But they are being painted as unworthy and therefore its OK to take away their pay. And if you want to see a model for the new level of compensation look at the low pay and lack of benefits of most charter school teachers.

The Silver lining is that parents and the public in general are starting to wake up to this travesty and are pushing back. I just had parents on my Facebook ask for info on how to opt out of the state tests and yes this should become a bigger electoral issue as well.

[Nitram]

8. The right wing is strongly opposed to all public education.

They call public schools "government schools," implying the government uses public schools to brainwash us with liberal ideas. Like science, history and art. And teachers get caught in the crossfire. Just like people who work for the federal government and have to endure pay cuts, furloughs and other indignities because the right wing believes "government is the problem." Thank Ronald Reagan.

[CK_John]

9. It's easy when 50% of the political process in this country doesn't believe in public education.

[Romulox]

10. Our schools do a poor job preparing students for the 21st century.

Whose fault that is is up for debate. But to pretend otherwise?

[FiveGoodMen]

19. And has the testing and teacher-bashing helped to improve the situation?

[kwassa]

41. Bullshit. Some schools do poor jobs, many do a great job.

These broad brush assertions are simply false.

[LWolf]

11. THIS

I suspected that the key to understanding the American view of teachers lay in our history, and perhaps had something to do with the tension between our sky-high hopes for public education as the vehicle of meritocracy and our perennial unwillingness to fully invest in our public sector, teachers and schools included. For two hundred years, the American public has asked teachers to close troubling social gaps—between Catholics and Protestants; new immigrants and the American mainstream; blacks and whites; poor and rich. Yet every new era of education reform has been characterized by a political and media war on the existing teachers upon whom we rely to do this difficult work, often in the absence of the social supports for families that make teaching and learning most effective for kids, like stable jobs and affordable housing, child care, and health care.

[kwassa]

18. Always asking teachers to compensate for inadequate social supports. Why?

It is the larger society abdicating it's own responsibility, not the teachers. When did teachers become the parents, or the legislators, or the social workers, or the clergy?

[BuelahWitch]

20. This! ^^ n/t

[YoungDemCA]

21. Teachers become a scapegoat for social problems

And it's usually powerful people-and their political supporters-who are engaged in the scapegoating.

The question, then, is: Why would the people who are already powerful within the current system be so anxious to scapegoat a group like teachers-most of whom are educated women, FWIW, and in the public school system, teach a population that is overall a lot poorer and more racially diverse than, say, the students from families with more money, more highly educated parents, and more elite connections.

Why are public school teachers such a threat to economically, socially, and politically powerful people?

[kwassa]

23. Economically, socially, and politically powerful people need compliant employees ....

that are educated enough to serve them, but not educated so much as to be competition for them.

They also attempt to apply the world they know, the business model, to the world they don't know, the educational model, misunderstanding the issue to be a simple problem of management. It is essentially an ignorant approach.

[BrotherIvan]

30. ^^This!^^

The US expects teachers to solve all problems including parenting them, forcing them to care about their own education, and dealing with violent children. It may be true that parents are working more and can't raise their own children, but it is also true that extra curricular activities are taking a much larger role in children's lives. Right here on DU we have had threads about how there is too much homework, how science projects take away from "family time," and how parents are not responsible for the actions of their bully children. Which is it? Are teachers supposed to educate or deal with all the problems in society? If parents cannot be bothered or don't have the time to raise their own children, they perhaps they should choose not to have them.

[pipi_k]

35. I would never expect this

The US expects teachers to solve all problems including parenting them, forcing them to care about their own education, and dealing with violent children.

From a teacher, but how about teachers who, if they can't solve all problems, at least will figure out that there IS one, and that it might go a little deeper than just misbehavior on the part of the kid?

Many years separate me from my 13 year old self, yet, at the age of 61, I still hold a bit of a grudge toward my 8th grade English teacher, who, because I was getting failing grades in her class, chastised me in front of the entire class by telling me to "either shape up or ship out".

Trouble was, I wasn't a problem child. Very shy. No trouble.

I was having a lot of difficulty conjugating verbs and other such things at the time.

Which, in my defense, probably was to be expected since my main focus at the time was on my family, not on schoolwork.

I was kept awake at night by my parents' incessant arguing. They were physically violent with each other. And I didn't want to stay home and listen to the fighting, but I was afraid to leave the house, thinking they'd both be dead when I got back home after school.

No...I didn't need a teacher to solve my problems. Just one who would give enough of a shit to look beyond the outer shell and wonder if something might be going on underneath, and then refer me to someone who COULD help.

She took a kid who was already suffering and SHAMED her in front of the whole class.

I will never forgive her for that.

[kwassa]

40. You had a bad teacher, a very bad teacher.

I'm about the same age as you, a teacher, and must say that modern schools have much more psychological support for kids, and greater awareness among the teachers, than when we were kids.

So much about psychological understanding has developed in our lifetimes, but was pretty unknown in the mid-60s.

It is quite interesting now to hear the focus on domestic violence as a result of the Ray Rice scandal, and the NPR news story yesterday was how domestic violence had far more lenient sentencing than equivalent crimes between strangers. You witnessed such fighting at home, and didn't get support for yourself at school.

I went through several severe depressions as a freshman at college in 1970, got no help for it because such services didn't exist then, and still have bitter feelings to my college because of it. I've never contributed another penny to the place.

[BrotherIvan]

43. I'm sorry that happened and that it still bothers you

But you laid out the perfect argument as to why all students can't and aren't top achievers as the reformers would have everyone believe. That's the point, a lot of kids have a lot going on. A classroom full of kids with problems at home, learning disabilities, behavior problems, drug problems, different languages and raging hormones and most of the time, its all they can do to keep order.

Yet everyone complains that bad teachers are the reason why kids aren't learning. In your story, it was your parents' relationship. When I taught for a short time, I had students lined up after class just to talk about their problems. And it was so sad I couldn't believe it. One girl slept on a couch in a one room apartment that had six other people in it, including a baby that cried all the time, and her uncle would bring his friends home to party all night so she never got any sleep. Most of my students had no where to sit and do their homework. One kid got beaten up on the way home from school because he had a book in his hand. All of those are contributing factors to why students aren't achieving and all of them need to be addressed, not just firing all the teachers.

[LWolf]

31. It makes it easy to perpetually ignore

inadequate social supports when you've got convenient scapegoats.

[YvonneCa]

48. I asked that at my school. When did I...

...become the enemy? I did everything I was asked to do and more.

[justgamma]

12. Union busting by the righties. N/t

[GOLGO 13]

14. Union busting plain & simple.

All part of the master corporate plan.

[YarnAddict]

15. My great grandfather was a teacher

(maybe called a school master, at that time) and he was one of the most highly respected idividuals in his community. He was an educated man, and he was considered right up there with the local doctor, banker, and preacher. My mother always felt she was a bit better than everyone else because her grandfather was a teacher.

I had several aunts who were also teachers, and a bunch of cousins. The respect society had for teachers diminished gradually over each succeeding generation. I think part of it was that as more people became educated, the choices expanded. Women could become engineers, attorneys, doctors, or whatever they wanted. Those professions paid much, much more, and so teaching was seen as something you went into if you weren't quite smart enough to become something else.

Also, since we do entrust our precious children to teachers for the majority of their waking hours, we have a right to expect higher standards from teachers than from accountants, for instance. Teachers often fail to live up to our expectations. They may be much less smart than their students' parents. They may have different values. Their influence on their students may not always be positive.

Unionization has actually made matters worse. Bad teachers are protected by tenure, and teachers often seem to prioritize union membership over their obligation to their students. That perception may or may not be true, but the perception is still there.

Just my humble opinion . . .

[roody]

44. Tenure is nothing more than employment rights.

All workers should have employment rights.

[YarnAddict]

46. So unproductive,

unethical, lazy employees should never be fired?

Employers always should have the option of terminating anyone who isn't doing their job.

[roody]

47. You don't know what employment rights are.

Do you have any? I hope so.

[seabeyond]

16. i think it started well before the RW. a lot of parents blaming teachers for their child failure.

instead of addressing the issue with the child, and the work and the frustration of getting the kid to do.... they whine about the system.

thankfully i am about done with that part of my life. it is not easy. there are no easy answers to motivate the child to do the work. or i have not found the answer. but, i know it is in my child, not the teachers for sure, having always stayed connected to the teachers in communication.

i do not think either boys had ONE teacher, where the teacher did not make themselves available to help the children.

[justabob]

32. I agree with this... it started long before NCLB

I think it is tied into the whole movement to deal with self esteem issues too.... I mean everyone winning a prize, even if they cannot do the task, whether it be sport or academic or whatever.... grade inflation too. There are plenty of parents who cannot believe little Susie or Johnny are terrors in school, or cannot do the math or the spelling or whatever. Even at the college level, my geology professor told tales of dealing with parents suing him, and/or raising a fuss with the administration because their adult children didn't make an A in his class at community college. These are generally the wealthier families and a totally different matter from the kids who have zero support at home and are struggling to eat etc, but it is a factor in what we are seeing now.

[seabeyond]

34. interesting conversation, having participated for 14 yrs and counting. every school, the teachers

would react surprised, then enthused when i sat down with them at the beginning of yr. my oldest had some real issues, and he simply needed the help from the teachers and a lot of the girls in his class, to make it from point A to B with all his stuff. even after months.

every yr up thru about sophomore in high school, i said hi to the teachers and chatted for moments, to explain that child a bit.

i told them clearly, with both boys, to not lower expectation. have a high expectation, and that is what they will attempt to meet. i let them know that i was a phone call or email away. i paid attention to the grades and work, and when i felt the need, hit each teacher after school.

and STILL, getting it done was hard. not cause of the teacher. cause the boys could slide.

my youngest had a real issue with large motor skills and i had to make a mention about that.

regardless how much we followed them along, ultimately it was up to the boys. they were given the tools and the support. it was their choice.

they get the rewards, but they also get the repercussions.

i have found, surprisingly, even thru high school the teachers are there. and councilor.

private school, then lower income public elementary, then an exclusive money, middle school 5-8, then a diverse, white minority, all level income, high school. all, the teachers were surprised with support from parent. that was my eye opener. even in the middle school where it was a high income household, the "elite" in this texas community of omg, the country club ect... i talked to those teachers often. there was a lot of participation because it was new. a lot of family money, but being public, few low income, the school was new and poor. so a lot of parental volunteering. and the stories i heard. it was never johnny/sue fault, oh no. also, my boys talked about the kids, i knew the realities, and i even took the time to interact with parents. oh lordy.

so.

i agree.

[justabob]

37. yeah

Unfortunately, our experience was bad going through the Dallas ISD in the inner city, which has had lots of issues on lots of levels before we get to actual education and teachers. Teachers did their best, but 95% of the kids, including us, were poor/struggling, and most didn't speak English. Even getting in with the counselors and teachers et al didn't help, despite their willingness to help....too many kids had issues far worse than what we were dealing with, plus the classes had 30+ kids. There just are not enough resources/time for dealing with it all, especially when you add in all the safety net cuts that have also had an impact on these families. There is so much going on in the public schools besides education itself, I do not see how anyone can put all the blame on teachers. My son is a senior finally, and we are almost free. LOL He has some stories to tell too... both from the poor schools and the wealthy ones. Currently he is in one of the best public districts in town/state and he has done a lot better there than elsewhere, but even there, teachers have a lot to deal with... helicopter parents mostly, but there are some real issues too. It's going to be a long time before this mess gets sorted out.

[seabeyond]

38. yes. then all that is the other end. and that too brings so much into the equation. the middle of

the road, or whatever, is very slim.

wth the economy and pay wage being so far from a living wage, it just gets harder and harder for all of us.

[hifiguy]

22. Throughout history educating the masses has been considered

to be an act of profound subversion by the feudal overlords and the clerical establishment.

It is not one bit different today. The peasants may start to realize their own state of peonage, begin to think for themselves and start asking questions/making trouble for their "rightful" and "divinely-appointed" rulers and we can NOT have that.

Twas ever thus.

[etherealtruth]

24. Unions ... teachers belong to strong and effective labor unions

Teacher unions (in general) do a terrific job advocating for their members .... this is something we should all strive for.

I definitely wish the police had this level of scrutiny

[onecaliberal]

26. Because a certain political party needs people to be more

Stupid than a bag of hammers.

[justabob]

39. both parties are behind this

It isn't just a republican problem or flaw. Obama and his appointees are going full steam ahead with charters, for-profit schooling, teacher blaming, testing and all the rest of it. Sad, but true. This one isn't even a case of the lesser evil. Both parties are completely wrong about what is going on in schools and what needs to be done.

As others have said in this thread, if we really look at what the biggest problems are in education we might have to take a look at all the other institutional and societal issues that affect people's lives that our leaders refuse to deal with or acknowledge. It is a lot easier to bash on teachers than address the real issues that, if dealt with, would improve way more than just our schools.

[whereisjustice]

27. Wall Street douchebags who want to privatize schools and sell them to highest bidder

It won't be long before our education system is as fucked up as our health care system.

[WinkyDink]

33. IDK, but I feel like I wasted any other potential I had. Glad I'm out.

[Orsino]

36. "It's the money, stupid."

Our moneyed elites resent the existence of huge piles of money they can't own. They're coming for education just as they are the Social Security fund.

All the nonsense about education reform and bad teachers is just cover for hostile takeovers, and Americans fall for it. Our enemy is determined, and they are winning.

[Initech]

45. AM hate radio + Fux News + 8 years of George Bush & no child left behind = perfect storm.