Live Long and Prosper...

John Young suggests that the current trend towards teacher bashing and teacher union bashing is a political vendetta from the party of Bush, Cheney, Limbaugh and O'Reilly. He also said to one of his readers that it was ok to copy his words because,

...The more people who read these thoughts, the better.
JPY
APRIL 18, 2010 12:18 AM

So, here goes.

Public Flogging of Teachers Continues

I blame my mechanic — the fact that I don't change my oil often enough, don't check my tire pressure regularly, and don't know my carburetor from my glove compartment.

I'm sure you will agree with me that my mechanic is solely to blame for any malfunction of my car. It can't be that I invest too little in it, or that I take only passing interest in its interests — that is, until it doesn't motor me to every chosen destination.

We need new accountability standards for mechanics. Assemble the lawmakers.

I'm serious here. Just about as serious as some policy makers are about education.

Those policy makers, and the citizens for whom they posture, blame teachers for all the ills of the schooling machine.

It couldn't be any outside influences that affect learning — not the inattention of parents, not whatever roiling events outside school walls might make it difficult to learn, not too-crowded classes, not administrators and policy makers who don't really get what teachers do.

Something very detrimental to learning has been happening under the guise of education reform for nearly two decades. Americans have been convinced that standardization is education. They have been convinced that the way to "excellence" is to treat children's minds like one treats tomatoes during canning season.

In the process, too many Americans have swallowed the propaganda that those who don't buy the standard (King James?) version of school accountability employed by state after state don't support excellence.

In Florida a pitched battle rages over one more quest to reduce education to tomato paste on the butcher block of standardization. Reformers seek to pin teacher pay increases to test scores. The bill would require school districts to set aside 5 percent of their entire budgets starting in 2011 for "performance" pay increases. If they have any leftover money, they could use it to develop new tests, like end-of-course exams. Otherwise, they would have to give it back to the state.

The bill also would essentially rewrite the rules for teacher contracts. And in telling districts how they can pay teachers, it would wipe out considerations like advanced degrees and experience.

The most offensive thing about this is that it's not really about education. It's about a political vendetta. The party of Bush and Cheney and Limbaugh and O'Reilly has had it out for "teachers' unions" from the day some marginally educated focus group said the term was disparaging enough to be gold.

So, we have people stepping up saying they know how to "fix" education. Even if they confuse teaching with conveyor-belt work. Even if they consider Sarah Palin learned.

Ah, standardization. I once heard a person say, seriously, that if only schools would be like the Army, our problems would be solved. You see, all enlistees have to learn how to assemble a rifle. Have to. And will.

But, then, education isn't training. Education is a higher quest. Or, so we once assumed. Unfortunately, our political system has instituted a concept of schooling that casts students across a sea of bubble-in questions.

You say teachers oppose assessment? That's the most ridiculous claim of all. I have a book that has 450 pages of really great assessments — classroom exercises that show if students are using critical thinking skills. It has activities which can make school fascinating and truly challenging. No one craves assessments — quality, diagnostic assessments — more than a teacher, or at least the vast majority of true classroom professionals.

The same goes for most mechanics. But I'm holding mine accountable for my inattention. If my oil pan ends up empty, heads will roll down at the shop.

John Young writes for Cox Newspapers. E-mail: [email protected].

Stephen Krashen sent this to the NY Daily News yesterday, April 9, 2011.

Andrew Wolf points out that "Dennis Walcott is more of the same: Bloomberg's new chancellor once again lacks classroom experience," (April 8).

Here is another obvious case: US Education Secretary Arne Duncan has never taught and has no actual credentials in education. He has no background in education other than administration.

His uniformed view that increased testing is the answer to improving schools demonstrates that, like Dennis Walcott, he "lacks the instructional experience to actually fix what is going wrong in our classrooms."

Stephen Krashen

I've said this before.

[Duncan] realizes that if masters degrees in education meant something then his own qualifications would be suspect. He has no educational training. He has never taught in a public school...has never worked in a public school...has never even attended a public school. It's in his best interest to imply that teachers with masters degrees don't know any more than he does with his bachelors degree in Sociology.

Who else has much to say about education...and has no credentials?

• Eli Broad - "education reformer" Graduated in 1954 from Michigan State University in Accounting.
• Bill Gates - "education reformer" and expert because of his money (would anyone listen to him if he wasn't rich?). He went to Harvard, but dropped out to become a billionaire.
• Michael Bloomberg - current Mayor of NYC. Attended Johns Hopkins University and received a BS in Electrical Engineering 1964. Attended Harvard Business School and received an MBA.
• Barak Obama - current president of the USA. Attended Occidental College, transferred to Columbia University and got a BA in Political Science in 1983. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law school in 1991.

Would Broad let a nurse do his taxes rather than a CPA? Would Gates turn over Software Troubleshooting at Microsoft to a Pharmacist? Would Bloomberg assign an Art Historian as the Chief of Police?

Let's look at President Obama's choices for his Cabinet.

Q: Would President Obama nominate a doctor for attorney general?
A: No, the attorney general is an attorney, Eric Holder (Columbia Law School, J.D).

Q: Would Obama nominate an attorney as surgeon general?
A: No, the Surgeon General is Regina Benjamin, a physician (University of Alabama, Birmingham, MD).

Similarly, the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, is a Farmer.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, is a Banker.
The Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, was an Intelligence Officer.
The Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, is a Nobel Prize winning Physicist.

On the other hand, Education Secretary Duncan is not the only misfit. Other members of the Cabinet have backgrounds which don't prepare them for their jobs. We call this political cronyism.

I don't know if it will work for the Department of Transportation for example. Ray LaHood is a former congressman from Illinois who sat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Appropriations Committee. So we can see that he has some relevant experience from his time in the House of Representatives. However, his professional background is not in Transportation...does Mr. LaHood know what he's doing at the DOT?

Wait...according to his biography at the Department of Transportation web site, Ray LaHood

...was a junior high school teacher, having received his degree from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He was also director of the Rock Island County Youth Services Bureau...

Maybe there's someone qualified to be Secretary of Education in the Cabinet after all.

When people need legal help they hire attorneys. When people are ill they go to physicians.

Education needs educators.


UPDATE:

On April 9, I stated that the rich aren't paying their fair share of taxes...and if they did, we could solve most of the budget problems in the country and around the states. Here's some more information on that issue.

The rich are paying less and less of their fair share of taxes...

We've been talking about teaching credentials.

Teachers can have bachelor's degrees, master's degrees or doctoral degrees (E.D. or PhD.) but by themselves, the qualifications of teachers won't make up for the fact that 20% of our children live in poverty.

It doesn't matter what Arne Duncan or Bill Gates say. We know what the problem is and we've known for a long time. Not only do we know it, but people all over the world know it. It's poverty.

"The relationship between SES [socioeconomic status] and achievement was consistent across all 20 countries. Students with highest levels of SES, as measured in this study, had an educational advantage over their lowest SES counterparts. This reinforces the associations previously documented in the literature both in the United States and abroad between SES and student educational achievement."

— U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, April 2006)

...or I agree with him...whichever. On December 27 I wrote:

2. He [Duncan] realizes that if master's degrees in education meant something then his own qualifications would be suspect. He has no educational training. He has never taught in a public school...has never worked in a public school...has never even attended a public school. It's in his best interest to imply that teachers with master's degrees don't know any more than he does with his bachelor's degree in Sociology.

Then, I read this today...

Prediction: Arne Duncan's next move

by Stephen Krashen

I predict that Arne Duncan's next move will be to declare that teachers don't need any kind of degree in education or any course work in education. In fact, he will say they are better off without it.

Guess who has no degrees or course work in education: Arne Duncan. Nor, to my knowledge, has he ever spent any time alone in a room with children or high school students.

And the same is true for many of his advisers.

Analogy: The hospital administrators whose only training is watching Dr. Oz are telling the surgeons how to operate, and are making wild statements about the quality of medical schools and how much preparation medical professionals should have.

This has to stop.

— Stephen Krashen
NCTE Members Open Forum

2010-12-28

And just for the record...Margaret Spellings, Duncan's predecessor at the US DOE had the same qualifications that Duncan has...none.

[Note: You may have noticed that I inserted an apostrophe for "master's degree." When I posted on 12/27, I left it out. I have since checked and found that most (but not all) sources say use the apostrophe. You can read that information here.]

Why is it that Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education, denounces teachers masters degrees as not effective and too expensive? He claims that advanced degrees do not make better teachers...except perhaps for Math and Science teachers.

Here are some possible reasons for Duncan's position on this issue...

1. He equates "good teaching" with test scores. Teaching students to get higher scores on tests does not require a masters degree. The learning doesn't last...doesn't mean anything beyond the test taking, but that's where he is...tests are the only things that matter.

2. He realizes that if masters degrees in education meant something then his own qualifications would be suspect. He has no educational training. He has never taught in a public school...has never worked in a public school...has never even attended a public school. It's in his best interest to imply that teachers with masters degrees don't know any more than he does with his bachelors degree in Sociology.

3. Ditto number two, above, for his friend and ally in the destruction of America's Public Schools, Bill Gates (aka, the college drop out).

4. If masters degrees in Education were meaningful then Teach For America, which puts non-educators into classrooms where the most experienced, best trained teachers are needed, would not be as good as having education school graduates teaching. Duncan has emotionally invested himself in TFA. He doesn't want to admit that experienced teachers with training are better than college graduates with 5 weeks of training.

5. If teachers with years of experience and advanced degrees are not any better than beginning teachers, then the higher salaries paid to teachers with experience and advanced degrees can be saved. The price of education is too high. The truth is that children in the United States are not valued. We're not interested in how we can improve their learning...just how we can save money. Duncan is playing to the Americans who want services but don't want to pay for it.

The Secretary of Education as well as the President and most US Politicians still won't admit the obvious truth. The fault lies with the system that keeps 20% of our children living in poverty. They blame the public schools, teachers and teachers unions for their own failing.