Railroaded

       Where did public education run off the rails?  When did we surrender our pact with children to those only interested in education as a new avenue of personal enrichment? Like most revolutions, it didn’t happen all at once, but over time and with the same ultimate effects - resegregation, the denigration of the teaching profession and indoctrination rather than real education.  You remember real education, don’t you?  It wasn’t so long ago the purpose of education was still to give students the skills required to develop in an orderly, sequential, age appropriate process into contributing, functioning members of society; to teach students critical thinking and to provide basic reasoning skills. An overabundance of educational initiatives in the past 25 years or so have served to incrementally replace critical thinking as the primary goal with social constructs and standardized test prep that have no business in classrooms or school buildings. My belief is the collective and individual intent of each of these initiatives was, one small piece at a time, to drive away teachers, parents and students,allow the use of public education dollars for private education and personal enrichment and to ensure an undereducated populace that would vote how they were told.

     Let’s start with standardized testing. Real educators know that every child is different, every child learns in different ways at different rates and responds to some instructional methods and not as well to others. That’s why teachers are required to use differentiated instructional methods. Simultaneously. Hourly. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Because children are different.  If our goal is to continue to be that we teach all children, regardless of physical or mental handicap, then differentiation is a fundamental requirement. Can someone please explain how teachers are required to differentiate for every student but that what they are teaching can be accurately measured by a standardized test created by people that don’t know these children and what they have been taught yet magically determines what they know?  Standardized tests and the use of the resultant test scores are educational malpractices designed and implemented to drive parents, students and teachers away from public education. Why? Because enormous sums of money in educational funds are at stake, and the thought is that money might be put to better use than educating commoners.  Like you.  Like me. Like our children and grandchildren.

     Not that teachers had any voice in its implementation, but using standardized test scores to determine any part of a teacher’s annual professional evaluation was implemented by many states without any evidence that teachers themselves, no matter how effective, had any effect on student test scores greater than the effect of parents at home. Assuming any effect teachers may have had on the standardized test scores of their students without compensation for the effects of home life (or the lack of it) requires a leap of logic that would make statisticians shudder with statistical insignificance.  It’s like holding doctors accountable for every patients’ health without determining whether the patients are following the doctors prescribed regimen or not, or holding every college responsible for every students’ graduation without considering outside influences, effort or ability level.  You know, like we do high schools. Balderdash.

     One mistake that we bought into was when we were led to believe that “all children can learn” and “all children can succeed” translates into “all children will succeed at high levels.” No it doesn’t.  It doesn’t matter how badly we would like every child to succeed or every child to be “college material” it just isn’t true.  My perception is that when we impose impossible expectations on every child that some will absolutely not meet is when we create an untenable situation for some students in school. “Every child will succeed at high levels” also leaves out, in addition to variances in ability level, what Grandma used to call “want to,” and motivation is often an essential ingredient in student learning. “Want to” is an ingredient that more often than not comes from home, from early parental instruction from a two parent home, from reading, from learning the alphabet, from learning to count and from being read to by parents before students reach school age. It’s practically impossible for teachers to overcome parental neglect in these areas before students even begin school. Legislating equity, like legislating excellence, is a dangerous exercise in ego and futility.

     Common Core, in essence a national curriculum and an overt attempt at a national control of ideas, was created, approved and implemented without input from teachers, without a trial run or feasibility study, and as part of a bribery program that would give states millions of dollars from the USDOE collected from those states if they would only follow the Common Core gameplan without substantial alteration. Governors jumped at the chance to “win” back money from the USDOE, especially those that had used education budgets to balance state budgets in an economic downturn. The entire program was a nationwide bait-and-switch scheme implemented largely by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, seemingly copied from the Standard Manual of Used Car Sales.

      Another bureaucratic fumble in the educational process occurred when teachers attempted to hold students accountable for their failure to do classwork and homework and for their behavior in class.  Parents began a wave of pushback and insistence that it wasn’t their child’s fault they didn’t do their classwork or were disruptive in class, but instead was the fault of the teacher.  Teachers, often unsupported by administrators and left to defend themselves against a rising tide of blame for what are actually parental failures of responsibility, found that life was much easier, at least in the short term, to just go along to get along and not argue against what they saw as an impossible situation.  It was difficult to insist on personal responsibility for students when parents were supporting their child’s irresponsible behaviors with confrontational behaviors themselves.  Teachers saw they couldn’t possibly fight against parents without administrative support, and first began by removing zeros for work not done, and allowing a grade of 50% at the lowest.  This soon turned into an administrative decree that zeros and failure were unacceptable and no longer allowed, as if they were agreeing that failure was indeed the fault of teachers. Teachers knew that removing the option of failure would be far more detrimental to students than failure itself could ever be, but administrative decrees are not often effectively fought by teachers.  Not allowing students the opportunity to learn from their mistakes has created an overwhelming sense of entitlement for students.  Don’t think they don’t know about the policy or that adults have successfully hidden it from them. Students that don’t know how to overcome setbacks or defeat will expect life after school to continue the same way they were taught. We are beginning to see the results of that in politics and society in general already. Real teachers know this is not how life works and not how students learn effectively. Giving students grades they didn’t earn, not allowing zeros or F’s or failure or setbacks is counterproductive and counterintuitive, and produces an undeserved series of promotions that life will always make sure ends badly.  Ignorance, at one level or another, is always uncovered, and illustrates that the further bureaucrats are from daily contact with children the less educational sense their decisions make.

     At this point I have an important question.  What do graduation rates for schools mean when students are not allowed to fail? Not much is my guess. 

     So what did teachers do at the earliest opportunity?  They removed themselves from what had become an untenable situation, both personally and professionally. Since the 1980’s, teachers have retired, changed jobs, learned to do something - anything - else and left classes without teachers and schools and systems begging for replacements that just weren’t there, because students in college saw up close and personal what their teachers had gone through and, just as importantly, what they were paid to go through it, and thought to themselves “there’s got to be something better for me.”  And there was. And is.

      Even those students who went into education because they were sure they could change the world were prevented from actually teaching students with the implementation of standardized lesson plans, bus duty, lunch duty, professional development opportunities (so administrators can check the box for providing professional development), the documentation of instructional interventions, hundreds and hundreds of clerical duties and, as if that weren’t enough, administrative micro-management from people that don’t believe you can actually do your job unless they are constantly checking to make sure you do.  Don’t think for a second that’s just building admin, either; it’s system, state and political interference as well.  Teachers will tell those they trust that they succeed in their classrooms far more often in spite of the system than because of it. I can’t think of any other profession more with more people looking over their shoulders to make sure they do their jobs than teachers. “Teach the standards and not the books” became the mantra, and standardized lesson plans - required by many districts - were successful in removing every single possibility that teachers might actually be creative in class and use their own skills to successfully reach students. Here again we have a case of “we will require differentiation in teaching by making sure everyone is teaching the same way for all students.” Horsefeathers.

     No, the solution lies with people that remember what education is supposed to be, and that sometimes students fail and it either motivates them to get better or relegates them to the also-rans - those that made one effort and gave up.  The people we need to step up are the teachers that found themselves in an untenable or impossibly unhealthy, unproductive situation and had to retire or find another job or another profession, the parents that will not allow their kids to miss out on an education and face a life of ignorance and the leaders that have the courage to stand up and say “this is enough, and this is as far as this stupidity goes.” Perhaps it’s time to consider the rights of the kids that want to be in school to an equal or even greater extent than the rights of the kids that don’t want to be there, and to consider the learning of the students making an effort, making mistakes and trying again more than those whose only contribution is disruption of the learning experience for others.  

     Working conditions must be improved for teachers - current and prospective - to continue to want to teach. Today conditions are at the tipping point, and far too many students, teachers and parents are walking away rather than continue in untenable situations.  Perhaps it’s time to consider the students that are making an effort and want to be in class to an equal or greater extent than the ones that are only there because they have to be. I’m pretty sure they have just as much right to a Free and Appropriate Education as those that don’t want to be there. 

     If we don’t do something about it - and quickly - the public educational system that has served so many for so long will cease to exist, and that gap can’t be completely filled by private, religious or charter schools. Public education has been one of the keys of the growth and success of the American dream and the continuation of our Republic. Without it I am convinced many of us will be surrounded by ignorance and stupidity, the growth of crime and lawlessness and the abject hopelessness of an uneducated populace.  Or maybe we are already there.