A Veteran Teacher's Thoughts on Living Through the Death Throes of Public Education as We know it.
"You are a transitional generation... It's the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make... For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts... they will have no memories of any other way... they won't want what they can't have. "
- The Handmaid's Tale, By Margaret Atwood
My principal had a lot of autonomy and gave us the same. We felt safe to try new things, to take risks, and we felt valued for our efforts. No one in central administration cried austerity in the affluent, suburban district where I taught. Field trips were encouraged, without tons of red tape and committees. Interdisciplinary learning was valued, as well as creative and hands-on learning. There were no common core, no learning targets, "I can" statements or PLCs. Our evaluations were meaningful and every year a building administrator spent a full class observing each of us and tried their best to give us meaningful feedback. No checklists. No ipads. No 10 minute "gotcha" pop-ins, no quadrants or Danielson Model. Everyone in the building felt like part of the same team.
And then things started to change. The never-ending, unnecessary additions of new administrative and teacher-on-special-assignment jobs (in administrative positions) added layer upon layer of administrative bloat and levels of distance between teachers, principals, and the district office. There was a time when staff and the district office folks knew one another well. People didn't jump from district to district. They stayed and were committed to our students, staff, and community. Many of these new positions re-assign duties that were once the purview of the principal, such as disciplinarian. Now we are outsourcing jobs from our own district administration/HR office, such as hiring and placing substitutes. Even for a current employee to transfer or apply for a new position is impersonal and corporate.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was the baby of George W. Bush in 2001. He wasn't the first the first president to attack our public schools, and this law wasn't as damaging as what was to come in 2015 with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). President Barack Obama's administration worked hand-in-hand across the aisle with Republican law makers, as they all agreed to find "innovative" ways to privatize big chunks of public education, as well as to union bust. I wonder why they seem to only work across the aisle when disrupting and destroying public services and middle-class unions.
I spent many years trying to figure out what was going on in my district, only to learn that it was a covert, suburban-style version of what had happened in our nation's cities about a decade earlier. It's as if one superintendent came to the suburbs and set this all in motion. It's like they were selected to bring the same damaging reforms to suburban schools who passively watched it all happening to our urban neighbors the previous decade. At that time, most of us didn't understand that we were being fed lies about "failing" city schools and the need for "data driven" charter schools with "No Excuses" philosophies. Many people still do not realize that much education policy and reporting are funded by anti-public education groups and foundations. Black and Brown children in urban, suburban, and rural communities became the focus of a deficit model that still exists today. The spin doctors and word smiths coined terms using the word "gaps", be it achievement gaps, opportunity gaps, or others. Click here to learn how Wall Street is making easy bets on America's most vulnerable and their "gaps" thanks to ESSA.
Seasoned teachers watched our state lawmakers mandate unfunded and arbitrary high school exit exams that would keep children from graduating, if not passed. We watched 14 year-olds have panic attacks, and we observed the state ignore the testimony of parents and students against these high stakes exams. I blogged here about the hearing where a PA state senator shared his reasoning for the high school exit exams, "The (state tests) could be blown off by the individual students because it didn't count anything for them. I recall visiting schools in various school districts and elementary school students can be cajoled, and bribed, and encouraged to do well on the (state tests), but by the time they get to 8th grade they've figured out they have no stake in the exam..."
We have seen teacher planning periods changed to over-structured data meetings, or worse, be fully eliminated. I once had a principal do a little activity at the start of the year with each team. He asked us to go through our class lists from the previous year and pick names of several students we thought scored proficient, advanced and basic. Once we did so, he shared their state test scores for the big reveal that.... we already knew and properly predicted the proficiency levels of the children. Numerical data is just one lens in which we can view our students, but the data is most helpful when it is not from high stakes exams or benchmark exams that standardize and rush the content so students can be measured at the same time.
If you are part of the generation of teachers who feels the physical and emotional pain of living through the destruction of public education, I see you. I feel your pain. If it feels hostile in your school environment, it may be because it is. Many districts are implementing ESSA without teaching their staff, parents/guardians & community stakeholders what is in the law and how they are choosing to implement it. It feels like a covert hostile takeover.
If you are interested in the long and winding road it took for me to figure this all out, here is a link to my first blog: http://whatsthebigideaschwartzy.blogspot.com/
To better understand the Every Student Succeeds Act, please check out a previous post in this blog: https://whattheheckinpubliced.blogspot.com/2021/12/this-is-innovation.html
I have experienced all five of the stages of grief as I figured out and continued to teach through the purposeful dismantling of public education as we know it. I accept that ESSA is the law, but is it ethical?
"You are a transitional generation... It's the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make... For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts... they will have no memories of any other way... they won't want what they can't have. "
Red for Ed?
