Mr. Duncan,
I read your Teacher Appreciation Week letter to teachers,
and had at first decided not to respond. Upon further thought, I realized I do
have a few things to say.
I’ll begin with a small sample of relevant adjectives just
to get them out of the way: condescending, arrogant, insulting, misleading,
patronizing, egotistic, supercilious, haughty, insolent, peremptory, cavalier,
imperious, conceited, contemptuous, pompous, audacious, brazen, insincere,
superficial, contrived, garish, hollow, pedantic, shallow, swindling, boorish,
predictable, duplicitous, pitchy, obtuse, banal, scheming, hackneyed, and
quotidian. Again, it’s just a small sample; but since your attention to teacher
input is minimal, I wanted to put a lot into the first paragraph.
Your lead sentence, “I have worked in education for much of
my life”, immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year
“education” career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan,
are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education
reform: that the number one prerequisite for educational expertise is never
having been a teacher. Your stated goal is that teachers be “…treated with the
dignity we award to other professionals in society.”
Really?
How many other professionals are the last ones consulted
about their own profession; and are then summarily ignored when policy
decisions are made? How many other professionals are so distrusted that
sweeping federal legislation is passed to “force” them to do their jobs? And
what dignities did you award teachers when you publicly praised the mass firing
of teachers in Rhode Island?
You acknowledge teacher’s concerns about No Child Left
Behind, yet you continue touting the same old rhetoric: “In today’s economy,
there is no acceptable dropout rate, and we rightly expect all children –
English-language learners, students with disabilities, and children of poverty
- to learn and succeed.”
What other professions are held to impossible standards of
perfection? Do we demand that police officers eliminate all crime, or that
doctors cure all patients? Of course we don’t.
There are no parallel claims of “in today’s society, there
is no acceptable crime rate”, or “we rightly expect all patients – those with
end-stage cancers, heart failure, and multiple gunshot wounds – to thrive into
old age.” When it comes to other professions, respect and common sense prevail.
Your condescension continues with “developing better assessments so [teachers]
will have useful information to guide instruction…” Excuse me, but I am a
skilled, experienced, and licensed professional. I don’t need an outsourced
standardized test – marketed by people who haven’t set foot in my school – to
tell me how my students are doing. I know how my students are doing because I
work directly with them. I learn their strengths and weaknesses through
first-hand experience, and I know how to tailor instruction to meet each
student’s needs. To suggest otherwise insults both me and my profession.
You want to “…restore the status of the teaching
profession...” Mr. Duncan, you built your career defiling the teaching
profession. Your signature effort, Race to the Top, is the largest
de-professionalizing, demoralizing, sweeter-carrot-and-sharper-stick public education
policy in U.S. history. You literally bribed cash-starved states to enshrine in
statute the very reforms teachers have spoken against.
You imply that teachers are the bottom-feeders among
academics. You want more of “America’s top college students” to enter the
profession. If by “top college students” you mean those with high GPA’s from
prestigious, pricey schools then the answer is simple: a five-fold increase in
teaching salaries. You see, Mr. Duncan, those “top” college students come
largely from our nation’s wealthiest families. They simply will not spend a
fortune on an elite college education to pursue a 500% drop in socioeconomic
status relative to their parents.
You assume that “top” college students automatically make
better teachers. How, exactly, will a 21-year-old, silver-spoon-fed ivy-league
graduate establish rapport with inner-city kids? You think they’d be better at
it than an experienced teacher from a working-class family, with their own
rough edges or checkered past, who can actually relate to those kids? Your
ignorance of human nature is astounding.
As to your concluding sentence, “I hear you, I value you,
and I respect you”; no, you don’t, and you don’t, and you don’t. In fact, I
don’t believe you even wrote this letter for teachers. I think you sense a
shift in public opinion. Parents are starting to see through the façade; and
recognize the privatization and for-profit education reform movement for what
it is. And they’ve begun to organize – Parents Across America, is one example.
To save yourself, you need to reinforce the illusion that
you’re doing what’s best for public education. So you play nice with teachers
for one day - not for the teachers but for your public audience. You also need
to reassure those who leverage their wealth – and have clearly bought your
loyalties – that you’re still on their side. Your letter is riddled with all
the right buzzwords and catch phrases to do just that:
“…to change and improve federal law
to invest in teachers” sounds like a wink-nod to TFA that federal dollars are
headed their way.
“…sophisticated assessment that
measures individual student growth” can be nothing other than value-added
standardized testing; a mill-stone for teachers but a boon to the for-profit
testing industry.
“…transform teaching from the
factory model…to one built for the information age” alludes to systemic
replacement of living teachers with virtual ones – bolstering the near monopoly
of one software giant who believes the “babysitting” function of public schools
is the only reason not to go 100% virtual.
“…recognize and reward great
teaching” is stale code for “merit pay”; which is stale code for “bribe for
test scores”; which comes down to “justification to pay most teachers less.”
Lower teacher salaries, in turn, will free up money for standardized tests, new
computer software, and other profitable pursuits.
No doubt some will dismiss what I’ve said as paranoid
delusion. What they call paranoia I call paying attention. Mr. Duncan, teachers
hear what you say. We also watch what you do, and we are paying attention.
Working with kids every day, our baloney-detectors are in fine form. We’ve
heard the double-speak before; we don’t believe the dog ate your homework.
Coming from children, double-speak is expected and it provides important
teachable moments. Coming from adults, it’s just sad.
Despite our best efforts, some folks never outgrow their
disingenuous, manipulative, self-serving approach to life. Of that, Mr. Duncan,
you are a shining example.
Letter by David Reber, Topeka K-12 Examiner
It can be found online here:
Still learning!
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