Frontier Desk - Corey Leopold (CC)

Well last Friday afternoon, she was shown nothing but disrespect. Not disrespect from the third graders  she had been teaching daily since about mid year, but from the administration. About 15 minutes before she was supposed to leave for the day she received a call, not from the principal who was still in the building, but from the woman who calls the substitutes for the district. She was told that this would be her last day and that she had 15 minutes to gather her things and leave. No chance to say goodbye to her students, just get her things and go.

It seems that the problem arose because one parent questioned her qualifications to teach. Seems my Mother did not meet some Act 48 requirements to be able to teach more than 90 days for years. I am told this law has been on the books since 2000 and she was never been questioned about it before. Mom had had no contact from this parent and no problems with their child.

I realize that rules are rules, and the law is the law, but I also know my Mother deserved more respect from the Belle Vernon Area administration than she was shown. Substitute teaching is a tough job. No benefits, no retirement, and you only get paid a fraction of what a regular teacher would be paid for the same time. My Mother very rarely refused a call to substitute and she would go above and beyond to do a good job for the students. She should have had someone look her in the face about the situation and been given a chance to make a smoother exit transition both for her and the students.

My Mother was not just a temp at some job, she was a teacher substituting for another teacher. If teaching is still to be considered a noble profession then my Mother deserved treated much, much more nobly. The funny thing is they may have taken away her ability to substitute, but they cannot take away her ability to teach. That she will still do for the dozen kids she tutors one on one after school 4 nights a week.  She only charges ten dollars an hour and her rates have never gone up in over twenty two years of doing it. She tutors because it  is teaching, and a teacher is what and who she is.

So, let’s start with the MSNBC coverage. As usual, they got someone that they felt could be considered an expert of sorts on the issue of across the board firings of teachers in failing schools. I went back to MSNBC today, and searched for the name of their expert on this – Zeph Capo, the government liaison for the Houston Federation of Teachers. (I learned his title from a Houston Press blog. Yes, the link is worth a look as you’ll see!) Either the folks at MSNBC were trying to pull a fast one, or they thought it was highly unlikely that anyone would bother to look up the credentials of Zeph Capo. Whatever their motives, I found it profoundly irresponsible to choose a man who just went through a battle with his own school district to prevent them from making incompetence grounds for dismissing a teacher there.

And that is what this whole situation is about – incompetence. Back to Central Falls High School, and all those teachers and staff that were given their walking papers, what you get when you bother to read the local coverage is a story about greed. The school administration wanted to go another route. They wanted to do a program that would have required a much more pro-active approach to teaching in that school – something that was sorely needed, since under half of the students were graduating. The school district offered the teachers $30 an hour for extra time needed to help the students – bear in mind, this isn’t a good school, in a good neighborhood, with an affluent community supporting its needs. The administration moved to the clean sweep option offered by the Federal government when the teachers demanded $90 an hour for their precious time. Personally, I think it was very kind for the district to offer them a dime for any overtime needed to fix the problems the teachers had created in the first place!

And back to our good friend Zeph Capo, he had a few precious gems to offer about all of this. To paraphrase, since his speech on MSNBC was splattered with “uhs” and “ums” – “It is inappropriate for President to make judgment calls about local school districts…There’s no research to say that these wholesale firings of teachers and staff do anything to improve academic improvement…School districts and school boards can support their teachers, they can support their kids. We can try to get a handle on the testing mania that is taking over our school systems…Teachers and students are more than a test score.”

First of all, it is quite appropriate for the President to make judgment calls of that kind, simply because when we, as a country, slip in the academic rankings worldwide, he takes the heat for it. If the districts won’t fix it, or can’t because they’re hogtied by unions, then the State and Federal governments have to step in. As for no research on wholesale firings, that’s absolutely true for only one reason – until now, it hasn’t been done because the teacher unions have been protecting bad teachers from the axe for years. When you’re looking at under 50% graduation rates in a given school, it’s fair to guess that there aren’t very many teachers in that institution that are managing to actually teach anything. The testing mania is the only game in town to evaluate schools – something we know we need to do because we’re not keeping up in the educational competition worldwide. Students that have problems taking standardized tests have options, but they take time and extra work on the part of the teachers. Oh, I forgot. The teachers’ time is too precious to waste on stupid things like helping students.

But while things are circling the drain in Rhode Island, there’s a ray of hope in Chicago, Illinois. In Englewood, there’s a school where all 107 graduating seniors this year are going on to four-year colleges. At Urban Prep Academy for Young Men, if you buy what the Zeph Capo’s of this world believe about education, they are achieving the impossible. Instead of striving for mediocrity, they are reaching for the stars.

I am the product of Catholic education. In our classrooms, students that did well were also taught to teach. We were encouraged to help our peers when they struggled in class, and were taught the skills to do that. Through that education, I learned that there are two types of teachers – ones that consider teaching a way to make a living, and ones that consider teaching a way of life. The young gentlemen that are privileged to attend Urban Prep Academy for Young Men have the latter. So was I.

Unfortunately, the successful schools don’t get the same amount of press coverage as the failing ones. (I’m guilty of that here.) At the very least, they deserve more so that the administrators of failing schools know where to look for ideas – find solutions to their problems in institutions that are excelling. As for the teachers’ unions, their time is over unless they stop protecting incompetent educators. Not everyone is meant to be teacher – many that are today should leave the profession. Until the unions start encouraging people that really don’t belong in a classroom to move on, they are the enemy to progress in education. While they were busy trying to get better wages and benefits for their members, they forgot why their members were supposed to be there in the first place – to prepare the next generation to take its place in the world. That in itself is failure.

Moving on to more mundane references to pop culture, this latest situation with education calls to mind P!nk’s “Dear Mr. President” – and is heartily tempting me to toy with those old lyrics to fit Obama, although right now, they already do when it comes to education. The rhetoric is a little more polished, but it’s still more of the same.

I already know that there will be numbers crunchers out there that will cry foul for one reason or another on this one, but at this point, it’s too tempting for me to ignore it. As quoted in the Washington Post, 70% of freshmen today are graduating high school. Now, based on dropout rates listed by the U.S. Department of Education from 2001 (Table 1), that’s down from 86.5%.

Before anyone starts yelling “apples and oranges”, and claiming that it’s an unfair comparison, the only reason I am even mentioning this is the fact that Obama didn’t bother to suggest anything new for education today. There’s some name-changing, and minor adjustments to NCLB standards of practice, but no meaningful differences – like removal of unfunded mandates (or the novel concept of offering Fed dollars for them), or reassessment of educational standards for educators.

Sure, Obama “said” that teaching is an important profession, but it’s lip service, just as it always has been. And my contention that we can’t expect meaningful change in education until we address problems in the system that creates teachers is still as valid as it ever was – still shared by at least a few scholars and researchers in the field. We didn’t need fast-tracking for people wanting to become teachers – one of the “shiny objects” from NCLB that still is ignored, in spite of its complete stupidity. We don’t need colleges and universities treating their Education departments like “cash cows” for the benefit of anyone but their Education departments. But there was no mention of that – apparently Obama thinks it’s enough to just say teachers are important.

It’s also important to keep talking about increasing standards for students, closing down poor-performing schools, or restarting schools in the hope that shutting them down temporarily will somehow magically make them better. Bluntly, a decent sound technician could have dabbled with the audio track today, making it sound like Bush, and I honestly wouldn’t have known the difference if it was on the radio. (I might have thought, “Wow! Bush is really on his game today. He must have practiced this speech for a long time!) But hey, change is about keeping programs that don’t work so well, right?

And yes, the next time someone jumps on me for not being enthusiastic about health care reform, I’m going to mention this one!

First, I will grant that there are several educational theorists in the Ivory Tower that are probably Marxists. But, like anything else in the world of educational academia, theories get watered down severely on the path to implementation, with the most radical theorems ending up in the circular file. Let’s not forget that there are still school boards out there, and there are still parents that bother to attend meetings and loudly voice their opinions when it comes to the education of their little darlings. That said, truly radical change in the educational system of this country will never happen in a single leap – ever.

Now, to address some of the absurdities mentioned in the article that was brought to my attention this morning:

Some of the basic tenants of critical pedagogy are:

ALL education is inherently political…

A social and educational vision of justice and equality should be the foundation for all education

Race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are important domains of oppression

The purpose of education is the alleviation of oppression and human suffering

Schools must not hurt students–good schools don’t blame students for their failures

Good schools don’t judge the beliefs students have about their life’s experiences

Part of the role of any educator involves becoming a researcher into social oppression

Education must promote emancipatory change

First, the term is “tenets”, not “tenants”, but maybe showing a command of the English language isn’t a prerequisite when it comes to writing a critique on educational theory in some people’s minds. Nitpicking aside, let’s start with the first tenet: “ALL education is inherently political”. Other than the fact that I find it comical that someone who is bothering to complain about the theories in the first place on political grounds is saying this, this is recognition of the condition of life in general. Life is political, even in the classroom. Anyone who doubts that doesn’t remember their school years, and if they have children, don’t know what in the world goes on during each school day. Cliques are the “political groupings” in the school setting, and every person in the school carries their personal political baggage with them each and every day. If educators would attempt to ignore that fact, they would lose their ability to teach because none of the students would think that they have any sense of reality. Only the Kindergarten and maybe the First Grade teachers would manage to have enough respect from their students to teach even a single concept. (Stating that from experience, since my youngest child is currently in Second Grade, and I am already seeing the signs of politicking amongst his classmates.) Divorcing politics from education would be an attempt to deny the very nature of human beings – we are political by nature, in that we seek the approval of others in our actions, naturally gravitate toward like-minded individuals, and avoid those that are “too” different.

The next one is bothersome to say the least. “A social and educational vision of justice and equality should be the foundation for all education.” Why anyone at this point in this nation’s development would find this objectionable is disturbing. However, I’ll grant a little bit of understanding simply because there’s a buzz phrase in there – social justice. That is a term that has become bastardized, and is obviously being taken in the context of organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (or at least I hope that’s the case.) In educational theory, this is typically considered on a much smaller scale, particularly in practice. It is meant to encourage educators and administrators to treat all students equally within the school environment. Students should know that if they do something wrong, no matter what all of them will receive the same treatment – conversely, the same treatment if they do something right. There should be no “special treatment” that isn’t specifically attached to circumstances that are beyond the students’ control – i.e., students with disabilities such as autism may not end up with the same punishment as other students for acting up in the classroom, but that’s only because such actions are biologically beyond the control of the student. The goal of this tenet is that students will go out into the world with a reasonable sense of what is right and wrong – at least that’s a very basic analysis of it.

“Race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are important domains of oppression.” Denying reality is a certain guarantee that students will not take educators seriously. The reality of society is that race, class, gender, sexuality, religion and physical ability can be oppressive. There are still situations where these circumstance affect the way society treats individuals. Education is called the great equalizer because it is meant to help individuals overcome real or perceived barriers to success. These are the “perceived” barriers. And that also addresses the next one: “The purpose of education is the alleviation of oppression and human suffering.” Education is meant to open doors of opportunity, and that alleviates oppression and suffering.

Objections to this next one infuriate parents of children that need even the slightest bit of educational support. “Schools must not hurt students–good schools don’t blame students for their failures.” Contrary to what some people might think, this isn’t about coddling students that have the ability to do well, but are just not trying. This is about recognizing when students are not learning because they need to be taught in a different way from their peers. Special education, tutoring, individual educational plans, and all of the rest of the various educational support programs are being addressed here. This is merely recognition of the fact that not all students learn the same way, and that it is important to assist students that have different needs – not ignore them, and let them fail.

This next one is probably objectionable only part of the time. “Good schools don’t judge the beliefs students have about their life’s experiences.” It’s probably bad to avoid judging students when their beliefs and experiences are different – look out if anyone judges students that happen to agree with the ones that believe in this nonsensical view of educational theory.

“Part of the role of any educator involves becoming a researcher into social oppression.” Educators more often than not won’t have a clue about the problems faced by their students. There are the exceptions – ones that had “been there, and done that.” But for the rest, educators need to know where their students are coming from, or they will lose credibility. Call it “researched empathy” if you like. Bottom line is that an upper-middle-class white teacher will not be effective in an inner-city classroom unless that teacher takes the time to learn about what the students’ lives are really like. Conversely, that same teacher teaching in an affluent, mostly white suburban school will not be able to teach students about what they will probably encounter in the “real world.” Oh, I forgot. Class and race are never oppressive, right?

Finally, “Education must promote emancipatory change.” The greatest gift of freedom is the ability to expand one’s world through education. Education itself is meant to be freeing. Learning how to do a job frees one from the oppression of occupational mediocrity or failure. To put it in more capitalistic terms, if our nation as a whole is better educated, we can emancipate ourselves from the oppression of being ranked as less than number one in business and technology. We can free ourselves of the need for social programs outside of caring for retired citizens and veterans (disabled or not, since there is no way we can ever honestly repay them for their service.)

That said, for all the screaming that educational theories such as this are “Marxist” and will sap this nation of its strength, the arguments fall flat in the face of what the real goals are. Educational equity is not the enemy – it is the path to greatness. If it wasn’t, why was “No Child Left Behind” so important? NCLB wasn’t nearly as effective as anyone had hoped. The ones in the Ivory Tower sat down and worked on ways to make it better, and we ended up with theories like this. Evaluating them in the context of the world of politics is bluntly ludicrous. Although everything is political, the political world is not equipped to evaluate these theories fairly. They are meant to be evaluated in the context of educational scholarship. These tenets are merely a recognition of the laundry list of shortcomings of our educational system as a whole. Some of the tenets should be applied and implemented in all schools – some shouldn’t. All of them should be kept in mind when it comes to making decisions on how to manage our educational systems. One thing that isn’t mentioned is the one thing that all educators and administrators do when it comes to evaluating theories like this – they take what they know would be useful to them and implement it, and leave the rest, either permanently, or for future consideration. They recognize that there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” theory out there for our schools. Perhaps that’s why NCLB didn’t do so well.