Good teachers don't have it easy

When there is no recognition of quality, and high quality is not rewarded while poor quality is not punished, systems break down.

I swear we'll make you an old-school conservative yet!

Another depressing feature of the letter (if its allegations are truthful) is the appalling lack of quality control in determining who gets to teach children in many, though I hope not all, public schools. Public schools have been, and will continue to be, a refuge for people who couldn't make it in most other fields. A very sad fact for the child victims of these incompetents and worse-than-incompetents.

Off-topic: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19090
(Dyson on Dennett)

Letters like this make me want to take another look at people who say we should end teacher tenure. I say this as someone who marched with my teachers when they were on strike, and whose mother is currently a public school librarian.

And then I stop and think about what the actual consequences of that would be, and what teachers we'd end up with, and decide that the current system with tenure is marginally better than the current system minus tenure.

So... how would one solve this? As far as I can see, the public school system manages to combine the high dependence of outcomes on individual star employees that you get in small companies with the large company culture of almost vauge and arbitrary employee decisions because management has to manage too many people at once. Abolishing tenure would simply accelerate the big-company-like tendencies of teacher employment - you'd end up with hundreds of Wallys (from the Dilbert comic strips) in front of children everywhere. Not what you want.

It's enough to make you think that the problems in public education are inherent in some deep aspect of the system's design.

And people wonder why anyone might consider homeschooling for non-fundie reasons...

I read several of the posts over at First Year Teacher. It made me grateful to be a college instructor. The real heros are in the trenches of grammar school. And they get no respect. One recent letter to the editor attacked teachers for not getting more students through the new California high school exit exam:

Why are people criticizing students for not passing the exit exam? When are teachers going to be held accountable for not doing their jobs?

What a nightmare! The whole letter is quoted here, along with a response.

Careful, PZ. You're starting to sound like a conservative.

First, there is a dangerous man in room 134. I have referred to him as Jackass, mostly, but you know who he is. I know that you are aware that he is tracking his female students menstrual cycles on a sheet of paper at his podium because I have told you this. I am certain that you know he also keeps a picture of a female student on his whiteboard and has been observed kissing it by students because, again, I have told you this.

*shudder*

That's the frightening part of the letter.

I worked for several years as a teacher in the public schools and left primarily because teachers do not get any respect -- not from administrators, not from parents, not from public officials, and not from the general public.

Many members of the public seem to share Mr. Schuyler's view (above)
"Public schools have been, and will continue to be, a refuge for people who couldn't make it in most other fields."

Whether intentionally or not, such statements tend to imply that "the teaching profession is full of idiots."

I have heard the "refuge for idiots" claim more times than I can count (often, from those who were themselves clearly idiots) but I have to this day seen no proof. Those who make the statement never provide any (conveniently).

I have a degree in physics and since leaving teaching, I have worked with engineeers and scientists, many of whom have advanced degrees, and let me just say that I have come across more incompetent people in the high tech industry (and within the government) than I ever encountered in the public schools.

Careful, PZ. You're starting to sound like a conservative.

Right-wingers sure are jealous of their claim to be the respository of all virtue. I'm a flaming liberal, Jason, but my students need to earn their grades because I'm not just giving them away. I know it confuses conservatives when they find out they're not the only ones with standards, but that's mostly because they believe their own propaganda about liberals and never recognize the straw men that they themselves constructed.

Ulg: You're right. The posts concerning Jackass were the scariest thing over at First Year Teacher. He was a math teacher, too, damn it. But no colleague of mine! I hope First Year Teacher finds a good job back in her home state.

I've seen this kind of thing a few times now: our problem is that the public schools are being treated as little factories, where you push kindergarten kids in at one end, and a dozen years later an adult with an education pops out.

I'm not so sure about it. This factory model is standard in many countries, including several whose educational systems are way better than the USA's. The main difference is that e.g. the Russian factory is geared toward producing scientists and writers rather than factory workers with the occasional factory manager.

A high school diploma is regarded as an entitlement rather than an earned acknowledgment of ability, and what that means is that administrators tend to lower their standards and be extremely lenient about the behavior and skills of both students and faculty.

This is the main problem. A high school diploma in the US means very little beyond "He showed up for class every day." District standards are worthless because the district is too small a unit, state standards are usually a joke and at any rate are not enforced, and national standards are nonexistent. Once in a while somebody comes and suggests to make graduation contingent on passing a standardized tests, and out come all the idiots who think either that testing is inherently evil or that standardized tests measure anything but how good you are at taking standardized tests.

At this point, every political position in the US has lost its virtues. Face it -- 'conservatism' has as little to do with what the word used to mean as 'liberalism' now has to do with actual liberalism.

Careful, PZ. You're starting to sound like a conservative.

Only in the cartoon land of values.

There are people who truly espouse the caricature. Reading David Brock's account of what pushed him into conservatism, you get a sense of it. The notions that criminals aren't really responsible for their actions, that twisting science to serve a 'greater good' (environmental, anti-corporate) was justified, that a child's self-esteem mattered more than giving them only what they earned. All dogma unfettered by evidence.

The reaction to this shouldn't be to simply go extreme on the other side, committing the same sins.

There is a whole range in the 'middle-left'. We don't want able-bodied people sitting on the dole forever, but we do want wider health care for practical and humanitarian reasons. We don't want to treat the world as though the
second coming is imminent, but we don't want the science perverted through an agenda on either side. We want to keep the government out of our bedrooms and our churches, and vice versa. We think that racism is ignorant, but we will not abide in the slightest honor killings in our neighborhood for the sake of being "culturally sensitive".

And we don't like cheats.

Personal responsibility is a value we cherish. Lawsuits by women in heels slipping on ice, molesters-in-waiting like Jackass, executives that get down on their knees and make fake appeals to Jesus when caught embezzling billions with
their two mistresses, children who gets their parents to lie for them when they are caught cheating, contractors who won't finish jobs they've been paid for, all these things drive us berserk.

Far be it from me to make an inclusive moral judgment on PZ, but I think he's probably in the same sort of camp.

Conservative my fuzzy backside! :)

Speaking on personal responsibility in education, I remember in the 90s we had a period of having a "no fail policy". (Part of that whole 'self-esteem better than merit in all circumstances' dogma) The 1997 focus group report had this to say on it, quite simply: "No fail policy a joke".

I'm appalled by the conditions the teacher has to live with. Some of those other particular teachers should have their heads on a platter (others, there's no doubt more to the story - not every comment dropped is cause for an orange alert press conference).

'Jackass' in particular is a ticking time bomb. There was a phys. ed. teacher from my old junior high school who was actually arrested. It's likely that there were warning signs before that point. If 'Jackass' hasn't already had sex with a student (and possibly the one in the picture he keeps), I'd actually be surprised. Ick.

If there are rules tying the principal's hands on some of these issues (and there may be - hiring and firing is not always in their purvey), there should be some efforts put forth to rescinding or altering them. The principal should
be at least trying to report this, even if they cannot hire and fire themselves, and unions shouldn't be issuing blanket protection regardless of behavior.

I hope she finds decent work elsewhere. It's sad that it seems that there's not much to be done about the conditions and risk (re: Uncle Molester, even if he's being passed elsewhere in the system) the kids must endure.

Teaching is not profession for the weak minded. The students will chew you up and spit you out. It isn't for someone who can't do other things. Almost a third to a half of all teachers quit in the first 3 years.
If Jackass was doing this stuff, he isn't getting fired because of tenure. He isn't getting fired because the administrator isn't doing their job. Tenure does not stop people from getting fired. It makes sure that they get due process. It is important because you need to be able to do stuff like giving some rich kid, who's daddy is friends with a board member, an "F". It is needed for a variety of reasons that don't apply to other kinds of jobs. But it doesn't protect those who break the law.

In elementary and high school I had various qualities of teachers, and by the end of high school I certainly had worked out what seemed to be what was wrong with those who weren't effective in various ways.

There seemed to be a great problem with teacher burn out. Admittedly, this would create even more shortages, but perhaps some sort of sabbatical schedule would help with burn out. I don't know what would help with the teachers who felt it was their job to be as snarky and nasty as possible with students, or those who couldn't answer questions in a straight way, or those who couldn't give an unboring lecture to save their skins, or ...

I for one wouldn't want to teach at that level - young adults are more up my line, in part because they "don't have to be there", and even that level of selection is remarkable at weeding out some trouble makers. Of course, in the case of TMs in high/elementary schools, it is often not their fault - but I would still hate to deal with the kid who insists on throwing a superball at the blackboard every time you turn your back or the kid with the messy handwriting who you think you can "shape up" by forcing him to write two dozen Ps instead of letting him out at recess.

For something like the Jackass situation, tenure is irrelevant. Under any sane regime, there would be cause to fire him, but I assume the administrators involved would rather avoid a scandal. Bluntly, a fish stinks from the head down. Until the teachers have respect, authority, and backing from their superiors, the school system will continue to fail the students and abuse the teachers.

"Old-school conservatives" only began to disavow bigotry and sexism publicly a few decades ago, and I have my doubts about what they say in private. Assuming this whole thing is real (because I guess I'm naive, but are things this bad?) about half the complaints centered around bigoted and sexist behavior by teachers. I really doubt that a big dose of good-old-boy conservatism would help matters.

Out of ninety-five thousand tenured teachers in Illinois, only an average of two each year are fired for poor performance. Why... isn't that two one-thousandths of one percent? Teachers must be the best-performers of any industry!

We put three kids through the public schools here. There was a Spanish teacher who couldn't speak Spanish, a GS teacher who ridiculed children in front of the class (once for having yellow teeth) and was later named 'teacher of the year' - statewide!, and a science teacher who told the class that the Earth was colder at the poles because they are farther from the sun than is the equator. Another GS teacher defined a 'fact' as anything you could look up in a book. There's more.

But hey, there's plenty of fault to go around. We found many errors in math books, and one GS science book that defined 'extinction' as 'when an animal is dead'. And nothing is made easier by excitable parents who storm the school board every time they realize "Huckleberry Finn" was written in another century when people used the 'n' word.

We did encounter some truly extraordinary and wonderful teachers. They were always getting in trouble for some reason or other.

DOF:

a GS teacher who ridiculed children in front of the class (once for having yellow teeth) and was later named 'teacher of the year' - statewide!,

I seen many similar anecdotes, and I often wonder if there is an overall trend here. It almost seems as if the more willing a teacher is to breach their commitment to being impartial, focusing on the course material, and not getting inappropriately involved in students' personal lives, the more likely they are to be named "Teacher of the Year."

I suspect there are a number of teachers out there doing a fine job of imparting knowledge, not particularly liked or hated by the students, who are never recognized by such awards, which are at core a popularity contest.

Oops. I mean "I have seen..." (that's a pretty embarrassing typo to make when criticizing teachers).

The issue of liberals vs. conservatives aside, I wonder if this nation's blather about education isn't all a joke. There is a strain of anti-intellectualism that runs so deeply through America that it undermines all our new education initiatives and elections of the latest "Education President." I wonder how many people consider education to be just job-training for "jobs" that we "create" to escape the real work that this country needs to do, should we decide to do it.

It's like the American attitude toward art and literature--they're supposed to be "good for us" in an immediate sense, in a social/moral conformist sense, in a nauseatingly self-improvement sense, like Katherine Kersten's barfola reduction of great works into little moral lessons to light our path. Who wants to be alive while we live? That might lead us astray! English classes are mostly censorship activities, and teaching in this country has become an obstacle course.

I rather suspect that these sorts of problems in education, which are the result of America's rather dim view of education as a process and as a goal, are one of the key reasons why the American society is collapsing in on itself.

Careful, PZ. You're starting to sound like a conservative.

How? I didn't hear PZ calling for the closing of the public schools and the shifting of tax money to private schools.

Alon said:

Once in a while somebody comes and suggests to make graduation contingent on passing a standardized tests, and out come all the idiots who think either that testing is inherently evil or that standardized tests measure anything but how good you are at taking standardized tests.

Those are pretty harsh words, Alon, about people who are opposed to standardized testing. I don't consider myself an idiot, nor do I feel that way about the many teachers and administrators that I know, dedicated educators, who feel that standardized tests cause more problems than they can possibly solve.

My challenge to you is to demonstrate that standardized test actually do measure something more significant than test-taking ability and how well a child has been coached in a particular testing format. The second challenge is to show that these tests can measure things like creativity or divergent thinking.

ArtK:

I can easily show that standardized tests measure (at a minimum) the ability to read the test.

This alone was a huge jump in the average literacy in my state when they first implemented a functional literacy exam.

I've responded to sgent and Alon in more detail here and here, respectively.

sgent -- the short answer is this: You've got a glaring post hoc fallacy in your comment. Perhaps you'd like to fix that before offering it as evidence refuting anything.