Your final comment: Only parents can reverse this trend; American authoritarianism is born in its “free” public schools" holds the key. Lax parenting is where this began - parents who have resigned the job of actual parenting and just give their children to the government, to the schools, to raise. almost from birth onward. They do not support the school in this endeavor; their child can do no wrong, so any problems must be the school's fault (i.e. the teacher). In my mind, this started back in the sixties or perhaps even earlier, with Dr. Spock parenting and the whole anti-authoritarian movement. It took a few years to to drift into the schools. But unless parents retake their role as the authorities in their child's life, and support the teacher in his/her role as authority, it's not going to change. I don't know how teachers do it. I gave up as soon as I started, after only a couple of years, and yes, I had a master's degree that felt as worthless as the paper it was printed on. I saw where it was going and chose to withdraw from the school environment and homeschool my own children. In my opinion, the whole education system as it now stands is rotten to the core and needs to be disbanded. We should make parents responsible for their own children - if they choose to have someone else educate their children, it should be in very small neighborhood schools with a single teacher for a few children, and the parents in direct supervision, backing a teacher they have hired and pay out of their own pockets or via a voucher. It would require parents to once again take up the mantle of raising their own children instead of shifting the responsibility onto the government. It is already happening, and has been since parents realized what was going on in public schools, with the homeschool movement growing by leaps and bounds. I see it as the only solution; as you said: Only parents can reverse this trend; American authoritarianism is born in its “free” public schools.
I agree to all of this with one caveat: the intentional devaluation of human labor through inflation has made it necessary for both parents to work. It's going to take radical sacrifice to save your kids. Most people, frankly, aren't willing to do it. Thank goodness you were.
In our state of West Virginia, where I was a public school teacher for 7 years, our legislation has passed one of the most powerful bills regarding school choice. The money follows the student. $4,000 can be used towards private school, charter school, or micro schools which are popping up in our area. A teacher can set up a school within a home, a community building, etc, and take in the students. This is a tremendous saving to the state as its normal outlay is $8,000 per pupil (which is understandable, it has buildings to maintain, supplies to purchase, etc.) However, I have high hopes for the micro school revolution and I look forward to seeing the fruit that it produces.
I get the impetus behind so-called restorative justice. Go for the root problems. All good. Except we forget some kids just don't want to be in school. And it's a darn shame we can't have apprenticeships and set them free.
Otherwise, the manipulative ones would game the whole system before multiple adults with masters degrees have the common sense to question basic motives.
In my experience, the ones who don't want to be in school don't want to be there because the schools have totally failed to offer a value proposition. The kids who hate school the most are usually the smartest, most under-challenged students. The waste of innate ability -- across all socioeconomic strata -- is a national tragedy.
And Masters Degrees in education are relatively easy to get, if expensive. They're the purest form of credentialism and, arguably, have the worst and most far-reaching effects.
Nice work. I retired in June after 35 years; art, ELA and social studies in 7 schools, 3 districts, 2 states, inner-city LA, tiny midwestern cow-town, LoCali suburb. I had a persistent sense of deja vu while reading and am glad it’s done for me. Near the end I concluded that being authoritative - in the most comprehensive way, including a full complement of practical survival and mental health skills - was the ultimate goal, and definitely not one identified as such by the powers-that-be. So I like your framing, and your frustration was too familiar. I could’ve written the script of that little discipline problem story. I also hope that my own response to the environment and its pitfalls was similar. I did get some positive returns on my efforts in terms of student feedback; in the stretch run I taught for 7 years at an inner-city HS where I worked hard to write my own stuff for SS classes b/c the texts were lame and the kids wouldn’t read them anyway. Made some progress on that with a tough crowd of hood rats that I loved.
Since I did have a head start on you, I can attest that the issues you ID’d preceded the more recent of the poorly conceived solutions foisted upon you, your colleagues and students. I started at a jr. high in south central LA in 1989; it was year-‘round to alleviate overcrowding and featured a full complement of other well-known probs: high #s of newly arrived immigrant EL kids (before the precise label was in use), 95%+ Title I, gang banging. The limits of effective disciplinary ‘support’ became clear there too. But it did make for a great place to figure out one’s game, particularly for a new dad who desperately needed the job. And I was lucky to be around some excellent, tough-minded teachers; they still stack-up as the best group I was ever part of.
From them I learned that the most essential motivation was internal - a necessity for lifers. Which, by the end of my 9 years there, I knew I would be. What I hadn’t yet learned, though, was how fraught relationships with admins were always going to be. That was a lesson I received strict instruction in off/on for the rest of my career, right up to the end. And by then I saw it from the perspective of someone who’d jumped through the necessary hoops to join those ranks. (I never took the leap, but not for lack of trying, since I had 3 kids to put through college.) Ultimately it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that the mediocrity, inexperience, and venality of the available pool was an intractable issue. With a BA and MA in art I was able to stay with my fave subject for the final descent and happily avoid the mind-numbing aspects of being stuck in a miserable AP job.
The career ladder needs a complete makeover, and if our unions were to get on board with that it could happen. Strong veteran teachers could rotate into/through/ beyond (& back to the classroom) mid-level management jobs, both on-site and off. Their perspective is the crucial missing element at the decision-making level, and could provide more astute insight for decisions that directly effect classrooms. Until that day expect more of the same. But keep up your good work, both the writing and the teaching. I’m planning to keep tabs on all that.
The school environment shifted about 7 years after I started teaching. Not that it was any great shakes prior to that, but it really went off the rails in 2005 in our district. "No Child Left Behind" had been implemented, and our district hired a superintendent from outside the district who had never taught school. (Our district currently has a superintendent who only taught for five years prior to becoming a TOSA), and this superintendent decided to eliminate the "9-year Rule" that had been in place since the 1960s. It was based on the study done that concluded that the average person needs about 10,000 hours of doing something to achieve expertise in that thing. 10,000 hours equated to approximately 8.5 years when it came to teaching. This policy said that the district would not hire anyone to be an administrator until they had at least 9 years of teaching IN THE CLASSROOM. The idea being that unless one were an expert teacher, how on earth would they have the knowledge and skill to evaluate teachers and assist them in solving their problems? It was a sound rule. It served the district well for 40 years. However, when this new superintendent came in, he believed that administration should be nothing but management. They should have no emotional or social connection with the teachers in the district. He wanted them to be flunkies for the superintendent and enforce his rules and policies without question. So, he began the nefarious policy of deliberately hiring teachers who had the least amount of classroom experience to be administrators, freezing those existing ones in place where they were, and eliminated site-based policy-making. He would regale his young 20-something APs with analogies such as "The district is an airplane. Administration are the pilots. The students are the passengers, and the teachers are the hijackers." Needles to say, everything went to hell very rapidly. Instead of experience, admin had policies to guide them. When the policies failed, they would just repeat the policy and assume that the teacher was to blame since, by definition, the policy couldn't be wrong. Since you had rookies evaluating veterans, they often had no idea what they were even looking at, nor had they any way of judging the effectiveness of a lesson or any way of making them better. Promotion became based solely on politics and sucking up. Merit be damned. The "Peter Principle " became something that we WISHED we had! If ONLY we had people promoted only one level above their competency! We currently have the entire district being ran by these incompetent rookies! Our current HR Assistant Superintendent has NEVER taught! Ever! And 90 percent of the district personnel have taught for fewer than 5 years. Site-based decisions have been replaced with "concensus building " where the district decides what it wants to do, brings this to a school committee, and asks for a vote on it before they take it back to the school board for approval. They tell the board that everyone agrees with it, and it passes. It's devious and stupid, and things just get worse and worse. The reason admin don't know how to help teachers with classroom management, is because they have zero experience with it themselves. That's why they think "restorative justice " is a good idea. It's total BS. Glasses had it right with his "Choice Theory for the Classroom." I don't CARE what the root causes are for the behavior. I don't care that your parents suck, or why you ended up this way. What counts is how you bebehave. Are your behaviors responsible or irresponsible? Do they move you towards your goal, or away from it? Are your goals adequately defined? A teacher asked me last year how I could have done this for 26 years. I told him that if it had been like this when I started, I would have done something else. It's sad because teaching should be a noble profession; a calling, but it is a long way removed from that now. Everything that Dissident Teacher is saying here is one hundred percent true. Not only about the system, but her own efforts. I have known her for 20 years and saw what she did when she was here. She's not even remotely exaggerating her efforts or the effects she had on the kids. Our discussions about this stuff would go on for hours and her passion about this is real (and that was when she only had ONE kid!). I don't know what other districts have been through, but if mine is any example, then major systemic change is needed.
I learned a lot from you. I have to agree that I don't know how you continue to do this job. If I remembered half what you did I'd have had multiple strokes from totally justifiable and unremitting rage.
LOL. The reason I can handle it is because of my own personal segment I have occupied. Teaching "emotionally disturbed " kids, without low IQ disabilities, gives me tremendous freedom that others don't enjoy. I have autonomy in my room. Admin leaves me alone. I am bound by no curriculum other than what I create. I use no textbooks, which my kids know I affectionately call "the book of lies", and use real books and information to teach with. Much of what I teach is based on open source selection of topics by the kids, provided it is relevant to the larger subject. You should hear our discussions! No kid or parent wants their kid moved once they get to me, and I have former students who are in their early 40s now who keep in touch (their parents too). They come in with the worst behavior records, and leave productive. In other words, my set up is completely anomalous to what others deal with, which is why I survive. The only time they mess with me is when I venture out of my room and rock the larger boat, (and even then, only at the district level), which I gave up on after my vindictive transfer. I learned a lot from you too kiddo. I just wish what you were doing had been more contagious with other teachers.
Too simple of an explanation. Blame lies with everyone, as we have been complicit. Some of the worst culprits are the parents themselves, who won’t accept any discipline whatsoever and defend their child to the death for a simple detention, and then will be at the central office if they don’t get their way. We have empowered parents and neutered authority. Pay is terrible for teachers nearly everywhere and our strongest candidates leave the workforce after a few years to make far more money for easier jobs. Living and working on good will doesn’t pay the bills. I’m a HS principal and there is some truth to this essay, but reality is far more nuanced than this. I’m a firm believer that one of the best things you can say to a student is “no”, but when the parent goes to the board for refusing a student’s schedule change, it sucks the life out of you and creates far more work.
You just backed up what I said in the essay though. If you are neutered because the Board and the District Office are political, then you can't back the teachers in the classroom. If you can't back the teachers in the classroom, then how the hell are they supposed to hold these poorly-parented students accountable for the work of learning? It's turtles all the way down but, having said that, I also recognize that everywhere you look for perps, you also see victims.
However, you and I are the only ones collecting a SALARY here. The kids pay in time -- and if you're a principal, you KNOW that you have teachers that waste bucketloads of student time, sometimes through negligence, sometimes incompetence, sometimes by teaching to the middle, and sometimes at the behest of the politicians on the Board and the D.O. to make sure students spend significant parts of the day on devices.
The parents pay in taxes, and before you say, "Not all parents are net taxpayers" yes, I know, I worked in large, deeply Title I schools for 13 of 20 years.
You gotta have a set of brass balls to find the loopholes in the law that allow you to fight for the GOOD KIDS in the room. Until leadership does it, and until the board backs you, the kids will continue to drown because the people who are paid to watch out for them keep parroting the Nuremburg defense. That's why I made the point about the brave men I knew who held the line -- and how they were absolutely STYMIED by the District Office.
The worst part is this: the best parrots are usually the most handsomely rewarded. Nobody wants to look too hard in the mirror on this one; the golden handcuffs are too shiny.
I get what you are saying, all I am saying is it is far more nuanced. One of the things I agree with is that the teachers are the ones with the impossible jobs, much more so than anyone else. You cannot differentiate when the grade level span is literally eight years apart in a math class of 35. Just isn’t happening.
One thing I disagree with is “good kids”. I’m not that cynical yet. Kids are most often a product of what they learn, and the system itself is not set up to serve all kids. No kid, especially at younger ages, wants to be unsuccessful. Ultimately, I think we need alternative education options at a much earlier stage of life than high school. My district only allows for alternative settings in the 11th and 12th grade, which is absurd.
To clarify, what I mean by "good kids" are kids who are at school and have some sense that the work they are doing is meaningful and that they can learn given solid instruction. All kids love to feel competent at things; some kids need really good teachers and really solid discipline policy to make up for deficits at home.
I've only had two kids in my classes who I couldn't always rein in, but they'd go walkabout, at which point, I'd call security and our class would go on. I've had plenty of disaffected, uninterested kids with records reflecting lots of poor behavior who, once shown they can learn this stuff -- even if their pace is slower -- and taught that they will be held strictly accountable for their part in maintaining the sanctity of our classroom, were never a problem in my class.
However, you're right: if admin can't remove the kids who are beyond the teacher's capacity to control, then you don't have a learning environment.
So at what point does the Board and District leadership put learning over feelings? There's your nuance. Anything else is just job protection and lawyer-avoidance. We let it get this far. If we let it go any further the costs will be unpayable -- and you'll end up with a public school system that only warehouses the very poor and the very dangerous.
Out of school suspension needs to be brought back as part of a Progressive discipline policy. Any act of violence toward another student or the teacher should result in an immediate 3-day suspension. Destruction of school property or a class evacuation to handle behavior should also be met with an immediate 1-day suspension. Documented, persistent defiance which includes failure to observe classroom norms should eventually reach suspension.
It's easy to make the case if you're logging behavior consistently and you have administrators writing clear, actionable policy regarding behavior infractions. If you have to write a literal script, DO IT, then hold the teachers accountable for following it.
It's time to stand up for the 30 who are doing what they're supposed to against 1 who prevents that (even if that 1 is the teacher).
Thank you for your illuminating and frankly shocking writing, it’s invaluable to learn all of this as a parent.
Piecing together your professional insider view with random everyday situations like the completely vandalic behavior of middle school children in upscale supermarkets, with everyone sheepishly looking away as they throw things on the floor and curse, paints a terrifying overall picture.
Put aside your fear and fight. Rage against the dying of the light.
We were probably only ever to transmit our values to our children. There was never a way to do it en masse. Our big mistake was ceding that power to the State as if it could -- or wanted to -- transmit parents' values to their children.
We got fat and lazy and dangerously complacent, to the point of giving them our posterity to mold outside our influence.
I agree that the biggest thing one can realistically make an impact on in life is his own family and loved ones, most of all children. Don’t undestand parents who aren’t zealously protective and passionate about the minds and souls of their offspring.
I understand your hard headedness. I too am a hardheaded board member who questions this stuff at every meeting only to be voted down 4-1 or 3-2. I go to teacher trainings and see very little that I can get behind. I watch neighbor kids who have failed Algebra 1 three times over three years only to transfer to one of our schools that offer “integrated” math so they can graduate. Their answer? Beef up security measures with high tech facial comparison and a portable metal detector, and policies that do nothing to address the behavior. I ask them respectfully to look at the policies that gave Parkland, Florida a Nikolas Cruz. We are doing nothing differently.
As a teacher who is now in their fifth year, reading this feels very validating and just as disheartening. It felt as if you had been walking with a recorder, noting my day-to-day struggles. I teach American history in an underprivileged community, and there is a constant battle between my passion, and the reason I became a teacher versus the reality every time I step into my classroom. The most heartbreaking piece is how this is affecting the students who come to school to learn and get something from the teacher/topic yet they are robbed of this because of the groups of students who have learned to play the system.
In my opinion, the key to ensuring success is keeping high expectations and creating safe spaces for kids to learn. Any time I try to hold students accountable though, admin comes up with a creative way to tell me I can’t. At times it’s been that with a delightful mixture of parents who enable their children.
Like all of us though, I’ll continue to fight the good fight, no matter how stubborn that makes me seem.
Let your love shine through. Try as hard as you can to level primary source readings -- the kids LOVE them, especially when they get into the nitty gritty of daily life for normal people under extreme circumstances. I walk around the classroom to see who read (we use highlighting and simple metacognitive markers, i.e. (?), (*), and (! -- connections to personal life/other learning). I look at what they marked and give them positive feedback on their curiosity or say things like, "Yeah, most kids don't know what that is -- would you mind doing us a favor and asking that question so the people who aren't as brave as you get to hear what it means?" Then we talk through what blew their minds in the primary sources, which lets me fill in the gaps of their learning through lecture and review of previous learning.
It's a hard dance, my sister, but I did it with deeply poor, mostly-chicano, low-literacy populations for 13 years. They didn't all pass my class, but most of them LOVED learning. Even econ (which is my jam). You won't get them all, and when you're dealing with tough customers, you might never find out, but you're doing work that grows hearts. Keep fighting. Ignore the haters. ;)
You could not be more correct that "too many teachers barely know more than what’s in the student textbook. Many of us don’t even know that."
I found the state testing to become a teacher insultingly easy. Fresh out of college, I scored a 200/200 on Virginia's history praxis exam (history was my major) and a 198/200 on VA's computer science praxis (comp. sci. was only my minor in college). I felt like I wasted my time going to college to pass those exams; if the exams were that easy, why couldn't I just teach straight out of high school? I certainly could've passed those cakewalk exams straight out of high school given the huge margin between my scores and failure.
Also, I'm proficient in history, but I am no expert. I wouldn't even consider myself proficient in computer science, yet I nearly received a perfect score. If someone like me can score that highly on those exams then those exams are too easy.
Asking other teachers how they feel about the praxis exams has become my litmus test to tell a good teacher from a bad one. If they say that the praxis exams were challenging (some have told me they had to retake the exams to secure a passing score) then I know they don't know their content. I hope other states are different, but in Virginia anybody with a basic understanding of a subject can easily pass the exams to become a teacher.
VA also dropped the requirement for teachers to pass a math exam (unless they are a math teacher). This is crazy. Every teacher should be able to do basic math.
Teachers get away with not knowing their content because the people responsible for licensing let them.
Wait until you look into the CBEST. The state of California is considering scrapping it because too many teachers can't pass it. It literally ONLY measured basic arithmetic and reading skills. In other words, it was written so that an advanced 3rd grader could pass it.
I cannot tell you the number of colleagues I had over the years, teaching in HIGH SCHOOLS, who had to take it multiple times to pass.
I really wish I could get more parents to understand that if they're already spending a gorillion dollars on club sports and their kid can read, there's almost zero benefit to sending them into school every day as long as the parent is willing to hold the kid accountable for learning, whatever that looks like in your house. I recommend the Feynman test under your supervision at the end of the day in every subject on the calendar for that day. https://educatedandfree.substack.com/p/teach-yourself-anything-using-feynmans-technique?r=b8lae
Fortunately he was home-schooled until 11th grade. He had great independent learning skills. He went on to received degrees in math and philosophy. Has a great job, doing well.
My daughter is in AP physics - mechanics (I have no idea the distinction but it apparently means something she tells me), but the teacher only has 12 kids out of 950 in the senior class in this class. She is incompetent and she regularly is wrong and the kids correct her, and she basically gives the kids links to teach it to themselves.
That's so depressing. I just don't understand how the teacher can feel she has no duty to at least TRY to get out ahead of the kids so she might be able to help a few of them.
All education is student directed. Anything else is just learning. No system of discipline and accountability can match the power of native human curiosity and the urge to be and be recognized as competent. I never met a student that didn't want to learn, who didn't enjoy it. But not every student wants to learn the same material at the same time.
Education should be the goal. You're right about it -- education and schooling are not the same. The problem is that we're trying to do this highly individualized thing at scale. Frankly, it can't be done. But if we're going to try to school everyone, the least we can do is demand that they have a solid foundation of knowledge and skill upon which they can build a real, DNA-specific education.
The whole rotten K12 edifice is going to have to implode under the weight of its stunning incompetence; it could go on for some time since most parents are sleepwalking through their kids' formative years.
K12 is the kind of meat-grinder that makes the Marne look like a walk in the park.
I appreciate your insight. I’m not a teacher, but I grew up and exist in a family of teachers.
The system won’t improve until good teachers speak out against the Department of Education and the policies of administrative class. All too often in public, educators double-down on Progressives’ policies, even those exposed during the COVID era and through Progressives’ critical-theory debates.
My daughter-in-law is a teacher in an inner-city school 500 miles away. I can’t observe what she’s going through, but it sounds just like what you describe. Further, she has been under attack, more than once, it seems because she cares more about helping the students than playing the administrative games.
All I can tell you is that you probably did a good job raising a good moral human being. The thing is, it's lonely out here. Comfort her the best you can and encourage her. Even though she may NEVER see what she's done for her students, if she has integrity and sticks to what is True and Good and Beautiful, then she will have fought this war bravely and with honor.
Until we get make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again, the only thing we can do is hold the line on high expectations.
Obviously, if your position is dependent on end-of-term student surveys, that will be terrifying -- which is why the system continues apace producing highly-credentialed, fearful indentured servants.
But if you and your colleagues can pull them up by their collars -- metaphorically, of course -- you will change lives in ways you never dreamed.
You said it all. Fortunately, for me, I am at the end of my career. I only teach one online course now, although I used to teach in-person, full-semester loads. Student reviews are demoralizing and terrifying. I refuse to read them now, but used to have to; I still have less experienced and less qualified individuals ask me about how I plan to “respond to students’ criticisms.” That doesn’t even include when I have received insulting and degrading emails from students (fortunately rare). I don’t know what the answer is, but I am moving toward school choice for parents. What a system. Congratulations on your hard work and not giving up or giving in!
Having read a lot about the struggles of inner city teachers trying to control disruptive students with little support from mostly black school administrators it seems to me that it would be possible to greatly improve the teaching environment by simply removing (expelling) those causing the most disruption. This would send a strong message about acceptable behavior and make it possible for most students to actually learn. Kids will quickly understand the consequences of disruptive behavior and change accordingly so relatively few would actually have to be removed. As with crimes like shoplifting it appears that society has given up on enforcing standards of accountability and thus its deterrent effect. A self fulfilling prophecy.
Thank you very much for this post. Your writing made me feel and empathize. I've seen various versions of much that you described. I'm not yet convinced though that accountability has completely disappeared, at least not yet. I've been a teacher and mentor. I became a principal that had a significant amount of instructional leadership experience. From this point of view, I would humbly offer that accountability not only has to be reclaimed but also re-envisioned with a different locus of control. Society has shifted; the model of teaching and learning in public schools generally hasn't. It's a tough thing to describe, and I'm working myself on ways to describe it clearly. Essentially I'm chasing a notion that the new authority (and subsequent accountability) includes what you allude to but also includes a shift in how we understand learners, learners in community, and then provide opportunities and tasks that connect to them. And by learners I mean students, teachers and administrators. Maybe the whole system. I submit that all educators and students want to be a part of identifying the problem and part of the solution. The solution is definitely a long game.
They sure do want exactly that. The problem is that if the teachers and students actaully are allowed to solve any of these problems a bunch of six-figure administrative jobs and consultancies and contracts go *POOF*. And we can't have mediocre adults having to find new jobs that require them to work more than 20 hours a week, can we now?
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need -- except for the students, of course.
Your final comment: Only parents can reverse this trend; American authoritarianism is born in its “free” public schools" holds the key. Lax parenting is where this began - parents who have resigned the job of actual parenting and just give their children to the government, to the schools, to raise. almost from birth onward. They do not support the school in this endeavor; their child can do no wrong, so any problems must be the school's fault (i.e. the teacher). In my mind, this started back in the sixties or perhaps even earlier, with Dr. Spock parenting and the whole anti-authoritarian movement. It took a few years to to drift into the schools. But unless parents retake their role as the authorities in their child's life, and support the teacher in his/her role as authority, it's not going to change. I don't know how teachers do it. I gave up as soon as I started, after only a couple of years, and yes, I had a master's degree that felt as worthless as the paper it was printed on. I saw where it was going and chose to withdraw from the school environment and homeschool my own children. In my opinion, the whole education system as it now stands is rotten to the core and needs to be disbanded. We should make parents responsible for their own children - if they choose to have someone else educate their children, it should be in very small neighborhood schools with a single teacher for a few children, and the parents in direct supervision, backing a teacher they have hired and pay out of their own pockets or via a voucher. It would require parents to once again take up the mantle of raising their own children instead of shifting the responsibility onto the government. It is already happening, and has been since parents realized what was going on in public schools, with the homeschool movement growing by leaps and bounds. I see it as the only solution; as you said: Only parents can reverse this trend; American authoritarianism is born in its “free” public schools.
I agree to all of this with one caveat: the intentional devaluation of human labor through inflation has made it necessary for both parents to work. It's going to take radical sacrifice to save your kids. Most people, frankly, aren't willing to do it. Thank goodness you were.
In our state of West Virginia, where I was a public school teacher for 7 years, our legislation has passed one of the most powerful bills regarding school choice. The money follows the student. $4,000 can be used towards private school, charter school, or micro schools which are popping up in our area. A teacher can set up a school within a home, a community building, etc, and take in the students. This is a tremendous saving to the state as its normal outlay is $8,000 per pupil (which is understandable, it has buildings to maintain, supplies to purchase, etc.) However, I have high hopes for the micro school revolution and I look forward to seeing the fruit that it produces.
I get the impetus behind so-called restorative justice. Go for the root problems. All good. Except we forget some kids just don't want to be in school. And it's a darn shame we can't have apprenticeships and set them free.
Otherwise, the manipulative ones would game the whole system before multiple adults with masters degrees have the common sense to question basic motives.
In my experience, the ones who don't want to be in school don't want to be there because the schools have totally failed to offer a value proposition. The kids who hate school the most are usually the smartest, most under-challenged students. The waste of innate ability -- across all socioeconomic strata -- is a national tragedy.
And Masters Degrees in education are relatively easy to get, if expensive. They're the purest form of credentialism and, arguably, have the worst and most far-reaching effects.
Nice work. I retired in June after 35 years; art, ELA and social studies in 7 schools, 3 districts, 2 states, inner-city LA, tiny midwestern cow-town, LoCali suburb. I had a persistent sense of deja vu while reading and am glad it’s done for me. Near the end I concluded that being authoritative - in the most comprehensive way, including a full complement of practical survival and mental health skills - was the ultimate goal, and definitely not one identified as such by the powers-that-be. So I like your framing, and your frustration was too familiar. I could’ve written the script of that little discipline problem story. I also hope that my own response to the environment and its pitfalls was similar. I did get some positive returns on my efforts in terms of student feedback; in the stretch run I taught for 7 years at an inner-city HS where I worked hard to write my own stuff for SS classes b/c the texts were lame and the kids wouldn’t read them anyway. Made some progress on that with a tough crowd of hood rats that I loved.
Since I did have a head start on you, I can attest that the issues you ID’d preceded the more recent of the poorly conceived solutions foisted upon you, your colleagues and students. I started at a jr. high in south central LA in 1989; it was year-‘round to alleviate overcrowding and featured a full complement of other well-known probs: high #s of newly arrived immigrant EL kids (before the precise label was in use), 95%+ Title I, gang banging. The limits of effective disciplinary ‘support’ became clear there too. But it did make for a great place to figure out one’s game, particularly for a new dad who desperately needed the job. And I was lucky to be around some excellent, tough-minded teachers; they still stack-up as the best group I was ever part of.
From them I learned that the most essential motivation was internal - a necessity for lifers. Which, by the end of my 9 years there, I knew I would be. What I hadn’t yet learned, though, was how fraught relationships with admins were always going to be. That was a lesson I received strict instruction in off/on for the rest of my career, right up to the end. And by then I saw it from the perspective of someone who’d jumped through the necessary hoops to join those ranks. (I never took the leap, but not for lack of trying, since I had 3 kids to put through college.) Ultimately it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that the mediocrity, inexperience, and venality of the available pool was an intractable issue. With a BA and MA in art I was able to stay with my fave subject for the final descent and happily avoid the mind-numbing aspects of being stuck in a miserable AP job.
The career ladder needs a complete makeover, and if our unions were to get on board with that it could happen. Strong veteran teachers could rotate into/through/ beyond (& back to the classroom) mid-level management jobs, both on-site and off. Their perspective is the crucial missing element at the decision-making level, and could provide more astute insight for decisions that directly effect classrooms. Until that day expect more of the same. But keep up your good work, both the writing and the teaching. I’m planning to keep tabs on all that.
The school environment shifted about 7 years after I started teaching. Not that it was any great shakes prior to that, but it really went off the rails in 2005 in our district. "No Child Left Behind" had been implemented, and our district hired a superintendent from outside the district who had never taught school. (Our district currently has a superintendent who only taught for five years prior to becoming a TOSA), and this superintendent decided to eliminate the "9-year Rule" that had been in place since the 1960s. It was based on the study done that concluded that the average person needs about 10,000 hours of doing something to achieve expertise in that thing. 10,000 hours equated to approximately 8.5 years when it came to teaching. This policy said that the district would not hire anyone to be an administrator until they had at least 9 years of teaching IN THE CLASSROOM. The idea being that unless one were an expert teacher, how on earth would they have the knowledge and skill to evaluate teachers and assist them in solving their problems? It was a sound rule. It served the district well for 40 years. However, when this new superintendent came in, he believed that administration should be nothing but management. They should have no emotional or social connection with the teachers in the district. He wanted them to be flunkies for the superintendent and enforce his rules and policies without question. So, he began the nefarious policy of deliberately hiring teachers who had the least amount of classroom experience to be administrators, freezing those existing ones in place where they were, and eliminated site-based policy-making. He would regale his young 20-something APs with analogies such as "The district is an airplane. Administration are the pilots. The students are the passengers, and the teachers are the hijackers." Needles to say, everything went to hell very rapidly. Instead of experience, admin had policies to guide them. When the policies failed, they would just repeat the policy and assume that the teacher was to blame since, by definition, the policy couldn't be wrong. Since you had rookies evaluating veterans, they often had no idea what they were even looking at, nor had they any way of judging the effectiveness of a lesson or any way of making them better. Promotion became based solely on politics and sucking up. Merit be damned. The "Peter Principle " became something that we WISHED we had! If ONLY we had people promoted only one level above their competency! We currently have the entire district being ran by these incompetent rookies! Our current HR Assistant Superintendent has NEVER taught! Ever! And 90 percent of the district personnel have taught for fewer than 5 years. Site-based decisions have been replaced with "concensus building " where the district decides what it wants to do, brings this to a school committee, and asks for a vote on it before they take it back to the school board for approval. They tell the board that everyone agrees with it, and it passes. It's devious and stupid, and things just get worse and worse. The reason admin don't know how to help teachers with classroom management, is because they have zero experience with it themselves. That's why they think "restorative justice " is a good idea. It's total BS. Glasses had it right with his "Choice Theory for the Classroom." I don't CARE what the root causes are for the behavior. I don't care that your parents suck, or why you ended up this way. What counts is how you bebehave. Are your behaviors responsible or irresponsible? Do they move you towards your goal, or away from it? Are your goals adequately defined? A teacher asked me last year how I could have done this for 26 years. I told him that if it had been like this when I started, I would have done something else. It's sad because teaching should be a noble profession; a calling, but it is a long way removed from that now. Everything that Dissident Teacher is saying here is one hundred percent true. Not only about the system, but her own efforts. I have known her for 20 years and saw what she did when she was here. She's not even remotely exaggerating her efforts or the effects she had on the kids. Our discussions about this stuff would go on for hours and her passion about this is real (and that was when she only had ONE kid!). I don't know what other districts have been through, but if mine is any example, then major systemic change is needed.
I learned a lot from you. I have to agree that I don't know how you continue to do this job. If I remembered half what you did I'd have had multiple strokes from totally justifiable and unremitting rage.
LOL. The reason I can handle it is because of my own personal segment I have occupied. Teaching "emotionally disturbed " kids, without low IQ disabilities, gives me tremendous freedom that others don't enjoy. I have autonomy in my room. Admin leaves me alone. I am bound by no curriculum other than what I create. I use no textbooks, which my kids know I affectionately call "the book of lies", and use real books and information to teach with. Much of what I teach is based on open source selection of topics by the kids, provided it is relevant to the larger subject. You should hear our discussions! No kid or parent wants their kid moved once they get to me, and I have former students who are in their early 40s now who keep in touch (their parents too). They come in with the worst behavior records, and leave productive. In other words, my set up is completely anomalous to what others deal with, which is why I survive. The only time they mess with me is when I venture out of my room and rock the larger boat, (and even then, only at the district level), which I gave up on after my vindictive transfer. I learned a lot from you too kiddo. I just wish what you were doing had been more contagious with other teachers.
Never gonna happen. I am the product of my pathology more than school and they are the product of success in public schools, more the worse for them.
Too simple of an explanation. Blame lies with everyone, as we have been complicit. Some of the worst culprits are the parents themselves, who won’t accept any discipline whatsoever and defend their child to the death for a simple detention, and then will be at the central office if they don’t get their way. We have empowered parents and neutered authority. Pay is terrible for teachers nearly everywhere and our strongest candidates leave the workforce after a few years to make far more money for easier jobs. Living and working on good will doesn’t pay the bills. I’m a HS principal and there is some truth to this essay, but reality is far more nuanced than this. I’m a firm believer that one of the best things you can say to a student is “no”, but when the parent goes to the board for refusing a student’s schedule change, it sucks the life out of you and creates far more work.
You just backed up what I said in the essay though. If you are neutered because the Board and the District Office are political, then you can't back the teachers in the classroom. If you can't back the teachers in the classroom, then how the hell are they supposed to hold these poorly-parented students accountable for the work of learning? It's turtles all the way down but, having said that, I also recognize that everywhere you look for perps, you also see victims.
However, you and I are the only ones collecting a SALARY here. The kids pay in time -- and if you're a principal, you KNOW that you have teachers that waste bucketloads of student time, sometimes through negligence, sometimes incompetence, sometimes by teaching to the middle, and sometimes at the behest of the politicians on the Board and the D.O. to make sure students spend significant parts of the day on devices.
The parents pay in taxes, and before you say, "Not all parents are net taxpayers" yes, I know, I worked in large, deeply Title I schools for 13 of 20 years.
You gotta have a set of brass balls to find the loopholes in the law that allow you to fight for the GOOD KIDS in the room. Until leadership does it, and until the board backs you, the kids will continue to drown because the people who are paid to watch out for them keep parroting the Nuremburg defense. That's why I made the point about the brave men I knew who held the line -- and how they were absolutely STYMIED by the District Office.
The worst part is this: the best parrots are usually the most handsomely rewarded. Nobody wants to look too hard in the mirror on this one; the golden handcuffs are too shiny.
I get what you are saying, all I am saying is it is far more nuanced. One of the things I agree with is that the teachers are the ones with the impossible jobs, much more so than anyone else. You cannot differentiate when the grade level span is literally eight years apart in a math class of 35. Just isn’t happening.
One thing I disagree with is “good kids”. I’m not that cynical yet. Kids are most often a product of what they learn, and the system itself is not set up to serve all kids. No kid, especially at younger ages, wants to be unsuccessful. Ultimately, I think we need alternative education options at a much earlier stage of life than high school. My district only allows for alternative settings in the 11th and 12th grade, which is absurd.
To clarify, what I mean by "good kids" are kids who are at school and have some sense that the work they are doing is meaningful and that they can learn given solid instruction. All kids love to feel competent at things; some kids need really good teachers and really solid discipline policy to make up for deficits at home.
I've only had two kids in my classes who I couldn't always rein in, but they'd go walkabout, at which point, I'd call security and our class would go on. I've had plenty of disaffected, uninterested kids with records reflecting lots of poor behavior who, once shown they can learn this stuff -- even if their pace is slower -- and taught that they will be held strictly accountable for their part in maintaining the sanctity of our classroom, were never a problem in my class.
However, you're right: if admin can't remove the kids who are beyond the teacher's capacity to control, then you don't have a learning environment.
So at what point does the Board and District leadership put learning over feelings? There's your nuance. Anything else is just job protection and lawyer-avoidance. We let it get this far. If we let it go any further the costs will be unpayable -- and you'll end up with a public school system that only warehouses the very poor and the very dangerous.
Out of school suspension needs to be brought back as part of a Progressive discipline policy. Any act of violence toward another student or the teacher should result in an immediate 3-day suspension. Destruction of school property or a class evacuation to handle behavior should also be met with an immediate 1-day suspension. Documented, persistent defiance which includes failure to observe classroom norms should eventually reach suspension.
It's easy to make the case if you're logging behavior consistently and you have administrators writing clear, actionable policy regarding behavior infractions. If you have to write a literal script, DO IT, then hold the teachers accountable for following it.
It's time to stand up for the 30 who are doing what they're supposed to against 1 who prevents that (even if that 1 is the teacher).
Thank you for your illuminating and frankly shocking writing, it’s invaluable to learn all of this as a parent.
Piecing together your professional insider view with random everyday situations like the completely vandalic behavior of middle school children in upscale supermarkets, with everyone sheepishly looking away as they throw things on the floor and curse, paints a terrifying overall picture.
Put aside your fear and fight. Rage against the dying of the light.
We were probably only ever to transmit our values to our children. There was never a way to do it en masse. Our big mistake was ceding that power to the State as if it could -- or wanted to -- transmit parents' values to their children.
We got fat and lazy and dangerously complacent, to the point of giving them our posterity to mold outside our influence.
Time to Rocky-training-montage this sheeeeeit.
Bon courage!
I agree that the biggest thing one can realistically make an impact on in life is his own family and loved ones, most of all children. Don’t undestand parents who aren’t zealously protective and passionate about the minds and souls of their offspring.
I understand your hard headedness. I too am a hardheaded board member who questions this stuff at every meeting only to be voted down 4-1 or 3-2. I go to teacher trainings and see very little that I can get behind. I watch neighbor kids who have failed Algebra 1 three times over three years only to transfer to one of our schools that offer “integrated” math so they can graduate. Their answer? Beef up security measures with high tech facial comparison and a portable metal detector, and policies that do nothing to address the behavior. I ask them respectfully to look at the policies that gave Parkland, Florida a Nikolas Cruz. We are doing nothing differently.
Oh my. Have you read Why Meadow Died? It's a tough, necessary read.
As a teacher who is now in their fifth year, reading this feels very validating and just as disheartening. It felt as if you had been walking with a recorder, noting my day-to-day struggles. I teach American history in an underprivileged community, and there is a constant battle between my passion, and the reason I became a teacher versus the reality every time I step into my classroom. The most heartbreaking piece is how this is affecting the students who come to school to learn and get something from the teacher/topic yet they are robbed of this because of the groups of students who have learned to play the system.
In my opinion, the key to ensuring success is keeping high expectations and creating safe spaces for kids to learn. Any time I try to hold students accountable though, admin comes up with a creative way to tell me I can’t. At times it’s been that with a delightful mixture of parents who enable their children.
Like all of us though, I’ll continue to fight the good fight, no matter how stubborn that makes me seem.
Let your love shine through. Try as hard as you can to level primary source readings -- the kids LOVE them, especially when they get into the nitty gritty of daily life for normal people under extreme circumstances. I walk around the classroom to see who read (we use highlighting and simple metacognitive markers, i.e. (?), (*), and (! -- connections to personal life/other learning). I look at what they marked and give them positive feedback on their curiosity or say things like, "Yeah, most kids don't know what that is -- would you mind doing us a favor and asking that question so the people who aren't as brave as you get to hear what it means?" Then we talk through what blew their minds in the primary sources, which lets me fill in the gaps of their learning through lecture and review of previous learning.
It's a hard dance, my sister, but I did it with deeply poor, mostly-chicano, low-literacy populations for 13 years. They didn't all pass my class, but most of them LOVED learning. Even econ (which is my jam). You won't get them all, and when you're dealing with tough customers, you might never find out, but you're doing work that grows hearts. Keep fighting. Ignore the haters. ;)
You could not be more correct that "too many teachers barely know more than what’s in the student textbook. Many of us don’t even know that."
I found the state testing to become a teacher insultingly easy. Fresh out of college, I scored a 200/200 on Virginia's history praxis exam (history was my major) and a 198/200 on VA's computer science praxis (comp. sci. was only my minor in college). I felt like I wasted my time going to college to pass those exams; if the exams were that easy, why couldn't I just teach straight out of high school? I certainly could've passed those cakewalk exams straight out of high school given the huge margin between my scores and failure.
Also, I'm proficient in history, but I am no expert. I wouldn't even consider myself proficient in computer science, yet I nearly received a perfect score. If someone like me can score that highly on those exams then those exams are too easy.
Asking other teachers how they feel about the praxis exams has become my litmus test to tell a good teacher from a bad one. If they say that the praxis exams were challenging (some have told me they had to retake the exams to secure a passing score) then I know they don't know their content. I hope other states are different, but in Virginia anybody with a basic understanding of a subject can easily pass the exams to become a teacher.
VA also dropped the requirement for teachers to pass a math exam (unless they are a math teacher). This is crazy. Every teacher should be able to do basic math.
Teachers get away with not knowing their content because the people responsible for licensing let them.
Wait until you look into the CBEST. The state of California is considering scrapping it because too many teachers can't pass it. It literally ONLY measured basic arithmetic and reading skills. In other words, it was written so that an advanced 3rd grader could pass it.
I cannot tell you the number of colleagues I had over the years, teaching in HIGH SCHOOLS, who had to take it multiple times to pass.
When my son was in high school he took AP physics. The teacher told his class she couldn't pass the test. He basically taught himself. W
I really wish I could get more parents to understand that if they're already spending a gorillion dollars on club sports and their kid can read, there's almost zero benefit to sending them into school every day as long as the parent is willing to hold the kid accountable for learning, whatever that looks like in your house. I recommend the Feynman test under your supervision at the end of the day in every subject on the calendar for that day. https://educatedandfree.substack.com/p/teach-yourself-anything-using-feynmans-technique?r=b8lae
Fortunately he was home-schooled until 11th grade. He had great independent learning skills. He went on to received degrees in math and philosophy. Has a great job, doing well.
My daughter is in AP physics - mechanics (I have no idea the distinction but it apparently means something she tells me), but the teacher only has 12 kids out of 950 in the senior class in this class. She is incompetent and she regularly is wrong and the kids correct her, and she basically gives the kids links to teach it to themselves.
That's so depressing. I just don't understand how the teacher can feel she has no duty to at least TRY to get out ahead of the kids so she might be able to help a few of them.
Tenure RUINS people.
How tragic for such an elegant topic!
All education is student directed. Anything else is just learning. No system of discipline and accountability can match the power of native human curiosity and the urge to be and be recognized as competent. I never met a student that didn't want to learn, who didn't enjoy it. But not every student wants to learn the same material at the same time.
Education should be the goal. You're right about it -- education and schooling are not the same. The problem is that we're trying to do this highly individualized thing at scale. Frankly, it can't be done. But if we're going to try to school everyone, the least we can do is demand that they have a solid foundation of knowledge and skill upon which they can build a real, DNA-specific education.
"...this highly individualized thing at scale. Frankly, it can't be done."
I hope you're wrong. But I do see a great deal of evidence to support it.
And this gibberish is how we end up raising a generation of retards. Go fuck yourself David.
Sounds terrible. Good for you for being stubborn and persistent, but it's not looking good out there.
The whole rotten K12 edifice is going to have to implode under the weight of its stunning incompetence; it could go on for some time since most parents are sleepwalking through their kids' formative years.
K12 is the kind of meat-grinder that makes the Marne look like a walk in the park.
I appreciate your insight. I’m not a teacher, but I grew up and exist in a family of teachers.
The system won’t improve until good teachers speak out against the Department of Education and the policies of administrative class. All too often in public, educators double-down on Progressives’ policies, even those exposed during the COVID era and through Progressives’ critical-theory debates.
My daughter-in-law is a teacher in an inner-city school 500 miles away. I can’t observe what she’s going through, but it sounds just like what you describe. Further, she has been under attack, more than once, it seems because she cares more about helping the students than playing the administrative games.
All I can tell you is that you probably did a good job raising a good moral human being. The thing is, it's lonely out here. Comfort her the best you can and encourage her. Even though she may NEVER see what she's done for her students, if she has integrity and sticks to what is True and Good and Beautiful, then she will have fought this war bravely and with honor.
I’m dumbfounded. I teach at college level. I’ve definitely noticed a difference in students in the last 10 years. This essay explains lot.
Glad I can help you understand.
Until we get make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy again, the only thing we can do is hold the line on high expectations.
Obviously, if your position is dependent on end-of-term student surveys, that will be terrifying -- which is why the system continues apace producing highly-credentialed, fearful indentured servants.
But if you and your colleagues can pull them up by their collars -- metaphorically, of course -- you will change lives in ways you never dreamed.
You said it all. Fortunately, for me, I am at the end of my career. I only teach one online course now, although I used to teach in-person, full-semester loads. Student reviews are demoralizing and terrifying. I refuse to read them now, but used to have to; I still have less experienced and less qualified individuals ask me about how I plan to “respond to students’ criticisms.” That doesn’t even include when I have received insulting and degrading emails from students (fortunately rare). I don’t know what the answer is, but I am moving toward school choice for parents. What a system. Congratulations on your hard work and not giving up or giving in!
Having read a lot about the struggles of inner city teachers trying to control disruptive students with little support from mostly black school administrators it seems to me that it would be possible to greatly improve the teaching environment by simply removing (expelling) those causing the most disruption. This would send a strong message about acceptable behavior and make it possible for most students to actually learn. Kids will quickly understand the consequences of disruptive behavior and change accordingly so relatively few would actually have to be removed. As with crimes like shoplifting it appears that society has given up on enforcing standards of accountability and thus its deterrent effect. A self fulfilling prophecy.
Thank you very much for this post. Your writing made me feel and empathize. I've seen various versions of much that you described. I'm not yet convinced though that accountability has completely disappeared, at least not yet. I've been a teacher and mentor. I became a principal that had a significant amount of instructional leadership experience. From this point of view, I would humbly offer that accountability not only has to be reclaimed but also re-envisioned with a different locus of control. Society has shifted; the model of teaching and learning in public schools generally hasn't. It's a tough thing to describe, and I'm working myself on ways to describe it clearly. Essentially I'm chasing a notion that the new authority (and subsequent accountability) includes what you allude to but also includes a shift in how we understand learners, learners in community, and then provide opportunities and tasks that connect to them. And by learners I mean students, teachers and administrators. Maybe the whole system. I submit that all educators and students want to be a part of identifying the problem and part of the solution. The solution is definitely a long game.
They sure do want exactly that. The problem is that if the teachers and students actaully are allowed to solve any of these problems a bunch of six-figure administrative jobs and consultancies and contracts go *POOF*. And we can't have mediocre adults having to find new jobs that require them to work more than 20 hours a week, can we now?
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need -- except for the students, of course.