The people who are running education in the United States of American lie like dogs in the sun.
I teach public school students in Springfield, Ohio. I have spent 11 of my 17 years teaching there. My first 6.5 years I taught public school students in Albuquerque. I came to teaching at age 35, after spending my early adult years mostly drunk. By the Grace of my Higher Power and the fellowship of A.A., I have been sober since St. Pat’s Day, 1987. I graduated with a B.S. in Special Education in 1993 and began teaching January of 1994. I received a M.A. in Secondary Education in 1999, and we moved to Ohio over Memorial Weekend, 2000. I submitted my application to Springfield City Schools in June and was an official hire early July, 2000. My family relocated here due to my mother-in-law’s need for someone to be nearby after my father-in-law died. So we moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where we still reside. I had visited Yellow Springs twice before we moved here. I knew very little of Ohio and nothing of Springfield (other than stories from the 1960s when my husband still lived with his parents). I was extremely nervous about being uprooted with a musician husband and a 5 year-old daughter, that accepting the first reasonable job offer seemed like a wise decision.
O.K., Enough about me. I just thought a little background might be helpful.
Springfield was once a robust small city with many blue-collar jobs. Pretty much the last of these jobs were dying out when I arrived in the community. The school district had 2 high schools, 5 middle schools and bunches of elementary schools. The 2 high schools had a combined enrollment of around 2500 students in 2002. That was fewer students than a median sized high school in Albuquerque had. 2002 was the year the decision was made to begin to downsize the district. The city had been losing population steadily for a decade, and there were no signs that the economy would turn around any time soon. Charter schools had been given a big green light in the late 90s and they were appearing with more frequency. http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/...
Many parents with school-age students were fleeing to the surrounding county schools, which were much more homogenous. The heads of the district were beginning to panic as they watched student enrollment plummet and millions of dollars leave with the students. Levies failed. As teachers, we were told to do everything we could to make the district look successful. We HAD to stop the drain of the finances or we would be in huge trouble. We had to convince parents that their students could be educated with quality education anywhere in the district or the consequences would be dire. We could ill-afford the “brain-drain”.
The enrollment continued to decrease, as did funding. And the consequences were dire. Since 2002, Springfield has cut almost 300 FTEs. Because of a one-time state funding deal, all new schools were built during the first decade of the new millennium. And they were much-needed. The 2 high schools were now combined into 1. 2 middle schools are gone, as are many elementary schools. There are no more education “centers” that are part of the district, and many of the “middle management” curriculum people were put back to the classrooms or went out on an incentivized retirement package. When I first started in the district in 2000, there were 7 or 8 special ed coordinators. We were down to 2.5 a couple years ago. We are up to 5 now. Class sizes increased, “specials”, P.E., art, music, teachers were split among 2 schools in elementary grades, meaning they would get their special classes once , maybe twice, every other week. Secretaries were cut from 3 to 2 to 1. Assistants were cut way back. Nurses went to 3, 4, or 5 schools per day. Elementary schools have a counselor scheduled one day per week. I could go on and on, but I won’t, except to add that the mismanagement reported to have happened in the years just preceding my hire, was a cause of a great deal of financial difficulty.
During this time, NCLB was really in gear. We were cutting, cutting, cutting and we were told, “more with less”, “more with less”, which is the district’s mantra to this day. We had (and are still) losing our brightest students. We are left, not always, but way too often, with marginalized students. Poverty is rampant among our student population. Mental illness is a huge problem. Health care is abysmal. Teen pregnancy is high. Substance abuse starts before kids reach puberty. Lead poisoning is astronomical for a Midwest small city. And we were handed the challenge of ensuring all students would be proficient in reading by the year 2014.
The district and most individual schools have failed, according to the benchmarks of NCLB. Year after year, the same schools were “failing” and “ineffective”. http://www.ode.state.oh.us/... So we had hours and hours of professional development. And after that we still had “failing” and “ineffective schools”. So the district tried “Schlecty” and “Marzano” and “Study Island”. And still we failed by NCLB standards. So then schools had to purchase programs that could solve all our woes. I have worked in 2 that have “America’s Choice”, the program that will guarantee all students will succeed as long as “it is IMPLEMENTED correctly”. The fail-safe, if it doesn’t work it is because the TEACHERS are failures, not the program purchased, or the circumstances of the students. Teachers scurried around to make sure all their ps and qs were in order and they could prove they were highly qualified to teach. Teachers were shuffled around if their transcripts failed to show their mastery of a subject they had been teaching successfully for the past 15 years, to teach a subject they hadn’t gone near in a decade and a half. And if a teacher would happen to be foolish enough to question if any of these miracle elixirs were indeed working, he or she would be called out for not believing that poor/minority/disadvantaged students can really learn. If you are not with us, then you must be against us and we will make your professional life very miserable. Drink, drink, drink the kool-aid, for that is the only salvation for the children and the only path to saving your career. Some of us have even spoken up for mental health supports in the schools. But what the heck, we spent all the money on miracle elixirs and there is nothing left. Just give them a good tongue-lashing and threaten them with no recess/detention/suspension and that’ll turn the little buggers around. http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/... And since you only have a Master’s in education and 20+ post grad hours and have been teaching 17 years, with no bad evaluations (for teaching, anyway, just quit asking so many damned questions) you are not really a professional, even though the state has been generous enough to grant you a teaching license (for a chunk of change) you are not trustworthy enough to do your job so we will have to have a subsidiary (America’s Choice) of a huge testing business (Pearson) come in and tell you what you MUST hang on your wall and where it must hang, and what you MUST say and do for the first 6.75 minutes of the lesson…And you are bottom-feeders just trying to suck the public dry with big salaries and benefits that the leaders of the State of Ohio feel it vitally important that your Unions be destroyed so we can implement merit pay, which will cost a whole lot less because the game is stacked against you, else the big testing companies couldn’t sell all the remedial materials and programs that are guaranteed to solve the proficiency deficiency as long as the teacher doesn’t step out of the tightly scripted role (and doesn’t work less than 10 hours per day). Oh yeah, if the stress of the job doesn’t kill you, the State will try to get you fired, because you and all your worthless experience and education makes you too expensive.
http://www.plunderbund.com/...
Americans need to STOP the lies about education. I don't have all the answers, but I have a few. We are harming our students and our Nation by closing our eyes, covering our ears, and humming "Schools Out For Summer". I get dirty every day teaching students. I buy them supplies, food, clothes. I give them attention, affection, and knowledge, (and bandaids).
There have been many, many diaries written about education and what works and what doesn't. teacherken is always a must read for me. I plan on being in D.C. the end of July for the Save Our Schools march. http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/. We MUST insist on the TRUTH about poverty's and mental illness' impact on learning. And we MUST get rid of NCLB. Not rewrite, not amend it, GET RID OF IT. It's the handiwork of the privatizers of education. http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/...