Sunday's Washington Post features How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders. I will be blunt. It is anti-teacher, anti-teacher union. My good friend Anthony Cody rightly calls it A Manifesto of Error Consider only this:
The glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher -- and our discomfort as a society with criticizing anyone who chooses this noble and difficult profession -- has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.
That is baloney. Any administration doing its job can move incompetent teachers, (a) would not hire them or (b) allow them to get tenure in the first place.
I refuse to quote more. Instead let me offer a different and better vision, written 20 years ago by Ken Goodman, and titled A Declaration of Professional Conscience for Teachers.
PLEASE - keep reading
This link, identical to that above the fold, will take you to an intro page, where you will find a link for the one page Declaration, and a brief update by Ken.
The Declaration appeared in 1990 as a front piece of the bookThe Whole Language Catalog, edited along with Ken's wife Yetta and Lois Bridges.
I wish I could offer the whole Declaration without violating copyright. Consider simply how it begins:
There is a time in the historic development of every human institution when it reaches a critical crossroad. Institutions, like people, cannot stand still; they must always change but the changes aren't always for the better. Human institutions are composed of people. Sometimes the people within the institutions feel powerless to influence the directions of institutional change. They feel they are swept along by a force beyond anyone. Yet people within institutions can determine the directions of change if they examine their convictions and take a principled stand.
The educators with whom I am working are moving towards taking such a stand. We see it in push back against Race to the Top and the Blue Print, against what NBC was pushing out in its Summit.
Skipping a bit, and this is still the intro of the Declaration, Goodman offers words that even 20 years later sound remarkably current:
...laws and policies are being imposed on schools that limit the ability of diligent teachers to use their professional judgment to further the personal development and welfare of their students.
There are strong pressures today to dehumanize, to depersonalize, to industrialize our schools. In the name of cost effectiveness, of efficiency, of system, of accountability, of minimal competency, of a return to the basics, schools are being turned into sterile, hostile institutions at war with the young people they are intended to serve.
It is as a result of this, in an attempt to prevent further industrialization and dehumanizing of our schools that Goodman offers the points of his Declaration. Consider the first of the paragraphs of the actual declaration:
We will make the welfare of our students our most basic criterion for professional judgment. We have no greater accountability than that we owe our pupils. We will work with parents and policymakers to formulate programs that are in the best interests of our pupils. We will work with the kids to personalize these programs. We will respect all learners. We will cherish their strengths, accept and strive to understand their language and culture, seek to further their personal values, tastes, and objectives. We will oppose methods, materials, and policies that have the intent or effect of rejecting the personal and social characteristics of our students. We will, in all matters, and in all interactions, deal with our pupils fairly, consistently, honestly, and compassionately.
Or skip down to the paragraph on proper use of assessment and willingness to offer non-compliance:
We will accept the responsibility of evaluating our pupils' growth. We will make no long- or short-range decisions that affect the future education of our pupils on the basis of a single examination no matter what the legal status of the examination. We will evaluate through ongoing monitoring of our pupils during our interactions with them. We will strive to know each pupil personally, using all available professional tools to increase our understanding of each and every one.
Part of this is something I think critical, and undergirds much of my own approach to teaching: We will strive to know each pupil personally - our children are far more than their test scores, and are entitled to be treated as the unique individuals each is.
The next brief paragraph is blunt and well worth posting on the walls of every teachers' lounge in the US:
We are teachers. We are not actors following scripts. We are not technicians servicing an educational machine. We are not delivery systems. We are not police officers, babysitters, petty despots, card punchers, paper shufflers, book monitors. We are not replaceable by machines.
Goodman explores the commitment of teachers to the broad scope of knowledge - much more than just the content of the subjects taught - necessary for a proper grounding for effective teaching. Read those.
Then read this conclusion:
We will continually update our knowledge of education, of our fields of instruction, of the real world, because of our professional dedication to use all means to improve our effectiveness as teachers. We expect school authorities to support us in our professionalism and self-improvement. And we will oppose all policies that restrict our professional authority to use new knowledge or new pedagogical practices on behalf of our students.
We believe that schools can well serve pupils, parents, and communities if the teachers in them function as responsible, dedicated, and compassionate professionals.
To that purpose we make this declaration of professional conscience.
Somehow I find the words offered by Goodman, a man committed to teaching, to students, over a lifetime of dedicated service in a variety of roles in education, far more meaningful than the blather offered by Klein, Rhee and company, some of whom have yet to demonstrate either real understanding of or any meaningful success in running the public schools in their charge.
In the recent additional words added by Ken Goodman at the request of his publisher, he starts by making clear that he wanted to
to help teachers to examine their professional beliefs so that they could respond professionally.
The two decades that followed have been marked by great change indeed. Professionalism among teachers throughout the world has increased but the attack on teachers is now an attack on the very nature of public education. Federal policies in the United States have so constricted the ability of teachers to act on behalf of their students that many have taken early retirement or moved to different careers. Major urban school systems are disasters. Teacher certification is devalued and tenure for teachers no longer exists in several states.
Yet the truth is that only teachers can make a difference in the education children experience. There are still heroic, dedicated teachers everywhere who are successful in providing their students with the best classroom experiences possible.
Even some of the "reformers" admit that there are many good teachers, dedicated teachers, but then immediately move on to the attack on teachers that we see in the "Manifesto," that we see in "Waiting for Superman," that is part and parcel of the entire approach of the so-called "reform" movement in education. Why is it that these "reformers" are so determined to exclude the voices of the good, dedicated teachers they acknowledge do exist? How different might our public discourse on education be if their voices were a regular part, that the editorial boards of papers like the Washington Post, which gave me my teaching award, would listen to the voices of the teachers they honor each year?
Goodman concludes his recent update by reminding us that teachers knew the work was hard, the pay was not great.
They saw teaching as a fulfilling career and a way of making a significant contribution to their community and nation. Whether or not they are given the respect they deserve they must respect themselves and not lose sight of what makes them professionals.
Whether or not they are given the respect they deserve - why should that even be an issue? It is, for we are not given respect. Our voices are excluded. The hard-won protections from abuses by administrators and school boards are now in jeopardy.
Even worse, we have those who really do not understand education imposing work conditions that are so rigid, so driven by test scores, so micro-managing, that we are losing the ability to adapt to the needs of the students before us.
. . . they must respect themselves and not lose sight of what makes them professionals - here's the scary thought - what if the only way we can respect ourselves is to walk away from what we love, to maintain our integrity? What then will happen to our students whom we love, on whose behalf we so labor? Who then will really care for them in the schools, who will advocate for their individual needs?
Manifesto versus Manifesto - actually that is not quite correct. The Kleins and Rhees offered a Manifesto. Ken Goodman offered a Cri de coeur that is, sadly, even more timely today than when he first offered it two decades ago.
Twenty years. 20 more years of "reform" and still we are told that are schools are failing, and somehow it is the fault of teachers and their unions. How about the responsibility of those imposing upon schools? How about the increasing economic disparity from which our children come? What about the loss of hope for a future when their families lose jobs and savings and homes, when even after Health Insurance Reform many still cannot get proper medical and dental and vision and hearing care on a regular basis, when so many of our children have to depend on the school lunch program for basic nutritional needs?
I do not think anyone who has read me will be surprised. I reject the thrust of the Manifesto. I ascribe to the thrust of Ken Goodman's Declaration. If the Manifesto advances, I do not see how I will in conscience be able to continue as a teacher, not when the William Hite who signed that Manifesto is the head of the school system in which I teach.
I do not feel any Peace tonight.
Sorry.