Steven Brill: "Class Warfare"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-08-16/steven-brill-class-warfare
American students rank 15th in the world in reading literacy, 25th in math and 17th in science. Frustrated parents in urban areas have turned to charter schools led by young, idealistic teachers. Education reformers have found an ally in President Obama, whose “Race to the Top” program rewards states that measure teacher quality and tie salaries to student test scores. But the program has met resistance from teachers’ unions, who form the backbone of the Democratic Party. Veteran journalist Steven Brill, who investigated New York's infamous "Rubber Rooms," reports on the education reform movement and the great struggle it has set off within the Democratic Party.
Guests
Steven Brill
journalist and author of "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," and "The Teamsters"
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Read an Excerpt
Excerpted from "Class Warfare" by Steven Bill. Copyright 2011 by Steven Brill. All rights reserved. Excerpted here by kind permission of Simon & Schuster:
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The prior two generations of my family were teachers. I graduated from the University of California system in 1998. Several of the people that I graduated with became teachers because they could not find jobs in their fields. Even though I came from a family of teachers if I had become a teacher I would have considered myself a failure because that was not the profession that I sought in school.
A serious problem with the teaching profession in my opinion is that it is not taken seriously by our society and evidence of this shows firstly in the amount of pay. If you go to college and excel in your field you most likely are not going to go into education. So many people in education are there because they couldn't get a job doing anything else out of college. I am not saying that most of these people don't do a good job teaching, but simply if this is a force driving the selection of who becomes a teacher you have to wonder about the quality of your selection pool.
Secondly the children in many classrooms today are not there to learn. It is more like free childcare. Teachers are not supported by many parents and many children are not educated in the home by their parents anymore prior to coming to school or after school. (Taught manners, how to pay attention, read to, etc.)
Robert C., Yes, that's documented by loads of research.
http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc152e.pdf
Mr Brill like so many others in the media, doesn't really tell the whole story. Unions don't protect poor teachers, administrators not doing their jobs protect poor teachers. Unions protect good teachers from artbitrary termination by administrators who are more concerned with their own power than teaching children. Teaching is an experience based profession. Does being ambitious make you a good doctor? No, it doesn't. Where is the research that says being young makes you a good teacher? There is none.
Here it is. We don't blame police for the behavior of criminals. We don't blame doctors for the behavior of their patients. We don't blame the dentist for bad teeth. Yet, we blame teachers for the behavior of children who are not theirs. Welcome to the new nanny state.
I have yet to see a single teacher evaluation that takes confounding variables into effect.
I work in a middle school in Ky., and I see a lot of what the author says. The most energetic and effective teachers are constantly leaving the classroom for administrative jobs (4 in 2 years). This is largely due to pay. These are not greedy people, but they have families, etc. I think teachers should be promoted to stay inside the classroom.
Oregen I agree. We(my family and I) are so out of the box we cannot find it. I listen to a variety of music. Read a variety of books. I am questioned why I speak as I do and why my children and grand children sound, forgive me, 'white'. I hurt feelings. I tell them because I am an American, how else should I speak? I think one of the worse things I hear in CPS. Too many teachers cannot speak english correctly. It is mind boggling. I will continue to blast Bon Jovi, Evita, Phantom, Phil Collins, Prince, Michael J, Jimmie Reed etc. and not apologize and continue to read Grisham, Patterson, Greek Mythology, Stephen King. Not changing. Catch up if you can, i will not lag behind to suit you.
I strongly disagree with the comment that "Teaching is the only occupation where performance isn’t taken into consideration." Really? The tenure process typically lasts from five to seven years--each year consisting of various checks and balances to judge teaching, service, and professional development--not a "Drive-by" as stated by the author.
Of course there are poor teachers, there are sub-standard individuals in every profession. I have found that it's the non-tenure track folks--adjunct faculty--who tend to have lower performance than the tenured faculty.
Aren't charter schools for students with involved parents and public schools for students with unenvolved/non-caring parents????
I have been teaching at the NYS School for the Deaf for over thirty years. I still put in ten hour days and do so willingly. I teach 7 unique content areas working with deaf children ages 3 - 21.
I am also Council Leader of our school's union ~ Division 206 of the Public Employees Federation. In speaking of tenure - A) Administration awards tenure; administrators need to do their homework prior to awarding tenure. B) Once tenure is awarded, it is the responsibility of the administration to make certain that teacher is doing the best teaching possible and interact as needed. C) Tenured teachers CAN be removed from teaching should situations warrant. It takes a lot of work on the part of the administration but can occur. (Note value of (A) above.)
Who is a teacher? Thirty-five years ago bright educated women had few options: teaching, nursing . . .
Today - women can do anything. Sadly, the brightest feel they are bright enough to NOT become teachers . . .
For another story . . .
Most highly educated men today were taught by highly educated women in the past.
Math education especially has suffered from the exodus of smart women (and, to a lesser extent, men) to professions other than teaching! My own sister was an example of this. She was an "A" student math major in college, intending to become a high school teacher. Her advisor in the math department at the college told her she was "too good" for that - that she should become an accountant and business major. She received her accounting degree in 1972 with honors. Big firm were eagerly hiring women like her to diversify their management in the age of women's lib. She continued to study at night and quickly received her CPA and then her MBA. One large corporation tried to convince her to go to law school at night so they could make her a VP. She was solid gold! Her carer was VERY successful and she retired quite early.
But a few thousand high schools kids - likely girls - missed out on a really competent, caring math teacher. And my sister was only one of many women who made the same shift while still in college. Her best friend was another.
I saw the paucity of good math teachers while my own sons were in school. We live in one of the best school districts in the country, but the talent just isn't there to hire. This has to change. Unions can raise compensation, insist on better training, require better grade-point-averages from the teachers' college grades, and lobby for better etiquette and discipline in the schools so teachers can really teach.
lol, pisces, I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. I went to university in Cleveland--near the east side. I could not really mingle with local black community. Was insulted many times too...
First of all, there aren't enough private school slots in America to accept every child who might want to attend; but, if every private school in the US closed today, guess where all those students would end up?
Private schools cans pick and choose their students, public school can't!
For decades now, we've had one side of our political class telling us education should be a local issue- that Washington shouldn't tell us how to educate our kids. The result of that is 51 different educational standards, and with all due respect, the worst standards are in places that consistently listen to those 'leaders'.
They tell us how bad teachers are, how bad educated people are, and how people need to take a stand against them.
Well first of all, why shouldn't we have national standards for education? Why shouldn't the core cirriculum be the same nationwide? Allowing for regional dialects, shouldn't the basics be the same for everyone?
Secondly, all those politicos 'dissing' education- every one of them went to college, so education is bad for you but not for them. Let's face it, with their agenda, they need their constituents desparate (no jobs, struggling to make ends meet) and dumb (poor educational oportunities) to keep getting the votes they get.
You people who swallow that crap had better get a clue, and an original thought in your heads, and stop listening to the talking points of folks who have shown that they've chosen sides- and it's not yours!
I am working in my classroom today preparing for a new school year that starts tomorrow. I am a high school English teacher and I feel appreciated by my students, parents and administration. I do not feel supported by the media and the politians. I don't know when it happened, but somehow, education became a political talking point.
My job is to prepare our children to be productive and critical thinkers. Our work is important and should be valued. Most educators are hard working and dedicated!
once again steven is right, right, right. in a union environment u can basically have an employee or i.e. a teacher basically doing backflips off the freaking desks or swinging from the chandilear (however its spelled lol) and there is absolutely nothing u can do about it because they are in the freaking union. and thats is a major underlying problem. u cant do anything about it because u are under contract and the union wont do anything about it because they earn with the person in question through dues and membership. see thats the problem. its a conflict of interest. the other problem that comes from this is the fact that an incoming teacher or employee in most union environments is under some sort of probationary period 60 or 90 days or 6 months or what not. these probationary employees are scrutinized heavily and sometimes too heavily because if u make them permanent and they get in the union and they start under performing you'll need dynamite to get them out of there because well now they are in the union. so alot of employers at the first sign of trouble will just get rid of a probationary person instead of working to help them get better out of fear of letting them into the union. union problems feed and foster more union problems.
Let's just hope Diane Rehm's next show gives equal time to someone who actually knows anything about education.
Your comments reveal how little you understand about unions in general, and teachers' unions in particular. Even if you're not in a union, you have benefited in many ways just from the existence of unions--which have helped workers have rights to safe work places, have helped workers get fair wages, and have created reasonable working conditions. Brill knows he can generate outrage in his readers by focusing on a few shocking (and in some cases really outdated) examples of poor teachers remaining on the job or being given DUE PROCESS when accused of failing to fulfill their obligations satisfactorily. It's convenient to misrepresent tenure as a way to keep bad teachers on the job. Tenure just guarantees due process. And unions (especially under Randi Weingarten) have played a vital role in keeping kids' and their needs at the focus of changes in education. Unions protect workers. And research shows that schools with the best performing students learn from unionized teachers--both here and abroad.
We are a corrupt society with a flawed bureaucratic model. Internal politics spoils many a potentially good teaching career. The focus on achievement testing means very little teaching is getting done. Most students I know learn much more outside the classroom than in with parent and community provided activities. The best reason to send your child to private school is scheduling flexibility and prevention of time wasted in bodily warehousing. The plight of students in public schools is depicted very well in an unexpected place. "The Wire" (5th season?) shows how "dupid" education can be when it is irrelevant to social and economic conditions families face. Home life is disintegrating as wages fall and jobs disappear. What are students educated for in an economy financially hostile to family life? Again, where are the jobs, and why is so much of our population superfluous? Educational failure proves corporate totalitarian capitalism is imploding.
If been teaching 3 years and I am so disappointed in this story. This book is just more blame the teachers. I’ve heard it all before, charters in the same building do better than other school. Charters look better because they pick and choose the kids. The students with the worst behavior, the students most below grade level, and emotional/learning problems. These students remain in the “regular” school and the charter cherry picks the students with parent support and self-efficacy.
Everyone says teachers are not accountable and yet no one looks at principal accountability. In Oklahoma the principals’ capriciousness determines teacher evaluation. One person, who steps into your classroom for ten minutes then state they have not viewed the teacher doing a multitude of items the principal could not have monitored in peek-in visit.
You don't know what is going on in a school by "hanging around", Brill is not competent to speak on the issue.
Something my district never tried was holding us teachers accountable for student performance but LEAVING US ALONE to do our job. At first I could see good results from NCLB: minority boys were coming along the pipeline who could actually read. But after several years, increasing directives/instructions/programs from district and state officials caused us to reach a point of diminishing returns. I was the highest-performing teacher in my subject/grade (based on standardized test scores and student feedback) but I finally took early retirement because NCLB required us to discard successful strategies, focus on narrower and narrower goals for an increasingly tiny subset of students, and ignore 90% of our students including the gifted. I could have succeeded if simply told what was needed and then left alone to do my job!!! Instead, expensive consultants brought in from Tennessee (don't ask me why Tenn.) began micromanaging our classrooms until teaching became a process of kissing up to superiors and feigning cooperation... not my thing!
You cannot hold teachers accountable for inadequate school funding. Reduce class sizes, increase the pay, don't just kick out 'underperformers'. And charter schools are no fair comparison because they can pick and choose kids.
For poor kids there is a host of other issues outside of school that affect their academic performance: the stress of parents' money problems causes stress at home, plus they live in unsafe neighborhoods. No superstar teacher can fix that.
BTW that old mantra of portraying unions as the culprit has become just another narrow-minded political talking point. Unionization is stronger in those countries where things are better!
It would have been nice to have Diane Ravitch there to provide another perspective.
Yes, why does Brill assume that principals and district officials always have the best interests of the students in their minds? They somehow don't ever talk about the principals who hire those they know will never talk up or talk back and even will do their principal's job instead of their own. Or the district officials who are willing to ignore and even destroy successful schools that don't have enough political support?
As a twenty year teacher in an urban high school, I'm not greedy. I've always been satisfied with a salary that allowed me to support my family. I don't see why a person has to hate the idea of job security. I know how hard I work and how much good I do and I think I deserve it. I'd better believe it because we get very little respect from anyone else. Our mayor fired every single teacher in the district last spring and the community went wild with approval. (He subsequently hired us back after months of anxiety.)
I've always encouraged my students, mostly of color, to become teachers; they hear me wax poetic about how wonderful it is to be a teacher. But it's hard to do that when I now know that there is no job security as well as no respect. When I see bright, young teachers these days, I worry about them.
So true!
This quote by Max W. Fischer:
"Have you heard The Blueberry Story that's been making the rounds of teacher listservs and conferences…
It seems that a successful businessman -- reputedly the producer of "the best blueberry ice cream in America" -- thought he had the solution to the problems plaguing the U.S. educational system. Schools, he impatiently explained at a teacher in-service, need to be run like businesses; businesses know how to provide quality management and produce a quality product. Little did that smug businessman know that his speech would lead him -- and not the teachers he lectured -- to an epiphany sparked by a question. "What do you do," a teacher in the audience asked, "when a shipment of defective blueberries arrives at your business?" The man readily admitted that he shipped them back; inferior ingredients were not acceptable in his successful business. "That's right," the teacher pointed out. "Unfortunately, however, schools can't reject their defective blueberries."
The claim that schools alone hold the key to improving academic performance only attacks the tip of the iceberg. Surely, the ice cream manufacturer wouldn't have expected his quality-control inspectors to resurrect spoiled blueberries; he would instead have consulted with the growers and shippers to avoid future spoilage.
Until true home-school partnerships become the norm; until a community's social problems are removed from the learning equation; until real dialogue melds all segments of society, our system of education will continue to come up short no matter what the government-inspired panacea might be." http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/profdev077.shtml
Though I agree that good teachers should be far better compensated, there are many pieces to the problem. Is comparing our standardized scores with those of other countries even a fair comparison? We are one of the only countries who makes a huge effort to educate our learning disabled and our mentally retarded. Most must take the same test and their scores count equally. In many other countries, Europe for example, these children would be tracked to vocational school at the end of elementay school. In others, they wouldn't go to school or be tested. Here, we hope/expect our learning disabled to attend college. The truth is that the vast majority of teachers are good and do try very hard. We just can't measure them or our kids with the same yardstick. Ellen Arch, Developmental Pediatrician, Southern Utah
Yep - that is a huge factor. I am a woman and believe in gender equality. But both men and women forgot to pick up the slack when most moms went out to work. Kids cannot raise themselves. I think we are really seeing that now. Multi-tasking just means doing lots pf things less well. Parents have to stay aware and involved in all facets of their child's upbringing. There are some things parents should not outsource: love, structure, discipline, good nutrition, etiquette, and high expectations.
I listened intently while baking this morning. My ears especially pricked up when I heard Diane read the comment from the teacher listener who had just quit her teaching job to join the family business as she had worked hard and long for many years without appreciation or substantial pay raises.
I, too, have recently quit my job after 13 years of working at the same community mental health agency. After years of trying to help the mentally ill of our surrounding communities, I have been ignored, placated with empty promises and of course, never given any recognition. I actually would have stayed and muddled through administration's short comings, but I could no longer abide by the continued and additional rsponsibilities that they forced me, as clinic manager, to demand of my staff of case managers. These people, who have bachelor's degrees in psychology or sociology, have a beginning salary of $25,000! Teachers, in comparison, are rich. I had 2 workers who have done that work for 7 and 9 years respectively, but are not yet making $30,000.
My hope would be that someone like Mr. Brill would investigate the mental health system in the state of Missouri, as this is not just a problem restricted to 1 agency, but appears to be statewide. The agencies bill either the Department of Mental Health or Medicaid approximately $100 per hour for case manager time. With their salaries, that certainly seems to be a lot of money left over for administration. Obviously there are many other factors involved, but the system appears to be broken and we are either losing the best workers or not getting them to begin with.
I was on hold for 40 minutes when the screener came on to make sure I was still there. I was to be the next caller but then the caller before me took a very long time, no worries though I'll pose my question post-facto: "I recently took part in an on-line dialogue about how we could effectively reform the education system in the US. A number of the participants pointed to Salman Khans work at the Khan institute. What role do you see such initiatives playing in the future of education and will teachers unions embrace them? -btw the conversation took place on Hubski.com -I will provide a link to a Sal Khan talk. -trust me, it is worth watching. In fact, I challenge Diane to have Sal on as a guest.
http://hubski.com/pub?id=1911
I would like to know one thing from your guest: what percentage of K-12 teachers are unionized?
He speaks as if teachers everywhere are unionized when I would guess fewer than half are. I teach in a so-called "right to work" state, that is to say, anti-union. It is lowest in state funding for schools and one of the lowest in student performance outcomes. No unions to blame there! These outcomes are not coincidental to being anti-union and true of all anti-union states which is most of the south and southwest.
I find your guest to be long on anecdotes and ideology and short on data and evidence. And anyone who speaks on the issue of "problems in the schools" and never mentions the severe inequality in the FUNDING of schools is no expert at all. It is supreme irony that your guest's book is called "Class Warfare" and he never mentions the class warfare of the wealthy against the poor who absolutely refuse to, would rather die than change the funding structure for schools.
I'm very disappointed, Diane, in you and your staff in your selection of today's guest. In fact, I find your show relies far too much on journalists who have superficial knowledge of their subject and far too few scholars who have spent their lives studying the subject and experts in their fields. Today's show really burns me, though, as I am a teacher and tired of the same old tired arguments of blaming teachers, unions and parents. Please, for the sake of public knowledge, do better!!!
I would like to know one thing from your guest: what percentage of K-12 teachers are unionized?
He speaks as if teachers everywhere are unionized when I would guess fewer than half are. I teach in a so-called "right to work" state, that is to say, anti-union. It is lowest in state funding for schools and one of the lowest in student performance outcomes. No unions to blame there! These outcomes are not coincidental to being anti-union and true of all anti-union states which is most of the south and southwest.
I find your guest to be long on anecdotes and ideology and short on data and evidence. And anyone who speaks on the issue of "problems in the schools" and never mentions the severe inequality in the FUNDING of schools is no expert at all. It is supreme irony that your guest's book is called "Class Warfare" and he never mentions the class warfare of the wealthy against the poor who absolutely refuse to, would rather die than change the funding structure for schools.
I'm very disappointed, Diane, in you and your staff in your selection of today's guest. In fact, I find your show relies far too much on journalists who have superficial knowledge of their subject and far too few scholars who have spent their lives studying the subject and experts in their fields. Today's show really burns me, though, as I am a teacher and tired of the same old tired arguments of blaming teachers, unions and parents. Please, for the sake of public knowledge, do better!!!
I question the validity of some of the guest's comments in that when he did a comparison of schools he said that he compared" a low performing public school to a high performing charter school". Why not compare apples to apples and compare two public schools? Surely he could find a high performing public school.
As a third generation teacher who chose teaching because I love it, I find the guest's comments and promotion of his book in line with so many people today who are critical of the public system while praising charter schools, Teach for America and meanwhile trying to sell something. Everyone has attended school and many think that makes them an expert on school and teaching.