The Path To Teacher Evaluation

Teacher evaluation, aka accountability, continues to be a topic of wideranging debate. On the one hand, we have lots of folks who call for teacher "accountability." On the other hand, Race to the Top and the state waiver programs gave us systems of teacher evaluation that are spectacularly dysfunctional and conceptually stupid (how well some eighth graders do on a single, bad reading test should determine how good the shop teacher is?). And on the third hand, the new education law (ESSA) gives each state a chance to come up with new ways to make a hash of the whole business.

Critics (and I'm one of them) have said repeatedly that value-added measures and test-based ratings and a few other stupid things that have been tried are, in fact, stupid, destructive and bad for everybody. Supporters of the accountability movement have replied, "Fine then. What do you want to do instead?"

Okay, then. How do we get on the path to a useful method of teacher evaluation? Step one is to figure out what purpose the evaluation will serve. This may seem obvious. It isn't. Here are some of the goals that a teacher evaluation system might try to meet.

To find bad teachers. For a while, this was the focus-- we would find all the Bad Teachers and fire them, and then life would be swell. This remains the focus of attacks on tenure and seniority; we  plan to cut your budget to the point that you have to fire people, and we want to be sure you fire the right ones. The bad ones.

To find good teachers. Let's locate all the super-duper teachers so we can move them to where they're needed, or reward them with generous quality bonuses.

To guide and support teachers. A new favorite. Let's figure out teachers' strengths and weaknesses so that we can help them grow and develop.

To compare teachers. We want an evaluation system that helps us stack rank teachers so that we can do comparisons across a building, district, state, or even nationally. We need measures that let us compare every teacher to every other teachers.

To let the taxpayers know whether or not they're getting their money's worth. Taxpayers spend a lot of money paying teachers; they are entitled to know if they are getting a good deal or if they would be better off hiring a minimum wage worker to push "play" on Khan Academy videos.

To give teachers a clear set of expectations. This is not discussed nearly enough. While some jobs come with clearly delineated descriptions of duties and responsibilities, teacher are more likely to get directives along the lines of, "Go in there and do teachy things, and do them real good." An evaluation system makes job expectations explicit, whether you want it to or not. That's one reason the test-linked systems suck-- they send the message that a teacher's job description is "Get students to score well on the Big Standardized Test."

To make the complex look simple. Trying to understand and make decisions about  complex human behavior is hard. If we could just boil it all down to some simple digits and data points, it would be easy, and then we wouldn't have to do hard thinking about hard things. But if we could just take human judgment out of the whole hard business and simplify it to an algorithm, boy it would just be the berries. Which is both the most popular and the dumbest idea on the list. Fans of this idea are welcome to sign up at match.com and let the dating site pick their spouses for them. If the marriage results in children, they can also go ahead and use data to decide which child is the best one. Human beings are complex. Human relationships and interactions are complex. Lord knows we all have days when we wish it weren't so, but hey-- I have days when I wish I weren't so bald or that Donald Trump weren't a Presidential candidate. You can't build a strong system on a foundation of denial.

And none of this addresses the most important element of all, which is hiring practices. W. Edwards Deming used to refer to an insight from his own mentor-- if you have dead wood in your organization, either you hired dead wood, or you hired live wood and killed it. Either way, you have a management problem that directly impacts the quality of employee work.

Now, you may say, "Well, those all seem like swell ideas." You'd be wrong in some cases, but still--  you have to pick. You cannot have one system that does them all. It's not possible. Evaluating for the top and bottom qualities in teaching-- that's two entirely different searches. In fact, it's two entirely different types of searches, the difference between looking for something to include, and looking for something to exclude. And both of them are different from a system that would help a teacher develop by examining personal strengths and weaknesses from the standpoint of improving their craft. It's the difference between walking into a restaurant and saying "Don't bring me anything green," or "My dinner has to include a steak" and "Let's look at this whole meal and see what we could do to bring its elements more into balance."

Letting taxpayers know they got what they paid for is a laudable goal, but it leads us directly away from any sort of standardized measure that lets us compare teachers across the nation. Instead, being accountable to local taxpayers would start with asking them what they want for their money, and that is likely to vary from community to community. I think, however, it's the foundation of a real evaluation system.

I do think teacher evaluation is possible. I also think almost everything we're currently doing in the name of accountability is dead wrong. It can't be fixed-- what's needed is to start over, and to start by talking about the question of purpose. We can't get anything done until we do that.

The Student Privacy Pledge

In the fifties, under scrutiny (actual Congressional hearings) and attack (Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent) the comic book industry hatched the comics code, a special seal that would guarantee parents that a comic book contained nothing unsavory. Of course the film industry had done something similar-- creating a rating system that would assert that the public could enter a movie theater safely.

The motivation behind both of these was simple and transparent-- if we offer to police our own industry, maybe the government won't feel the need to step in and hammer us with regulations we can neither stand nor control.

Meet the Software and Information Industry Association. Among other things, the SIIA  "aggressively promotes and protects the interests of its member companies in legal and public policy debates by working with state, federal and international policymakers and participating in landmark legal decisions."

The SIIA is a busy group, and they are also the creators of the Student Privacy Pledge. Signers of the pledge have promised not to do things like maintain files on students, nor collect share or sell student personal information-- at least, not for any reasons other than those authorized by educational institutions. The pledge also involves promises to do things like "Collect, use, share, and retain student personal information only for purposes for which we were authorized by the educational institution/agency, teacher or the parent/student." 257 companies have signed the pledge.

If you find this less than reassuring, well-- consider other activities of the SIIA as reported by Missouri Education Watchdog.

For instance, SIIA reps recently flew out to Colorado to oppose their proposed student privacy bill. They found the protection of personal information too broad, and they don't care for the provision involving publication of the names of companies that misbehave.

Or back when the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against Google (one of the signers of the pledge) for setting chromebooks with a default setting of "spy creepily on students"-- the SIIA was there to defend Google.

Is the pledge even enforceable? The SIIA says that if someone who signs the pledge breaks it, that opens up the company to FTC charges of deceptive practices. So the pledge is kind of enforceable, sort of maybe. If you think a company is violating the pledge, the SIIA suggests you reach out to that company. Or you can file an FTC complaint. Or you can pound sand.

When wolves are worried that the farmer is going to bring in real watchdogs to keep an eye on the henhouse, it makes sense for the wolves to promise to patrol each other as they guard the henhouse. It does not, however, make sense for the hens to relax and be any less vigilant.

The Other Testing Problem

It's testing season, and that means we are hearing the annual recitation of stories of despair and misery among the students, as small children are pressed to and past their breaking point. These stories are heartbreaking and rage-inducing all at the same time, but they aren't the only story. They probably aren't even the most common story, and they may not even be the most important story.

If you give a human, particularly a young human, a task to complete, one that seems difficult and yet pointless, unpleasant and yet with no real stakes for that human, what is the most common response?

A) To try their hardest because even if it seems pointless, it might not be, and I always do my best
B) This is a stupid waste of my time, so I will zip through it quickly so it wastes the least possible time
C) I will avoid frustration by not caring and not trying
D) Look, a butterfly!

Testocrats are so certain that their work is so hugely important that they can't imagine how anyone could fail to see the Importance of the Test. In a weird way, the student meltdown stories actually confirm their judgment.

But all the data, all the analysis of the data, all the conclusions based on the data-- all of that starts with the assumption that the students who took the Big Standardized Test actually tried.

Teachers have only a couple of choices here. We can try to cash in the trust we've built in our classrooms. Every fall I promise my students that I will never purposely waste their time; when BS Test time rolls around, I could just lie to them. But that seems, you know, wrong. Morally and ethically wrong.

Teachers can make the test relevant to students by making it central to the class, the culmination of learning for the year. This is what test prep really means-- not just teaching test-taking tips and material strictly because it will be on the test, but making the test the whole point of education. This seems like, you know, educational malpractice and a huge devaluation of education itself.

Teachers can also try things like flat out bribery. That seems like an admission of defeat and a betrayal of the rest of the students' education.

Or teachers can watch as students complete twenty multiple choice questions in three minutes (of course, we're not allowed to offer help or say "Get serious, Pat!") and write three word essay answers and remember that experience months later when someone is trying to claim that the BS Test tells us something useful about what Pat does or doesn't know.

Pat will whip through the test, take a nap, and leave school for the day happy and unbothered. Pat's blowing off of the test may even make a good story for Pat to tell that makes Pat look pretty cool in the circle of friends. Pat's story is neither touching nor heartbreaking. But I sure wish the people who think that Pat's test tells anybody anything could be there to watch Pat take the test. Because even if the BS Tests weren't a lousy test, Pat's results still wouldn't tell us a damn thing.

Amazing North Carolina

I'm here in North Carolina for the Network for Public Education after a ten hour drive. I've seen many things upon the way. The Mrs and I stopped to gawk at the New River Gorge Bridge, which is an amazing feat of engineering. On the way into Raleigh, we wound our way through amazingly narrow and windy street, as if Raleigh were patterned on a falling-down-drunk version of Pittsburgh streets.

After ten hours in the car, my wife and I walked all around downtown Raleigh, which is amazingly beautiful and modern-yet-classic. We ate a delicious meal, and then the miracle of facebook allowed a former student I haven't seen in almost twenty years to reach out and invite us to walk a few blocks to join her, her husband, and some friends at a restaurant to catch up./ She thanked me for my work with her decades ago, and I also got to meet three former North Carolina teachers who gave up the classroom for other lines of work.

But nothing more amazing than just a few minutes ago, when Governor McCrory appeared on my hotel to explain just ho awesome he has been for teachers in North Carolina. Nothing I have seen today was as amazing as his ability to deliver this line with a straight face. Because, to recap-- under McCrory, North Carolina's elected government has tried to get rid of tenure, both by direct assault and by offering teachers the deal of trading their job protections for a raise-- a deal that is appealing since North Carolina teachers hadn't gotten a raise in years. When they did finally come up with a raise, it was an insulting package limited to only some, while continuing to shaft the rest.

The state is losing teachers at what ought to be an alarming rate, still bolstering charters, installed an anti-education president at their primo state university system, and installed a punishing pass-or-fail testing set-up for eight year olds.

That McCrory can even think about selling himself as an education governor is the most mazing thing I have seen in North Carolina, and for a state that first showed a human could fly, that's no small feat. The good news, I guess, is now that I've seen everything, I can just relax and enjoy tomorrow. But Sunday AM McCrory is going to go on the interview show circuit to explain how his hateful, oppressive, intolerant, probably-illegal new discrimination law (which also represents the opposite of conservative small government philosophy) is just a matter of "common courtesy." That promises to be hugely amazing indeed.

Vergara Pt. II-- Now What?

So Vergara has now been successfully appealed and overturned by a unanimous decision of judges who actually have some of those critical thinking we're all fond of, recognizing the argument, "There is a bear attacking, so we should shoot the cook" is not a particularly compelling argument.

But what comes next? I don't mean what comes with the next with the case, which I'm sure will be appealed ad infinitum until some judge bonks it on the head with a sledgehammer.

I mean with teacher job protections.

There is no question that Vergara (and the New York case and the new Minnesota case) were breathed to life for one reason and one reason only-- to try to stick it to those damn unions. We know the people-- we've read their articles, talked with them on twitter, seen them in the comments section of a thousand different online conversations. They hate the union. Hate it. They think the roadblock to everything decent and good is the teachers' union, that the teachers' union is a giant scam to make teachers and union reps rich while thwarting the plans of brilliant visionaries who just want to be free to implement their grand design without having to answer to anybody, least of all the hired help. They think that public schools are a scam that the union came up with to suck the taxpayers dry while teachers sit and eat bon-bons and ignore the cries of downtrodden children. They hate the union, and like many people on many sides of many issues these days, they are looking for any argument, no matter how disingenuous and cynically constructed, that can be used to make the union shut up and go away.

These lawsuits are also backed by people who would like to slap teachers down in general, who would like to see the profession reduced to a group of hired hands who do what they're told, speak when spoken to, and are rarely kept around long enough to make trouble. Vergara is about empowering teachers like the attacks on voting rights laws are about empowering voters and attempts to shut down abortion clinics are about protecting women. It is about making sure that those little people, those women who don't do anything but work in classrooms with children all day, know their place and understand that they are Less Than and not as important as people with power and money.

And they are about plowing the field. The farmland that is public education is rich and inviting and there is a line of people who want to plant it with rich cash crops for their own purposes. Teachers are the rocks and trees in that field, making it pleasant and welcoming for a small farm, but presenting annoying obstacles for people who want to factory farm on gthe large scale, thousands upon thousands of acres at a time.

And they are people who simply don't believe that you should have to pay a teacher all that much, ever. If they get too expensive in a tight economy, you should be able to fire the expensive ones to get your costs down.

Vergara is all that.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss every single person who cropped up on the anti-tenure, anti-FILO, anti-job protection side of things.

There are people who see problems (and some of them are teachers) in places where job protections have run amok, either because some board negotiated a bad contract or some administrators don't do their jobs. Under the attack of Vergara, there have been places where conversations have popped up about how, perhaps, the system could be improved and strengthened for teachers and school districts, and there are some places where that conversation really needs to happen.

I believe that the benefits of a seniority-based system are huge. Huge. It incentivizes people to look at teaching as a career, a job to which they can devote their entire life, which in turn encourages them to be the very best they can be and to invest themselves in training and self-improvement. It gives stability and institutional memory to a school, creating ties that bind a community together and making a school a community institution that connects people to a history that matters. It helps draw good people to the work because you may not ever be paid real well, but at least you don't have to spend half your time worrying about losing your job over something stupid. And it protects teachers so that they can do their job like professionals with an educational mission instead of political appointees who are busy trying to suck up to whoever has the power to fire them this week.

At this point we could just say neener-neener to the Vergara fans and walk away. I don't think we should. Well, in some cases we should. Some of them are not interested in serious conversation because they are not interested in better schools, and they never have been.

But I'm a big believer that there's nothing that can be hurt by simply talking about it and considering it and wondering, "If we had a blank slate for this issue, what would we write on it/"

I'm not saying I have a better idea, a proposal I want to sell. Basing job security on student results on crappy tests is an exceptionally crappy idea. We can always play with the probationary period at the beginning of a career, but I haven't seen much to indicate that would really make any difference. We probably should spend more time strengthening what happens in the grey area between a solid teacher and one that needs to be fired. But no, I don't have any particular proposals. I suspect that a FILO system coupled with job protections that mean good teachers can't be fired for bad reasons-- I think that's about as good as it gets.

But by refusing to even talk about it, we fueled things like the Vergara baloney lawsuit. Yes, the people who instigate these things are not operating in good faith, and so no good faith responses will affect them. But I think they attracted many people to their side who are operating in good (if somewhat confused) faith, and there's no reason not to talk to them.

Every classroom should have a great teacher in it. Nobody believes that more than teachers. Nobody understands how complicated and challenging achieving that goal is than teachers, and it's in everyone's interest for us to keep tying to explain just how complicated and challenging that is.

It has been difficult. It is difficult to put forth any argument that feels even a little vulnerable when some folks are charging at you with torches and pitchforks. But for the moment, the courts have told the Vergara wackjobs to put their pitchforks down, and it might be a good time for us to try talking to the people they conned into joining their merry assault. I'm not saying to roll over, play dead, and give up the farm. I'm just saying let's not brush off our hands, say "Glad that's over" and go home. Because first of all, it's not over, and it will never be over as long as there are rich and powerful union-loathing teacher-dissing folks out there (and that will be forever), and because there will always be a need to talk about how to keep the teacher pipeline and school classrooms filled with good people, and that's a conversation we should not walk away from.

John King Still Doesn't Get It

News comes that today in Vegas, John King will try to use his bully speaker's podium to lay down some words about education. Here's the short version of his message, from Emma Brown at the Washington Post:

The nation’s schools have focused so intently on improving students’ math and reading skills that, in many cases, they have squeezed out other important subjects, such as social studies, science and the arts.

Close. Actually, the nation's schools have focused so intently on improving students' math and reading scores that the squeezage has occurred.

But throughout his comments, King shows that, like his predecessor, he just doesn't get what has happened.

For instance, Brown reports that King plans to say that No Child Left Behind had the unintended consequences of narrowing the curriculum. I can believe that, at least for some people, the consequences may have been unintended. But they were completely predictable, and in fact people on both side of the ed reform divide predicted it.

Brown reports the criticism, including the observation that what NCLB made bad, the Obama administration made worse, "especially by pushing for teacher evaluations tied to those test scores." But King objects to that criticism, "saying that the administration’s efforts always emphasized a more holistic approach to teacher evaluations than the political rhetoric suggested."

No, sir, they did not. At best you can say that the administration paid lip service to a more rounded view of education. But their efforts were always toward emphasizing results of the narrow Big Standardized Test. The administration spent a ton of money to develop what were supposed to be the two national tests (SBA and PARCC). And at every turn, the administration demanded that teacher evaluation be tied to "student achievement," which always and only meant "test scores."

In fact, this administration made an example of Washington State by yanking their NCLB waiver because they refused to link teacher evaluation to student test scores.  

The administration has always emphasized test scores, and the BS Tests have always emphasized reading and math. The administration could not have more fully and directly narrowed the curriculum of American schools if they had deliberately tried to do so.

King's speech opens with a personal story from his teaching days (he does not mention that those teaching days were in a charter and few days indeed) and then moves to an impassioned call for wider education. Then he starts slinging baloney.

I’ve been clear, as have the president and my predecessor Arne Duncan, that in many places in this country, testing became excessive, redundant, and overemphasized, and our Department is serious about helping states and districts to change that.

No. The USED is not serious about helping, and they never have been. If they had been, they could have done away with the federal mandate for testing every child every year. If they had been, they would have done away with the federal requirement that teacher evaluations be significantly linked to test results. What they have been serious about is maintaining that federal level of testing, making it really count, and when called on the over-testing of US students, shifting focus by claiming that it's all those other tests that are the problem.

King makes an attempt to somehow link NCLB to social justice and civil rights. And he admits that maybe emphasis has shifted from classes that are important. He gives a single-sentence paragraph emphasis to the statement, "And the research is clear that a well-rounded education matters."

You understand a reading or a lesson better when it touches on knowledge or experiences you’ve encountered before – which is why students with wider knowledge read and learn more easily.

King is correct-- and yet what he's saying runs contrary to the whole reading philosophy of Common Core, which treats reading as a group of discrete skills that exist in a vacuum, independent of any content. It is also contrary to the BS Tests, which are designed to use reading excerpts specifically chosen to level the playing field by being obscure (so no prior student knowledge) and boring (so no student interest).

Then he goes on to talk about how science and STEMmy things can stimulate math ability. So King is telling us that math and reading aren't the only important areas of study. Other areas are also important-- insofar as they help with math and reading!

King is excited because he believes that ESSA will let states redefine what "education" means so that it includes non math-and-reading things.

And then. Then King talks about how he sees all this through his daughters' eyes. You know-- the daughters that attend a Montessori school where none of the reforms of NCLB and Common Core and BS Testing are followed. Yeah-- their school does really awesome stuff?  Shouldn't all schools be that awesome, wonders John King as if he is not sitting in the head office of the government agency that has worked for over a decade to insure that all schools are not like that.

King shares one other characteristic with his predecessor-- he can occasionally say the right thing (even if it has nothing to do with the department's actual policies). Here's his finish, spinning off from his daughters' education:

Their education will shape the people they will become, not just what they will achieve academically. Both of them have studied music, dance, and theater. I don’t know if either of them will become a concert pianist or a famous guitarist or a professional ballerina. But I do know that they are developing a kind of aesthetic appreciation that will bring them joy and widen their world for the rest of their lives.

And really, that’s what this is about: that inextricable intersection between what our kids learn and who they become. I am who I am because a teacher and a school believed it was worth the time and effort to widen my horizons. 

That’s what every student in this country deserves. Let’s work together to make it possible.

 One of the things that has always puzzled me about King is that his story is powerful and moving and real-- yet King himself does not seem to understand any of the lessons that story teaches. It appears that this policy-level blindness has followed him directly into the secretary's office. How the cognitive dissonance between his messages and the policies his office supports and approves-- I don't know how that doesn't make his head blow up.

MN: Another Baloney Attack on Tenure

From today's New York Times:

Opening a new front in the assault on teacher tenure, a group of parents backed by wealthy philanthropists served notice to defendants on Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging Minnesota’s job protections for teachers, as well as the state’s rules governing which teachers are laid off as a result of budget cuts.

Close, but not quite.

Opening a new front in the assault on teacher tenure, a group of wealthy philanthropists using parents as a front, served notice etc...

There. Fixed that for you.

The anti-tenure lawsuit is funded by the usual suspects-- the Partnership for Education Justice (funded by the Walton family and Eli Broad), and Students for Education Reform (an astroturf group used as a front by Education Reform Now, the lobbying brother of Democrats for Education Reform, an astroturf group of hedge funders which is also heavily funded by Broad and Walton).

It is a bullshit lawsuit. Here is how we know.

Exhibit A:

“These laws have the effect of poorly performing, ineffective teachers staying in the classroom for years on end,” said Jesse Stewart, a lawyer who will be arguing the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. “You have teachers who are demonstrably ineffective teaching students who need the best that’s out there,” Mr. Stewart added.

This is a lie. If a teacher were "demonstrably ineffective," they would be demonstrably fire-able. For the umpty-gazzillionth time-- tenure does not protect demonstrably incompetent teachers from getting fired. I have seen it done, even in my little small town corner of the world. say it with me. Tenure does not keep incompetent teachers from being fired. What does? Bad administrators. Lazy administrators. Sloppy administrators. Let me quote myself-- behind every teacher who shouldn't have a job is an administrator who isn't doing his. And all the tenure "reforms" (and this is tenure reform in the same sense that a building demolition is construction reform) in the world will not turn a crappy administrator into a good one. Give a lazy, sloppy, bad administrator the power to fire bad teachers, and it still won't happen.

An apartment building is reformed







But the plaintiffs don't actually mean "demonstrably ineffective." What they mean is "standing in the classroom with a bunch of poor kids."

In one example cited in the legal complaint, teachers at a school in Minneapolis where nearly all the students identify as minorities and are eligible to receive free or reduced price lunches had the lowest average performance ratings in the district.

Well, yes. Of course they did. We already know that poverty levels are excellent predictors of test scores. Take a classroom with no roof. When it rains, all the students in the room get wet, and so the teacher gets wet too. If you fire that teacher and go get a dry one, the students will still get wet when it rains-- and so will every replacement teacher you ever put in there. Claiming that a really good teacher would keep everyone dry is baloney.

If you are going to fire every teacher who teaches poor kids who get bad Big Standardized Test scores, you will never make headway. Can a teacher help poor students do better. Abso-fricking-lutely. But you have to build a roof, because you cannot fire your way to better test scores (we will forgo, for the moment, whether test scores even mean jackity-poo to begin with).

Exhibit B:

Tiffini Flynn Forslund, one of the named plaintiffs and the mother of a 17-year-old high school junior in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, said her older daughter’s beloved fifth-grade teacher was laid off during budget cuts because he had less seniority than other teachers in the school.

Here's is how I know that nobody filing this suit actually gives a rat's ass about teacher quality-- if they did, they would also be aggressively addressing the issue of budget cuts.

Tiffini should not have had to lose her beloved fifth grade teacher (six years ago-- one wonders why the family waited till now to act). But neither should some other student in Tiffinni's school. The assumption here is that somewhere in Tiffini's school was some Terrible Teacher, so odious and incompetent that they clearly should have been marked for removal (but somehow was not, despite the administration's power to do so).

But what if that's not the case. What if every single teacher in the building was beloved by some deserving child? Why should Tiffini's teacher be spared while someone else's beloved teacher is axed.

Well, you know which beloved teacher should be furloughed due to budget slashing in a poor school? None! Nobody!! Instead, the plaintiffs should be (as some are in other states) taking the state/city/district to court to demand that school be funded properly. Plaintiffs should be arguing that Tiffini's school should not be forced to cut staff at all!

The fact that these "advocates" and their twitter cheer squad are troubled by the cutting of Tiffini's teacher, but not at all troubled by the slashing of Tiffini's budget or the reduction Tiffini's teaching staff or the loss of Tiffini's resources tells me that they are far more interested in attacking teacher tenure and job protections than they are concerned about Tiffini.

Look-- there are plenty of legitimate conversations to be had about teacher job protections, hiring and firing practices, etc. But this lawsuit, like Vergara in California and Campbell Brown's lawsuit in NY, is not an attempt to have that conversation. It's simply an attempt to break the teachers' union and destroy teacher job protections so that teaching staff costs can be kept low and teachers themselves can be cowed and bullied into silence and compliance.

Put another way, this is not remotely pro-student, and is strictly anti-teacher. It's thick-sliced unvarnished baloney, and the fact that it is an attack on teachers is bad enough, but in attacking teachers, it also leaves unquestioned the attacks on student facilities, schools and resources, while trying to make conditions inside schools that much worse. It's cynical, it's destructive, and it's just plain mean. Let's hope this doesn't drag over another few years to another lousy conclusion.