Jeanne Allen's Charter Murder Mystery

Nobody represents the angry anti-public school side of reform better than Jeanne Allen. She's the founder, president, and chief spokesperson for the Center for Education reform. She graduated from Dickerson with a degree in political science, then moved on to study political philosophy at the Catholic University of America. She was the "youngest political appointee to serve at the pleasure of the president, Ronald Reagan, at the US Department of Education, then became the ed policy chief at the Heritage Foundation." She earned an Educational Entrepreneurship masters at University of Pennsylvania in a program that offers what I once called "a degree in soulless profiteering." She announced her intention to step out of the president role in 2013, but no successor was named and apparently, she stayed right in place.

CER is packed with charter groups, charter operators, and investor groups from their board to the advisors to their contributors. Oddly enough, the smallest group is The Team. 

Allen is an expert lobbyist and advocate. She knows politics and business. She bills herself as "one of the nation’s most accomplished and relentless advocates for education reform, and a recognized expert, speaker and author in the field." She has no background or experience in actual educating. But she does know how to brand herself. If you want to see her in action, you can watch this 2012 clip, but chances are that by the time she says, "You can't have parent power and have teacher union power" and says "teacher union" with the same tone of voice one would use for "rotting cockroach carcasses," you will want to say unkind things to her. 

She's pretty intensely committed. It took her about fifteen minutes to get over her initial antipathy toward the Trump administration, and her analysis of the GOP's 2018 losses was that they weren't reform enough. She went to bat for cyber charters when even folks in the charter sector were slamming them. And she called for a full Reagan on the LAUSD teacher strike earlier this year-- just fire 'em all. And with all that, she can be mighty touchy; when the documentary Backpack Full of Cash had the audacity to quote her accurately, she was most put out.

Allen's voice turns up many places; this week, she's in the pages of the Post and Courier of South Carolina posing a bit of a murder mystery-- Who is killing charter schools? And the answer is-- well, it's not clear what the answer is, actually.

She's jumping off from the teacher walkouts in South Carolina last week, but she really wants us to understand that the teachers union is not the murderer-- even though, in her telling, they really really want everyone to believe that they are that powerful. Not for the first time, it occurs to me that Allen may not love school reform half as much as she hates teachers and their unions. But here's the start of her detective work:

Earlier in the year, teachers went on strike in Los Angeles, Denver, West Virginia and other areas. The teachers’ narratives say they strike for higher pay and lower class sizes, winning victories for children against all odds.

But the real story isn’t so pretty in many places: It’s a tale of politicians working to kill charter schools, sacrifice opportunity for their students and hurt children’s education, just as they’ve done for decades.

As Exhibit A, she is going to offer her own unique retelling of the West Virginia strike. She says that teachers last year protested salaries and health care costs, "this year they protested a bill that would allow the first charter schools to open in the state." That is correct in the same sense that if I send back a salad that comes topped with raw liver and rancid cheese, I am sending back a dish that contained lettuce. West Virginia teachers struck for five demands, including the end of certain union-busting bills and no charter expansion. A year later, the legislature placed a bet that teachers wanted their raises and health care badly enough to give in on a radical expansion of choice ideas-- not just charters, but super vouchers. They lost the bet. Allen says that union officials crowed about the victory, but it's worth remembering that the West Virginia strike was a wildcat strike.

But Allen's point is that teachers did not murder charters in West Virginia, no matter how much they want to take credit. No, she says, the bill was never going to pass. The GOP has long had control, but "the powers that be in the Mountain State just have no interest in creating educational opportunities for the students of their state."

Here's where Allen's detecting runs into trouble-- every good murder mystery fan knows we need to establish opportunity and motive. But Allen's singular vision is so tunnel bound that she can never imagine any reason for people to disagree with her except that they are evil and stupid. If I were someone who wanted to sell charters to WV, and they weren't selling, I might ask why not, find out the concerns, try to address them. Could it be that in a largely rural not-very-wealthy state, folks are worried about the impact of charters on local school budgets? Could it be that they've seen nothing happening in nearby charter-friendly states to make them say, "Yeah, that looks like a good thing to do."

But Allen's not interested in digging. WV test scores are low. Unions and politicians agree, for some reason, that nothing needs to change. And yet there have been two strikes over this stuff-- what, did the union and legislature get together and say, "Let's just stage a whole strike thing to throw Jeanne Allen off the scent"?

"Teachers unions take credit for killing charter schools like politicians take credit for grain growing," says Allen, which means that, I guess, the death of charter schools is a normal, natural process? Unions, she says, want to pretend to be powerful so they can keep deluding their dues-paying members, because desperation post-Janus and fear of parents hungry for change, which means, I guess, that the change-hungry parents in WV don't vote?

We're still hunting for a motive and a murderer. Politicians, she says, are always happy to kill innovative education programs and point the finger at organized labor. Are they? Really? Politicians just sit there and say, "Yeah, that looks like an education innovation, so I say kill it right away." Why do they do this?

But those teachers (who didn't murder the charters, but let's talk about why they want to murder charters) strike despite the research Allen's group has collected showing that charter schools boost math proficiency. No link to that research, nor the research claiming that Oakland charters are magical. It probably wasn't either of these two, but let's get serious-- nobody at this stage of the game can seriously claim that there's research showing a clear, consistent, universal charter advantage.

Oh, and also, those teachers are hurting kids by striking because strikes have a "proven negative impact" on education. So does the long-term degradation of the public education system.

So you have to keep an eye on those unions, who are in no way powerful enough to kill charters, but boy do they wish they could, so watch them, and learn from the union in West Virginia even though-- twist!!-- there is no teachers union in South Carolina. Still, now that advocates (polite term for lobbyists) are pushing for charters and choice, "some intrenched interests are pushing back-- both in union halls and state capitols nationwide." Except not in South Carolina, where she just told us there are no unions and so, presumably, no union halls.

So who is killing charter schools? Definitely not the teachers. Probably the politicians, except we haven't come up with a single idea about what their motive would be, and since virtually every reform goal has been achieved politically over the last twenty years-- well, of Common Core, charters, or vouchers, name a single reform policy that was pushed by an actual grass roots popular demand. All are the result of "advocates" and stacks of "advocacy bucks" and well-connected corporate backers and, in places like Florida, self-serving politicians.

Who is killing charter schools? Jeanne Allen has no idea. It's certainly not the drip-drip-drip of daily news about charter failure, fraud or waste. It's certainly not the growing number of local public school districts that are learning about how many resources they lose to charters, or the taxpayers who discover that choice policies also rob them of their voice. It's certainly not the growing number of people who believed the charter hype and have now learned better. It couldn't have anything to do with people who have a serious and sincere concern about education in this country who disagree with Jeanne Allen about the virtues of choice and charters.

No, it must be some dark conspiracy. The solution. in Jeanne Allen's world, is for all the freedom loving parents to rise up and demand elected representatives who bring charters to life. But if she can't solve a simple murder mystery, I'm not sure how she'll ever figure out what happened to the vast groundswell of charter and choice support that still hasn't arrived.



 

The Problem With Tax Credit Scholarships

The classic talking point for tax credit scholarships (yet another type of voucher) is that they don't actually take money away from public education. This is technically correct because the money never actually gets into the government's hands; instead of paying taxes, the contributor hands the money to their favorite charter or private school and gets credit for paying taxes.

So does that take money away from education? Of course.

Let's imagine a neighborhood in North Egg with ten households. Out of those households, there are five children who spend every Saturday cleaning up the neighborhood. The families, many of whom include folks who work on Saturday, decide that the kids need something to eat for lunch, so the ten households create a Saturday Lunch Fund, and every family commits to chip in two bucks to the fund. Mrs. McSam handles the collecting of the money, and uses it to buy the workers a couple of pizza, some drinks, and a few extras to go with.

This system works for a while. Some Saturdays the pizza's not very good, and sometimes the dessert item is some pretty good ice cream and other times it's some kind of packaged processed junk. But for the most part, the basic needs of the workers are met.

Then one of the families says, "We actually take our nephew from a South Egg out to lunch every Saturday. Could you just count the money we spend on him toward our contribution for the Saturday Lunch Fund?"

"I don't see why not," says Mrs. McSam. "It's not like you're taking money out of the fund."

Two other families say, "We don't actually have any kids. But we do buy organic kelp for our church youth group snacks on Sunday. Can we just count that toward our Saturday Lunch Fund contribution?"

"I don't see why not," says Mrs. McSam. "It's not like you're taking money out of the fund."

Two other families say, "Pizza is so unhealthy. We are giving money to support an  all-vegan food truck that operates over in Southeast Egg. Please count that as our contribution to the Saturday Lunch Fund."

"I don't see why not," says Mrs. McSam. "It's not like you're taking money out of the fund."

One of the parents says, "We're actually going to start taking Junior to TGI Fridays on Saturday during her break. Just count that toward our contribution. It's only fair. And of course any of the other parents who want to spend their two dollars for a meal for their kid at TGI Fridays can do so, too." (Spoiler alert: You can't get a two dollar meal at TGI Fridays).

"I don't see why not," says Mrs. McSam. "It's not like you're taking money out of the fund."

Says another household, "We think breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so we'd like to buy a box of cereal and have that count for our contribution to the Saturday Lunch Fund. "

"I don't see why not," says Mrs. McSam. "It's not like you're taking money out of the fund."

At this point, only three households are actually paying into the fund, which has a whopping six dollars available every Saturday to buy lunch for the kids. Nobody ever took a cent out of the fund, but now getting a decent lunch for the workers means either raising everyone's contribution, which will have limited usefulness as long as they can have their credits. The alternative is a to try to meet the workers' needs with a meager supply of cheap lunch supplies.

So when somebody (like, say, the Secretary of Education) tried to argue that this type of voucher doesn't take anything away from public education, understand that they are, at best, twisting the truth or, at worst, lying.

ICYMI: May Day Edition (5/5)

Read, read, read. Share, share, share.

It's Not Like You Weren't Warned 

Dad Gone Wild gives us a look on the ground at the messes in Tennessee and Memphis

Betsy DeVos Has No Idea Who Alexander Hamilton Is 

A lesson for DeVos on Hamilton's place in US history and why he is not her BFF

The F-Bomb in Texas    

A new problem on the STAAR test.

Charter School Controversy in Rural Alabama

So many of the problems with the charter biz are right here in this tale of an Alabama charter.

Zuck turned American Classrooms into Nonconsensual Laboratories

Cory Doctorrow's brutal take on Summit Learning

Lawmaker's Role in Unusual Charter Arrangement  

One more wretched story from Florida, where apparently nothing qualifies as conflict of interest.

The Best School Innovation Would Be More People 

Steven Singer has some thoughts about what would actually help.

Newark Charter Schools Complaint     

The complaint is that the system didn't send them as many students as they asked for. Who does the choosing in school choice?

Why Teens Don't Talk To Us

Good insights and practical advice about how to connect personally a bit better with the teens in your classroom.

Florida's Charter Sector Is a Real Mess 

Carol Burris takes a look a just how much of a mess (spoiler alert: a huge one).

        

PersonAOLized Learning

If you are of a Certain Age, you have fond memories of America OnLine. You grabbed one of those magical discs that arrived in the mail like Harry Potter's unthwartable Hogwarts invitations. You stuck it in your computer, listened to the modem beep and boop and finally hissssss like R2D2 had just fatally assaulted a snake. Then a portal opened up, promising a variety of channels with a dizzying assortment of websites and digital content.

It was a simpler time. The internet (which your grandmother thought was actually on the aol disc) was a big scary place, but AOL promised to hold your hand and bring it all to you in safely curated pieces. You chatted with your friends on AOL Instant Messenger. You marked your favorite channels. AOL ate CompuServe and Netscape; it had so many subscribers that at one point, its servers faltered. AOL smelled like the future of media, big enough to merge with Time Warner.

But then, about five minutes after the AOL Time Warner merger, a few million Americans asked themselves a question:

If AOL can take me to the Ugly Kitty website, can't I just use one of those browser thingies and go straight to Ugly Kitty myself?

The tools were there. Search engines. More sophisticated browsers. Broadband connections. Users now savvy enough to pick up tricks of navigating the web; your grandmother no longer thougbt the internet came on a disc.

AOL still exists (or, rather, Aol still exists)-- but most of you were surprised to learn that. In 2015 it was acquired by Verizon; its top guy promised it would be the largest media technology company in the world. Nope.

I thought of all this history this week as I read a newspaper account of a recent school board meeting in my old district (sadly, behind a paywall).

The upshot is that the sixth grade classrooms in one of our elementary schools have gone one-to-one with chromebooks and an entirely digitized classroom.

Now, I don't want to get into the question of whether or not that' a great idea. What I want to notice is that it wasn't done with Summit Learning or Rocketship software or AltSchool-designed programs. They're just using Google classroom, like many teachers across the country. Google provides a framework that the teachers use to do whatever it is they design. es, Google is a notorious data-gathering hog. But the difference here is that all the assignments and assessments are teacher-designed, meaning that the data is not created in any way that makes it easy for crunching together with that from thousands of other students.

Before you burn up the comments with reminders about the evils of Google's evil data-mining empire, let me go on to make my actual point.

We didn't need AOL. We didn't need a large complex structure pre-filled with content for us. All we needed as a simple tool-- a browser-- that let us manage whatever content we saw fit to manage.

The modern digital iteration of personalized [sic] learning doesn't need a Summit or some other giant super-structure already stuffed with content and assessments and pedagogical soup (particularly when all those things are being created by computer programmers and not teachers). All it needs is a platform- one loose enough to allow teachers to fill it with whatever goodies they think would best serve their purposes. Something like Moodle would be plenty good enough.

I am not a fan of digitized personalized [sic] learning built on a foundation of mass customization and algorithmic direction, and the incorporation of competency-based education is a fatal flaw. But I am not tech-averse, either. I taught in a one-to-one room for a decade and found ways that computers could extend my reach as a teacher. A computer is a tool, a digitized high tech hammer, and the best way to make sure it's used for good is to keep your own hand wrapped around it. The biggest problem with modern personalized [sic] learning is that it puts the hammer in the hands of the wrong people, who intend to use it for the wrong purposes.

There are things that the software or a computer platform can't do. It can't assess writing. It can't analyze exactly what a student does or doesn't need to master, nor can it absolutely tell us whether a student has mastered something or not. It can't teach, or usefully engage a student for But it can manage paperwork, handle grading, give us a way to let students self-pace and enrich the content of the class. It can allow students methods of expression and discussion beyond what we used to be able to offer. It's not The Tool, but it is a tool.

It will become a more effective, less dangerous tool the moment teachers take it into their own hands. AOL pretended to open up a world of possibilities and choices, but in fact unseen people on the other end were making all the choices for us, limiting what would and wouldn't be seen or done.

I don't want to have the technology argument now-- my point is just this. The future of tech-assisted computer-delivered education isn't Summit or Altschool or any digital curriculum on a hard drive-- it's a Moodle or Google classroom type framework with the guts built by some classroom teachers. AOL looked like it would dominate the market, but it was a domination based on relatively helpless users. The current wave of tech-based education has the same base.

Is Your School Year Over Already?

Depending on which state you live in, your schools are now, or are about to be, entering testing season.

It's the magical time of year when your schools must subject students to the annual Big Standardized Test, a narrow slice of testing aimed at reading and math skills. In most states, the stakes are high, including the rating of the school itself as well as the professional ratings for the teachers who work there. And so every spring, schools turn their attention to preparing students for that test.

Fans of the modern test like to argue that these tests are impervious to test prep, which is true if you think that test prep refers only to memorizing the specific answers that will be on the test. And it's true that classic rote memorization is of very little use on these tests.

But modern test prep is not about rote memorization. Test prep involves teaching students to think like the people who manufacture these tests. Test prep involves learning the kinds of wrong answers (distractors) that these test manufacturers favor. In a multiple choice test, distractors are the whole game, the little traps and tricks that test writers include to "catch" students in particular sorts of mistakes, so students need to learn what sorts of enticing traps to recognize and avoid. And while students can't memorize specific answers to specific questions, they can expect certain types of questions, and so benefit from practicing those types of questions. For instance, there will almost certainly be a question asking students to use context clues to determine the meaning of a word. That word may well be familiar, and good readers will think, "Oh, I know this word," but the word will appear in a selection that uses it in an unusual manner; the whole point of the question is to trick the student into selecting the common definition of the word rather than the unusual one.

Students can also be prepared to recognize certain sorts of questions. The test manufacturers have certain ideas in mind when they talk about "mood" or "author's intent." Students benefit from practicing these terms and the test writers' intent before test day arrives.

Some will argue that if one just teaches the student well all year, she'll automatically be ready to do well on the test. No. We could get into this in depth, but the short answer is that a standardized test is not an authentic measure of learning or skills. Someone can be a great basketball player; that doesn't mean they will do well on a tricky standardized test about basketball. Someone can learn to be a great jumper, but that doesn't automatically make them great at jumping through a particular set of hoops, nor does learning to complete a particular hoop course make one a great all-around jumper.

Politicians periodically announce their intent to reduce the length of the Big Standardized Test, because they have heard the many complaints about how much school time the test takes up. But the actual days spent ploughing through the test are only the tip of the iceberg. Tested classes may interject test prep materials throughout the year, culminating in an intensive four, five or six weeks of test prep. There will be practice tests throughout the year, taking up additional time. The results of those practice tests may be that students who are "on the line" will be pulled from a study hall or elective and required to take a "course" which is nothing more than a daily period of test practice.

By March or April, all eyes will be on the test and the preparation for it. Then comes the actual testing, which may shut down even grades and classes that aren't being tested because staff is all tied up proctoring the test itself. Once all of that process is completed, teachers may have a few weeks of the year left to teach, if they can get their students' minds back in the classroom. This can be even more problematic in schools that have cute pep rallies and catchy songs to get their students ready for the test; the subtext of that approach is, "This test is the culmination of the whole year," and the unintended result is students who say, "But we took the test already. Doesn't that mean the year's basically over?"

High stakes tests have become the educational equivalent of the office where nobody can get their work done because they're constantly attending meetings to give progress reports on the work they're not getting done. High stakes testing have effectively, drastically, shortened the school year, not just by the week or two required to give the test, but by all the weeks used to get ready for it. Simply abolishing the test, or even removing all stakes from it, would instantly improve education in this country because it would instantly lengthen the school year by weeks.

Not all schools suffer from this issue. Some have administrators who are brave enough to put education ahead of testing. You may be fortunate enough to have such a leader in your child's district, but if not, your school year--the part of the year in which school and teaching and learning take place in an authentic and meaningful way--may already be over.

Originally posted at Forbes   

Florida Really Is The Worst

There are plenty of states in the country that are not very friendly to public education, but Florida under its new governor has established itself as the very worst state for public education. The worst. Its hatred of public school teachers and its absolute determination to dismantle public education so that it can sell off the pieces to privatizers and profiteers puts the sunshine state in the front of the pack.

The Newest Baloney

The latest nail in the coffin is Senate Bill 7070, a bill that adds yet another school choice program to the Florida portfolio of choiceness. That bill was passed today and now needs only Governor DeSantis's signature, which it will get quickly. The bill offers up vouchers that can be used for private schools, including the religion-based ones, like the ones that teach dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together and the ones that maintain their right to discriminate against, well, whoever. The vouchers will be one more drain on the public tax dollars intended to fund public education, but then, a key feature of the Florida approach has been to keep underfunding public schools so that charter and private schools can look better by comparison.

No signs of help for education anywhere on the horizon

One Democratic representative during the discussion of this bill pointed out that Florida has been proud of its accountability system (the stupid test-score based awarding of letter grades to schools) and these vouchers will completely circumvent that system.

"What are we doing?" Montford said. "We're allowing them to take public funds to go to schools where the standards are not as high, or maybe don't have any standards. And worse than that, we don't even know what those standards are. Why are we supporting allowing parents to take their children to schools that don't fit the accountability system that we all are so proud of? Why are we doing that?"

Just spitballing here, but I'm betting the answer is "The accountability system was just a tool for dismantling public education, and once we've cracked open that piggy bank, we don't much care how good or bad the schools are."

The bill was "delivered" by one member of the DeSantis all-star team, Jennifer Sullivan, the 27-year-old homeschooled college drop out (and we're talking Liberty University here) who heads the House education committee. DeSantis also banks on . There's the longtime grifter and profiteer Richard Corcoran, who, after being term-limited out of the legislature landed a new job as state education chief (here's another take on just how bad Corcoran is). The legislature itself is loaded with reps with a family stake in the charter biz (which is not a new thing in Florida). 

But the most important team members for this play are the three new state supreme court justices that DeSantis installed. In 2006, Jeb Bush tried a similar move, and the court recognized the obvious-- that the law violated the state constitution (they didn't even get to the problem with public money for religious education). DeSantis is expecting friendlier judges to see things his way. 

About That Teacher Pay

Meanwhile, Florida has fallen to 46th place in rankings for teacher pay. The legislature wanted to-- oh, I don't know what they wanted to do. Look like they're addressing Florida's problem in recruiting people to work under their lousy job conditions? At any rate, the same bill that added vouchers also tweaked Florida's boneheaded teacher bonus program. Now a Florida teacher's bonus is not based on her SAT scores, but instead we're back to the old student test score baloney. 

What's key remains the same-- it's a bonus. It doesn't help you build a pension or buy a house, and you can't count on it to feed your family in the future. It's almost as if the legislature doesn't actually want to attract people to come teach in public school.

Killing Competition

Local school districts had, in fact, decided to address the teacher problem on their own, with voters in several counties giving themselves a tax increase in order to attract more teachers.

One would think that free market competition-is-good legislators would applaud this move. It is, after all, exactly what they've said all along-- charters and choice would spur competition and make public schools better. 

But rather than applaud, the legislature is in the process of stifling that competition in a piece of brazen thievery. HB 7123 has passed in the house, and it requires public schools to share any increased tax levy money with charters. This tweet thread of the discussion shows just how ballsy and cynical the charter thieves have been. Charter supporter Rep. Bryan Avila argued that the voters didn't know why they voted for increased taxes, so maybe they did mean to give charters some of the money (they didn't). Avila is asked repeatedly what mechanism will be used to hold charters accountable for using the money for its intended purposes; he has no answer for that, because the answer is that charters will be free to use the windfall for whatever they wish.  An amendment to require accountability from charters is called "unfriendly" and denied. And in perhaps his most ballsy comment on the purpose of the bill, Avila says, "We don't want school districts acting on their own." 

Oh, and the tax grab would be retroactive.

And The List Just Goes On

The legislature seems likely to pass a bill arming teachers with minimal training. Because irony is still legal in Florida, yesterday a school resource officer accidentally fired his gun while it was still in the holster.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has some ideas about how to significantly ramp up Schools of Hope. Schools of Hope is a cynically designed program for bypassing local elected school districts by using state authority to plunk new charters directly across the street from struggling public schools. Too bad, voters. 

But that doesn't stomp on locally elected school boards hard enough, so there's also a bill to impose term limits on school board members. School boards are a problem because they don't always approve charters. You see the repeating theme-- the Florida legislature just finds the democratic process to be a big problem.

A bill that will make it a felony to provide students with banned books. It also gives any citizen the right to challenge any material, as well as forbidding any pictures of naked folks (good luck in your Florida physiology classes). And the book banners behind this bill already have a list ready to challenge, including Angela's Ashes and The Awakening. Banning the latter is-- well, something. I've taught The Awakening for decades, and it doesn't have anything remotely graphic in it (generally I have to explain to most of my students "Between the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next one, sex probably happens"), but it does have a married woman who has an affair.

And That's On Top Of

The American Federation for Children School Guidebook reminds us that Florida is already awash in school choice. Florida has every flavor of choice we know of-- ESAs, vouchers, tax credit scholarships-- and leads the rest of the country by a wide margin. By AFC's figuring, Florida spent 39% of all the voucher money in the US in 2018-- that's $956 million out of $2.4 billion.

Florida teachers were stripped of job protections (what folks sometimes call tenure) years ago.

Florida has one of those stupid third grade test failure rules-- third graders must pass the Big Standardized Test in reading to be promoted to fourth grade. Never mind that this is a bad rule; they have adhered to this rule with stunning determination, and justified it by arguing in court that teacher-given grades are meaningless.

Florida consistently ranks close to the bottom in spending-per-pupil.

Peak Cynicism

There's so much more, but these lowlights give you the idea. Talk to some charteristas on line and get a feel for just how deeply some of these folks hate teachers and teacher unions and public education. But nothing captures the cynicism driving the privatization of Florida education like the moment DeSantis explained "If the taxpayer is paying for education, it's public education."

Sure. The best way to steal something is to gaslight your audience and tell them, "What? I didn't steal it. It's still right there." Don't tell the public you're ending public education; just redefine public education as a private business with no meaningful transparency, oversight, or democratic local control, and which the public does not own or operate.

There are lots of places in this country where public education is under assault, hampered by privatizers and profiteers, and in the past, I wouldn't have tried to pick a Worst, but I'm ready now. I have no doubt that there are many good teachers, many good schools still hanging on and doing their best in spite of it all. But I wouldn't send my worst enemy to raise children in Florida, and I wouldn't send my worst enemy to get a teaching job there. Openly hostile to public education and systematically trying to break it down and replace it with privatized businesses while degrading and attacking the people who do the actual work, who actually care about education. Florida really is the worst.


  

Why It's Important To Say There Is No Teacher Shortage

I've been saying it. Tim Slekar has been saying it. Other people who aren't even directly tied to teaching have been saying it.

There is no teacher shortage.

There's a slow-motion walkout, a one-by-one exodus, a piecemeal rejection of the terms of employment for educators in 2019.

Why is it important to keep saying this? Why keep harping on this point?

Because if you don't correctly identify the problem, you will not correctly identify a solution (see also every episode of House).

It's not lupus.

"We've got a teacher shortage," leads us in the wrong direction. It assumes that, for some reason, there just aren't enough teachers out there in the world, like arguing there aren't enough blue-eyed people or enough people with six toes. It assumes that "teacher" is some sort of solid genetic state that either exists or does not, and if there aren't enough of them, well, shrug, whatcha gonna do?

"We've got a teacher shortage," argues that we've had the meat widget equivalent of a crop failure. The drought and the dust storms were just so bad this year that we didn't get a full harvest of teachers. And when the harvest is slow, what can we do except look for substitutes?

That's where teacher shortage talk takes us-- to a search for teacher substitutes. Maybe we can just lower the bar. Only require a college degree in anything at all. Louisiana is just the most recent state to decide to lower the bar-- maybe we can just let anyone who had lousy college grades but still got a job doing something, well, maybe we can make that person a teacher.

Or maybe we can substitute computers for teachers. A few hundred students with a "mentor" and a computer would be just as good as one of those teachers that we're short of, anyway, right?

We need to stop talking about a "teacher shortage" because that kind of talk takes our eyes off the real problem.

Teaching has become such unattractive work that few people want to do it.

This is actually good news, because it means that we can actually do something about it. The resistance to doing so is certainly very human-- if we convince ourselves that a problem in our lives is something that just happened to us, then it's not our fault. Unfortunately, that also means we have no power. Stan Lee told us that with great power comes great responsibility, but the converse is also true-- with great responsibility comes great power, so when we accept the responsibility, we get some power that comes with it.

Anyway. The most obvious answer folks land on is "Offer them more money," and that is certainly an Economics 101 answer. If you have a job that people don't want to do, offer more money to do it. If teaching paid $500,000 a year, there wouldn't be an unfilled job in the country. But as the #RedForEd walkouts remind us, money isn't the whole issue.

Respect. Support. The tools necessary to do a great job. Autonomy. Treating people like actual functioning adults. These are all things that would make teaching jobs far more appealing. I've often wondered how much job satisfaction you could add by giving teachers actual personal offices, some space of their own. These are all things that any school district could add, on their own, almost immediately (well, maybe not the offices).

There are other factors that make the job less attractive. The incessant focus on testing. The constant stream of new policies crafted by people who couldn't do a teacher's job for fifteen minutes. The huge workload, including a constant mountainous river of stupid paperwork (is there any wonder why special ed positions are among the hardest to fill). The moves to deprofessionalize the work. The national scale drumbeat of criticism and complaint and repetitively insisting that schools suck, teachers suck, it all sucks.

The continued pretense that there is some sort of deep mystery about why teaching jobs are hard to fill, as if it's just an a mystery wrapped in an enigma covered with puzzle sauce. Shrugging and saying, "Well, there's just a teacher shortage," is a way for everyone responsible, from the building administrators who do a lousy job of taking care of their people all the way up through legislators who continue to beat down public education, to pretend innocence, to say innocently, "Well, it's not like there's anything I can do about it."

And, we should note, this all piles on top of more specific problems, like the dire need to get Brown and Black teachers in the classroom. Again, folks just shrug and say, "Well, you know, there just aren't that many teachers of color" as if that's because of some act of God.

We know exactly why so many teaching jobs are hard to fill. But the folks with power would rather not bother exerting the effort to actually fix the problem. After all, it would be hard, and expensive, and anyway, why go to so much trouble over a bunch of whiny women. Even after being dragged to some level of understanding by teachers, many legislators have turned away and gone back to denial.

"We have a teacher shortage," is a fig leaf with which we are trying to cover the Grand Canyon, but many folks are only too happy to play along rather than rock the boat. Because "disruption" is only good for some folks.

So don't say "We have a teacher shortage." Say "we can't convince qualified people to take this job": or "we won't try to make these jobs attractive enough to draw in qualified people." Stop pretending this is some act of God; even the dust bowl turned out to be the result of bad human choices and not nature's crankiness. If we start talking about what-- and who-- is really responsible, perhaps we can fix the problem-- but only if we start with the correct diagnosis..