With a cover that announces “Rotten Apples: It’s Nearly Impossible to Fire a Bad Teacher” alongside an image of a judge’s gavel about to smash a fruit, you might suspect Time magazine (10/23/14) is doing some good old-fashioned teacher-bashing.
You’d be right.
There are a few problems with the story, but the biggest one is pretty familiar: It buries the lead. The Time piece, by Haley Sweetland Edwards, waits until the very end to tell readers that the teacher evaluation scheme central to argument is advancing is highly dubious.
The article is about how a small group of very wealthy Silicon Valley millionaires have decided they’re the ones who can fix America’s public schools–a “half-dozen tech titans who are making the repair of public education something of a second career.” The movement has been joined by people like “CNN anchor turned education activist Campbell Brown.”
The piece focuses on a relatively unknown figure named David Welch, an “unassuming father of three” who “clearly prefers a world of concrete facts to taking sides.” Welch evidently came up with the novel legal strategy behind the Vergara case in California. A court ruling in June found that tenure provisions serve to protect failing public school teachers, and thus the civil rights of the students forced to endure these conditions have been violated.
Time tells readers that Welch arrived at this simple conclusion by asking a “big-city California superintendent” how to fix the schools. His answer “blew Welch away”:
The educator didn’t ask for more money or more iPads. “He said, ‘Give me control over my workforce,'” Welch said. “It just made so much sense. I thought, Why isn’t anyone doing something about that? Why isn’t anyone fixing this?”
So someone with enormous power in a system thinks the problems is that he needs more power. Got it.
Time does admit that teacher job protections used to be important:
Before states began passing tenure laws in the early 20th century, a teacher could be fired for holding unorthodox political views or attending the wrong church, or for no reason at all if the local party boss wanted to pass on the job to someone else.
But nowadays, such protections are used to protect the bad apples, which is obvious to anyone who watches sensationalistic coverage of public schools:
But what began as a popular idea has become increasingly controversial as countless stories of schools and districts being unable to fire bad teachers have populated the news. In a story that hit headlines in 2009, the LA Unified School District was legally barred from firing a teacher who told an eighth-grade student who had recently tried to slit his own wrists to “carve deeper next time.” Episodes like that help explain why even in California, where the electorate votes overwhelmingly Democratic and is often sympathetic to unions, recent polls show that voters are skeptical of tenure.
Turns out that if people are exposed to wildly unrepresentative horror stories about abusive teachers, it impacts how they feel about job protections.
But back to the main point: Time reports that Welch and his ilk were able to find “a flood of new academic research on teacher quality ” to back up their hunch that bad teachers are the problem. One research team relied on a “a controversial tool called value-added measures (VAM)” to measure teacher effectiveness, and they “found that replacing a poorly performing teacher with an excellent one could increase students’ lifetime earnings by $250,000 per classroom.”
So there’s a technique that supposedly measures teacher quality, and you can sue public schools that fail to adopt it. Does anyone have a problem with this approach? Of course. Teachers, for example, and their unions–who are, shockingly, never quoted in Time‘s piece.
But we do get some outside perspectives: one researcher for a “conservative education think tank,” and… another analyst for a conservative think tank (Michael McShane of the American Enterprise Institute). That’s where Time went when it needed to find critics.There are, of course, plenty of other analysts who could critique the Silicon Valley approach.
But then, at the end of the piece, we finally get to the heart of the matter: Do these statistical models that purport to give us objective data on teacher effectiveness actually do what they claim?
The question of how to judge a teacher’s value gets to a fundamental irony in the national war over education reform today. Welch’s unexpected victory in Vergara, which hinges on the necessity–and feasibility–of measuring a teacher’s effectiveness, comes just as a broad range of educational experts have begun to question the validity of the tests and evaluations on which those teacher-effectiveness measures are based.
Huh. “Irony” might be the right term to describe the problem here: The wealthy interests who claim they have found a system for measuring teacher quality may in fact have no such system at all–but are nonetheless attempting to use their power to make decisions about who should remain in the classroom. This is the fundamental problem; but for Time, you explain this is in the second-to-last-paragraph of the piece, where the magazine spells out the doubts about these “value added” models:
In April, the American Statistical Association released a statement questioning whether VAM, the methodology that undergirds the Chetty study, adequately measures a teacher’s total value to a student’s education. In May, the American Educational Research Association found a “surprisingly weak” correlation between teachers’ VAM scores and their actual skills, as evaluated by surveys and expert observations. In July, the Department of Education found that VAM scores varied wildly depending on what time of day tests were administered or whether the kids were distracted. Even the Silicon Valley reformers appear willing to dial back the emphasis on testing and evaluations, at least for a bit.
So the whole foundation of this approach to “fixing” American public schools could very well be bogus? If that’s the argument–which, it should be stressed, is not new (Extra!, 4/11)–then why is this at the end of the piece? And why doesn’t the cover advertise the fact that the millionaires “saving” public education could very well be relying on a highly flawed method of sorting out the “bad apples”?
When you’re profiling millionaires who prefer “concrete facts” to “taking sides” in their drive to “repair” public schools, it seems like you might want to do more to emphasize what the facts are.
Teachers with tenure are an obstacle to techdom’s wet dream of virtual schools, and the profits they’d produce, aren’t they?
“Control over [the] workforce” is not only essential to implementing that vision. On a societal scale, it’s a primary goal of it.
Save for a favored few, the purpose of the educational system would be to pump out compliant drones to fill the miserable occupations late stage capitalism excretes.
In the oligarchy’s eyes
A mind is a terrible thing.
Yet another reason I stopped reading Time in the very early 1970’s.
We all know by now that these attacks on teachers are a backdoor way of getting rid of politically powerful teachers’ unions that strike back at Koch brothers-inspired school privatization measures.
Studies appear to demonstrate that income may be the most critical determiner of school success. If Johnny’s dad earns a living wage, chances are Johnny’s grades will rise. Conversely, if Johnny’s parents live a stressed out life counting pennies, choosing month to month whether to pay the light bill or to buy groceries, I can guarantee you this stress will “rub-off” on Johnny and distract him from academics. Wish the think-tanks the Kochs sponsor were a bit more intellectually honest rather than taking the low road to write apologist, slanted papers that advance their patrons’ ideology.
The Time mag editorial board should hang its collective head in shame…
Be well.
Add to historical background, in the “good old days” when my mother was a new teacher, in some districts if a woman teacher got married she would be fired instantly, even if there was no one to replace her. And tenure is a system which requires a district proves — with evidence– the incompetence of malfeasance of a teacher before he or she can be fired. If the evidence is there, the teacher is out of there, no matter what Time Mag says. There is still the chronic problem of the districts which fire teachers before the probationary period is up (to prevent tenure and to avoid giving raises), resulting in a permanent staff of newcomers.
Sadly, the Corporate lords and masters have shown us once again what happens when allow out of touch idiots with a heightened sense of entitlement to run the show. I thought we would have learned our lessons from the history, but then we have to realise that history is one of those subjects “THEY” don’t want taught by anyone but themselves.
But beyond that, the Corporate Lords and Masters are the very reason that America is being out produced and out maneuvered on every angle because over the years the very schools they desired (those teaching only ‘approved thoughts’) were producing complete and utter morons when it came to the work place. Anyone here recall the lament of the Uber-right when they found out they didn’t have a work force with enough training to be able to work smartly or efficiently. In order to get a decent worker, they had to send them to another 2 years of training.
The same reasoning that was in effect back then is the same one they are using now; “don’t hire intelligent worker”, hire only stupid, lazy individuals who will only do “exactly as they are told”. The problem is the actually idiots are the ones in charge and can’t tell a worker how to pour pee out of a boot with the directions on the heel. They know one thing “how to be Artificially Stupid”. In talking with a well known author, back in the late 80’s at a sci-fi con, he pointed out then that all countries have a product or service they are good at exporting and are well known for; and he pointed out that America is good at creating and exporting ‘Artificial Stupidity’. I think the next person who tells me ‘Oh, I don’t know how to work, I only how to make money’, I am going to hit with a ball bat (a Louisville slugger, might as well make it an American Product) and tell them “No, your too F-ing stupid to live, and you don’t know how to make money, you only know how to steal it from others.”
Over the years we have been told that we must let the CEO’s have everything they want, when they want it, with no questions asked and no repercussion for any actions taken regardless of legality, if we want the Eagles of Enterprise. And as always it turns out that it isn’t the Eagles of Enterprise we get, it is the Kochroaches of Commerce; the ones who breed like cockroaches, eat everything they can, and then crap on the rest so that no one else can have it.
The time for French Style Revolution is at hand; if they are going to kill us anyway for their own personal gain, we need to start taking them with us. It won’t take long to remove the 1% er’s if the other 99% stands up and stomps out the kochroaches.
If the author writes for FOX you know it is fax news. Teachers are hard working and educated. The author wasn’t born in a jungle but was educated by teachers. Public schools don’t need repair. They need more funds. Teacher’s pensions keep them on the job teaching. Charter schools need repair because they are for profit and give everyone high marks if they deserve it or not. It is full of fraud.
Many in our Congress went all the way public schools including university. They hate what helped them and don’t want anyone else to have the same.
We are investing our money in the wrong things. Wars are not good for anyone but bankers. They don’t need it since they already have good jobs.
The real reason the elite don’t like public schools is because it gives everyone an equal chance to succeed. It also teaches truth and democracy. Can’t have that. The religiously insane want to control every thing from what we learn to what women do with their bodies. Bug out RWers.
Over 40 years ago, we called it “TIME, The Weekly Fiction Magazine.”
Le plus ça change. . .
GEE, wasn’t that skank Michelle Rhea around to share her 2 cents? Oh, that is right – she was the flavor of the month last year.
Trying to repair public schools should not mean demonizing teachers. To be accused of bashing teachers is like being accused of not supporting the troops if you are critical of the military industrial complex. At least the military can be said to be a proper role for government though not to the extent that it is today.
Government schools seem to exist to brainwash citizens into accepting a growing role of government in warfare and welfare. Government and schools should be separated. along with the separation of government and religion. Throw in separation of government and economy. Call it a conflict of interest.
I strongly suspect the two major culprits are: gutless administrators (need zero tolerance to protect their incompetence; and politically appointed incompetents in county and state
Shame on Time Magazine for adding fuel to the teacher bashing fire.
To the Editors of Time Magazine:
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” – Malcolm X
I hope Malcolm X was wrong about media controlling ‘the minds of the masses,’ but the Time cover on teacher tenure with the phrase ‘Rotten Apples’ emblazoned across it shows that his other points were spot on. Irresponsible media can accuse with impunity, they can treat as hereos tech millionaires who lambast teachers by not only encouraging the use of, but use the courts to compel the use of techniques such as ‘Value-added measurement.’
Having written extensively on VAMs, I am aware of what a troubled and inaccurate method it is. I am not going to enter into all the reasons –I have a book about that–, but the “flood of new academic research on teacher quality” is dubious at best, deliberately misleading at times, often relying on a single study of a single school in a single year and then generalizing that to all schools everywhere in all years. Furthermore, this research is often miscategorized and misrepresented by advocates for a quick fix. But there is no quick fix – the problems of our schools are rooted in social pathologies, not teacher quality.
It is concentrated poverty, not teacher quality that plagues our system – or, more accurately, those parts of the system which serve the poorest quarter of our population. Even Eric Hanushek of Stanford, who is known for saying we need to “replace the bottom five to eight percent of our teachers in terms of effectiveness,” stresses that “an average teacher is quite good in our schools” and would rate well against teachers anywhere in the world. And almost no one suggests what seems obvious – that tenure draws people into the teaching pool who might go elsewhere, thus very likely making the average teacher significantly better.
On the other side, the so-called fixes would make things worse, much worse. What none of the advocates admit is this: it narrows the curriculum. The ‘value’ measured is not that that of character or creativity, but is based on standardized tests and how students perform on them. It has nothing to do with their dreams or aspirations, on their unique gifts or their personal histories and, as one might expect, since the advent of high stakes tests in the early 1990s, young people have had documented declines in creativity. Administrators and teachers are pressured to teach students to do well on the short list of skills the tests measure, not on how to have a meaningful life.
Those tests are themselves narrow in many ways, but in one way they are not: they are sweeping in their ability to make money. Pearson education has a nearly half a billion dollar contract to provide testing services in Texas. As for venture capitalists, the money has gone up 30-fold, from $13 million in 2005 to $389 million in 2011. As former Massachusetts Governor William Weld said some years ago, the “fundamentals are all aligned for a great number of people to make a whole lot of money in this sector.”
Weld finished his statement, “and do well by doing good.” That is always the claim. Dismantle the public system to serve the students. This is done in the strangest way — teacher autonomy declines and long term professionals are pushed out not because they are ‘bad,’ but because they have higher salaries. The problem is that far too many advocates of this position are trying to make room in the budget for their own payments; ranging from Rupert Murdoch to purveyors of virtual education to TFA to Pearson to the Gates-funded, Michelle Rhee-founded organizations the New Teacher Project, have an interest, financial and professional, in labeling the system as failing.
Add to this those with political interests to do the same, from the Bushes to Chris Christie to Scott Walker to Kevin Johnson, and you have a potent force able to craft messages that are in their own interests, but not those of a democratic nation the most important foundation of which is its public education system.
Sincerely,
Brian Ford
brianford58@yahoo.com
646 713 8285
Sources:
First, my own book, Brian Ford, Respect For Teachers or The Rhetoric Gap and How Research on Schools is Laying the Ground for New Business Models in Education, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475802078
Eric Hanushek speaking, “Class Size and Student Achievement,” Diane Rehm Show, 8 March 2011; accessed June 2011 at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-08/class-size-and-student-achievement.
Luke Quinton & Kate Mcgee, “What’s in Texas’ $500 Million Testing Contract with Pearson?” KUT.ORG News, Austin, Texas, July 16, 2013; accessed October 2014 at http://kut.org/post/what-s-texas-500-million-testing-contract-pearson.
Stephanie Simon,”Private firms eyeing profits from U.S. public schools,” Reuters, New York, 2 August 2012; accessed October 2014 at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/usa-education-investment-idUSL2E8J15FR20120802
Kyung Hee Kim, “The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance
Tests of Creative Thinking,” Creativity Research Journal, 2011, Vol. 23:4, pp. 285-295.
Weld quote was from Walsh, Ed Week, 19 Jan 2000, p. 13
Moderator — PLEASE remove my phone number and email address from the letter.
Thanks,
Brian Ford
” replacing a poorly performing teacher with an excellent one could increase students’ lifetime earnings by $250,000 per classroom.”
Does this mean that in a classroom of ~ 30 each student gets ~ $8,000 more / lifetime – or 40 year career ~ $200 / year. How could they even measure such a small factor?
I think I’ll be canceling my subscription to Time For Kids.
So…according to this Time article, an excellent teacher can impact a classroom’s lifetime earnings by $250,000. Wow. That’s an impressive $250 per year increase per worker. Definitely a strong point to make. For those who can’t count.
Tenure is not a right or a protection for bad teachers! It is a right to due process! Get and report the facts is an under statement.
This whole issue is about destroying teachers’ union. Let the educator make the decisions about education; not rich capitalist scum. With regard to “value-added measures (VAM),” does everything have to turn on money? Citing Nietzsche: “it is now as it’s always been; the more you possess, the more you are possessed. Therefore, praised be a moderate poverty.” And again: “A will to a system is a lack of integrity.” These online schools are such a racket of nonsense. When the destitute in our society, which is to say the majority, grasp at any lifeboat on the sinking ocean liner that is their lives, and hit upon an online school, like Phoenix, they are loaned money to “attend.” No sports, no recess, no socialization, no arts among the students. There is more debt in student loans than there is in all credit card debt in the US. The wizards of Wall Street, like they did with the home mortgages of the Great Wall Street Bailout of 2008, ongoing today under what is delicately referred to as Quantitative Easing, not 1, not 2, but 3! bundle those loans into financial securities, rated AAA by the likes of Moody’s; which rated said fraudulent mortgages AAA right up to the day they crashed into worthlessness. The same Moody’s which raised the cackles of the corporate media at the State of Illinois when it had the temerity to reduce Illinois’ bond rating. The left hand of one segment of the capitalist pigdom, washing the other. The result remains the same – ridiculous and senseless warfare, ecological destruction, the elite owning eight and ten homes while the homeless are left to fend for themselves, ad nauseam – only the means and disguises change. Riffing on Socrates2, studies also show the best means of birth control is educating women. Paremellryn, love your metaphor of the boot with instructions on the back of it. However, when you speak of America, it’s my opinion you should be delicate enough to define exactly what you mean, as contrasted with the fascism of the US. In Bolivia for example, in Venezuela and the other South American countries of the Bolivarian Revolution, there are real experiments in real democracy ongoing. And those countries are standing up to the brutal colossus of the north. Love also the rest of your comment, especially the rich imagery. This is very true and apt: “Wars are not good for anyone but bankers.” This country, if such it may be called, factoring in all auxillary and hidden costs, some $60 billion for example, stashed in the civilian Department of Energy to “stockpile and maintain” nuclear weapons, a gross violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, will spend about a TRILLION dollars on its military apparatus and apparatchiks this year. How is that Homeland Security for the homeless? Or those struggling to find two twenty dollar bills to rub together? How long will the American – the US – people tolerate not nonsense exactly, too kind a word, but process of collective suicide? I disagree that government and schools should be separate. Who is going to fund public schools if not the government? Whenever individuals come together to effect that which they cannot individually, that process must of necessity be mediated by government.
Nothing pisses me off more than…know-it-all magazine & newspaper editors/reporters, millionaires/billionaires, politicians, Campbell Brown (the new Michelle Rhee/Ann Coulter wannabe http://www.salon.com/…/education_reforms_new_ann_coulter_a…/ ), and anyone else who…has no teaching experience (let alone the credentials), has never set foot in a classroom (either to volunteer/observe for an entire day, week, month), has visions of for-profit-education-reform…throwing an entire PROFESSION under the bus. Shame, shame, shame! SMH
Shame on you!!!!
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