R-E-S-P-E-C-TFind out what it means to me
~Aretha Franklin (And Otis Redding)
Teachers, we’re told, leave due to disrespect. Let’s break that down. Teachers have been driven out of the classroom due to a 30-year plan by corporate school reformers and politicians to privatize public education.
Americans should be worried. Without qualified teachers, students won’t learn what they need to gain acceptance to quality universities or find decent careers.
It will destroy our country if we collectively become lesser educated. Public schools are one of the last democratic institutions to unite people, and well-prepared teachers make this happen.
Here are five examples of how teachers have been and continue to be driven out of the classroom and why. The list is incomplete. There’s MORE TO COME!
I welcome feedback.
1. Buildings
The pandemic showed how critical safe school buildings are and the poor state of school infrastructure. This continues, like 115,000 Philadelphia students who had learning disrupted due to no air conditioning. Or see the lousy conditions in Columbus. Why has this gone on for so many years?
One theory is that teachers are being replaced with tech, anywhere, anytime learning, and students will get vouchers for private and cyber charter schools.
Betsy DeVos alluded to this when asked about rebuilding schools. At the pandemic’s start, former NY Gov. Cuomo said he’d partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reimagine schools.
The old model of, everybody goes and sits in a classroom, and the teacher is in front of that classroom, and teaches that class, and you do that all across the city, all across the state, all these buildings, all these physical classrooms — why, with all the technology you have?
Watch for new cyber or smart schools described here without teachers.
A smart school integrates technology into the mechanics of learning, helping to prepare students for life in the modern world of work.
2. Class Size
Everyone knows with manageable class sizes, teachers reach students and their families and understand their behavioral and learning problems. Private schools advertise smaller classes.
If teachers are replaced with computers, expect large class sizes. Bill Gates promoted this. Former governor Jeb Bush fought against lowering class sizes. They advocate online instruction.
Large classes mean reliance on technology.
3. Corporations
Ian Round of the Daily Memphian tells how billionaires drive public school reform. This is a good example of what’s happening across the country. The two reports are behind a paywall, but the titles are:
Billionaire charter school advocates gave to at least 22 organizations that endorsed TISA.
Twenty-two nonprofits received huge sums to support the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement despite concerns it doesn’t support teachers. See Andy Spears of Tennessee Education Report and the Tennessee Coalition for Public Education in The Tennessean.
How pro-charter school tech billionaires quietly influence state government.
Here Round describes how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $5.5 million in grants to Chiefs for Change, former Gov. Jeb Bush’s organization, to promote charter schools.
Outside partners promote charter schools and vouchers and nonprofits, with individuals who may or may not be educators, with an anti-teacher agenda and who will profit on funding that should go to public schools.
Think how billionaires could have supported students and teachers over the years.
4. Covid
Public school and teacher critics used Covid to scapegoat teachers over remote learning, even as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admits to a botched Covid response.
Few understood Covid dangers at first. Teachers and students got sick and sometimes died. Teachers did what they believed was safe for students and families.
Many schools still lack decent air quality! One of my teacher friends is currently recovering from a bad case of Covid.
Economist Emily Oster’s controversial writings that schools could have safely stayed open, according to Protean, were funded by grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Walton Family Foundation, Arnold Ventures, and far-right billionaire Peter Thiel. The Mercatus Center, a think tank founded and financed by the Koch family, managed the Thiel grant. These groups are not friendly to public education or teachers.
Pandemic blame intentionally cast teachers as failing, eroding public trust in them.
5. Curriculum
Drill and micromanagement of impersonal commercial and online instruction focused on Common Core State Standards turn teachers into script followers and classroom monitors.
Instruction often becomes cold and calculating, aligning specific goals and objectives to tests, setting the stage for online instruction and more data collection.
Many poor schools have stripped art programs, fired art teachers, shut down school libraries, and fired librarians, focusing on narrow offerings and standards leading to all-tech.
________
Stay tuned for more examples of how teachers have been and continue to be driven out.
References
Educators We’ve Lost to the Coronavirus. Education Week. (2020: April 3). Accessed at https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/educators-weve-lost-to-the-coronavirus/2020/04.
Round, I. (2022: August 29). Billionaire charter school advocates gave to at least 22 organizations that endorsed TISA. Daily Memphian. Accessed at: https://dailymemphian.com/section/metro/article/30066/bill-gates-walton-family-tisa-tennessee-department-of-education
Round, I. (2022: July 2). How pro-charter school tech billionaires quietly influence state government. Daily Memphian. Accessed at: https://dailymemphian.com/subscriber/article/29550/chiefs-for-change-mark-zuckerberg-bill-gates-influence-tennessee-charter-education.
Restorative Practices (Restorative Justice) creates chaos in the classroom. Gender issues take more time away from teaching the subject as well. Plus, thanks to Common Core, test scores are falling even for great schools, and the teachers get blamed. I had no tech or standardized testing, yet I graduated from high school knowing far more than students today.
I agree with you about CC and standardized tests, but I believe there’s more chaos created about restorative justice and gender issues by parents who dislike those issues outside the classroom than students in the classroom.
“Restorative Practices (Restorative Justice) creates chaos in the classroom. Gender issues take more time away from teaching the subject as well.”
Would you expand on these assertions? I have a feeling that things have changed quite a bit since I left teaching. The only discussion about gender that ever took place in my class (high school) was about gay students. The kids asked me how I felt. At that time, it was still far more controversial and we hadn’t yet identified so many different iterations of gender identity. You were either gay or straight. At that point in my life I had had a cousin come out and get married. They were a wonderful couple accepted by our entire family. I told the kids that when you cared /loved for someone who identified as gay your thinking tended to change or at least you started thinking. It allowed the kids to acknowledge that the kids they knew were actually very nice.
Restorative justice was handled by school counselors who trained students to help resolve issues between two students in a face to face discussion and resolution. It did help to cut down on fights that more often than not seemed to be the go to conflict resolution technique. I did not experience many problems in the classroom.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Mine were similar teaching high school.
The #1, THE cause of the bastardization of the teaching and learning process is the standards and testing malpractice regime. Until that is eliminated all else doesn’t really matter.
Thanks, Duane. As you’ve likely noticed, testing is becoming progress monitoring and online assessment to collect more personal data about students.
The willful elimination (out of fear) by administrators and BOEs of student accountability, both academically and behaviorally has worked to severely undermine teacher morale. Students need concrete limits and clear and certain consequences to regulate their behaviors and schools have failed miserably in this regard.
Interesting point, Rick. Why, I wonder. I think the notion that students can self-regulate their behavior to work alone on computers might be one reason. Thank you.
100%. A healthy, positive rapport with students is important, but admin, BOE and school officials have perverted this approach with the ideology of having relationships with students. Building “relationships” with students – this has no doubt blurred the lines of teacher student boundaries. Students receive mixed messages of the “hey I am your friend” mentality with authority. No dress code for teachers contributes to this blurring of the lines as well. This plus the restorative justice “seeing all sides” bit – all contributes to disorder in the classroom.
I’m not sure. Some teachers would say that developing professional working relationships and friendships might help students build trust. Of course, there’s always a line that can and should be drawn.
Sometimes teachers might be a students life line. I’m thinking of a movie I saw a while back called The Edge of Seventeen where a teen is having social problems after losing their father. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1878870/.
Dress codes for teachers. I agree that teachers should look professional but I’ve never been one for uniforms in public schools for students. And how does seeing all sides contribute to disorder?
I fear teachers often have so many students they can’t get to know them well. But I agree that there is a line and there should be boundaries.
Thanks, Cat!
I think extreme “Inclusion” is harming public education. In the late 1980 and early 1990’s inclusion was meant to help those with mild or higher moderate disabilities succeed in the regular classroom. Now those with extreme disabilities are in regular classrooms distracting the teacher and the other students with loud mooning noises, frequent medical issues, and worse of all violent behavior. This forced inclusion is causing teachers to quit their jobs because of the stress from not being trained to deal with disabilities this severe.
Good point! I think you’re right, and it’s especially difficult when class sizes are large. I see this with reading difficulties too. I’m unsure if schools still offer resource classes where students can get 1-2 hours of intensive individual or small group instruction. Special help is costly, and parents were convinced with IDEA reauthorization that general classes were best no matter what. Thanks, Bill.