Newsweek devotes several pieces this week to public schools. But the lead piece, “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers,” by Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert, lays out the magazine’s skewed vision: Teacher unions protect the worst performers, while charter schools offer an easy solution. (“In the past two decades, some schools have sprung up that defy and refute what former president George W. Bush memorably called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations.'”) Newsweek even finds the silver lining in Hurricane Katrina:
It is difficult to dislodge the educational establishment. In New Orleans, a hurricane was required: Since Katrina, New Orleans has made more educational progress than any other city, largely because the public-school system was wiped out. Using nonunion charter schools, New Orleans has been able to measure teacher performance in ways that the teachers’ unions have long and bitterly resisted.
The decision of a Rhode Island superintendent to fire every teacher at one low-performing high school is called a “notable breakthrough.”
Many of these ideas are the subject of intense debate—research on charter schools has generally not shown substantial improvement over conventional public schooling, for example. Experts and advocates disagree with the notion that New Orleans is a success story. But Newsweek presents little debate—sticking with the right-leaning narrative version of “school reform” that is primarily about bashing teachers.
An accompanying article pitting teachers union president Randi Weingarten and anti-union D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee is presented on Newsweek‘s home page under the headline “The Union Boss vs. the School Reformer.” It’s not hard to imagine which option is supposed to be more attractive (unless you’re the pro-boss, anti-reform type).
Back to the Thomas article, though, with its subhead: “In no other profession are workers so insulated from accountability.” This is particularly ironic to see under Evan Thomas’ byline. One only needs to recall his contribution to the pre–Iraq War propaganda effort summarized below, and wonder what sort of accountability exists at Newsweek.
March 17, 2003
Newsweek‘s cover story is entitled “Saddam’s War,” and the cover features a close-up of Hussein’s face on fire. At the top of the story, Newsweek reports from the scene of a Baghdad military parade, describing as jarring the sight of Iraqi fedayeen fighters “garbed in the familiar tan camouflage of the United States Army. Saddam has ordered thousands of uniforms identical, down to the last detail, to those worn by U.S. and British troopers. The plan: to have Saddam’s men, posing as Western invaders, slaughter Iraqi citizens while the cameras roll for Al-Jazeera and the credulous Arab press.” The article closes with this call for war:
“One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of ‘the green mushroom’ over Baghdad—the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time.”
And I thought it was just me that had an adverse reaction to this newsweek piece. Obviously the research this decade has taught us the importance behind teacher quality, nothing new. But I just want to know who says that the reason KIPP schools yield greater gains on test scores is better teachers? I think its probably something closer to the sum of the model–cohesive culture, longer days and school year, & teachers willing and able to go above and beyond conventional duties. And that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of things I would take issue with as the author. As the author above pointed out, their take on the role of unions is anything but balanced. Shame on these journalists for making a complex issue seem simple….I think this article would be more aptly titled, “why we must fire bad journalists”?
While I admit that I have not done the research myself, my personal experience is that good teachers and bad teachers do make a large difference. In the Newsweek article the difficulty of firing tenured teachers is mentioned, and I have to agree to that. Our High school English teacher routinely uses the phrase “I suspicion” and shows blatant and overwhelming amounts of bias toward her daughter. I could go on, but this is not the place. In any case, there is more than a grain of truth to the Newsweek article.
Look, I’m the last person to defend crappy teachers. Of all the teachers I had in public school, only three were worth a damn. The others were mediocre at best.
But make no mistake. This “blame the teachers” mindset is part of a far-reaching campaign to privatize all public education in this country. It constantly bashes unions as inflexible and inefficient, while saying nothing about the vampire-like monomania of capitalism for profits. It trumpets “workforce readiness” in colleges, and preaches charter schools as the solution for “failing” K-12 schools
To take just the last point, it assumes that the “failure” of certain K-12 schools is simply due to bad teachers. Let’s cut the bullshit: even if all schools had all the resources they need, the (global) economy needs both the proles and the lumpenproletariat. Even if we everyone could get PhD’s for free, like in Germany, the majority of us (worldwide) would still end up in low-paying jobs with no benefits and no job security. That’s just the way things are — under capitalism.
I’m with ‘Marx’. This is all a big ruse by the conservatives. All you have to do is look at their devotion to the religion and militarism — two authoritarian institutions that disdain intelligence and the rational method – – to see where their real motivations are. And of course they ignore any of the severe environmental settings of so many students in the lower ends of the economic spectrum. Most of this is just a ‘blame-the-victim’ tactic, to divert attention from the vanishing full-time jobs in this country (remember the US textile industry? Footwear manufacturers?) that are being replaced by low-level service jobs or huckster-financial scamming positions. When you have no commitment to full-employment then…voila… you have no full-employment. But you do have plenty of people to fill up the military or our jails with.
I think you can sum up the ‘tude of The Powers That Be ™ toward the right of quality education for all as
“That’ll learn ya!”
The point is not firing bad teachers but developing good ones. I am curious where all the gifted teachers are going to come from after the housecleaning of all the “bad” ones. Are there lines of them waiting out there, jobless and hungry, just waiting for a job to appear? Or are there a number of untested young people eager to begin a teaching career, but not experienced in dealing with kids, parents, administrators, or the curriculum? Good teachers require several years of hard knocks (just ask most of them how they performed at first), mentoring, forgiveness for their mistakes, and professional development. That, of course, presupposes a social climate that honors the hard work, effort, and enthusiasm of young teachers while taking their frequent failures in stride. Such an attitude is sadly lacking in the screed written by Thomas and Wingert.
How ironic for Newsweek, the magazine that publishes the completely indefensible “Top 100 Schools in America” every spring, to assume it knows anything about education. For its unreliable and invalid data, Newsweek bases its ratings in part on the percentage of students who take Advanced Placement tests, with no data on how successful those students are. Check out Newsweek’s top 100 schools, and note how few appear from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, the top three schools traditionally on ACT and SAT scores. I teach Advanced Placement Literature and Composition at a public school in Iowa with no restrictions on enrollment in AP classes, and on the 2009 exam, 81% of my students scored at the proficient level (3) or higher, as opposed to 59% nationally. In addition, 21% of my students scored at the highest level (5) as opposed to the national average of 7.37%. It’s time for Newsweek to either get serious about what constitutes quality teaching and quality education, or stop trying to assume that it has any credibility in reporting on educational issues. I might also add that for the past five years I have served as a reader for AP exams, and I fear that I have read some essays from Newsweek’s top 100 schools that could barely pass as fifth-grade writing, let alone college-level writing.
Let’s get real: Starting pay for a teacher is usually in the ball park of $35K. Good teachers usually work 12 – 13 hours each weekday during the school year. Elementary school math tells you that means less than $13.50 per hour. Last month a Chick-Fil-A opened up in my town paying $11.50 for fry cooks.
This is not about weeding out bad teachers. This is about declaring the system “broken” so we can implement a school voucher system. That way conservative families would be free to spend their share of taxpayer money sending their child to whatever madrasa they choose. Only idiots would believe that they could recruit the “best and brightest” for $13.50 per hour.
Teachers are underpaid, relative to other occupations that require a college degree. This has an effect on education for a couple of reasons: schools typically lose teachers to other better-paying professions, so the schools lose their veteran teachers. If the schools could hang on to experienced teachers, the schools would be better off.
In addition, many teachers have second jobs. This reduces the time that they can devote to teaching. Teachers can’t afford to drop their second job and still make it financially.
FAIR, thanks for making the point that if Newsweek fired reporters and editors who blew a big story (the Second Persian Gulf war), there’d be a lot of vacancies at Newsweek and other mainstream media outlets.
Teachers should be paid according to the difficulty of their mission, and their effectiveness in educating students. Teaching is basically a talent that needs development, not a skill that can be taught. Education of teachers only goes so far. Many teachers stress themselves out getting a PHD while they work, just so they will get to a higher pay bracket. It doesn’t make them better teachers, just more knowledgeable. In these days of complicated systems such as weather prediction and brain research, why can’t we develope a system for judging a teacher’s effectiveness, including all relevant variables? Children who are not educated in kindergarten will never be adequately educated.
I went to an excellent elementary school and middle school (although there were lots of drugs in middle school), and a high school that did not have very good teachers or much in the way of financial backing (I moved between middle school and high school). I got bored in high school, but then figured out that I did have a public library 14 miles away, and a college library 7 miles away that I could get to sometimes to read while I was there, and I could teach myself a lot. Now there is the internet, which can be used as a resource if people want to use it that way. I use the internet for research for work all the time now.
What I am trying to say is that schools matter, yes, but individuals and families do have resources to help us cope with school failings. Education depends a lot on what people are trying to get from it.
Teachers and administrators must be held accountable. The problem is the many variables that are part of the teacher-student relationship. Test scores are probably the most unreliable variable because of the inherent variability of test results from one test to the other. I have seen reading and math scores change as much as 3-5 years on the same test for the same student. There is nothing biblical about standardized tests. They are merely another instrument to be used in assessing student performance. Most important, reading and math are skills needed for successful school performance. They are not the end product of education. What is probably most important is a child’s ability to conceptualize, to recognize cause and effect relationships, to research data, to think critically, etc.
We must also recognize the varying levels of readiness with which children enter school. Teaching in a school surrounded by poverty presents many different educational problems, problems not seen in a middle class suburban community. We have to stop our knee-jerk response of blaming teachers and recognize that the playing field for both children and teachers is not level and, therefore, we should not judge all teachers and children by the same standards. If we really want excellence in education for all our children, we must be ready to make a long term financial commitment that confronts the social ills of poverty as well as the quality of education in the school buildings. Historically, public education has never done well with children of poverty.
The easiest, albeit most expensive, way to improve schools is to shrink class sizes. Funny that’s not too high on reformers’ agendas. Instead we get blanket damning of teachers because they’re out front.
My wife and I are letting our Newsweek subscription lapse, after about 20 or so years. Instead of “news,” every week Newsweek supplies page after page of opinion and commentary. Now, I enjoy a well-reasoned column as much as the next news junkie, but I also look to news magazines for in-depth reporting and a perspective that daily newspapers cannot always provide. Instead, Newsweek fills its pages with well-written, provocative, but poorly supported and frequently slanted opinion pieces. The editor, Jon Meacham, constantly reiterates his mantra that “America is a center-right nation,” and Newsweek writers (or editors) never miss a chance to praise Ronald Reagan as a great President. (Did I miss something? I was alive then and never saw Reagan as anything but a good actor–this was his role of a lifetime.) I guess we should call Newsweek a “blue dog” liberal magazine.
The teacher article makes some valid points but also MANY unsupported generalizations, such as this one: “Much of the ability to teach is innate–an ability to inspire young minds as well as control unruly classrooms that some people instinctively possess . . . . Teaching can be taught, to some degree, but not the way many graduate schools of education do it, with a lot of insipid or marginally relevant theorizing and pedagogy. In any case, the research shows that within about five years, you can generally tell who is a good teacher and who is not.” What a slip and slide from one wild generalization to another! Is the ability to be a good doctor, architect, engineer, lawyer, social worker “innate”? What the heck does that mean? And most teachers learn how to teach in undergraduate programs, not graduate. And what in-depth study does Newsweek have access to that demonstrates that schools of education offer “insipid” theory and pedagogy? The school of education on my campus (I’m an English professor) emphasizes urban education, field experience, addressing the needs of diverse learners, and very well-grounded pedagogy. They try to assess their students often so that they are not sending out unqualified teachers with poor attitudes.
What do schools need to be more effective? Smaller class sizes. Smaller teaching loads for middle and high school teachers (who often have 180-200 students, sometimes every day). More opportunities during the day for teachers to plan together, do professional development, and meet with individual students. (You know, office hours like college professors have?) Writing and math centers staffed all day and after school. Excellent libraries with top-notch librarians who work closely with teachers. Well-staffed, well-funded arts education for ALL students. Better principals (not mediocre teachers who escape the classroom and seek better pay through poor graduate programs in “leadership”). Better superintendents. Better school boards (many are filled with people who have an agenda, a one-track mind, little understanding of teaching or learning, and are either too quick to fire superintendents or too quick to accept everything they propose). More community involvement. More parental involvement. Better pay for teachers, more respect, more autonomy. Fewer standardized tests. Less standardization of curriculum. Better-equipped science labs.
And new ways of thinking about schooling, teaching, and learning.
None of this is cheap, or easy, or simple. Fire the teachers! Privatize schools! Give vouchers! Make more charter schools! Such slogans are truly rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Newsweek should be ashamed of itself.
I won’t reiterate what others have already so aptly mentioned about how Newsweek has become a propaganda mouthpiece. I Just wanted to express that reading the responses here have made me feel that a sane America does still exist. My weekend has just gotten brighter.
Newsweak should be ashamed of their multipage editorial masquerading as journalism. This article was a travesty. How can serious, educated journalists state that KIPP does not cherry-pick, but requires a contract for admission requiring parental involvement? How can the issues of gentrification and demographic changes that occurred post-Katrina be ignored in explaining improved performance in New Orleans public schools? Finally, how does this highly micromanaged approach they advocate, geared toward rote learning for standardized tests, prepare kids for univeristy-level education – where intellectual curiousity and independent study skills are essential for success?
Thanks, Steve, for your thorough analysis of an extremely biased article and to the others who “get” what is really going on in public education.
As a public secondary English teacher I am with Diane Ravitch http://tinyurl.com/ravitch who states that “This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and punitive.” Along with that, Bill Maher http://tinyurl.com/y9qs856 very bluntly calls for the firing of parents–many of whom serve on school boards and DO have a personal agenda; usually it is to get their child a good position on a sports team or on the cheerleading squad. And if that child fails a class for doing no work, the teacher’s job is on the line.
Of course in my corporation we have a new grading policy; no student in grades k-8 will receive less than a 50% on any assignment…even if they don’t do it. This is NOT the teacher’s doing, it is the administration’s and why? So “they” can “show” improvement in grades. Our principal made it a goal this year to expel as many kids as he could before our standardized test…the kids who would not do well…the kids from really bad homes…the kids who need us the most.
It’s despicable to me and the other teachers in my building. Four of us were written up for not following this order immediately. And we are all worried about our jobs, and even though it is our administration creating practices that to any normal individual are unacceptable, it is the teachers who will be blamed.
The teachers are not the problem. Every teacher in my building loves his or her students. And we all do our best to make sure students who come to us behind catch up, and the ones who are ahead are given enrichment so they don’t get bored. But there are always students who really, truly don’t care. And we still do our best with them.
People who try to tell the world that we are overpaid have not spent time in a 21st Century classroom, and they need to. It is extremely taxing on a teacher to not only keep up with legislation that directly impacts us, but also to deal with kids who are video game products, or are damaged by their parents, either by drugs, alcohol, or lack of parenting. I cannot tell you how many students we have that have parents in prison.
Parents need to be more involved in a positive way with their child’s education. Talk to the teachers. Find out what is really going on in your child’s school. I guarantee the teachers are not the problem, although most administrations these days will allow parents to believe that and throw the teachers under the bus.
And I am currently in grad school, NOT to improve my pay grade as Gregory Lynn Kruse claims, but because I’m so disgusted by the current climate in education, I’m looking for alternatives. Most teachers are doing the same thing for the same reason. Unfortunately it is the best teachers who are moving on.
As a public school teacher who works smart and professional with my students I am offended by those who attack the teacher and public school system. Why doesn’t Evans go get a job as a public school teacher? In an average public school. My money says he wouldn’t last 6 months. If it “takes a village” to support, nurture, educate a child doesn’t it “take a villiage” to fail a child? Accountability? What about Student MOTIVATION? The bottom line is that right wingers would love to shut down all public schools and privatize them. The TEA Party people would love to do away with taxes supporting public schools.
WAKE UP AMERICA! A chid is not a business by product produced on a manufacturing line, or shuffling papers around and calling it “profit.”
Newsweak should be ashamed of their multipage editorial masquerading as journalism. This article was a travesty. How can serious, educated journalists state that KIPP does not cherry-pick, but requires a contract for admission requiring parental involvement? How can the issues of gentrification and demographic changes that occurred post-Katrina be ignored in explaining improved performance in New Orleans public schools? Finally, how does this highly micromanaged approach they advocate, geared toward rote learning for standardized tests, prepare kids for univeristy-level education – where intellectual curiousity and independent study skills are essential for success?
No Newsweek subscription for us. Instead I will be reading “When Teachers Talk” by Rosalyn Schnall and “White Chalk Crime” by Karen Horwitz to hear the true stories about why schools fail.
I worked an average of 72 hours a week and ended up being cut due to budgets after over 25 years of teaching. I miss my job and my family of four misses my income. Who is going to want to become a teacher with the lack of respect shown to them, all too often hostile work environments, lack of pay, and lack of job security? My teenagers have stated they would never consider that career.
Our society is going backwards.