2590
Comments
More
A warning to college profs from a high school teacher
For more than a decade now we have heard that the high-stakes testing obsession in K-12 education that began with the enactment of No Child Left Behind 11 years ago has resulted in high school graduates who don’t think as analytically or as broadly as they should because so much emphasis has been placed on passing standardized tests. Here, an award-winning high school teacher who just retired, Kenneth Bernstein, warns college professors what they are up against. Bernstein, who lives near Washington, D.C. serves as a peer reviewer for educational journals and publishers, and he is nationally known as the blogger “teacherken.” His e-mail address iskber@earthlink.net. This appeared in Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors.
By Kenneth Bernstein
You are a college professor.
I have just retired as a high school teacher.
I have some bad news for you. In case you do not already see what is happening, I want to warn you of what to expect from the students who will be arriving in your classroom, even if you teach in a highly selective institution.
No Child Left Behind went into effect for the 2002–03 academic year, which means that America’s public schools have been operating under the pressures and constrictions imposed by that law for a decade. Since the testing requirements were imposed beginning in third grade, the students arriving in your institution have been subject to the full extent of the law’s requirements. While it is true that the U.S. Department of Education is now issuing waivers on some of the provisions of the law to certain states, those states must agree to other provisions that will have as deleterious an effect on real student learning as did No Child Left Behind—we have already seen that in public schools, most notably in high schools.
Troubling Assessments
My primary course as a teacher was government, and for the last seven years that included three or four (out of six) sections of Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. Government and Politics. My students, mostly tenth graders, were quite bright, but already I was seeing the impact of federal education policy on their learning and skills.
In many cases, students would arrive in our high school without having had meaningful social studies instruction, because even in states that tested social studies or science, the tests did not count for “adequate yearly progress” under No Child Left Behind. With test scores serving as the primary if not the sole measure of student performance and, increasingly, teacher evaluation, anything not being tested was given short shrift.
Further, most of the tests being used consist primarily or solely of multiple-choice items, which are cheaper to develop, administer, and score than are tests that include constructed responses such as essays. Even when a state has tests that include writing, the level of writing required for such tests often does not demand that higher-level thinking be demonstrated, nor does it require proper grammar, usage, syntax, and structure. Thus, students arriving in our high school lacked experience and knowledge about how to do the kinds of writing that are expected at higher levels of education.
Recognizing this, those of us in public schools do what we can to work on those higher-order skills, but we are limited. Remember, high schools also have tests—No Child Left Behind and its progeny (such as Race to the Top) require testing at least once in high school in reading and math. In Maryland, where I taught, those tests were the state’s High School Assessments in tenth-grade English and algebra (which some of our more gifted pupils had taken as early as eighth grade). High schools are also forced to focus on preparing students for tests, and that leads to a narrowing of what we can accomplish in our classrooms.
I mentioned that at least half my students were in AP classes. The explosive growth of these classes, driven in part by high school rankings like the yearly Challenge Indexcreated by Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, is also responsible for some of the problems you will encounter with students entering your institutions. The College Board did recognize that not everything being labeled as AP met the standards of a college-level course, so it required teachers to submit syllabi for approval to ensure a minimal degree of rigor, at least on paper. But many of the courses still focus on the AP exam, and that focus can be as detrimental to learning as the kinds of tests imposed under No Child Left Behind.
Let me use as an example my own AP course, U.S. Government and Politics. I served several times as a reader for the examination that follows the course. In that capacity, I read the constructed responses that make up half of the score of a student’s examination. I saw several problems.
First (and I acknowledge that I bear some culpability here), in the AP U.S. Government exam the constructed responses are called “free response questions” and are graded by a rubric that is concerned primarily with content and, to a lesser degree, argument. If a student hits the points on the rubric, he or she gets the points for that rubric. There is no consideration of grammar or rhetoric, nor is credit given or a score reduced based on the format of the answer. A student who takes time to construct a clear topic sentence and a proper conclusion gets no credit for those words. Thus, a teacher might prepare the student to answer those questions in a format that is not good writing by any standard. If, as a teacher, you want your students to do their best, you have to have them practice what is effectively bad writing— no introduction, no conclusion, just hit the points of the rubric and provide the necessary factual support. Some critical thinking may be involved, at least, but the approach works against development of the kinds of writing that would be expected in a true college-level course in government and politics.
My students did well on those questions because we practiced bad writing. My teaching was not evaluated on the basis of how well my students did, but I felt I had a responsibility to prepare them for the examination in a way that could result in their obtaining college credit.
I would like to believe that I prepared them to think more critically and to present cogent arguments, but I could not simultaneously prepare them to do well on that portion of the test and teach them to write in a fashion that would properly serve them at higher levels of education.
Even during those times when I could assign work that required proper writing, I was limited in how much work I could do on their writing. I had too many students. In my final year, with four sections of Advanced Placement, I had 129 AP students (as well as an additional forty-six students in my other two classes). A teacher cannot possibly give that many students the individualized attention they need to improve their writing. Do the math. Imagine that I assign all my students a written exercise. Let’s assume that 160 actually turn it in. Let’s further assume that I am a fast reader, and I can read and correct papers at a rate of one every three minutes. That’s eight hours—for one assignment. If it takes a more realistic five minutes per paper, the total is more than thirteen hours.
Further, the AP course required that a huge amount of content be covered, meaning that too much effort is spent on learning information and perhaps insufficient time on wrestling with the material at a deeper level. I learned to balance these seemingly contradictory requirements. For much of the content I would give students summary information, sufficient to answer multiple-choice questions and to get some of the points on rubrics for the free response questions. That allowed me more time for class discussions and for relating events in the news to what we learned in class, making the class more engaging for the students and resulting in deeper learning because the discussions were relevant to their lives.
From what I saw from the free response questions I read, too many students in AP courses were not getting depth in their learning and lacked both the content knowledge and the ability to use what content knowledge they had.
The structure of testing has led to students arriving at our school without what previously would have been considered requisite background knowledge in social studies, but the problem is not limited to this field. Students often do not get exposure to art or music or other nontested subjects. In high-need schools, resources not directly related to testing are eliminated: at the time of the teachers’ strike last fall, 160 Chicago public schools had no libraries. Class sizes exceeded forty students—in elementary school.
A Teacher’s Plea
As a retired public school teacher, I believe I have a responsibility to offer a caution to college professors, or perhaps to make a plea.
Please do not blame those of us in public schools for how unprepared for higher education the students arriving at your institutions are. We have very little say in what is happening to public education. Even the most distinguished and honored among us have trouble getting our voices heard in the discussion about educational policy. The National Teacher of the Year is supposed to be the representative of America’s teachers—if he or she cannot get teachers’ voices included, imagine how difficult it is for the rest of us. That is why, if you have not seen it, I strongly urge you to read 2009 National Teacher of the Year Anthony Mullen’s famous blog post, “Teachers Should Be Seen and Not Heard.” After listening to noneducators bloviate about schools and teaching without once asking for his opinion, he was finally asked what he thought. He offered the following:
Where do I begin? I spent the last thirty minutes listening to a group of arrogant and condescending noneducators disrespect my colleagues and profession. I listened to a group of disingenuous people whose own self-interests guide their policies rather than the interests of children. I listened to a cabal of people who sit on national education committees that will have a profound impact on classroom teaching practices. And I heard nothing of value. “I’m thinking about the current health-care debate,” I said. “And I am wondering if I will be asked to sit on a national committee charged with the task of creating a core curriculum of medical procedures to be used in hospital emergency rooms.”The strange little man cocks his head and, suddenly, the fly on the wall has everyone’s attention.“I realize that most people would think I am unqualified to sit on such a committee because I am not a doctor, I have never worked in an emergency room, and I have never treated a single patient. So what? Today I have listened to people who are not teachers, have never worked in a classroom, and have never taught a single student tell me how to teach.”
During my years in the classroom I tried to educate other adults about the realities of schools and students and teaching. I tried to help them understand the deleterious impact of policies that were being imposed on our public schools. I blogged, I wrote letters and op-eds for newspapers, and I spent a great deal of time speaking with and lobbying those in a position to influence policy, up to and including sitting members of the US House of Representatives and Senate and relevant members of their staffs. Ultimately, it was to little avail, because the drivers of the policies that are changing our schools—and thus increasingly presenting you with students ever less prepared for postsecondary academic work—are the wealthy corporations that profit from the policies they help define and the think tanks and activist organizations that have learned how to manipulate the levers of power, often to their own financial or ideological advantage.
If you, as a higher education professional, are concerned about the quality of students arriving at your institution, you have a responsibility to step up and speak out. You need to inform those creating the policies about the damage they are doing to our young people, and how they are undermining those institutions in which you labor to make a difference in the minds and the lives of the young people you teach as well as in the fields in which you do your research.
You should have a further selfish motivation. Those who have imposed the mindless and destructive patterns of misuse of tests to drive policy in K–12 education are already moving to impose it on higher education, at least in the case of the departments and schools of education that prepare teachers: they want to “rate” those departments by the test scores of the students taught by their graduates.
If you, as someone who teaches in the liberal arts or engineering or business, think that this development does not concern you, think again. It is not just that schools and colleges of education are major sources of revenue for colleges and universities—they are in fact often cash cows, which is why so many institutions lobby to be able initially to certify teachers and then to offer the courses (and degrees) required for continuing certification. If strictures like these can be imposed on schools and colleges of education, the time will be short before similar kinds of measure are imposed on other schools, including liberal arts, engineering, business, and conceivably even professional schools like medicine and law. If you teach either in a medical school or in programs that offer courses required as part of the pre-med curriculum, do you want the fatality rates of patients treated by the doctors whom you have taught to be used to judge your performance? If you think that won’t happen because you work at a private institution, remember that it is the rare private university that does not receive some form of funding from governments, local to national. Research grants are one example; the scholarships and loans used by students to attend your institution are another.
Let me end by offering my deepest apologies, not because I may have offended some of you by what I have written, but because even those of us who understood the problems that were being created were unable to do more to stop the damage to the education of our young people. Many of us tried. We entered teaching because we wanted to make a difference in the lives of the students who passed through our classrooms. Many of us are leaving sooner than we had planned because the policies already in effect and those now being implemented mean that we are increasingly restricted in how and what we teach.
Now you are seeing the results in the students arriving at your institutions. They may be very bright. But we have not been able to prepare them for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them. It is for this that I apologize, even as I know in my heart that there was little more I could have done. Which is one reason I am no longer in the classroom.
2590Comments
Sort:
i am a college instructor and mr. bernstein has nailed it. most of my students are not even remotely prepared for college level work. feeling the pressure, many resort to plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. sadly, the administration supports this and will overturn grades if a student is persistent in challenging grades. i have watched this happen time and time again. as educators, we are complicit by participating in a doomed system. blaming politicians serves no purpose. the facade will soon crumble.
Check out the YouTube video entitled "Interview with (Jeff Bliss) Duncanville High School Student - WFAA Report ". BTW, if this is Bush's fault, why has nothing been done about it for the last 5 years?
In 2002, in my newspaper column "Under The Curve", I warned of the flaws in No Child Left Behind -- but they were consistent with Bush logic and Republican goals, so they had to take effect. The article will have no effect on the direction America is headed.
We can test any proposed GOP goal: Will it cause The Most Harm to the Most People? And will it be sold based on helping a very limited minority? (Example, anti-abortion goals mandate children be born even at the cost of the mother's life or sterilization. At the same time, the anti-abortion promoters are working to cut social programs, medical coverage, educational funding and anything else which will ensure that the child they demand be born cannot succeed in a way that will make them a productive member of society... this also includes outsourcing the jobs that should be available when they reach maturity, ensuring so level of unemployment, or under-employment).
We can test any proposed GOP goal: Will it cause The Most Harm to the Most People? And will it be sold based on helping a very limited minority? (Example, anti-abortion goals mandate children be born even at the cost of the mother's life or sterilization. At the same time, the anti-abortion promoters are working to cut social programs, medical coverage, educational funding and anything else which will ensure that the child they demand be born cannot succeed in a way that will make them a productive member of society... this also includes outsourcing the jobs that should be available when they reach maturity, ensuring so level of unemployment, or under-employment).
Sounds like it's all GWB's fault. And the Republicans' fault.
And...the poor child that gets born in a less than great world...who should have been aborted?
(Good thing my parents, peasant grandparents didn't hesitate to give birth. Their worlds, job situations were much worse than now...)
And...the poor child that gets born in a less than great world...who should have been aborted?
(Good thing my parents, peasant grandparents didn't hesitate to give birth. Their worlds, job situations were much worse than now...)
Unless they have changed that much since I was in HS, AP exams in History, French and English required essays. If a student cannot properly analyze and describe literature and primary sources, then he/she will fail the AP exam. In this case, teaching to the test actually proceeds to the goals that Mr. Bernstein seems to advocate.
I took some online courses where getting people to read essays was a problem to be addressed. Perhaps here's an area where individual school administrator/teachers can try some different options
*Qualified volunteers brought in to read essays a few times a semester (Essays could be submitted without a name...the volunteer should not be reading essay of someone who is related to them).
*College interns, notably English majors perhaps going for their masters, might be recruited to read some essays.
*Perhaps a system where 2-3 read an essay, react to it with written comments...would help provide a wider perspective to the student.
There are ways around the grading logjam so that teachers can assign more essay work!
*Qualified volunteers brought in to read essays a few times a semester (Essays could be submitted without a name...the volunteer should not be reading essay of someone who is related to them).
*College interns, notably English majors perhaps going for their masters, might be recruited to read some essays.
*Perhaps a system where 2-3 read an essay, react to it with written comments...would help provide a wider perspective to the student.
There are ways around the grading logjam so that teachers can assign more essay work!
As a former high school English/AP Lit teacher, I totally agree. Thank you for saying what so many of us teachers think. I put my kids through private school K-8 just so they could have a proper social studies, language arts (grammar, writing and literature instruction), math and science education. Ironically, a Catholic education has had more freedom than a public school education.
I'm getting a little tired of all the excuses why today's kids are falling behind. It is not because of a lack of money, because we spend twice as much as the rest of the world on a per capita basis. And I pay little heed to teachers' complaints of being overworked. If you're overworked and your kids are still not learning, maybe you need to find another job you can better handle. Many school administrators exasperate problems rather than solve them. They award their best teachers the AP classes, where many of the kids are smart enough to teach themselves, and the at-risk kids are assigned to teachers who cannot teach. Any wonder why schools get failing grades today? In just about every other profession you put your best minds on solving your biggest problems. Unfortunately, most teachers today were nowhere near the head of their class when they were in school, and their unions have resisted any effort to purge their ranks. Only now, reluctantly, are the unions acknowledging the need for more accountability within the profession.
I'd love to see schools teach kids/teens some basic principles of logic & critical thinking.
So that...when a politician visited he/she would not fear heckling, but...the shrewd high school/college student's question which can puncture the politician's bad logic.
There's a famous old essay where a Renaissance woman of the 20th century suggests that training in logical thinking would be beneficial for students. Maybe we can't quite duplicate her model, but certainly someone can come up with Logic Games and/or other ways to teach students how to think critically.
The Lost Tools of Learning - by Dorothy L. Sayers is available online.
So that...when a politician visited he/she would not fear heckling, but...the shrewd high school/college student's question which can puncture the politician's bad logic.
There's a famous old essay where a Renaissance woman of the 20th century suggests that training in logical thinking would be beneficial for students. Maybe we can't quite duplicate her model, but certainly someone can come up with Logic Games and/or other ways to teach students how to think critically.
The Lost Tools of Learning - by Dorothy L. Sayers is available online.
For a year, I graded the essays included in tests like this from all over the country. When essays demonstrated an ability to put together a grammatical sentence, I felt lucky. Some – like South Carolina's tests – were horrifying. But as far as evidence of critical thinking, forget it. It came up once in 100 pieces of writing and sometimes, those kids were penalized for doing that. This was 15 years ago and if things are worse now, if fear for the future.
Oh, please.
I've been teaching in college since 2009.
They didn't know how to read, write or spell then either.
It hasn't gotten any worse over the years because it can't get any worse. Most people coming out of the public schools are functionally illiterate.
College is the new grade school. College is where the students learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers, decimals and fractions. College. That's where they find out what nouns and verbs are. College. It's been that way for a long, long time.
Grade school and high school have served exactly their purposes for the last several decades - they are government baby-sitting while the parents work. That's all they are.
This woman was teacher of the year because she was the best babysitter.
I've been teaching in college since 2009.
They didn't know how to read, write or spell then either.
It hasn't gotten any worse over the years because it can't get any worse. Most people coming out of the public schools are functionally illiterate.
College is the new grade school. College is where the students learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers, decimals and fractions. College. That's where they find out what nouns and verbs are. College. It's been that way for a long, long time.
Grade school and high school have served exactly their purposes for the last several decades - they are government baby-sitting while the parents work. That's all they are.
This woman was teacher of the year because she was the best babysitter.
As a university prof, I also graded AP exams this summer. I am horrified about the students lack of general knowledge, their inability to construct a coherent argument and their failure at linking larger historical concepts. Many of the reviewed exams either discussed the rise of communism in Japan in the 1950s or the Soviet Union's victory over China in the Russo-Japanese War. One 1 out of 2000 graded exams approached a superior mark -- and this was a sentiment shared by my fellow graders.
I realize that most schools allow any and all students to take AP courses and sit for the exams - but the submissions this year hit an all-time low. Thankfully the duel enrollment movement is gaining steam - and hopefully eliminating the AP exams, but the overall procedure of leveraging months of teaching and learning leading to an exam that students are neither graded or taken seriously is an exercise in futility.
Last year - my son and I visited churches and museums during his school's designated testing days. Not only did he actually learn something other than how to completely fill in the oval and erase completely - but we had fun too. Imagine that -- letting kids learn and have fun....at the same time....
I realize that most schools allow any and all students to take AP courses and sit for the exams - but the submissions this year hit an all-time low. Thankfully the duel enrollment movement is gaining steam - and hopefully eliminating the AP exams, but the overall procedure of leveraging months of teaching and learning leading to an exam that students are neither graded or taken seriously is an exercise in futility.
Last year - my son and I visited churches and museums during his school's designated testing days. Not only did he actually learn something other than how to completely fill in the oval and erase completely - but we had fun too. Imagine that -- letting kids learn and have fun....at the same time....
One of the biggest mistakes being made by public school administrators and politicians is the push to pressure educators to "teach to the test". These standardized tests have been heavily promoted in Congress and in state legislatures by the profit-based corporations which design and produce them.
NCLB fully embraces this simplistic and one-dimensional method of educational assessment. However, there are far too many important aspects of learning and cognitive growth -- hands-on laboratory techniques and skills, data processing and analysis, deductive reasoning and analytical thinking -- that do not lend themselves to assessment via these types of standardized multiple choice tests.
In addition, these tests are often administered one to two months before the end of the school year, yet they are designed to evaluate student achievement and conceptual understanding of the entire year's curriculum in that subject area. So teachers are being pressured to restructure the curricular content, eliminating or postponing until late in the school year coverage of those skills and topics that are not emphasized on the standardized test.
Furthermore, in most school districts, these tests do not have any impact on the student's grade and there is no punitive action for intentionally poor performance. In addition, parents are often given the right to have their child "opt out" from taking the standardized test, and yet the school may be financially punished if too many students decide to opt out.
But politicians (and many administrators) love simple, objective measuring sticks -- even if what they measure has little value. So we invest millions of taxpayer dollars and valuable days of instructional time administering these tests to students, and essential judgements about the quality of education and critical decisions regarding educational practice and policy -- including school funding, county and state-level punitive measures, teacher evaluations, and merit-based
NCLB fully embraces this simplistic and one-dimensional method of educational assessment. However, there are far too many important aspects of learning and cognitive growth -- hands-on laboratory techniques and skills, data processing and analysis, deductive reasoning and analytical thinking -- that do not lend themselves to assessment via these types of standardized multiple choice tests.
In addition, these tests are often administered one to two months before the end of the school year, yet they are designed to evaluate student achievement and conceptual understanding of the entire year's curriculum in that subject area. So teachers are being pressured to restructure the curricular content, eliminating or postponing until late in the school year coverage of those skills and topics that are not emphasized on the standardized test.
Furthermore, in most school districts, these tests do not have any impact on the student's grade and there is no punitive action for intentionally poor performance. In addition, parents are often given the right to have their child "opt out" from taking the standardized test, and yet the school may be financially punished if too many students decide to opt out.
But politicians (and many administrators) love simple, objective measuring sticks -- even if what they measure has little value. So we invest millions of taxpayer dollars and valuable days of instructional time administering these tests to students, and essential judgements about the quality of education and critical decisions regarding educational practice and policy -- including school funding, county and state-level punitive measures, teacher evaluations, and merit-based
An excellent article, EXCEPT; You state "Wealthy Corporations that profit from these policies". As a small businessman who formerly worked for several of the largest corporations, I fail to see and have difficulty believing that any corporation, large or small would possibly benefit from having employees who are deficient in the required subject matter or the understanding thereof.
Business profits from and pays more for employees who not only know their job but also have understanding how their job fits into the whole organization and are able to cogently express their knowledge in this and other subjects. I disagree that any business would choose to counterproductively subsidize the educational practices to which you refer, and suggest you look elsewhere for the blame.
I do agree that our education system needs substantial improvement and wonder what improvements and/or changes that the author would suggest; while still maintaining the ability to grade student knowledge and ability.
Business profits from and pays more for employees who not only know their job but also have understanding how their job fits into the whole organization and are able to cogently express their knowledge in this and other subjects. I disagree that any business would choose to counterproductively subsidize the educational practices to which you refer, and suggest you look elsewhere for the blame.
I do agree that our education system needs substantial improvement and wonder what improvements and/or changes that the author would suggest; while still maintaining the ability to grade student knowledge and ability.
Unless I misunderstood, the writer attempted to point out that companies who provide the standardized testing were profiting from the policies and see no reason to change them. I think that's an honest observation. You provide what your customer wants or the customer gets a new provider. What needs to change is what the customer (education system) uses to test basic skill levels since what is in use now does not seem to be useful to anyone and harmful to the children.
The best advice to kids these days is -- skip the college education bubble, and study a trade. Learn to do things with your hands. Climb the rungs of apprentice, journeyman, and master -- then charge accordingly of the 'intellectual' people with soft hands and soft skills.
In the end game of this world, it'll be the craftsmen and skilled laborers who get picked for the team.
In the end game of this world, it'll be the craftsmen and skilled laborers who get picked for the team.
People can get the liberal arts learning...either online, or maybe in study groups, or by taking local college/jr college courses.
I have a 4 year degree...wonderful learning experience...NOT practical for the job world.
If I did it over...I'd also learn some kind of skill/trade...and then study various things on my own or course by course.
I have a 4 year degree...wonderful learning experience...NOT practical for the job world.
If I did it over...I'd also learn some kind of skill/trade...and then study various things on my own or course by course.
It disheartens me to witness the trajectory public education has taken. We had standardized tests when I was in high school (over 10 years ago), but I agree with Mr. Maggio when he contends that "the testing pendulum has swung too far"; teaching to the test and trying to quantify student learning does little to empower students or help them make meaning out of the material they learn. It also sets a dangerous precedent for what education is or means; in this case, standardized tests implicitly suggest that learning is a rather impractical exercise that is always looking forward to some future endeavor: getting into college, getting a degree, training for a career or job. In short, education becomes a hurdle.
For Mr. Maggio's critics, particularly those who critique his decision to leave, the suggestion that a single instructor could overturn the sheer velocity of this evolution in public education is unreasonable, and to imply that leaving the system does nothing is plain shortsighted (for more on that note, see Kenneth Bernstein's "Warning to College Profs from a High School Teacher: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/w... Those students who were inspired by Mr. Maggio and witnessed the events that led to his decision will, I hope, remember this moment when they emerge as a new generation of policy makers and voters.
Teachers today face unconscionable working circumstances. I teach college English, where I see many of my students only beginning to finally apprehend what learning can really be. This freedom in the classroom and power to make a difference comes with much personal sacrifice; the pay is often exploitative (many adjunct instructors who work full time earn less than $20,000/year without benefits) though, unlike K-12, most positions require at least a masters degree. I for one don't fault a teaching spirit that can't survive in the intellectual prison of K-12.
For Mr. Maggio's critics, particularly those who critique his decision to leave, the suggestion that a single instructor could overturn the sheer velocity of this evolution in public education is unreasonable, and to imply that leaving the system does nothing is plain shortsighted (for more on that note, see Kenneth Bernstein's "Warning to College Profs from a High School Teacher: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/w... Those students who were inspired by Mr. Maggio and witnessed the events that led to his decision will, I hope, remember this moment when they emerge as a new generation of policy makers and voters.
Teachers today face unconscionable working circumstances. I teach college English, where I see many of my students only beginning to finally apprehend what learning can really be. This freedom in the classroom and power to make a difference comes with much personal sacrifice; the pay is often exploitative (many adjunct instructors who work full time earn less than $20,000/year without benefits) though, unlike K-12, most positions require at least a masters degree. I for one don't fault a teaching spirit that can't survive in the intellectual prison of K-12.
Being an adjunct college instructior, I agree with smithers concerning the choice of having the freedom in the classroom (academic freedom) and the power to make the difference and at the same time, making less money. Plus, I have not one masters, but I have credits towards my doctorate. (Now I make even less money because Virginia has cut adjunct hours just to avoid paying our health insurance. I have already lost 10K in income from these cuts in hours! And, now I have less money for my own health insurance!)
There is NO way I could passively go along with teaching to the test! Like smithers, I have to teach what should have been taught in K-12! In the last twelve years, I seen students become more and more automatons who are clueless. When I tell them they can write pretty much what they want for a specific assignment, many come to me privately to double check what I have said. No creativity, no thinking out of the box, no start of adult level thinking describes the state of many of my students. Not counting the need to get the grade rather than learning! As it is, if it were up to some people, college instructors would loose their academic freedom, and move college education closer to what exists in K-12!
There is NO way I could passively go along with teaching to the test! Like smithers, I have to teach what should have been taught in K-12! In the last twelve years, I seen students become more and more automatons who are clueless. When I tell them they can write pretty much what they want for a specific assignment, many come to me privately to double check what I have said. No creativity, no thinking out of the box, no start of adult level thinking describes the state of many of my students. Not counting the need to get the grade rather than learning! As it is, if it were up to some people, college instructors would loose their academic freedom, and move college education closer to what exists in K-12!
You're so right, on many counts. A lot of people ask me why I won't work on the college level, where I'd have more freedom. The problem is I wouldn't make anywhere near what I make now, and I have to pay my mortgage. (I'd give anything to just follow my heart and not be concerned about salary and benefits. Seriously!) College professors, generally speaking, do not make a lot, and they don't have the same schedule as school teachers have. I would LOVE to work on the college level and be free to explore ideas with my students. But I would also miss my young, elementary-aged students. I love the students. I do not like anything else about the teaching profession anymore. You either feel the way this award-winning teacher does, or you become a Stepford Wife to the school system.
Load more comments
