Here are some concerns I shared in a letter to School Board Director Kay Smith-Blum this week, after her disappointing vote in favor of Teach for America, Inc. I urge all members of the school board to investigate this matter of collapsing teacher morale, which is happening on their watch, largely as a result of the frenetic barrage of dubious “reforms” being imposed upon our teachers, schools and children these past three years under the current district leadership, and with this board’s mostly unquestioning approval.
I understand that we will not always agree. But I honestly believe that with full information about TFA, Inc. and those behind it and where they are heading with it and other corporate ed reform agenda items, you would have voted differently.
Please take a look at this article in today’s New York Times in which Bill Gates speaks out against advanced degrees for teachers and against smaller class sizes.
Quite frankly, this is nuts. Research shows that children most definitely do benefit from more one-on-one teacher time, and professional development for teachers is indeed valuable.
Gates has zero expertise in education, yet he is a driving force behind ed
reform. He supports the deprofessionalization of the teaching profession, and along the way, is aiding and abetting the current, ugly national trend of teacher-bashing. (Local observers fully expect his foundation, or perhaps the Seattle Foundation with funding from Gates, to pay the TFA annual fees, thus enabling an agenda item Gates supports but which most Seattle Public Schools parents don’t even know about.)
This is serious business. I urge you — no, implore you — to conduct
some independent research like you did with that principal survey, and talk to SPS teachers and ask them what it is like to be working in their field and in SPS right now.
You will find their morale has collapsed, they are living in a culture of
fear created by constant local and national attacks on teachers, and
pressure to abandon their own knowledge and approaches for a standardized curriculum and methods pushed on them from SPS HQ, and the pressure to raise test scores uber alles. And they are being told in many different ways that they aren’t any good (or “effective”).
The board’s approval of the young, inexperienced, yet equally paid TFA-ers as the “cure” for the “achievement gap” in this town is just another kick in the gut to them.
As a parent I am very, very concerned about this.
Take a look at the chapter in Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education about the ravages of ed reform in San Diego. Teachers were literally made ill by the constant criticism and pressure from the district. Only when the ed reform superintendent Alan Bersin left and his failed management style with him, did the district regain its health.
I know for a fact that teachers here in SPS are becoming similarly ill
from this stress right now.
Finally, the research shows that TFA-ers are not more “effective” than
professionally trained teachers. They will not “close the achievement gap.”
This so-called new “arrow” (TFA) in the board’s “quiver” may well be one
straight into the heart of our existing hard-working professional teachers,
many of whom, as Director Patu rightly pointed out in her eloquent dissenting speech, are already among the best and brightest the profession has to offer.
I urge you to investigate what is happening to teacher morale in Seattle’s public schools right now. It is serious and damaging to everyone.
— sue p.
SPS parent
Co-editor, Seattle Education 2010
Founding member, Parents Across America
Education contributor, The Huffington Post
Seattle Education 
I just read this article in Teacher Magazine about the increase in early retirement. Demoralized, over worked, and disresepcted, excellent teachers are leaving the profession far earlier than they planned. I may be one of them.
http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2010/12/01/tln_teacherswonder.html?tkn=ZPCFwIr4K5m6T9FAH4sV0VWM5e%2FGvupBEdJZ&cmp=clp-sb-teacher
Thank you for the post- I was one of those teachers who came to speak against the TFA contract, and it is a complete slap in the face that the district is going this direction. I came late to the education field, and I got my Masters along with my certificate. I love my job, but the past 6 months have found me reading, writing, and researching everything education and some days I am just so frustrated. It comes out with my family, it comes out when I am at school and I am being told that my upper level science courses will not count for science credit next year. It comes out when I read that Gates says that an advanced degree does not matter, that experience does not matter, and class size does not matter in schools. I am guessing he is picturing his computer driven classroom of the future where no teacher with passion or ideas is needed.
Indeed teachers are exhausted and frightened. The biggest reason why there was no strike over the contract was the fear factor of what would come next. I also agree that this issue is not just teachers but also principals. I have seen principals do the downtown dance in front of staff, and I almost feel like they see the eye of Sauron watching them and so they say whatever upper management wants.
The one positive thing I want to say is that often the people who go into teaching are creative thinkers who do not conform. For this very reason I think that the education reform movement will fail because they underestimate the fortitude and ability of teachers to endure stress and organize. If you lack either of those skills you don’t last long in the profession. Nevertheless, battling these issues takes energy and that is energy that is taken away from working on education. I resent needing to spend my time on activism, but I’ve come to realize that at this point in time activism is necessary or this profession that I love and care about so much will be destroyed and my students will be harmed. Something that I cannot stand by and watch. I just keep re-reading Lord of the Rings and reminding myself that Frodo succeeds.
Truly a nation-wide epidemic and maddeningly frustrating! But, Danaher, thanks for the advice!
This is a nation-wide epidemic and we are all suffering from the effects of faux-education reform and the dastardly people behind this movement. It is happening from the east coast to the west, from north to south, in city schools and suburban schools alike. Parents are totally ignored or patronized, and teachers have become the enemy.
I am sure that you, like I, have been close to tears about the downturn in public trust in the one lasting public institution–public schools–that has meant so much to so many over the years.
How is this possible? What is really behind all of this? Follow the money.
Maybe Bill Gates thinks that we should keep ’em barefoot and pregnant!
Seriously, this is not the first time that I have heard from folks outside of education that there is no data that master’s degrees improve teacher quality. Nuts to that. Hard to imagine that I could actually design an advanced degree program my field, matriculate at a local university with an outstanding college of education staff, attend all classes, complete all work, graduate with a 3.0-4.o GPA and NOT see some kind of improvement. My masters degree program saved my teaching life because I finally got the coursework I needed to develop and hone my classroom management skills. Not to mention exploring changes in practice that had occurred since I graduated ten years before.
Bill is stuck on repeat–bringing back that old tired canard of teacher effectiveness–it is the teacher that matters, not the class size. This is misleading! Of course it is the teacher. But the most effective, wonderful, gifted teacher in the world will still be severely impacted by over-sized classes. There is a tipping point for all of us. I may be great with 25 6th grade kiddoes in one science class, but give me 32 and now I am struggling to keep up, struggling to individualize attention, struggling to manage 32 various personalities, struggling to find the time to meet with Johnny, the special ed student who desperatley needs me to boost his esteem and to help him compensate for gaps in learning and development.
BTW: I teach five 6th grade science classes every day, totaling 145 students. I have two classes of 34 kids and the room is packed. I manage, but there are a few kids who fall through the cracks every once in a while. It is not fair to the kids or to me.
Thank you for writing this. I am an SPS teacher and parent. I would like to add, in addition to there being low morale among teachers in the district, there is also low morale among building principals. Yesterday, I asked my building principal if anyone had contacted her regarding TFA and if they had, what she would have said. Her reply was that no, she was not contacted and if anyone had asked her about it, she would not have given her true opinion. Principals feel that with the current climate at SPS it is NOT safe to voice one’s true opinion about the current ed reform agenda. I’m not sure what’s going on with PASS, but I don’t think they even have an agreement. Principals feel that they must appear to agree with administration policy or they will be fired. So, it is likely that Smith-Blum’s survey of principals regarding TFA would have had a much lower buy-in from principals if they felt comfortable giving their true opinion.
Bob,
I think that getting the word out about what is going on is the most effective way to get more parents on board.
Sue and I come across parents every day who don’t know what is happening, people who are not aware of the specifics of RTTT, TFA or the effect of charter/semi-private schools in large urban areas.
It will take handing out fliers at parent meetings, speaking up at PTA meetings and a lot of reaching out on a one-to-one basis to others to get the word out.
Dan,
What was abusive to our children was the board blindly following the supe’s direction of unnecessarily closing schools and moving students around.
It was abusive to families, teachers , staff and anyone else affected by school closures including the neighborhoods where the buildings would remain vacant to close schools, cause an enormous disturbance to the school communities and tear children from their teachers and friends.
Many of us tried to reason with our school board members until we were blue in the face about the census report, the mayor’s plan based on the census report that indicated an INCREASE of a child population in the neighborhoods where schools were closed and that it just didn’t make any sense any way that you looked at it.
I don’t want to hear that recalling or litigating these people for not doing their jobs is abusive.
Children were torn from their favorite teachers and best friends.
Weeks were lost of educating our students in the classroom because books in the libraries had to be packed up at least one month before the closing of school. Teachers had to use time they would otherwise be using to teach, packing so that the movers could start moving their furniture and materials the day after school closed.
Students had identified with their buildings, the art work that was done, the little nooks and crannies where parents and teachers had added special touches that made the school their home. All lost. And for what? To save $5M? Just so we now have to open 8 schools for millions of dollars more?
The superintendent with her gang of four, her Broad residents and her minions have done a lot of damage to the psyche of our school system.
Don’t even let me hear that the board in some manner feels “abused”.
Abuse was putting Nova students in a school building that was less safe than the one that they were in previously. Abuse was uprooting the Nova community and eliminating the opportunities that there were to share resources with Garfield High School. Abuse was promising the Nova students in return an AP lab and then not following through with the promise. Emotional abuse is Nova finding out that their old and much loved building would be used for a program for other high school students. Abuse was uprooting the SBOC program where again the students had developed a relationship with a building they felt was at a scale that was comforting to them in a very disconcerting world.
And the worst of it? Finding out that the gang of four later said that they were fed information by the district that was out of date, particularly the census report.
I will always remember that DeBell made room for his constituent’s families in the north end by moving SBOC out of their building saying that the furniture was too small for them. Moving them into Meany, a building that those junior high school students loved and had made their own and then, as the topper, deciding that since the “floors creaked” in the Mann building, that was a good enough reason to move Nova in with SBOC. That way the Meany building would be full.
Don’t tell me that we are being abusive to these folks, not after what they did to our children.
Typo above:
misfeasance “of” malfeasance
should be misfeasance or malfeasance
Hey Bob V.,
Submit substantial evidence to School Directors on decisions proposed in Action Reports. Then review the decisions made in School Board approvals.
If Directors make an “Arbitrary and Capricious” not based on evidence, file a legal appeal of the decision in Superior Court within 30 days of the decision.
You do not need a lawyer to do this. (filing fee is around $230.00)
Cheaper yet is to file a petition for recall at the elections office. Recall of school directors ( cost = free no filing charge). We have yet to win one of these. We needed to show that a director intended to commit a misfeasance of malfeasance. In regard to that we are now informing Directors if they do such and such they will be violating particular laws and/or policies.
Then a Director cannot claim they did not know or intend a violation. If you can make one misfeasance or one malfeasance stick a a recall sufficiency hearing …. Then Bingo .. A recall petition for the Recall and Discharge of as Director is approved.
More here. Note the recall label to find another article on Recall at the Math Underground.
If you have questions, contact me. My email is at The Math Underground in the introductory heading, which welcomes the reader.
Sue, if only we could clone you and Dora resulting in maybe 100 really articulate advocates. I am finding around the country each city has a small (or very small) group of activists working against the deform of education. Here in Kennewick it is maybe 6 people, 3 of whom are doing almost all of the work. In NYC, even with all of Leonie Haimson’s work, they only got “about 50” people to show up to protest the Cathy Black appointment.
Do yo have any ideas concerning increasing our numbers. How do we get to the tipping point?
One big problem as I see it is the incredible lack of evidence based decision-making on the part of this school board.
In the Recall Sufficiency hearing on 11-18-2010:
Lawrence Ransom speaking for the directors said that recalls and litigation were abusive of the directors. Kathleen (Kate) Martin, a recall petitioner, responded with “It is the directors that are abusive, as they abuse the students and parents with their complete failure to make evidence based decisions.”
The declarations filed by the directors on 11-16-2010 for the court revealed that despite their claims the directors do not read emails from Mr. Dempsey and base their decisions largely on administrative recommendations no matter how flawed or inaccurate these may be.
Seattle teachers are wise to have no confidence in the Superintendent as public records requests are indicating that MGJ was less than truthful in what she wrote in the action report of 3-12-2010 for the proposal to sign the $800,000 New Tech Network contract.
How could morale be anything but poor in a district in which directors do not make evidence based decisions and the Superintendent and/or CAO tamper with evidence submitted to the court? The teachers are not totally clueless so of course morale is low.
So what evidence was presented that would lead anyone to see TfA as likely to be positive? Look at the testimonies of 11-17-2010 … follow the presentation of evidence from the public … be sure to separate relevant data and valid studies that apply to the Seattle situation from the hopeful and largely irrelevant stories and other anecdotes.
Seems than yarns get more weight than evidence when these directors vote.