Teachbad and Jay Mathews: Part 2
To fully appreciate this post, you should probably take a quick look at the last post if you have not already. This is the continuation of a dialogue between myself and Jay Mathews, education writer at the Washington Post, about the school where I formerly taught, Columbia Heights Education Campus(CHEC).
(I promise the next post in this blog will mark a return to the offensive silliness at which it most excels.)
Jay Mathews: Thanks Peter. This makes some sense in isolation. You make a case that the school could be run in a different way and have less turnover and better results, except for your statement about AYP. If you look at the latest results, the school made AYP in reading, math and graduation.
Mr. Teachbad (aka “Peter”): I’ll look back at the AYP data. Seems I may have misread something. As far as graduation goes, I know that many kids are put into credit recovery at the last minute and that credit recovery is a joke. It simply provides a plausible argument that a student has done this work and should graduate.
[Editor's note: CHEC made safe harbor in both reading and math in 2011. That means it made significant gains from last year. However, its 49% proficiency in math and 43% proficiency in reading fell far short of the AYP proficiency targets of 70% and 72%, respectively.]Mathews: But as I pointed out in one of my comments, parents want to know how a school compares to others to which they have access. On that score, looking at schools with similar demographics in DC, CHEC does very well. Its AP system also adds something unique that parents and students told me they were very happy with. Any thoughts on that?
Teachbad: [Note: CHEC forces all students to take AP English. AP is the only English option.] I have a lot to say about AP, but I’ll be brief. The most frustrated people in that building are probably the high school English teachers. I have talked to nearly all of them (dozens) in the past three years about AP. They all say virtually the same thing. “We are not really teaching AP classes.” You either have to stop and explain the difference between anonymous and unanimous or you don’t. At CHEC, you do. Every time.
“This school takes a giant dump on AP” was one of the more colorful quotes from an English teacher. She went on to say that this is unfair primarily to the African American students who are truly ready for an AP class and are not getting it. Some other kids are ready, as well, but she singled out African Americans as especially harmed. I believe that CHEC could pass two or three times as many AP tests if they were really teaching AP classes to the right students. As I know you know, the College Board says that students should be “academically prepared and willing” in order to take AP. Most students at CHEC are neither…and that’s probably the case at Wilson and Banneker as well. ADVANCED placement. How can everybody be advanced? I’m from Minnesota and I know that Lake Wobegon doesn’t really exist.
AP English for all is so transparently not working. But any discussion of this; any dissent, question or suggestion for modification is strictly forbidden. I remember one meeting so clearly toward the end of last year. An 11th grade English teacher was talking about next year. She asked one of the most carefully crafted questions I have ever heard. The gist of it was whether it would be possible to continue with AP for all, but possibly have the classes arranged such that kids with similar strengths and weaknesses could be put in the same sections so that teachers would be better able to target these specific things in instruction. The room fell silent. The assistant principal shook her head sort of sadly and said “Well, that would be tracking.” And that was simply the end of the discussion, even though it was a practical idea worthy of examination and everybody in the room knew that that is not what tracking is. That sort of interaction is what gets teachers talking and understanding that they were not hired to think or be creative.
If the baseball GM model is to work and be fair at CHEC, Tukeva should tell all new hires that they are entering a world of pure dogma and make-believe.
Mathews: Spend a few days at Dunbar or Eastern and tell me if you would choose them over CHEC. You notice they change principals every year or two. I would take a tough if often tone deaf principal who sticks it out and has plan to what happens at those schools.
Teachbad: Right. She keeps the place quite and gets left alone. As long as there are no deaths and we force everybody to apply to UDC so that everybody is “accepted” to college and force everybody to take AP tests so we get the challenge index award; it all looks great. If she is so amazing, she should go turn Dunbar around. How fast do you think Tukeva would retire if [DC Schools Chancellor] Henderson told her that the children of DCPS really needed her to do that?
Mathews: One thing I am curious about—how does CHEC do by your lights on safety and atmosphere? Is it chaotic in the halls like other DCPS high schools?
Teachbad: I have never felt unsafe and I think I’ve only seen one fight in the school. Sometimes there is stuff after school off campus. Having taught on both the middle and high school sides of the building, I would say the middle school is chaotic in the hallways. There is a lot of running, shoving, cursing, kids wandering around, etc.
As far as general atmosphere, I think there is an intangible that is probably significant but overlooked. Teachers overwhelmingly do not like being there. It is not because of the kids, but it must impact them. And it creates inefficiencies because there is only a slim chance that your 10th grade teacher will be around to write you a recommendation in 12th grade. Teaching seniors, I have had many kids complain to me that they don’t really get to know their teachers because everybody leaves. I think that is important. This is genuinely heartbreaking for teachers and I have seen it many times. Teachers really like the kids or they wouldn’t be teaching. But the hostility, disrespect and silliness they have to put up with from the admin is just too much. Again, 53 new teachers starting today. Could that possibly be an indication of organizational health and success?
But ultimately the issue for me is not Tukeva, CHEC or DCPS. I think the real issue here is what is happening to the profession of teaching. Increasingly I fear that teachers are expected to simply adapt to a program rather than use their judgment. It’s getting more like line work. CHEC is a particularly aggressive, front-edge manifestation of this, but probably nothing more. I think that is unfortunate and probably not a good thing.
Jay: Thanks Peter. Well said. Just one more question. The teachers I talked to at CHEC, NOT including Tukeva, said they tried other ways to reach the kids that you say, rightly, are not ready for AP and none of those methods produced much progress. This, they say, produces some progress for those kids. What would you do with the kids not ready for AP and how do you know that would work?
Teachbad: Sorry…could I ask you to rephrase that?
When you say ‘method’ I think differentiation strategies, reading strategies, etc. But it sounds like you are saying that compulsory AP is itself a method. I’m not sure I agree. It sounds like you might also be suggesting that, regardless of readiness and ability, kids taking AP get more out of their AP classes than regular classes? That’s possible, but I’m not sure how we would know. And that still leaves the issue of the fundamental dishonesty of not really teaching AP classes anyway and cheating the qualified students of that experience. This is what upsets me the most.
A system like DC has to spend so many resources on trying to bring up the bottom that those at the top, who are still kids and deserve our support just as much, are often neglected and left on their own because they are not causing trouble and have mastered our dumbed down lesson. Meanwhile, I’m on the other side of the room explaining the difference between federalism and the Federalist Papers, again. I know a great teacher would have everything differentiated just so that everybody is constantly challenged and successful. But how many reading levels and motivation levels in one room should a teacher be expected to differentiate for?
For the other part, I am never certain that anything will work. I experiment. I talk to my colleagues. I get to know my students. This cuts down on uncertainty. Another argument for trying to keep your teaching staff a little happy. There is no team with 40-60% annual turnover. That affects teachers as well. I have to believe that if Valerie and Bill and their replacements left every other year that you would be sad and annoyed.
Mathews: One of the best AP teachers I know, Frazier O’Leary at Cardozo, rarely gets kids up to 3 level, but he still teaches a rich course that gets kids much readier for college. That is what I am thinking of when I see what some teachers at CHEC, whom I have watched at work, are doing.
Teachbad: I would love to sit down with you and O’Leary together to talk about this. Maybe observe a lesson or two with you. My experience in DCPS is deep, but only in two places. (The other school I worked at was Noyes, before the scandal.) I would really like to see something with you and hear what you think about it. What do you think?
Mathews: Let’s stay in touch. I want to know what you do next, and how that works out.
Teachbad: [paraphrased] I’m pretty curious about that as well. I’ll keep you posted.
I hope Mathews will take you up on your offer to observe and discuss. It deeply troubles me that he says “but he (O’Leary) still teaches a rich course that gets kids much readier for college.” That one little segment really encapsulates how far the non-teaching public is out of touch with reality. When you consider the sheer number of students today who need remediation in EVERYTHING, it is easy to see just how overwhelming the problem is. And I say that from the perspective of 38 years of teaching reading from Kindergarten through graduate school. Our public school system is broken in some very fundamental ways, and drinking the administrative Kool-aid is just not going to fix it. Mathews seems genuinely interested in learning moreand reporting accurately-that is a terrific first step.
When Mathews said,
“One of the best AP teachers I know, Frazier O’Leary at Cardozo, rarely gets kids up to 3 level, but he still teaches a rich course that gets kids much readier for college.”
I immediately thought of a few questions:
– Is there an estimated avg. number of students that typically reach a score of 3 or higher on the AP exam? How does O’Leary compare to that? What might seem to be rarely to Mathews may be normal in terms of AP scoring.
–I would imagine any exposure to academic material “gets kids much readier for college” than no exposure. Mathews uses very relative terms to describe something at which he is looking from the outside in.
No matter what the nay-saying, ill-informed, decorum-touting critics of your biting sarcasm have to say, what is happening here is more constructive than what could have taken place when you were just some pseudo-anonymous bitter teacher named “Teachbad.” Thanks for getting fired. I’m attaching a few dollars as a PDF file to help support your family while you are suffering martyrdom. Let me know if you need more and I’ll scan it in.
I’m on the west coast in a state that rhymes with malifornia (one must protect one’s identity in this climate); change the names and acronyms and substitute a few pieces of schoolease jargon and it’s the same crap here as in DC. Everybody here is Honors and AP. We can’t “track” because that has a negative connotation, but we can take all the kids who didn’t pass the Exit Exam and even some we predict might not pass it and pile them all into the same classroom in a special class to get them to pass. We take the special ed population and put them into college prep classes and then essentially take college prep kids and put them in a special ed class. That, my friend, is “remediation,” “differentiated instruction,” or whatever the soup of the day is. I wish it was just administrative, but it’s the systemic ignorance and self-serving ethos of the top end of education that drives this garbage truck. Too many parents and other people with little experience in education readily accept that the problems are fundamentally at the classroom level, so they want to treat the symptom rather than the disease.
I hope your critics who read this see that buried in your/our bitterness, angst, and sarcasm is the wisdom and insight that could correct some of the problems. Sarcasm and wit are more than just defense mechanisms; they are also satire, and the intellectual diddlings of those of us who feel otherwise impotent in the face of an oppressive, absurd, dysfunctional machine. Where else in this struggling economy can you hear of such a high turnover of staff? Nobody who teaches can imagine that this is just a case of disillusioned young teachers who quit because they couldn’t reenact Mr. Holland’s Opus. I imagine that many of us can almost taste the righteous indignation of being able to quit that job; but that solves nothing and serves nobody’s best interest. The problem is that those with the power to fix problems spend their days justifying their existence under the guise that they need to be there to fix problems–it is in their best interest to not fix things. Those of us who deal with the problems spend our days doing just that, making the best of impossible situations–it is too often in our best interest to avoid those at the top, the ones with the power to fix things, who, as a matter of job security, have no real need of our solutions. Yep…it’s a well-oiled machine that fires those with the passion to be openly angry and retains those who channel their passion through dutiful, silent, conformity. If we do, in fact, teach by example, I have to wonder what real lessons our more adept students are learning.
Keep up the good fight.
Well said, two cents! Sadly, many of our educational top leaders today use data driven decision making, numbers, to measure school/classroom academic success. Thereby, destroying the USAs public school system. Due to the tendancy of those at the local school level who will take the necesary steps to meet the goals no matter the impact on students or teachers. And as Ted Sizer, wrote in, The Students are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract they are learning. Today students ask, “What do I have to do to get an A?” no longer interested in learning but in getting the A. It is nothing new, there have long been those who do not support taxpayer paid education for all… Could NCLB with it’s lovely stated laudable Goals have the unintended consequences, or possibly intended by some, of distroying the public faith and trust in our public schools? Without public support a free public education for all in the USA is lost…
Two Cents: Yours is an eloquent tome; if you are not writing, you should be.
Please don’t take this in the wrong way (nor you, Mr. Teachbad!), but we need to be involved in some ACTIVE movement, one that would bring more result.
Having been a teacher for 35 yrs., this blog is–without a doubt–absolutely necessary for sanity maintenance (how would we educators survive if we could not “laugh & complain?”). However, like the S.O.S. March that was (unfortunately) largely ignored due, I believe, to not having the #s of the Million Man March & other such hugomongous marches, more needs to be DONE. Teacher Tent Cities? That project that starts with the letter B (when I can find it again, I’ll post it here), whereby students all over the country (& they are aiming high–60,000,000!) refuse to take the high-stakes tests?!
When I was teaching, I was trying to start a walk-out for SpEd teachers across the state to walk out & refuse to test our students. Of course, since I’m retired, I wouldn’t advocate it for others–I would have done it for sure while I was active. &, on a + note, we had some EXCEPTIONAL administrators in my district who, I know, would have stood up & supported us.(Yeah, I’m not going around telling teachers to jeopardize their jobs any further than they already are!) I know people have families to house & to feed, & NO ONE needs to lose his/her job.
Finally, Two Cents–”malifornia,” D.C., ILLinois, Georgia–yeah, it’s an epidemic. G-d help the U.S.A.!
I have been reading you since I discovered you and I hope you keep this up and make five times as much money going forward as you did going backwards at CHEC.
I’m in Fairfax County. The mantra here is “We are the best possible school system in all the multi-verses and nobody can teach us nothin’ from beyond our borders!!” What I am hearing Jay Matthews defend is the entirely false notion that “because the county/school next door is worser, our bad is better, so our better is good.”
FCPS does the same thing, comparing itself to Loudoun, Alexandria, Arlington, Prince William, Montgomery, and Prince George’s. (Ooops. Not the latter. It is invisible to them.) Problem is, surrounding counties are starting to do a lot of things far better than Fairfax. It is sounding rather desperate when it meets with its patron, the Chamber of Commerce, trying to figure out the next spin message to keep businesses believing the myth of the multiverse. … So, Jay, leave CHEC alone because so many other DC schools are so awful? What kind of implied argument is that?
On the matter of fundraising, just look at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. TJ is an elite public school that has some 4,000 applications (or something huge) for 450 spots. It has a fundraising newsletter to alumni and their parents and partnerships with major corporations and technology/science centers. It begs for things like (more) electron microscopes. It has an established, built-in internship program so just about every rising senior gets an often-paid internship over the summer that becomes academic credit in the fall. They’ve sucked the air from all the rest of the public schools here on these opportunities. I know because my son went there. What he got at TJ, every single kid should have access to, in this best of all possible school systems. Instead, everywhere else, we cram 32 students into labs that have 25 spaces, and yet more kids into “lecture” courses like — math.
Teachers here are just as fed up with the Broad Academization of our school systems. The Widgetizing. The Bill Gates bit-mapping. Now Superintendent Jack Dale is stating that teachers should become something like “facilitators.” I hear he’s writing a book, along with his other top administrators. (One of the posters left out the progression from Superintendent to author to Arne Duncan.) The latest survey shows teachers here at their lowest morale in 30 years. Go figure.
PLEASE keep this up, shake the cages, rock the boats, rattle the bones!!!
It’s the Bartleby Project, named after Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby the Scrivener”:
http://bartlebyproject.com/
http://www.oldthinkernews.com/?p=297
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/the-bartleby-project.html
What I referred to earlier is called The Bartleby Project. Google it, & go to the first site–there are some interesting comments & “how-tos,” as well. Perhaps this is farfetched or some of you know something amiss about it–? Anyway, it’s an idea–or a start.
A little off topic here but worthwhile….here’s a nice well done rap on NCLB by two teachers. They worked hard on it and hit the nail on the head. I hope it goes viral…..
>I know a great teacher would have everything differentiated just so that everybody is
>constantly challenged and successful. But how many reading levels and motivation
>levels in one room should a teacher be expected to differentiate for?
THIS is why I left the classroom (high school English, 6 years, rural, low-income, high-minority school.)
I miss my students, and I miss a lot of what classroom teaching was all about. But I don’t miss constantly feeling incompetent because I couldn’t differentiate to the needs of 35 individual students on at least 20 different levels. No matter how awesome I was or how hard I worked (and I got compared to the teacher in “Freedom Writers” many more times than I care to think about) it was never enough.
There’s a point after which you just can’t keep up that pace any more. You just can’t do it.