If You Build a Better Crutch, We’ll Make a Lazier Student
Isn’t that the truth?
I was talking to a friend from my old school the other day. They had to read the article from the last post about the kid who went to DC public charter schools and then was unprepared for his freshman year at Georgetown.
Surprise!
You weren’t prepared because your teachers had to spend most of their time coddling and cajoling the way-behind, the lazy and the disruptive in your midst. (If you are poor and your mom is a drunk, that’s sad. But it is secondary. The teacher still has to deal with way-behind, lazy, and disruptive.) This takes a great deal of time and effort. In DC, public education is all about creating the appearance that the bottom is being brought up. Increasingly we see that this is a poorly executed illusion.
Here is how it works at my old school, the Columbia Heights Education Campus (CHEC), where I taught U.S. Government and DC History for three years. In short, the teachers do everything for the students, provide multiple opportunities to do the same thing, and just plain make things up to move kids out. And then we all pretend that the students did the work after all. It is simply a lie.
It all amounts to taking responsibility away from students and leaving them almost entirely unaccountable. In the name of “providing supports for struggling students”, we give students an excuse to not struggle at all. If you build a better crutch, we’ll create a lazier student. I have never seen such an intellectually helpless and self-deluded group of tree sloths in my life. And we have helped that to happen in the name of keeping the assembly line running.
For example, as a history teacher, I required students to write papers. As per the regulations of the school, every student writes the same paper. It comes to them in the form of a GRASPS. (Goal, Role, Audience, Situation, Product, Standards.) This must all be specified clearly and be uniform for all students. If I simply said “write a 5-page essay predicting the outcome of a pending Supreme Court case using precedents studied in class”, 9 out of 10 heads would explode right there and then. Exploding heads would also be brought on by allowing students to pick their own topics. They can’t do it.
So everybody gets the exact same assignment, spelled out in excruciating detail, which is never quite enough. There is also a ridiculously detailed rubric which, in many cases, ends up being longer than student papers. These materials are read in groups, discussed in class. Sometimes more than once. Along with this material is an exemplar, also required. This is a full sample paper, written by me, that fulfills everything on the rubric, has a kick-ass introduction and conclusion, cites materials properly, etc. It’s the shit. We read the exemplar in class and highlight the places in the paper where different parts of the rubric are satisfied. We discuss, ask questions (or not), etc.
So, each student has a painfully detailed assignment sheet and rubric, along with the entire paper written for them. This is all required and given at the beginning of the unit. During the unit, I speak extra loudly and clearly, with lots of pointing and any other signaling I can think of when we come to something relevant to the paper. We also have a word wall and preview “difficult” vocabulary because you know damn well only 20 percent would even think of looking up a word they don’t know and only 8 percent would actually do it. So I tell them and we draw pictures like stroke victims and first graders. I chew everything up and regurgitate it back into their mouths.
Time is given to write in class and this is mostly wasted. Time is allotted to peer review rough drafts and this is mostly wasted. Points and praise are provided for anything that might be reasonably construed as effort or thought toward completing the project. On or around the due date I might get 15 or 20 percent. The rest trickle in, or not. They are mostly very, very bad pieces of writing; betraying little effort and almost no thought.
Raising the bar, indeed.
I threaten to take points off for late work, but there is no way I can afford to do that. Production cannot be halted. Since there is no quality control on the final product (a DC high school graduate), and I am not going to be the bottleneck, we roll on and the grads roll out.
I don’t care if it’s 7 weeks late. Just turn something in so you don’t get a zero.
How about some extra credit?
Maybe you’d like to retake that test. You betcha! The very same one. I bet you’ll still fail it, but if we move up a click or two…
Now, behold the magic of denominators. Fs into Ds just as fast as you please!
The fraud at my school, in which I partook fully, is rampant and comes straight from the top. The administration has many creative and creepy ways of letting teachers know that when a student fails it is almost invariably the teacher’s fault for not providing enough “support”. Until somebody finds a way to hold students accountable for their own learning, the incentives to continue participating in The Great Lie will remain.
Mr. Teachbad
This kind of stuff makes me want to stab someone in the neck. Hyperbole? Whatever. How are we supposed to teach teenagers personal responsibility if we’ve constantly coddling them and treating them like little kids. A kid threw a fit in one of my senior classes because I refused to let him make up an exam from FOUR WEEKS AGO. District policy says you get a day to make up work, I give a week, four weeks is fucking ridiculous. You can’t raise the bar and still let everyone pass.
I agree! I have posted grades, and had students/parents contact the Principal to “make up” a TEST that was due MONTHS ago!!
Whew. That was a close one. I thought when you went on your Indiana mission trip you’d have an epiphany that would call you away from your Teachbad mission. Glad you’re back and badder than ever. Here’s a great read a former student of mine sent me…..they know what buttons to push. Especially the “data informed instruction” button. Written by an NYC middle
school teacher. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/taking-emotions-out-of-our-schools.html
You certainly hit the nail on the head. I teach math, but the idea is the same. I can only break it down into so many small pieces. Kids need to try.
Or trying to get them to take notes! “Miss! Where do I write that??” I dunno, on your paper maybe? “Oh, I needed paper? I don’t have a pencil.” *facepalm* I always wonder where this helplessness was learned. It drives me insane.
This reminds me of the scripted reading curriculum we are currently using at my school. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that we are to “coach” students into being successful. I read that to mean that we were supposed to give them the answers to their tests so they wouldn’t continue to pull 10s and 20s. Guess what? They can’t read. I’m not giving anyone any answers. They will learn to read…or continue to get their crappy tests grades. 10s and 20s skew the data? So be it.
Ha!!
I read your entries with full emotion to an audience. They are so amazing and so amusing, and also so very insightful. Thank you so much for another wonderful entry!
Here in Philadelphia our dog and pony show is called the Senior Project. It’s really a game of chicken.
The seniors have all year to develop a thesis, write a paper and do 15 hours of field work related to their topic.
We instruct them on every step, several times over. The kids respond by turning up the music in their contraband iPods and ignore us completely. (Electronics is another game we play in Philly)
Deadlines come and go, get extended two or even three times.
A small percentage does a decent job but generally speaking the final products are heavily plagiarized papers without text citations, field work comprising of tweeting about breast cancer or whatever and general crap that is a travesty of education and teachers’ time.
We pass almost everybody.
But now it is May and we have 65 holdouts who still have done *nothing* on their projects.
The last Final Deadline is next week; I’ll bet the best seat in the faculty lounge that most of them won’t be ready. They’re counting on us chickening out and not failing them even though they so richly deserve to fail and not graduate.
I’ll also bet you that at least half of them are right.
One of the teachers that I work with, and I, were having this exact discussion this afternoon. Until we give a deadline or an assignment, and then hold our students to it, we are never going to turn this shit around. I have 55 seniors, and only 10 have better than a 3.00 GPA. My superintendent complained today that our list of seniors who recieved scholarships last year was too short and we need to do better this year. I had to point out two things to him. First, our validictorian last year managed a 3.00 GPA at the very end of the school year. That means that the number two spot went to someone with less than a 3.00 GPA. Not too many scholarships given out to C students (that is supposed to mean average, but we all know that it means “gift”). The second bit of bad news I had to give him is that this year there are only 10 seniors with over a 3.00 GPA (validictorian about 3.98) and not too many scholarships applied for, nor awarded. Until we hold these students’ feet to the fire, and are not made to let up, it’s not going to get any better, ever. My teachers are free to record the grades (teachers don’t give grades, they merely record them) that their students earn. There is no magic number that must be passed along. If they fail Algebra I twice, maybe the third time will be the charm.
Your students don’t get 3.0 GPAs? Consider yourself lucky. At our small school, more than TWO THIRDS of the student body makes the honor roll.
Now, that would be an accomplishment, except that several students on the honor roll can’t read. Others have completed no homework in four years. Only fifty-seven percent of our 10th graders passed the state test last year–but about 72 percent of them had 3.0 GPAs or higher. Of course, that’s partially because we weight grades for our college prep courses…and then we label all of our classes “college prep.”
I remember when we used to have standards.
Ha, we have “held grades” if you don’t pass. We have kids on the honor role for 9th grade who have passed one class (PE) with an A and have a 4.0 GPA because their “fail” doesn’t count. We have 30% on the honor role, and only 16% can pass the state test at minimal level. I know we don’t like standardized tests, but seriously, when your average ACT score in the school is 15, you have to take that as a message.
Hold students accountable! Pffffff *snort* Hahhahhah! Let me catch my breath and wipe up the Coke spewed all over my screen.
Warning: If you are a touchy-feely, kum-bah-ya type, you should stop reading this reply right now. (And riddle me this: Why are you here at all?) What I have to say will make you blindingly angry.
The most valuable lesson the schools can impart on students is the one of having the self-discipline to work hard and complete the job, no matter what it may be. Unfortunately, the progressive, granola-crunching people running our schools no longer want to teach this lesson. They are true believers in The Cult of the Child™. Children, being all sweet and innocent should never be exposed to the big-bad adult world of hard work, failure and perseverance. Having to do something he doesn’t want to might hurt a child’s feelings. And the possibility of failing at something! Oh My God, the mere thought of that will scar a child’s precious self-esteem for life!!!! And as we all know, self-esteem must be elevated at all times.
So now we have thousands of classrooms full of students who are beautifully described by Mr. Teachbad. The adults who have artfully constructed this system look at it, see pervasive failure, and blame their teachers or anyone else handy. In order to keep their jobs, these adults must redefine success to make these young sloths look good.
The utterly stupid thing is, it does not have to be this way. Other countries (like South Korea, Japan, and Germany to name but a few) hold THE STUDENTS accountable. They have true high-stakes exams that have real live consequences for the students. Parents push their kids to work hard. If a student does not do well in school, it is the child’s fault — and he must do more — not the teacher’s. In other words, these places value education more than self-esteem. And you know what — they are right!! Hard work leads to achievement, and achievement gives a person self-confidence. The person with self-confidence knows he has worth because of his accomplishments. The person with self-esteem believes he has worth just because. One is based on reality, the other on fantasy.
*Sigh* Tonight, I drink to Mr. Teachbad and those who refuse to give in and force their students to work and achieve.
Excellent insight into current inner-city schooling — at least in DC.
How about forwarding your thoughts (sufficiently sanitized for verbatim printing in the WaPo) to the WaPo ed columnists — Jay Matthews and Valerie Strauss — for reprinting in their columns/blogs?
I’m a parent so I hope it’s ok to chime in here. Please know that I’m 100% behind the teachers out there. I commend you on your choice of profession and appreciate everything that you do. It’s the system that I blame. The problem as I see it is that America in general isn’t “hungry” anymore. Policy makers just want to see good numbers. Students and parents need to be held accountable.
I apologize if my comments are not quite as articulately written up front. My two children currently attend a private school in Savannah, GA to the tune of about $20K+ per year. (I’d like to see it run like a military academy not a freak’n day care for snot nosed, privileged, spoiled brats.) I’d pull them out if I could…..that’s another story. All students were issued iPads about three years ago…big mistake best I can tell they are the biggest distraction in the world. I recently requested that my student’s iPad be taken back by the school. It was used for school work but mostly to blog all day, play music, games, or message back and forth with other students. When it was time to turn in assignments the excuses were as follows…email didn’t work, the web was down, dog ate the iPad…etc. I think the tech is nice but they need to figure out a way to govern the technology.
To the point I have had these exact same conversations with anyone at the school that would listen. (We are not very popular with the administration but I think the teachers agree, but just cannot say it).My wife and I play a very active role in our children’s educational endeavors. We try to stay in constant contact with our teachers and the administration via email and phone. (Sorry guys we are those parents) We pull our hair out trying to make sure all assignments are done on time and to better than average. But some still slip through. I’m sick to death of my children getting extra time to turn assignments in or the teachers running them down to turn assignments in. I don’t get extra time to turn in engineering drawings at work. As a student (Graduated ’90’s) I was absolutely scared to death not to have my homework done when it was due. I respected and honestly feared the teachers to some degree mostly respected. Discipline coming from the school would hold so much more weight than just coming from us. My student has been grounded almost the entire school year no TV, x-box, Playstation, movies, computer unless absolutely necessary for school work. Pretty much its homework, and reading books. I’ve asked teachers to call out my kids when they did poorly but I was told that could be considered “Bullying” @#$%$#@#$…… really? I’ve had teachers pull me aside and tell me that don’t worry if the assignment is turned in late I’ll still give him/her full credit. To which I kindly replied “bulls_ _ it, you will” If they fail they fail. I about lost my mind. I have requested on several occasions that my children be disciplined by the school for late assignments, poor work etc. I asked for detention to which I was told that teachers cannot assign detention it has to come from higher up the chain. What are you kidding me?
By all rights my middle school student should be held back this year but by some miracle that won’t happen…. Btw if he/she failed they would be asked to leave the school. It wouldn’t look good. However, my students will always pass, that keeps the money flowing. I sometimes feel like the other more financially secure parents turn a blind eye to the problems and accept them for what they are. I just don’t have that luxury. I expect to get something for my money. I know for fact their kids don’t do any better in school than mine. These are the same ones that will spend 200k sending their kids to some college to party for 4-6 years so they can graduate with a Liberal Arts Degree in Basket Weaving.
Just my two cents…..
Wow….Can I teach your kids?
For the teachers who hang out around here, you are a dream come true. We all wish there were more families like yours out there.
P.S. Having just exited that ecosystem, I can confirm your spot-on analysis of private schools.
Teachbad, you are the voice of our profession. Your blog continually makes me feel less alone and more upset at the state of education.
My students do not know how to think for themselves or reason, or use logic, or anything that requires them to put out effort. So frustrating, especially when our school supposedly does so well on the state test. And on top of all this we are a “college going community.” This means everyone is going to college (yeah right) and they aren’t even prepared to think for themselves. Oh well, I only have a month left then I’m on to greener pastures.
I am in NYC and you just described my school, although we have the added excitement of fights inside and outside the classroom where students think nothing of knocking down a teacher, kicking the teacher’s body out of the way, and continuing the fighting. And then the students get no consequences for knocking down the teacher because it was an “accident” – they weren’t trying to hurt the teacher, the teacher just got in the way of their fight.
And we have “Exit Projects” as well. Takes about 15 minutes to grade one and they are all crap, but we have to give them passing grades as long as they turn SOMETHING in that is allegedly their “Exit Project”.
We have a student that has a cumulative average of 8 for the year. Yes, EIGHT. And we are now being asked by admin if there is ANYTHING we can do to help “support him in graduating”.
I’m a middle school teacher here in México (sorry for my english)The situation is the same with our system…we divide our school year in 5 bimesters, today I’ve made a review of the 4th bimester of one of my 6 groups (38 students, private catholic school) I knew it was horrible, but I need to make a report… 22 students don’t have a notebook for my class (spanish/language), 23 failed the last spelling test, 22 were too lazy to make an interview assignement to their parents!! During the hole bimester I almost begged to them, everyday I reviewed their parcial notes with them, I sended notes to the parents. Today the final notes were posted and the students have the nerve to ask why they failed or why they have a low note…sad thing? I know everyone will say that is my fault, that I’m a bad teacher…and I ask: how? if they don’t have a notebook, how and I why I am responsible? if they did not make an interview to their parents, how come I’m responsible? I do my work, I have a degree in Hispanic Literature, I’m more that prepared to teach my class(I know language teachers that haven’t read a book in their entire life, I read 4 or 5 by month) still, the parents look at me like if I am kid that doesn’t know a sh…Well, I am not a kid,I am not their kid, I have parents and they did a great job teaching me manners and responsability, the fruits of hard work…The world of the future is frightening me…
I teach in a public school in the South and I teach the exact project that Teachbad uses, except I teach them their native language. We are required to teach the research paper to ninth graders, which doesn’t sound too bad.
I use the same mind-boggling rubric, instruction sheets, “cheat” sheets for MLA style. I give them two weeks in the school’s media center, two additional weeks in the computer lab, not to mention an additional two weeks of painstaking instruction.
For all of that I get maybe 20 percent turned in on time. For the other 80 percent I get ass-chewing, grueling, conferences with parents and administration, who tell me why I “hate” their children and I am “unprofessional” for having expectations beyond those I would have for a rock.
I truly believe we are nearing the end of our democracy, just like Rome crumbled when everybody got fat, dumb and happy. Sadly, I chose teaching as my second profession because I was one of those parents who wanted to “make a difference from the inside.” Looking back on the intellectual wasteland that has been the past seven years, I feel like a total fool.
It was never really that the students in my town didn’t have good teachers; it was that the parents expect an “A,” but not learning and the students think all they have to do is mouth-breathe in class to get a grade.
Sadly, I sometimes dream of an armed revolution, just so we can start over. Sigh.
Though I am an elective teacher, I am in the same boat as you Souless. I feel your pain and agree with you 100%.
It is refreshing to be permitted to speak candidly and truthfully about the Reality of teaching in America! I teach Special Education AND Spanish II…non-disabled students. Honestly, my Spanish students are not much different from my special ed students. Everyone here has described them accurately…and their parents. Fortunately, I have one more year until I may retire. And I intend to speak the “Truth.” To my administration and the parents! The public has NO idea what we deal with every day! Lazy is the REALITY of ALL students we have in classrooms now. Even the smart kids, are lazy. And EVERYTHING is MY fault! THEY are Never responsible..it is always ME! A very sad state of affairs for the US!
After 3 years at a Detroit charter school watching kids led by the hand constantly or passed just because nobody wanted to deal with them another year (although I was lucky enough to teach K-8 Spanish, which administration and state standards don’t give a shit about) I’m currently teaching English on a Fulbright in Spain for a year. Almost immediately I noticed the difference between the kids I’ve worked with in the US and Spanish kids: Spanish kids aren’t fragile. Kids repeat grades more than I’ve seen before – don’t know the material from 5th grade? Maybe you’ll get it in your 2nd year. People aren’t talking about study guides, clear objectives, detailed lesson plans, test retakes, differentiation, or many of the all-holy artifacts of American pedagogy – and in some cases I can see room for improvement, but these kids also are self sufficient. They take notes because they know they’re not going to see this stuff again, and they write down their homework at the end of class because nobody is going to leave it on the board for weeks and post it to five different social networking sites. Much of this may come from a system where teaching jobs are almost impossible to lose once you have your permanent position, and a culture that lacks the workaholism that plagues most of America (and the teaching profession especially.) Teachers are appalled at my descriptions of bringing home work, staying late for longer than five minutes, and paying for classroom supplies out of my own pocket. Part of me knows that the US educational system may benefit from teachers who *have* to be dedicated, student-focused, and hard working just to survive their profession – but another part of me is resentful that I am going back to a country where it’s assumed that being a teacher means working long hours in increasingly unrealistic conditions for dwindling benefits and salary, and where students’ failures are always at least partially and usually completely the teachers’ fault.
Well done, Teachbad.
This is a problem I find especially frustrating and you did an especially good job describing it.
In the overall big picture of the “disruptive-change-reformers” vs. “status-quo-loving-teachers” debates, I wish this were something everyone would be more honest about.
I am all for the whole “no-excuses” charter idea: Please do create schools for kids who actually turn in assignments they worked hard on and would be embarrassed if their teacher showed them a page on the internet that contained their final project, word-for-word, including vocabulary words they clearly do not know.
But if you siphon those kids out of district schools, you can’t ALSO tell teachers that n# of kids need to pass, and ALSO have us sit through PowerPoint presentations about rigor, and ALSO cause teachers to get stress-related health problems related to showing test score gains. These things contradict one another. At some point the whole thing becomes unfair and untrue, and we have passed that point.
Roxanna Elden
Author
See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers
Teachbad has hit the nail on the head. Everyone at the top wants the “numbers to go up” without holding the students accountable. My principal recently admitted we have to stop letting the kids get by with doing nothing but about a week later said we need to get graduation numbers up “by hook or by crook.” I think that says it all. Teachers go along out of fear for their job but in this climate your job is not secure anyway. We need a revolution of integrity in the teaching profession. We need to overthrow this current mentality of accepting crap and stamping it as acceptable.
Another great post.
As the year ends, I MUST get my students to do at least some work. In rare cases, when I apply the pressure, “turn around, hand in something, at least be quiet, don’t, no, please, etc”. The students then rebel…yes in class, but also to the administration.
In a recent office “meeting” I was told that my students don’t feel welcome. That they don’t feel appreciated, encouraged, or invited. That they can’t learn unless they feel they are “wanted”. That this “bullying” by me, the professional must stop…
Needless to say, I just sat there dumbfounded, exactly what am I supposed to do to get them to do “anything”.
“ENGAGE THEM” I was told.
Thanks
First, I am very glad that this poor kid has found someone to blame for his ignorance. because I am sure that nobody ever told him to do more. Not one person. I am sure that when he showed up with his mediocre SAT score, nobody pointed out that there are people who get in the top 10%. I am certain that he could never have gone online to look at MIT courses for free, to see the level of college courses. I am pretty damn certain that if he didn’t get his A for his marginal work, he was the first to cuss out the teacher.
This year we have a “best” student, with a 23 on the ACT. Yep, best in class. So he doesn’t need to retake, he’s the best in the school (he explained this to me, because I am a dolt). He wants to be an engineer, but his mom won’t let him go for a free summer experience to an engineering college that I can get for him. He won’t look beyond what we provide, and doesn’t understand that the Algebra II and precalc he received at our school is pretty much Algebra I for a real school, which we are told to do so that students can “pass.” (Hey, this precalc is really easy, what’s all the fuss?)
Damn teachers.
My district just made U.S. News and World Report’s list of best high schools in the USA. One of the most significant areas measured was college and career readiness. Funny, but when you are forced to pass students who do little or no work, or give them 5 or 6 end-of-year exam days to “make-up” a semester just by attending and doing “something,” then how ready can they really be for either a career or college? We are setting these kids up to spend thousands of extra dollars as they take non-credit college courses to make up for what they weren’t learning in high school, spending 3 to 6 years getting a 2 year degree.
The emperor has no clothes.
Teachbad,
I’m don’t remember laughing so hard as when you wrote:
“So I tell them and we draw pictures like stroke victims and first graders. I chew everything up and regurgitate it back into their mouths”
You made my day, thank you!!!!!!!!!!
I think I know what makes your blog so compelling. Teachers read what you write and think, “My God, its not just me!!!!”
I wrote you 10 months ago, describing how they “terminated” me on some technicality when I returned from an approved leave and failed to notify me. I told you I was considering going back, pretending I hadnt heard about it when my wife went to get a prescription filled as was told my insurance was no longer in effect. When I left a message for the head of Personnel, advising him that I was going to go back with a reporter on the first day of school, he called back and, realizing his error, offered to “unterminate” me.
Needless to say, I didnt go back. I’ve since discarded my blood pressure medication and begun a new job. I formed a corporation and now work from home as a virtual trainer. My only regret is that I didnt do it sooner. I do not have a guaranteed income and I dont have health insurance. I do have my self-respect back and the knowledge that whatever time I do have left, wont be wasted in the awful environment you so accurately describe. Your humor and knowing I was not alone contributed to my decision. Thank you!
PS
I’m ordering the mug after I post this.
Tom
Dear colleagues,
What’s even more worrisome is that we are seeing this kind of thing at the college level as well! They get there totally unprepared (and it has been well established why), but the business needs to carry on! We can’t just fail them all, or else we would have to shut down our “production line”… very sad…