CHAOS
in our schools

The Failure of Modern American Education

One Veteran Teacher's Account of Life in the Trenches

FOREWORD from the book:

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Most of us agree that education is in trouble in our country.  What we can’t sort out is how to fix it.  The experts have propagated numerous theories over the years, each promising to provide the last, best hope.  One stand-out expert weighs in on the efficacy of these theories in the first paragraph of his op-ed that appeared in Education Week in 2015:

Let’s review the educational cure-alls of past decades: back to basics, the open classroom, whole language, constructivism, and E.D. Hirsch’s excruciatingly detailed accounts of what every 1st or 3rd grader should know, to name a few. It seems America’s teachers and students are guinea pigs in the perennial quest for universal excellence. Sadly, though, the elusive panacea that will solve all of education’s woes has remained, well, elusive. [1]

This is from Dr. James Delisle, a noted Gifted and Talented specialist whose books appear prominently on Prufrock Press’s webpages. When I read this op-ed in 2016, I thought, ‘Amazing!  Someone of note finally speaks the truth about teaching.’                

     From a teacher’s perspective, there is a disconnect between the messages routinely delivered by administration and the reality we experience in the classroom.  We are continually told that if we would just latch on to ‘this best practice’ or ‘that best practice’, all our students will respond positively, and every issue in our classroom will be resolved. This fad driven professional development creates havoc in schools and cynicism among teachers.  No strategy touted by their principal is given much credence because teachers know that next year, something new will take its place.

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The education elites have become fond of thrusting cutting-edge programs at us – I have manuals for many of these sitting on my shelves at home, distant memories of their tried-and-failed implementation clouding my mind.  I also remember my introduction to some pretty major requirements: Differentiation, Visible Learning, and Common Core, back in the school years 2012 and 2013. 

In truth, teachers want to believe there is a cure-all for the malaise they see in their classrooms.  But we know something the experts don’t: the reality of classroom teaching.

Where did all these education game-changers come from?  Why have we been assailed over the last twenty years by what has become a cottage industry of re-inventing learning? 

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I believe we can trace it to our lawmakers.

In 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a piece of legislation that addresses the disparities in achievement between impoverished populations and everyone else.  It is where we get programs that begin with the word Title:

• Title I:  mandated programs in low-income schools.

• Title II:  funding for school libraries, textbooks, and preschool programs.

• Title III:  mandates and funding for adult education.

• Title IV:  $100 million over five years to fund research and training.

• Title V: grants under Public Law 874 (for Title I, to address operating costs in low-income schools).

• Title VI:  definitions and limitations to the law.[2]

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Every five years, this Act has supposedly been reviewed by Congress, with new legislation added periodically, such as Title IX in 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in any program receiving Federal funds.  There are other extensions of the original ESEA, but for the purpose of this book, I will discuss only two of them.

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In 2001, Congress worked in a bipartisan way to write a law that would become much more intrusive than any of its predecessors.  Lawmakers were particularly proud of this bipartison legislation, while educators across the country could hear alarm bells. No Child Left Behind (NCLB)[3]  ushered in our current era of bureaucracy run amok.  One of its major provisions is something called Adequate Yearly Progress, which “allows the U.S. Department of Education to determine how every public school and school district in the country is performing academically according to results on standardized tests.”[4]

    The very name No Child Left Behind portended positive change.  Unfortunately, the law contained enough improbable-to-achieve mandates that the Dept. of Education had to establish flexibility in its implementation and waivers for its requirements.[5]  The ultimate waiver came in 2009, when Congress proposed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a bill that placed measuring growth in students above grade-level achievement as the arbiter of success.  This is a flawed proposition on two fronts: it requires teachers to focus on activities other than teaching, and it provides false security to students and guardians regarding learning.  ESSA was signed into law in 20015;  while it supersedes the earlier requirements of NCLB, it does mimic many of them, such as requiring states to report on student performance and graduation rates and identify the lowest performing schools.  One major departure from NCLB is that states now have the flexibility to develop their own accountability measures.​

In 2010, Colorado’s legislature responded to ESSA by creating a law they coined The Great Teachers and Leaders Act, Senate Bill 10-191.  From the moment it passed, districts across the state were compelled to develop teacher evaluation systems that reward compliance with mandated data collection regarding growth in student achievement. 

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I endured one of these district evaluation schemes for five years; it seemed to have no purpose other than appeasing the legislators who drafted SB 10-191.  The requirements for teachers were onerous, including the Individual Educator Goals that I describe in chapter 9.  I would surmise that the way these goals were managed in my school (and likely across the district) little resembled the intent behind the protocols so carefully crafted by district officials.  That's because they represented a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and when people are give onerous amounts of extra work to do (paperwork that has no bearing on any aspect of their real job) they are apt to take shortcuts.

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The Great Teachers and Leaders Act was sold to the public as a performance-baed doctrine.[6] 

However, half of the evaluation system mandated by it comes from a principal's unaudited notes about a teacher’s activities.   

This is not performance.  It is opinion!

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The rest of the evaluation is a mix of teacher-collected data, a school improvement plan drafted and graded by the principal and applied to everyone, and aggregated test scores, also applied to everyone. This is the great improvement Colorado’s legislature created for its thousands of schoolchildren across the state in 2010?

If you think I’m not being facetious with that statement, check Colorado’s test scores for the last eight years, available on page 45.

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When Congress passes massive reform legislation, especially for something like education, massive bureaucracy becomes inevitable. What we have now are well-intended but ineffective multiple layers of requirements. Federal mandates mean that states must enact their own measures, and thousands of people are hired merely to enforce compliance. Circular bureaucracy is the result.

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Complex systems require complex paperwork and lots of money.  They also allow for the real possibility of subterfuge and even fraud among participants.

  Chaos has taken over our schools: 

• Illogical policies couched in pleasant language.

• Growth, whether authentic or not, considered more important than achievement.

• Administrators and teachers participating in appearance-based protocols.

• Non-teach requirements for teachers assigned more important than actual teaching.

• Students seen more as subjects of data collection than as learners.

• School district websites filed with indoctrination and complexity.

I address each of these in this book.  My own plan for improvement appears at the end.  If you are tempted to jump ahead, don’t feel bad.  Just as students are coached to look at the questions prior to reading nonfiction to get the gist of what they must know, you may get benefit from seeing the endpoint I propose prior to reading the expose that supports it.  

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Finally, as you prepare to delve into the darkness, consider this: our public schools are tax-supported institutions. How much do you really know about them? What can you share about the curriculum children are studying and the tests they are taking, right now? Ultimately, it is the students who are the most important part of a classroom. Ironically, that idea has been diluted in our lawmakers’ attempts to improve the quality of education delivered in this country.
   I share this story as a teacher who has worked in the classroom for more than thirty years. I am not an expert, just a regular person sharing the facts behind the facade. I am sure plenty of actual experts will weigh in on my claims. It is up to you to discern what to accept and what to consider with suspicion.

Footnotes

1 Dr. James Delisle, “Differentiation Doesn’t Work”. Education Week, 2015.

2 Paul, Catherine A. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

3 U.S. Department of Education: No Child Left Behind

4 Wikipedia: Adequate Yearly Progress

5 U.S. Department of Education: ESEA Flexibility

6 Colorado Dept. of Education: State Model Evaluation System. 2019

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