My coworker and friend invited me to hear Michelle Rhee upon the TFA graduate turned how-to-fix-American-schools writer and speaker's visit to Kansas City last week. It was to be held at the public library. At first, I thought, why the hell would I want to hear that woman talk out her ass? My next thought was, I've never heckled anyone before. This could be my only chance. What fun! So I decided to go. (Honestly, I wouldn't heckle anyone - not enough to get thrown out of a joint anyway.)
My friend got an email from the KC Public Library stating that the event had unexpectedly received more than 1,000 responses, so if we wanted to get a seat, we needed to arrive early. As teachers, we know what this means. Turns out, two hours early did the trick. We were two of the first ticket recipients and behind no more than 50 people when we arrived back after eating a delicious dinner at Mixx. (Free advertising, Mixx! I could really use a complementary sandwich!)
If you've never been to the KC Public Library, Plaza Branch, you should go. That place is gorgeous, and full of my favorite things in the world. In fact, I want to be cremated and my ashes blown through the ventilation system in the library so my dust falls upon millions of books. Mmmmkay?
Anywho...
The line was full of KCMO teachers who had banded together through their teachers association to hear (and maybe heckle, too) Ms. Rhee talk about her experiences in teaching (not many), as chancellor of the DC schools (short-lived and controversial), and her new book. (No free advertising for Rhee here. I don't need a copy of her book, thanks.) She was announced briefly with humor by Henry Fortunto and then interviewed by Crosby Kemper III. You can actually watch the video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxgwhyfNyaY&feature=youtu.be to see for yourself.
The event was free to the public. I wouldn't have gone otherwise. I wondered - at least until I got to the foot of the stairs and saw the "suits" with "literature" on a table across from the reception area (where they were serving wine with felafel & hummus) - where the money for her talk came from. Classy, I thought. Must be some fancy dandies putting out this spread. Those fancy dandies are members of the organization called Show-Me Institute, and they were handing out (or standing by while guests mulled over) the numerous handouts they brought, most of which were full-color and multi-page booklets written in 14+ font with pictures and graphics the elderly could read and someone with a sixth grade education could understand but not likely question. Before the "show" began, I read a few of these pamphlets and annotated in their margins my many questions about the content.
The Show-Me Institute's primary goal, according to their website, is to improve "the quality of life for all citizens of Missouri by advancing sensible, well-researched solutions to state and local policy issue." Sounds like a good thing, yes? Of course! They claim to be "rooted in the American tradition of free markets and individual liberty," and are considered a publicly funded charitable organization, or a 501(c)3. Much of the literature handed out re: eduaction (as a teacher of literature, it's very hard for me to lump these types of writings in with the classic ideal of literature, but I digress) is written in first person by one of the organization's staff members James V. Shuls.
Mr. Shuls, like Michelle Rhee, has limited experience in the classroom. He is educated in Southwest Missouri with a bachelors and a masters degree in elementary education and is a PhD candidate in educational policy at University of Arkansas. He taught for four years in SWMO, which is a year longer than Ms. Rhee taught, so he's got that going for him. He is now a staff researcher and "scholar" who uses anecdotal evidence as much as he uses statistical evidence. In his essay "Why We Need School Choice" he uses his children's public education experiences in learning math differently than he was taught and differently than he understood, to prove his children's teachers and their administrator, and the district's methodology was wrong. He cautions his readers that public schools are teaching what they consider "deeper understanding" but they are not teaching them to solve real world problems using a real world approach. Now, I can understand and sympathize with that sentiment as a parent. Every once in a while, my kids bring home something I don't understand. The process is foreign to me, and I wax philosophical about back when I was young and so on. I also understand the frustration when, as a parent, you want what is best for your kids but it doesn't seem like their teachers have the same ideas about what is best. His own limited experience as an elementary teacher certainly makes him more knowledgeable about instruction, but his entire essay is based on the idea that because their way is different, it's wrong. The examples he uses in this essay, the graphics showing the problem-solving techniques his children were learning (or, apparently not learning well) at school show a method of grouping much like my own children experienced in their early elementary days. He makes the point that the teacher wouldn't allow his child to use standard mathematical form of "stacking" numbers used when solving an addition word problem. This method is meant to give the students a visual representation and to increase their analytical problem solving skills so as to apply those same skills when solving more complicated problems. It's a step in a long process, and something parents in my generation didn't learn in school back in the day. As an educator, I know when to step back and allow my kids' teachers to do what is necessary to teach the standards as they see fit, and if I have a question or a concern, I voice it, but I expect the teacher to do what he/she feels is best in his/her professional opinion. I trust the professional of an elementary classroom because that educator has been trained to teach that level.
Another of Mr. Shul's essays is entitled "The Salary Straightjacket: The Pitfalls of Paying All Teachers the Same" and is one of the key components of many school reformers' arguments for merit pay and competitive market-based salaries. In this essay, Mr. Shuls argues that traditional salary schedules that promote experience and education "fail to reward teachers based on their quality" and "fail to recognize that teaching different subjects and grade levels requires different skill sets and that those particular skill sets are in varying demand in the marketplace." What Shuls fails to realize is that teaching is not a market-based industry. It is a public service whereby education students are taught the skill sets of teaching, a very specific skill set indeed. Ask anyone who has quit teaching after a year or a few years on the job. It is a difficult job no matter what one teaches. Varying salaries based on competition in the marketplace is not the answer. He claims that "simply raising salaries for all teachers" would not solve the problem of attracting more and better qualified teachers to the profession. He uses his own tabulation of average salaries of teachers of varying subjects and concluded that STEM (science, technical, engineering and math) teachers, on average, actually make LESS than teachers of other subjects. He states that his information comes from DESE (the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education), but when using his documented sources, no information for these subjects is given. The data he has "tabulated" is not well documented, or not correctly documented. Furthermore, given the challenges of teaching in today's political and public school climates, STEM teachers may not last as long, thereby earning less because they have options that many other subjects' teachers do not have. As a chemistry teacher, for example, the options for getting a non-public education job are greater than that of an English teacher or an elementary teacher. Plus, he admits that coaching and extra curricular salaries are not accounted for, but then questions why coaches should be paid more at all (what?!?!). In other essays, he argues for private school vouchers and scrutinizes the Common Core State Standards because proponents of these standards use the term "deeper meaning" (to which he refers to his previous essay regarding his kids' learning of math and the teacher's use of the same terminology). Mr. Shuls is part of a group who wants to demonize public schools and all they do so that tax dollars can subsidize their kids' private education (because public schools just aren't good enough but they don't want to pay high dollar for private schools).
Essentially, the group who brought Michelle Rhee to Kansas City has a role to play in Missouri politics. There's a group like the Show-Me Institute in every state that works hard to bend the ears of politicians so that their agenda of bringing about vouchers and charter schools owned and operated by corporations (but which have little oversight by those who oversee public education). They want to privatize education in our country in order to create a steeper divide between the haves and have-nots. Michell Rhee, with her pithy comments and witty retorts, her platitudes about how we should give parents choices in who educates their children, all points to the same thing: we want our kids in better schools where they don't have to sit next to the poor, behaviorally challenged, special ed kid and learn things like tolerance and how a democratic society actually should work. We want our kids to be in top-rated schools where special ed kids don't even get chosen to attend, but we don't want to have to pay for it, and we don't want our tax dollars to go anywhere else but to our own kids' schools - the ones who can say no to "problem" children or children with needs unlike our own kids'.
Rhee commented more than once that unless we (the audience members) were willing to send our kids to schools with "ineffective teachers" (oh, I just love that phrase), then the schools had every right to evaluate and dismiss such "ineffective teachers" without prejudice. She argues for no teacher tenure so that administrators can "get rid of" teachers who "fail" their kids. Like so many listening attentively to this sort of politically-charged hyperbole, she actually believes that there is a national crisis (and to hear her and others like her talk, you'd think it was of epic proportions) of bad teachers out there, and that those teachers, instead of being supported and given a chance to improve, which is what tenure actually does (but I'll get to that later), should be fired at will. With this mentality, no teacher would ever make it past his or her first year!
Teaching is a skill unlike any other. It is one that must be honed with practice, good leadership, good mentoring, and support from administrators and parents. In an ideal world, teachers would be held up in such high regard that teacher training would include a paid stipend for a year spent co-teaching with an experienced teacher followed by another year (or two) of co-teaching with full salary. Like an apprenticeship, teachers would learn from other highly qualified teachers. However, we have programs like Teach for America and districts like KCMO who hire people with no experience, no student teaching, and little education in education to teach the most vulnerable and needy students: our inner city kids. These teachers are often placed in charter schools or low-performing schools to replace teachers who have been involuntarily reassigned or terminated due to budget cuts. Because an inexperienced teacher makes FAR less money than an experienced one, they save the district a bundle, yet the results are less than favorable most often. Many teachers in TFA, for example, quit teaching altogether after their required years of service or they find jobs in suburban districts, leaving the most vulnerable population in need of more teachers to fill their spots; and the cycle begins again.
Teacher turnover is at an all-time high, and that is a problem for districts and for kids. What so many of these so-called reformers fail to recognize is that teaching is not for everyone, and not just anyone can do it well. Yes, there are ineffective teachers out there. How many? Not half the number these reformers would have us believe. Probably not even a quarter. What they really want is to avoid paying teacher salaries with tax dollars, just as some of these same people want to end many public services - or at least de-fund them to the point where privatization is necessary. This is the capitalist's dream. Ending teacher "tenure" is high on their agenda, too.
What is teacher tenure, though? In many states - most states - teachers receive tenure after a probationary period of somewhere between 3 and 5 years, typically. During one's probationary period, if a teacher is doing a poor job, he/she is given job targets or, like in my district, placed on "intensive evaluation," which is a way for an administrator to look closely at what's going wrong and help the teacher find ways in which to correct or improve in that area. If, at the end of the year or the evaluation cycle, the teacher does not improve, the administrator has the right to not renew that teacher's contract. If the teacher is tenured, a similar process is followed, but more documentation is required. Unlike critics would have the public believe, it's actually not that difficult in this state, or many others, to terminate a teacher's position IF that teacher truly is ineffective or insubordinate. What tenure does is protect a teacher from the arbitrary whims of the administrator or the district to fire at will. It requires proof that the teacher is ineffective. There are, of course, exceptions like when a teacher is doing something illegal or unbecoming of his/her position as a teacher that can call for immediate dismissal. Tenure doesn't protect someone like Cameron Diaz' character in Bad Teacher or Jack Black's character in School of Rock.
When organizations like the Show-Me Institute get involved in public education policy, it spells b-a-d n-e-w-s for schools and for students in impoverished areas. When their chief goal is to advance "policies that protect and promote free-market capitalism and unleash the energies of a free people to make (their) state a better place for all" and they attempt to do so by promoting homeschooling, private school vouchers, charter schools, and removing "low-performing (teachers) from the classroom," through intimidation and false, unsupported rhetoric, it is a lose-lose situation for all. These are the same people who want to end corporate income tax because these taxes "damage" the economy, and they believe in trickle-down economics (austerity). They are the same group who lobby full-time for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and fight to end subsidies for alternative energy and to privatize public employees' pensions.In a nutshell, they want more for themselves and less for others.
I'm not sure if Michelle Rhee knows or even cares who sponsored her "discussion" with the public. Her answers to the audience's questions boiled down to the same sound bites she's been giving for the last few years, and when pressed, she often reduced her answers to the same, tired, platitudes she gave in her talk with Crosby Kemper III (who, by the way, is the Chairmen of the Board of Directors for the Show-Me Institute). While she was personable and perky, she pandered. She tried to make a room full of public educators (and a sprinkling of uncomfortable-looking legislators and tea party members of KC society in the front rows) believe that she was on our side, that she believed in public education when she cannot possibly believe in it if she believes vouchers are a viable solution. She also claimed from the onset that she was, is, and always will be a democrat, which was a thinly-veiled attempt to win the majority of her audience over (or at least make us think she is one of us) so as to possibly prevent too much heckling.
I have to hand it to the audience though. While her supporters were seemingly in the minority in that room, we behaved exceptionally well for people who could see the enemy before us (and with no protective barrier to keep her safe). We acted like professionals, which is what we are. We are trained to teach, we take our jobs very seriously, and we are effective at being teachers, counselors, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and the biggest advocates of children who come from all walks of life, who survive some of the most horrible childhoods, who suffer from medical, mental, and learning disabilities, who come hungry, cold and tired, and we do this because we love those kids. We have hope in their futures. We care about what they learn and how they learn it. We want the very best for every kid that walks through our classroom doors. So Michelle Rhee can keep talking out her ass about her short tenure as a teacher (did I say that it was only 3 years?) and her short career as the chancellor of a disorganized, ineffective district which was later proven to have falsified test scores under Rhee's leadership, a scandal she claims was "not widespread." She can pretend that she is one of us all she wants, too, but we know she is no friend of public education. She is no friend to kids whose parents cannot afford to place them in private schools who don't have to accept kids with low test scores or learning disabilities. She can promote her book and her Teachers First initiative that brings her a boatload of money through speaking engagements and signings and reap the rewards of a career based on rhetoric and no substance, on the politicization of public school funding, and on the demonization of teachers all she wants. We have been fighting this war for a very long time; and there are more us than of her. We have heart. We have belief. We have the strength to outlast any false prophets of privatization. We will win, but we have to let our voices be heard loudly, and we have to tell the truth about education without fear. We are the way to a better society. The kids we teach now will be the leaders of tomorrow, and we can give them heart, belief, and strength to do what is right for the next generation, too.
That is all.
