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This post was written for the 20 community colleges participating in Completion by Design, a five-year Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that aims to significantly increase completion rates for low-income students under 26. As a “National Assistance partner” for Completion by Design, Public Agenda provides direct assistance to the colleges to help them build capacity for solutions-oriented dialogue among faculty, staff and administration. Here, Public Agenda's Alison Kadlec discusses best practices for authentic internal stakeholder engagement. While the post is geared toward Completion by Design planning teams, the principles are useful for any authentic engagement process.
***Far too often, throughout our work in the education field, we've seen even the most earnest and promising ideas from experts and reformers for improving schools and ramping up student learning met with confusion, anxiety or even anger from teachers, parents, students or community members.
What does it mean for education when 40 percent of teachers are "disheartened?" Are they good teachers trapped in bad schools, or just not a good fit for their jobs in the first place? Are the "idealists" getting the help they need to channel their passion in productive ways? You can discuss this and other issues raised by our Teaching for a Living report here.
2011 Public Agenda
Comments
Interesting report. My wife has been a good teacher for +20 years, largely in the same small rural district, and the working conditions have deteriorated from "fair" to "poor" over those years. This year the collective bargaining process for developing an employment agreement is stalled because our economy is in free-fall (MI). The administration, while good at the building level, has determined that her middle school classes for teaching 60 individual students is only funded for $100.00 in supplies for the entire year. This is a slap-in-the-face for any professional educator (BTW - this amount is applied per teacher in the building - she wasn't singled-out for any reason). I'd love to see the Board of Education reduce the Superintendent's office to $100 in supplies for the year! Fortunately, as she and I have matured in the profession, we can afford the $2,500-3,000 we routinely use to support her classroom supplies. She loves middle-school kids and so she puts-up with the indignities. To be fair she makes a good living, pay and benefits wise, but that is what you should expect for someone with two Masters Degrees - isn't it? Do we really want teachers to make subsistence wages/benefits? I've always understood that the "social contract" involved in public service was that you trade high gain otherwise available in the private sector for fairness and meaningful benefits (like modest retirement). It seems lately that I've either misread that social contract or its become threadbare.
I'd like to be optimistic about the profession - I teach at a public university training special educators - teachers and administrators. Most of my students are passionate and excited to learn about the field. They want to make a difference in the lives of young people - just like the teachers rated "Idealists" in the survey report. I would like them to have a bright future - don't you too? SC
After 38 years of teaching, twelve of them as a reading specialist, I am sad and disillusioned with my profession. The joy of my life has been working with children and instilling them with a love of reading and writing, and a desire to be curious about their world, - to want to know "why" and "so what?". My daily routine has been reduced to testing, data analysis, teaching to the test by way of power points, worksheets, and study guides. My eight year old students are required to master concepts which require time and a variety of learning experiences. Our day is rushed from one subject to the next. Our curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep. Teachers on my grade level are required to be teaching the same objective at the same time on the same day. We call ourselves the "Stepford Teachers". Teachers have no say in what they teach, how they teach it, or how long it should take, We are judged by weekly tests, quarterly tests, and the all important SOL tests in the spring. Teachers are held accountable, not by how they value children and instill a desire of learning in them, but by their test scores. The price of all of the high stakes testing is evident throughout the school day. Students no longer discuss favorite authors and anxiously await the arrival of the new Newberry and Caldecott winners. There is not time for writing "our lives". We write to the prompt, by golly, using a four square formula. And - we pass that writing test! Never mind that all of our writing sounds the same, with the same intro, closing, and transition words. When asked why they should read the material or complete the project, children answer, "So we can pass the SOL tests!". This is not my idea of an education.
If I would have taken this survey, I am sure that I would have fallen into the 'disheartened' category. As a veteran teacher of 34 years, I strongly object to the idea that perhaps at some time I should have been counseled out of the profession. It is the very opposite that is true for me. For all 34 years, I can honestly say that I love teaching children, and I have perfected my craft. However, I see clearly how administrative mandates and beliefs about testing and compliance have invaded the profession to the point of reducing the joyful practice of learning to bubble-in tests. This is how disheartened teachers are created....not by a lack of love and devotion to the profession, but by witnessing the complete destruction of the profession, many times created by administrators who have spent little to no time in the classroom as teachers themselves. That is the real correlation that should be investigated!!
The problem with the research is that it is researching the wrong subject. What it should be researching is “parental involvement, are they”?
I think it is a shame that so many of the teachers identified as "Idealists" want to get out of the classroom and into other areas. That doesn't seem like idealism to me! We need some way to keep them in the classroom with their good attitudes intact.
After 41 years in the profession at the High School level, I retired. Ocasionally, I return to substitute because I miss the kids as well as earning "play money."
In my four decades plus, education has changed tremendously. Much of the change has been caused by the spoiled kids of spoiled parents who think they have a right to question everything including basic manners and behavior. "Helicopter parents" and the non involved parent, complicate the job of attempting to educate students. Administration of schools has become, for the the most part a joke. If a teacher has a problem with a student, it is the teacher who has to answer to why the class disrupter was thrown out .... not the student whose behavior was so disruptive, it shut down the teaching/learning process in the classroom.
Central administrators do not want to have to deal with parents so the burden is pushed on the building administrators. In turn they don't want to deal with discipline issues so those issues are pushed back to the classroom teacher with the "understanding" if you have a problem, it is your fault. As an example, in my former district, students TELL the teacher and administration when they want to serve detention for some infraction of the rules.
I loved my profession, despised the unions (and still do,) and am very grateful for the challenges public education faces today with school choice, home schoolling, internet courses, charter schools, federal and state mandated testing, merit pay, etc etc. The "education professionals" became lax, the unions even worse as they spend so much money on politics. Finally, no one seems incompetent enough at any level of education to have their employment terminated. In include in the last sentence every one from Superintendent down to classroom aides.
I found the survey results interesting. I am an "older" fairly new teacher and am appalled at the decline in student knowledge. When I began teaching in 2000 I had inquisitive students who were eager to learn. The previous comments that education is not what it was since testing has taken the focus are right on point. Eighth grade used to be the year that you captured students attention and turned them on to more sophisticated literature and left them hungry for further experiences. Now we read parts of novels but there is no time to enjoy the richness of the literature, only to focus on particular chapters that zero in on the concept we are required to teach. Students certainly were more critical thinkers than they are today!
In relation to putting teachers into the categories of "disheartened," "content," and "idealistic," I found myself wondering how the data would change were the "idealistic" and "content" teachers required to teach in the poor and low performing schools? Would they still fit in those categories, or would they become part of the disheartened? Would the teachers classified as "disheartened" once again become "content' or "idealistic" were they given the opportunity to teach in a school with few challenges?
Two things should occur before negative labels continue to be placed on teachers who choose to teach in the lowest performing schools. The first is that every individual who feels they are qualified to place judgment on a member of the teaching profession should first be required to teach in a low performing school for a minimum of a year. Second, ALL teachers should be required to teach in all types of schools and not just the highest performing schools. Then and only then will you be able to obtain an honest assessment of how folks in the profession feel. You would most likely see drastically different results!!!! I stay where I am and fight the multitude of obstacles that stand in the way of my students' success because I am an "idealistic" teacher who feels that sooner or later a strong leader will come along and things will be different, and because I know that those labeled as "idealistic" leave schools with the most challenging population usually following the first year of service. This is where the real tragedy of education is witnessed on a daily basis.
According to your survey, I am a "disheartened" teacher based on my age and job placement, "content" because I have seen my student test scores raise and hope that I would be included in the equation relating to their success, as well as believe that I am doing what I was born to do.
Please, please, please, stop belittling older teachers and those in the more difficult placements until you are strong enough to follow in their footsteps
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