In 2010, the corporate reform
movement emerged as a national phenomenon. “Waiting for Superman” was the rage
that fall, aided by a massive Gates-funded PR program, asserting that bad
schools were caused by lazy, greedy teachers.
Suddenly, the push for privately
managed charter schools and attacks on teachers merged as a coherent “reform
movement,” helped along by $5 billion in Race to the Top federal funding and
Arne Duncan’s persistent snide comments about “bad” teachers, low standards,
the promise of charter schools, and the necessity to judge teachers by the test
scores of their students.
Conservative Stanford economist Eric
Hanushek was at the center of the fray, pointing out in 2010 that conservatives
and liberals now agreed that teachers were the biggest problem in schools.
Hanushek had a featured role in “Superman,” where he reinforced the importance of choice and data as levers of change to raise test scores.
In the fall of 2010, he wrote an
article for the Wall Street Journal asserting that “There is No War on
Teachers.”
The article was sufficiently popular
that Hanushek rewrote it and published it a few more times, first in the Hoover
Institution publication in 2011 as “The ‘War on Teachers’ is a Myth,” and again
in defense of the Vergara
lawsuit in California, which sought to throw out teacher tenure (he
said that the teachers’ unions would surely trot out “tired rhetoric” about
“the war on teachers” to defend tenure.)
No, no, he insisted there was no war
on teachers, just a bipartisan effort to hold teachers accountable for student
test scores.
But now, Nancy Flanagan writes on her blog at
Education Week that the war against teachers and the teaching
profession has gone into high gear. The mask is off. Betsy DeVos is leading the
charge.
She writes:
“Several years ago, when the concept
of a “war on teachers” was first entering the national conversation, I used the
phrase in a blog. I got a solicitous message from a casual ed-friend, a man
with more degrees (and from more prestigious universities) than I have. He
politely told me that using “purple prose” weakened any carefully supported
argument I could make.
“Besides, he didn’t believe there
was, or ever had been, a concerted, organized effort to demean public school
teachers–only disconnected bits of evidence that not everyone thought teachers
were universally beneficent and professional. Nothing new. Nothing substantive.
Just the same old grumbling about bossy, arrogant teachers, the bottom tier of the
academic barrel.
“I was probably more worried about
what people thought of my writing back then, because I haven’t used “war on
teachers” language since. Until I read this: Parent Unions inviting
stakeholders in multiple California districts to weigh on survey questions.
“Sample question: Over the last 10
classes you have taken. How many teachers would you characterize as idle,
incompetent, rude, or lacks teaching ability?
“Another question: Unfortunately,
the educational system has some bad apples who’s [sic] actions not only affect
other teachers, but also the lives of students. Help us identify some of those
infected [sic] in order to preserve your educational experience, as well as the
experience of the next generation.
“Are there any teachers that are
abusing their authority in or outside of the classroom?
“The teacher (#1) I have listed
below should be fired:___________________________________
“Sample question: Over the last 10
classes you have taken. How many teachers would you characterize as idle,
incompetent, rude, or lacks teaching ability?
“Another question: Unfortunately,
the educational system has some bad apples who’s [sic] actions not only affect
other teachers, but also the lives of students. Help us identify some of those
infected [sic] in order to preserve your educational experience, as well as the
experience of the next generation.
“Are there any teachers that are
abusing their authority in or outside of the classroom?
“The teacher (#1) I have listed
below should be fired:___________________________________
“You get to choose three teachers to
be fired. And–to be fair and balanced–you get to choose three who should get a
raise. The “survey,” offered to parents and students (and social media trolls,
of course) goes on in a similar vein, with small editorial bits about horrible
teachers and their horrible unions, urging survey-takers to name names and get
those incompetent offenders out of our classrooms, so that children can be
better prepared for their future.
“Is this a war on teachers? Organized
by corporate-funded “parent unions?”
“Or is it just same-old griping
about teachers by resentful adults, including those who were never properly
instructed on the difference between “who’s” and “whose”?
“I would argue that we have
genuinely reached a tipping point, one where we’re struggling to get young
people to go into teaching as professional career (as opposed to two-year
adventure before law school). Our state legislators are openly declaring that
teaching is now a short-term technical job, not a career, and thus public
school educators don’t really need a stable state pension.
“That’s not only a war on individual
teachers, but a war on teaching itself.
“In the spring of 2011, the planning
team for the Save Our Schools March of July 2011 struggled to clarify our aims.
We knew it was important to have a set of lucid, defensible goals. We couldn’t
speak to media or explain the purpose of rallying in Washington, D.C., without
simple, easily understood objectives…
“It seemed to me then–and still
does–that what we were fighting for, in the end, was more basic: the
preservation of public education. There were people on the planning team (who
had more degrees than I, and from more prestigious universities) arguing that
the existence of public education was not endangered.
"We wanted better support for public education, certainly, and improvements in public schools, changes in policy and practice. We were fending off threats, for sure. But public education itself would survive….
"We wanted better support for public education, certainly, and improvements in public schools, changes in policy and practice. We were fending off threats, for sure. But public education itself would survive….
“Last night, I went to my local
Indivisible group meeting. I gave a two-minute report on education in my
county.
“I said: There’s a war on teachers
and we are facing the end of public education. It’s time to do something. And
people applauded. What are you doing, in your county or district, to make these
statements out loud?”