Some Thoughts On Chicago

I read an excellent post yesterday, written by a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, explaining why Chicago teachers are striking, and the Los Angeles Times had a very thoughtful editorial on the same subject, discussing the problems with using tests for purposes for which they were not designed, and also explaining some of the issues relating to the seniority provisions. Take a look at the LA Times editorial if you have a chance -- it's very thoughtful and informative.

I do think that many of today's "education reformers" do not understand schools and teachers very well, and I thought I'd also offer my own two cents on a couple of the most important misunderstandings.

First of all, most of the proposed "reforms" only make sense if you assume that most teachers are only doing the bare minimum and if they were just motivated using things like pay and punishments tied to student test scores they would all work harder and do a better job.  In my experience, and as noted in the LA Times editorial, this is an assumption for which there is no evidence.  After college, I went to Harvard Law School and then worked as a corporate lawyer in a big firm in Boston for 10 years, and when I became a teacher I found that it required just as many hours, if not more.  In my time in education, I have met very few teachers who were not also working incredibly hard, spending long hours before school, after school, at home, and on weekends, and the teachers that I know and have known are passionate and caring about their work and doing the best they can to make it work for their students.  Attaching rewards and punishments will not help people work any harder if they are already working as hard as they can -- it will simply demoralize them and make it more difficult for them to do a good job. 

Second, the whole issue of provisions such as seniority in teacher contracts is a difficult and complicated issue -- much more complicated than it may seem, and it's clear that there is much misunderstanding about it.  For example, as the Times editorial also noted, one of the problems for schools is that there is huge pressure to reduce costs.  In the absence of contractual protections for teachers, such as seniority, there would be irresistible pressure to keep only newer, less experienced, and cheaper teachers, which would eventually lead to teaching becoming not a profession but a form of public service in which young people would engage for two or three years after college, to the detriment of our children's education.  Most well-done teacher contracts, such as ours, are not entirely based on seniority, but have a number of factors, including evaluations, that are taken into consideration with respect to layoffs and the like, in order to balance these interests. 

Finally, I want to say again that the characterization of the American educational system as underperforming is incorrect, as has been demonstrated time and time again.  The truth is that there are huge differences between and among schools and districts in this country -- U.S. schools with low poverty rates score at or above the level of the top countries in the world, but U.S. schools with high poverty rates are performing at the level of Third World countries.  Many of the current "reforms" have been shown to be not helpful and some are actually harming our children's education.  Those of us in schools are still working as hard as we can to make it work for the kids, but are becoming increasingly demoralized by the broad brush attacks on schools and teachers.  I hope that the Chicago teachers' action will help to foster more conversation about the issues and that we will be able to make appropriate changes before it's too late.