TFA update on Dr. Royal's Speech
First, I thought Dr. Royal's speech in Philadelphia to TFAers had been taken down at YouTube but apparently not.
This inspired Trish Millines Dziko, noted educator and head of Technology Access Foundation and the TAF Academy in Tacoma, to weigh in. She, like Dr. Royal, is an outspoken advocate for children and public education. She is strong and fearless. Here's what she had to say in reference to Dr. Royal's speech:
This inspired Trish Millines Dziko, noted educator and head of Technology Access Foundation and the TAF Academy in Tacoma, to weigh in. She, like Dr. Royal, is an outspoken advocate for children and public education. She is strong and fearless. Here's what she had to say in reference to Dr. Royal's speech:
Pacific NW Education Reformers Pay Attention to This!
Our public education system needs a lot of work in order to provide the type of education our children need to succeed. However, those leading the education reform movement (particularly here in the PNW) have pushed their toes on the line of paternalism and are heading toward colonialism.
Dr. Camika Royal (an African American woman who is also a former Teach for America member) really laid it out in a way that you should all take seriously and make the necessary adjustments. She knows what she's talking about because she is on the ground. She comes from the very communities you're trying to "save". If you're not willing to listen to people like me (who has a similar background, but doesn't play with the "in crowd" ), then at least listen to Dr. Royal since she comes from TFA and presumably has played in the inner circles of education reform.
Read this Huffington Post article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/camika-royal-phd/teach-for-america_b_1669121.html) and if you want to hear her address to the 2012 TFA new members, check out this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltbJFWOo7IU).
Seriously. Before you get even further down this road, ask yourself: What ways can you actually involve the communities you're "saving" as equal partners in the actual plan to "save"? Why are you making things worse by lobbying to bring in outsiders to manage our schools when you yourselves have not bothered to involve the communities you're supposedly closing the "achievement gap" for? Why don't you invest your dollars in things that already work here and are driven by the community? How many times do you have to hear this message before you actually take it to heart?
As Dr. Royal says, there is a lot of working going on in these communities. What they need is financial and other support. Not for folks to come in and tell them how it should be done and withhold investments because it's not being done the way they want. If you really want to help kids, then support the organizations who are moving the needle, but could move it further with your support.
Our public education system needs a lot of work in order to provide the type of education our children need to succeed. However, those leading the education reform movement (particularly here in the PNW) have pushed their toes on the line of paternalism and are heading toward colonialism.
Dr. Camika Royal (an African American woman who is also a former Teach for America member) really laid it out in a way that you should all take seriously and make the necessary adjustments. She knows what she's talking about because she is on the ground. She comes from the very communities you're trying to "save". If you're not willing to listen to people like me (who has a similar background, but doesn't play with the "in crowd" ), then at least listen to Dr. Royal since she comes from TFA and presumably has played in the inner circles of education reform.
Read this Huffington Post article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/camika-royal-phd/teach-for-america_b_1669121.html) and if you want to hear her address to the 2012 TFA new members, check out this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltbJFWOo7IU).
Seriously. Before you get even further down this road, ask yourself: What ways can you actually involve the communities you're "saving" as equal partners in the actual plan to "save"? Why are you making things worse by lobbying to bring in outsiders to manage our schools when you yourselves have not bothered to involve the communities you're supposedly closing the "achievement gap" for? Why don't you invest your dollars in things that already work here and are driven by the community? How many times do you have to hear this message before you actually take it to heart?
As Dr. Royal says, there is a lot of working going on in these communities. What they need is financial and other support. Not for folks to come in and tell them how it should be done and withhold investments because it's not being done the way they want. If you really want to help kids, then support the organizations who are moving the needle, but could move it further with your support.
Comments
Instead ed reform is about an actually minute number of adults and their desire for power and political clout.
The students only exist as a means to self glorification.
Urban Legend
I agree with her and admire her greatly for her independence in action and thought and contribution to the community. But how did this come to be? And please Hanauer and others: read it.
n...
I will say this is a very tough issue for me because I do see the value in all schools that truly focus on students (regardless of whether they are public, private or charter). We do need serious education reform, but I'm afraid the approach leaves little to be desired and that has unfortunately made some really good ideas sound like bad ones (kind of like people paying attention to the messenger instead of the message).
So I find myself trying to pull all the good out of these ideas and applying them to the students TAF has the capacity to reach. Basically sticking to our knitting and poking our heads up every once and a while to make sure the train isn't going to hit us head on while we're trying to educate kids.
Thanks,
-Trish
Together with school officials, local leaders are working to create community schools. Community schools are the vehicle that enables schools and communities to connect, collaborate and create more powerful learning environments for students. They are places where children gain access to an array of health services and social support as well as enriched educational opportunities that lay the foundation for impactful learning. Community schools are also where families can find the assistance they need to confront the challenges of a difficult economy and to tackle the additional out of school factors Mieliwocki and others face in the classroom.
This strikes me as a much more sensible and effective approach to closing the "achievement"/"opportunity" gap than anything else I've read.
n...
The biggest snag with TFA for me, is the idea of 2 year, flash-in-the-pan, hot-shots having the arrogance and ignorance to believe in their heart of hearts that they know more about teaching than somebody who's ridden the roller coaster for 10+ years, just because they raised test scores a bit while working 80 hour weeks for a couple years in their mid-20s. How "awesome" would they be at 35, with three kids and a mortgage? Do we respect teachers enough as people to allow them a life outside the classroom? Or will we continue the drumbeat that we desperately need nothing less than superstar teachers to educate the pants off this generation to cure all the ills we and our forbears laid at their feet due to our own ineptitude and irresponsibility?
And how much "knowledge" do you all remember from the bubble tests you took way back when? I'll never recall the date Rome fell, but I'll always know why, and that can't be answered on a bubble test. Which is more important?
The whole Ed Reform model, especially of tying test results to teacher evaluations, etc. is wrong-headed and broken from the get-go. There are no simple solutions, yet despite all the rhetoric, the Ed Reformers believe just the opposite, while employing mercenaries and anti-democratic tactics all in order to "win." (Paid, deceptive signature gatherers, for example. Shame on you, Ed Reformers.)
I hope others can appreciate the irony of this discussion as we say goodbye to JP Patches, someone who for decades loved and cared about kids, and educated thousands of them along the way, with kindness, respect and decency at the core of everything he did. Quite a contrast to the bullies, frauds and profiteers within a lot of Ed Reform who proclaim their efforts are "all about the kids." WSDWG
And at the heart, as you say, are the people in the communuties around the country that are DOING things, organic and homegrown, that they think (and they are often right) will help students. No one needs paternalistic, somewhat suspect outsiders to dictate what should be done on the ground.
Thanks again.
http://neatoday.org/2012/05/16/bullying-of-teachers-pervasive-in-many-schools/
Sadly, in recent years the majority of teachers in SPS who are bullied (and forced out) are those who work well with and have made long term commitments to difficult to serve populations.
I believe that principals get away with this bullying because these students typically don't have a strong parent or community voice for a number of reasons. Also, there is an underlying false belief in the education community - the "best" teachers are those who teach the highest level students. Further, if a teacher does well with hard to reach students it is because that teacher does not have high standards.
My students are held to the same standards as any other students. It may take them much longer to reach those standards. It may take multiple stepping stones. It may take my hand leading them along with respect and patience and recognition of every achievement no matter how small others may see that success. BUT we all get to the goal eventually. Maybe not all at the same time but we always are eager to cheer the stragglers along. My commitment to all students is not a two year flash in the pan. I was the "best and the brightest" - a magna cum-laude graduate of a excellent private school. I was a member of Phi Delta Kappa, which is an exclusive organization reserved for the top 4% of private schools students nationally. Never mind the fact that that was nearly 25 years ago- I am still the same person but a much better teacher.
Near the end of the article I have linked to there is this paragraph-
According to Dr. Matt Spencer of the Workplace Bullying in Schools Project, “the bully steals the dignity, self-esteem, confidence, joy, happiness, and quality of life of the targeted victim”. And when the target is an educator, it is a great “injustice” because the bully deprives students of a caring adult who is crucial to their education.
This is what ed reform has accomplished has in SPS.
Shame on those who have feasted their appetite for power on the flesh of countless students and teachers.
Salander
I am thankful Ms. Dziko woke up. Her strong defense of her school's hiring of TFA on this blog several months ago was very disheartening. Apparently, some language that she heard, or the respect of this particular messenger, was the impetus for her change of heart.
Ms. Dziko, the simple veteran teachers of SPS may be more helpful to you than you have previously been aware. Welcome to our world, at least on this issue.
--enough already
There will always be "average" kids no matter how high that average becomes. And there will always be low-achieving students. It's not a perfect world. We need jobs for those students.
n...
"enough already" I have the same view of TFA that I had before. I think TFA served a need when they focused on rural and urban schools that could not draw experienced teachers. They, like many growing organizations, got drunk on their own expansion and started thinking they could and should be everywhere. That said, I don't paint every TFA candidate with the same brush. We have a TFA person who turned out to be an excellent teacher of physics, calculus and engineering for our high school students. On her own initiative she served as a lead for senior projects. We like that kind of initiative from all our teachers regardless of the level of teaching experience they have. We have STEM professionals come into the classroom to teach subjects our teachers have no capacity to teach, but are learning along the way. We provide comprehensive professional development all our teachers (experienced or not) need to effectively teach in an interdisciplinary project-based environment (which is not something taught in most teaching colleges). We also employ blended learning solutions that have nothing to do with teachers or computers.
And as I said in one of my posts, there are some good things out there that come from the education reform folks, and just because it came from them doesn't mean it's all bad, so we take a look and use what we can. The key is 5 out of 6 on my leadership team and about half of my foundation staff comes from the neighborhood we serve and they understand who they're working with.
So to sum it up, I have not changed sides. I don't have a side. I think it's detrimental to the students I educate to have a side. My job is to find everything I can to support their development (regardless of where it came from) and make sure all the adults working with them believe in every single kid and do everything possible for success.
Urban Legend
That's the hard, intimate work of education in a nutshell. Kids come as they are to school - we can't change their life at home - but we can give them the best education at school. And, as Trish, says "do everything" and not just one line of ed reform.
That's how we find common ground.
I wish we could go the way of community schools. We need to address the whole child. And I'd love to have more really good, authentic project-based teaching. Perhaps some of what you are doing could be spread to the creative approach notion. You might consider working with schools and our new superintendent to sort of curricularize your approach.
We need new ideas and the freedom to implement them. In my years of teaching, I've only seen old ideas tweaked and called "innovative." We need help at least to reach the kids who are failing.
Trying to think out of the box.
n...
They certainly do, but that doesn't mean that you have to.
There is common ground - acres of it. That's where Ms Millines Dziko lives and works. That's where the kids are. That's where we all should try to be.
We all - Reformers and Activists - need to avoid the constraining orthodoxy that forces and enforces this false dichotomy. We should be more pragmatic than that.
We don't need radical change and turmoil like Rhee in DC, for example. We are a small enough community to improve and bring about our own changes, with scores of bright-minded people capable of implementing the needed improvements, if only the local Ed Reformers would help out, instead of trying to change everything to suit their views and agendas borrowed mostly from far away places.
As for working together, I do it everyday, with my kids, their teachers, our principals, and other parents throughout our schools, cluster and district. The incredible dedication of all is why I'm infuriated when I witness teachers being attacked and scapegoated by many Ed Reformers who've never walked a step in their shoes, let alone a mile.
A little respect and dignity go a long way. I deeply appreciate your recognition of that, Trish, and don't see you on one side or the other, but simply on the right track.
May empiricism reign supreme! WSDWG
But where did that idea come from? It came from "we the people". We voted for officials who tied high school graduation, and other benefits on students who got test scores. We tied "value" to test results. And by doing that, it is inevitable that teachers will be accountable to that thing we value. And make no mistake, we as citizens created that value. Would it be fair to hold students accountable to test results, but not teachers? No. It would be ridiculous. Next up: principals.
I like Dr. Royal's equating of "achievement gap" with anglo-norming. How true! There will always be an achieement gap if we insist on anglo-norming (or any other norminh). Afterall, if everyone succeeded, success would not be something we wanted!
Reader
It's not just this issue alone that is the brick wall for me. I'm pragmatic, I can be open to TFA if they come in with needed skills and the ability to learn and teach in places where teaches are hard to come by. I'm open to charters if they are run like Albert Shanker's charters (or to schools like TAF or the old TOPS). I'm ok with some cost-effective standardized testings as long thye're useful to teachers and kids and not used inappropriately.
I see that we do need district administration for large district such as SPS, but NOT the scelerotic, bloated one we have now where people command big salaries with big titles, but are inaccessbile to parents, teachers, and students. It's down right depressing when you see your brand new principal being blindsided by admin with last minute major changes and watching this person trying to navigate between implosion and staying professional. Or the whole transportation SNAFU. Or the difficult with SPS communications dept. Why do these things happen all the time? Yet there is little accountability from our past Superintendent or the board to demand better.
The brick wall is big. The hands from CRPE, Stands for Children et al. seems to be building an alternate wall compounding the problem. I was hoping otherwise, but these folks get bog down too and they are not very transparent either with their decision making and plans. Maybe it's because the people behind these groups often work in the same manner as the folks at SPS. At times, their methods in convening public meetings and the need to vett questions/people first just scream fear (fear of us, I think) and losing control. Some may have very good intentions, but it's also about the paycheck and the people they answer to that drives what gets done. Even the PTA seems to have gotten caught up in all this and appears to miss the community input part as it steps into the state political arena.
stuck
n