In a post at the Daily Beast, Diane Ravitch points out the anger teachers felt when they read this. His actions are speaking much louder than any words he can say.
Teachers Furious at DuncanThe first week in May was Teacher Appreciation Week. On May 2, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released an “open letter” to America’s teachers, thanking them for their service and saying, in essence, “I hear you, I respect you, I understand your problems, I want to work with you.” It should have been about as controversial as the president’s annual Thanksgiving message, but in this case the letter backfired. Teachers reacted to the letter with outrage, as if it were addressed to the turkey community on Thanksgiving Day.
No one should be surprised. Behind the teachers’ rage and skepticism is the fact that Duncan has time and again said that “bad” teachers cause low test scores, refusing to recognize (as he did, belatedly, in his letter) that low test scores are primarily caused by poverty and lack of family support. Teachers remember that he cheered when the entire staff of Central Falls High School was fired (albeit temporarily). They recall that he was one of the few to applaud when the Los Angeles Times published teacher effectiveness ratings online, based on flawed test score data. They know that his Race to the Top program has encouraged state legislatures to pass laws mandating that schools evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores, even though testing experts say that such ratings are unreliable and inaccurate. He has been notably silent as legislatures have stripped teachers of seniority, tenure, and collective bargaining rights.
The expressions of outrage began with dozens of comments posted in response to Duncan’s letter on the website of Education Week, the journal where the letter first appeared. The overwhelming majority reproached him for insincerity and hypocrisy.
Well, Education Week has the letter subscription only, but it is posted at the DOE website. There are some scathing comments there, and it looks as though some have been removed.
In Honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. An Open Letter from Arne Duncan to America’s TeachersI won't post the letter, but here is a paragraph that is typical. It is more of the here's what I say, ignore the reality of what I do.
I consider teaching an honorable and important profession, and it is my goal to see that you are treated with the dignity we award to other professionals in society. In too many communities, the profession has been devalued. Many of the teachers I have met object to the imposition of curriculum that reduces teaching to little more than a paint-by-numbers exercise. I agree.
Those are words only. Both he and President Obama applauded the firing of all the teachers at a Rhode Island school in a community known for its poverty. Teachers don't forget that kind of thing very easily.
Here is a most fascinating comment that was posted at the Ed.gov website this week in response to the letter. I say amen to the statement.
Secretary Duncan studied sociology at Harvard, played bush league basketball in Australia, and then, through a childhood connection who had worked hard and made money, got a Directorship at a private educational foundation. Having never worked his way up through the ranks, Secretary Duncan has always been a general, and has no idea what’s required of the soldiers he’s commanding in the battlefields that are many of our nation’s toughest educational environments. It is not surprising then that when there are school failures, Sec. Duncan cheers firing of the women and men who are the ones showing up everyday to carry out his Department’s orders. When schools fail, it is communities that have failed, it is management that has failed, it is government that has failed, it is district offices that have failed, it is parents that have failed, it is systemic failure, but through the leadership of our top Education officier, the scapegoat for any failure within the nation’s education system is the teacher.
When Chrysler and GM failed, both companies with unionized workforces, the government guaranteed the companies debt, provided massive amounts of financial support, and allowed the companies to function in a hands-off manner that never happens in education. Interestingly, in each of these cases, management was held responsible for policies that were creating products customers didn’t want, and were fired. The assembly line workers were not blamed for making the products that management demanded, and were not required to be humiliated with a mass firing, and re-applying for their jobs. This level of humiliation is reserved for teachers.
The Atlanta Constitution Journal published a letter from an educator who had something to say about Arne's tactics.
A teacher’s response to Arne Duncan..‘Poverty doesn’t have easy solutions.’While I realize that there are some bad teachers, I don’t think that bad teachers are the reason why our education system has problems. If you get rid of all of the bad teachers (which I hope you do, but doubt you will able to do if you only use test scores as indicators of effectiveness), we will still have students who are reading below grade level and unable to demonstrate even basic skills in other areas. That’s because the main problem in education isn’t teachers. The main problem is poverty.
I believe every child can learn and that children in poverty shouldn’t be written off as inferior or unable to achieve. In the No Child Left Behind lexicon, “no excuses” became the battle cry to promote high expectations and heightened achievement for our poorest students. However, when we use the mantra “no excuses,” we mask the realities that poor children deal with. “No excuses” becomes our excuse as a society to continue neglecting the neglected. We don’t want to solve the problems of childhood hunger, unstable homes, or transience. We don’t really want to look at why children in poverty have such different education outcomes than children of affluence. Poverty doesn’t have easy solutions. It’s much easier to tout a new teacher training program or teacher effectiveness measure than to tackle a societal problem that has been a problem as long as there has been society.
An article at Huffington Post shows that many bloggers have been speaking out about this as well. You have to scroll way way down for the commments.
Teachers Question U.S. Education Secretary's Respect For ThemWhen elementary-school teacher-turned-advocate Sabrina Stevens Shupe saw Duncan's letter, she was dismayed, saying she felt it did not reflect his policies.
“There were so many things going wrong in terms of false assumptions and things that are not consistent with his actions,” she told The Huffington Post. "If you’re somebody who’s reading it, and you’re not aware of the whole back story, it sounds very nice. It’s so duplicitous."
So Stevens Shupe wrote a letter back to Duncan in the form of a blog post, saying that “actions speak louder than words.” She took issue especially with his message about testing because, as she wrote, “you have elevated and increased high-stakes.” She said Duncan's letter struck her as a public-relations stunt.
“It’s disappointing to hear that someone feels that way, but we don’t think that’s how the broader teaching community feels about it,” said Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the Education Department.
Anthony Cody, a former teacher who now works as a teacher mentor in Oakland, Calif.’s public schools, reacted similarly to Stevens Shupe and crafted his own response to Duncan, which he posted on Education Week. Cody wrote that he was “confused” by Duncan’s message to teachers. For example, he asked, if No Child Left Behind standards are so narrow, why use them as the basis for closing down schools?
There are so many comments following the article. Here is just one. It rings true because so many teachers and students at so many grade levels are filling in bubbles after spending days practicing how to choose the correct bubble.
“As I type this, my sophomore English students are on their third consecutive day of state-required end-of-course assessments in my class. I can do nothing but sit here and time the test while lamenting the fact we have now lost 270 minutes of classroom instruction time because of mindless testing. The sad fact is that today's test isn't even a required element. Instead, my students were "lucky" enough to be randomly selected to take a pilot test so that the state can write even more inane multiple choice questions for future tests (while making the testing companies wealthier). Instead of starting a new novel for rich literary discussion and for yielding essay topics for the end of the year, my students are bored out of their minds with a test they know doesn't even count.
Between end-of-course assessments in English, biology, and Algebra I and also AP exams, our school testing calendar for May is a picture of insanity. There are only two school days of the entire month where some kind of standardized testing isn't taking place. Thanks to the policies first established by Bush with NCLB and now perpetuated, we have turned our schools into standardized testing factories rather than genuine places of exploration and inquiry where students actually learn to think. Please don't tell me you respect the job I'm doing. Don't patronize me in that manner.” Comments at Huffington Post.I applaud her statements. That comment was posted this week, so the reactions to the letter are continuing. The letter was posted to the DOE website May 2. Today is May 13. I am glad to see that teachers are still speaking out. They should continue to do so.
Democrats, their leaders, and others should join them in speaking out to preserve public education, but I sadly don't see that happening at all. I think the word choice of the commenter was right on the button. When Arne's actions are the opposite of his words...she was right to say "Don't patronize me in that manner.”
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