The "Deprofessionalization" of Teaching

While doing online research for an unrelated topic for my blog, I stumbled across an episode of the acclaimed daily news program, Democracy Now!. Entitled "Educators Push Back Against Obama's 'Business Model' for School Reforms", host journalist Juan Gonzalez spoke with Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, and Lois Weiner, professor of education at New Jersey City University, to discuss various issues related to the current education reform movement in America. While there is the embedded HTML code for the episode video clip on the Democracy Now! website, I opted to use the episode video clips posted on You Tube, since they are divided into two segments. Although I will focus on selected parts of the interview, I strongly encourage everyone to view it in its entirety.

In the first segment of the interview...



...this is what grab my attention the most:

JUAN GONZALEZ: But now, what’s wrong? The supporters of Arne Duncan, superintendents like Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC, Joel Klein in New York City, and others around the country, are saying, what’s wrong with having higher accountability standards for teachers? What’s wrong with encouraging experimentation and entrepreneurship, in terms of how you deliver public education to the millions of children who so far have not been served by the public education system? So what’s wrong with that?

KAREN LEWIS: Well, the problem is that the whole idea of the business model doesn’t work in education. In the business model, you can select how you want to do something. You have an opportunity to innovate in a way that discriminates. It’s very easy to do. Whereas in a public school system, where we do not select our children—we take whoever comes to the door—what we need is actually more resources and more support for the people that are there and the work that’s being done...

In the second segment of the interview...



...these are what struck me the most:

JUAN GONZALEZ: You’ve also taken a look at the impact of No Child Left Behind on teachers. Could you talk about that?

LOIS WEINER: Well, I think it’s important to understand that there are—No Child Left Behind is part of this global project to deprofessionalize teaching as an occupation. And the reason that it’s important in this project to deprofessionalize teaching is that the thinking is that the biggest expenditure in education is teacher salaries. And they want to cut costs. They want to diminish the amount of money that’s put into public education. And that means they have to lower teacher costs. And in order to do that, they have to deprofessionalize teaching. They have to make it a revolving door, in which we’re not going to pay teachers very much. They’re not going to stay very long. We’re going to credential them really fast. They’re going to go in. We’re going to burn them up. They’re going to leave in three, four, five years. And that’s the model that they want.

     So who is the biggest impediment to that occurring? Teachers’ unions. And that is what explains this massive propaganda effort to say that teachers’ unions are an impediment to reform. And in fact, they are an impediment to the deprofessionalization of teaching, which I think is a disaster. It’s a disaster for public education.

 ...

LOIS WEINER: Well, that’s part of the—you know, that’s part of the thinking here, that teaching really is not—does not have to be a skilled profession, because we’re not going to teach—we’re not going to educate kids to do anything more than work in Wal-Mart or the equivalent. They only need a seventh or an eighth grade education, at most a ninth grade education, and so we don’t need teachers who are more than, as Grover Whitehurst, a former Undersecretary of Education, said, "good enough." That’s all we need is teachers who are "good enough" to follow scripted curriculum and to teach to these standardized tests. And if you only need teachers who are good enough, you don’t have to pay them very much. And that’s the project...

While Ms. Lewis emphasizes some key criticisms of the education reform rhetoric spewed by the ed deformers, it was the commentary by Professor Weiner that opened my eyes to this game the ed deformers are playing. To the ed deformers, all of this is a systemic ploy to dumb down the future workforce to become more docile and less high-skilled, as well as to deprofessionalize the teaching profession. I think Professor Weiner conveys this better than anyone else I have heard. And I believe she is absolutely correct.

How is teaching becoming more deprofessionalized?

• In my Master's thesis, I examined how NCLB affect the teacher workforce. (Mind you that I completed my degree over a year before the current ed deformers' propaganda got into gear.) According to its HQT criteria, all public school teachers must be certified by the state, as well as attain an undergraduate degree and pass content assessment. However, that is not the case for charter school teachers; in fact, a large percentage of teachers in a charter school are not mandated in many states to be certified. Nevertheless, every public and charter school teacher must meet the HQT criteria. In retrospect, NCLB is more concerned with teachers who are more knowledgeable in their content area than in pedagogical skills.
• Educator Julia Stein shared her experiences as a charter school English teacher and described how the administrators at this particular (and probably other) charter school  as fast-tracking kids, as young as in the 10th grade, in these college-level courses which they are not prepared for.  In addition, she expressed her unfavorable views of teaching English classes with more focus on grammar and less exposure to a variety of literature
• According to the EPIC/EPRU, Miron/Applegate, and Vanderbilt studies, teacher attrition (moving to another school or leaving the profession) is as nearly twice as high in charter schools than in traditional public schools. In an article where I discovered the former study, one of the commentors, D. Jones, shared her expertise on the matter:
  I am a charter school survivor. I taught two and half years at two different charter schools and survived low pay, bounced paychecks, no pay, no running water when the school didn't pay the water bill, no personal leave time -- even to go to the doctor when sick, and many other things that public school teachers never (usually) have to contend with. Rather than leave the profession, I found a good public school district which I have now been at for 3 years. Charter schools are a training ground -- nothing more. Good teachers who love the profession should move along into the public schools and consider their charter school time a good learning experience in how NOT to do things.
• In a more recent study on teacher attrition by Vanderbilt University, dissatisfaction with working conditions was cited as the primary reason for teacher attrition among charter school teachers. plus, the rate of involuntary attrition (termination) was significantly higher among charter school teachers than their traditional counterparts. Another study on teacher attrition conducted in Wisconsin's schools, which is more biased toward ed deformers, cited lack of job security and demanding workload as the primary reasons for higher attrition rates among charter school teachers.
• Due to the current economic woes around the country, state budget cuts in education has not only affected public school teachers, but also charter school teachers as well.  For example, see what happened to the teachers in Oklahoma:
  Not even the current stimulus package from the feds can rescue charter school teachers.
• One of the perks of charter schools is having a non-unionized personnel. However, there is an increasing number of charter schools nationwide where their teachers have unionized, including in areas like NYC and Chicago.
• Throughout the country there are widespread cases of charter school executives and managers committing corruption, fraud, and profiteering of school funding, which some of it comes from taxpayers. It is also worthy to note many of these executives and managers are paid salaries much higher than superintendents and principals in public school systems.

There is no instructional leadership or real, holistic learning taken place in many of these charter schools. Instead, there is this "supervisor-subordinate" dynamic among a college-educated workforce; streamlined process of student learning that many students may not be prepared to handle; and an organizational culture where the "bosses" sit on top and are being paid nicely while the "peasants" work harder and are paid less. Of course, the ed deformers wants to portray teachers and teachers unions as being "greedy", "selfish", and "irresponsible"; they wish not to share their dirty little secret that who they are ACTUALLY describing are themselves. Oh the irony!

No professional, including many of these same ed deformers, wouldn't be who they are if it weren't for another set of professionals -- teachers. Educating children is not contingent on content mastery alone, but also pedagogical skills in understanding how children learn. That's the art of teaching. Learning is too complex for standardization. Yet, those who embrace the "business model" of schooling don't have a clue; for the people they claimed to fight for a good education will be hurt by this movement the most...our children.

UPDATE: Directly from Shanker Blog this morning comes a simple concern addressed to ed deformers: Do you REALLY think the teacher supply in the future is "deep" enough to withstand voluntary or involuntary attrition in schools, especially charter schools? I DON'T THINK SO!