ESEA 2007

This piece was directed to an audience of my fellow teachers.

ESEA 2007

I didn’t envision creating such a sad and serious blog entry this morning, but that is the card I’ve been dealt this evening. Some of you may be old enough to remember the series of “Keep America Beautiful “ commercials featuring an American Indian surveying the land of litter, polluting smokestacks, and unbridled development with a tear rolling down his cheek. I feel like that Native American tonight in regards to the state of public education in our country.

As we all know, public school education has been under attack from all sides for many years. I remember the famous words of Education Secretary Terrel Bell from back in 1983, “We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Secretary Bell’s words struck me then with an intense sadness. Deep down, I suspected his words were a bellwether of changes to come.

Fast forward almost 25 years. The whole institution of education has changed. The art of teaching has been largely replaced by standards based instructional practices. “Accountability” has become the marquee word of the day; a linear, one way, one size-fits-all term.

Through it all, teachers like you and me have struggled to maintain the sanctity of the classroom. We’ve fought to keep education meaningful for our children. We’ve endured ill-conceived curricular changes at the national and state level coupled with unrealistic performance standards. Through it all we’ve been pounded by the media, by parents, and by our government. Do you remember when the Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the NEA a terrorist organization? Oh we grumbled at the changes, especially in how these changes affected the childhoods of our students. Yet we’ve been engaged in a futile fight against that rising tide of over-reaction, over-regulation, institutional blindness, micromanagement, and vilification. It’s enough to make a teacher just want to throw up her hands in despair.

Today I received two pieces of information that rocked me. Monday, I received information direct from NEA that suggests discussions on the reauthorization of The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) with members of Congress are not going well. In fact, NEA believes that House Education Chairman George Miller is close to releasing the revamped ESEA legislation this week. In it, NEA is hearing that there will be no relaxation of NCLB AYP (Average Yearly Progress) requirements. Worse than that, word on the street is that the bill will tie teacher compensation to test performance. That’s right. If the reauthorization passes, our pay will hinge on how well the children we can’t choose from parents we can’t choose from homes we can’t choose perform on tests we can’t modify or adjust.

The second piece of news I received today shook me equally and at a more personal level. A teacher from another school system came to me and told me that a child she received a couple of weeks ago from another country who speaks no English will not be granted an exemption from the Virginia SOL tests this year. So this third grade teacher is faced with the virtually impossible task of somehow imprinting four years worth of curriculum material onto a child who at this moment has no capacity to process it. The teacher was just flabbergasted and at a complete loss. How is she going to be able to get this child prepared to meet the expectations? Is it fair to have this child, who counts in several AYP groups, impact that school’s scores negatively? Imagine if ESEA passes…is it fair to have this teacher’s livelihood negatively impacted because she just happened to have a child placed in her classroom who couldn’t speak English?

It’s all so preposterous. For me, this is a sad Native American-looking-at-litter-tossed-at-his-feet moment. If the new ESEA evolves from draft as anticipated, I don’t see teachers across America taking it quietly.