How to Destroy Public Education
In Four Easy Steps

TWO: Blame the Soldiers

If you walked into a fast-food restaurant, or any other retail establishment, and saw a photo with the caption "Worst Employee of the Month" posted on the wall, what would you make of the motivational methods of the store's management? Not much. But that is precisely what states across the country are proposing to do by making teacher evaluations available for everyone to see. There is no other group of employees, in the public or private sectors, whose job performance is subject to such a degree of public exposure, or who are ranked from best to worst according to numerical scores. Why teachers? If schools are not really and truly failing on a broad scale, and teachers therefore do not deserve the unprecedented level of opprobrium that is currently being directed at them, could there be some other agenda at work?

One of the most insidious aspects of the "schools are failing" narrative that infects the discussion about public education is the way in which teachers are made the scapegoats for all of the ills of society. We do not blame firefighters in general when incidents of arson are on the rise, or the police as a profession when the crime rate is higher. We don't blame fires even on bad firefighters, or murders on bad cops. We recognize that these individuals are dealing with the fallout of social problems that they did not cause, and that their individual job performance has no bearing on the source of the maladies they are attempting to confront. Teachers must also confront numerous factors that contribute to poor student performance and for which they bear no responsibility: insufficient parenting and poor discipline at home, untreated or mistreated medical and psychological problems, lack of proper nourishment, social pressures of drugs, sex, gangs, and so on. Would we put an army in the field, give them less than adequate training, equipment and pay, send them into battle behind officers who were less interested in winning the battle than in testing military theories, and then hold them responsible for the outcome of the war? Of course we would not (at least not deliberately), yet we are supposed to believe that teachers are the primary obstacles to better student performance.

Worse, this supposition is based on the unproven theory that students' test scores are an indicator, let alone the most reliable indicator, of teacher performance. There isn't a single published study, or even an opinion by any reputable educator, to support this notion. It is based entirely on a misguided understanding by politicians and commentators about how businesses operate in the private sector, where relatively straightforward measures like sales figures drive decisions regarding compensation and promotion. But schools are not businesses (more on this later). In the form of test scores, political leaders believe they have found a numerical correlation to business success in the educational sphere. It is, of course, the one and only way in which a number is attributed to student performance. However, the use of test scores as a measure of teacher performance is predicated on several faulty presumptions, including (a) that the tests themselves are well-designed and properly weighted [this posting on The New York Times/WNYC blog SchoolBook offers one of numerous examples of poor test development and implementation] and (b) that even if the tests were perfect, they are a reliable measure of good teaching. The use of test scores even as a principal measure of student performance has never been effectively demonstrated, and it has certainly never been accepted by educators. Wielding them as a tool for determining the fate of individual teachers' careers is troubling, to say the least.

Even many school administrators are aghast at this unproven and potentially harmful approach to teacher evaluation, and at the unwarranted intrusion upon the educators' domain. Hundreds of school principals in New York, for example, signed a public letter earlier this year to the state's education commissioner criticizing the teacher evaluation plan in concept and its inadequacy in implementation. The following is by Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York, one of the leaders of this effort:

An interesting paradox unfolds: Ask almost parent or student who the best teachers are in their school, and they will not hesitate to name names. Everyone claims to know who the good teachers and bad teachers are, and presumes that their evaluations will merely validate what is already common knowledge. If this were truly the case, we would not need to devise an entirely new system of teacher evaluations to recognize the best and weed out the worst. In fact, where evaluations have already been made public on a limited basis, as in New York City this past spring and across the state in late summer, the anticipated validation did not take place. Statistical systems designed to render into raw numbers the immensely complex task of teaching are so convoluted that it has led in quite a few cases to results precisely the opposite of what one might have expected: mediocre teachers rated highly because they focused intently on the test and nothing but the test, whereas some highly regarded teachers were rated poorly because their students failed to show adequate progress on the very same tests.

Some will no doubt point to these outcomes as a positive development. Perhaps the teacher with the good reputation doesn't really deserve it, and the bad teacher is actually better than anyone thought. But anyone in business can attest that raises and promotions are not always bestowed upon the truly deserving. Any system that humans can devise can be gamed by clever, ambitious and dishonest people. Whether students are truly learning better than they were previously will not be determined by whether a teacher loses a job over a batch of test scores.

It takes an experienced educator to understand and recognize a good teacher. A layperson can observe a teacher delivering a dynamic and highly interactive lesson and still not have the slightest idea if any information or skills of a material and permanent nature were in fact imparted to the students. Without the circumspection that comes from observing hundreds of lessons by many different teachers, one can easily mistake a highly entertaining lesson by a charming teacher for a more substantive lesson by a less charismatic one.

An example: In a district where I once worked there were seven elementary schools, and I had the experience of attending the seasonal student concerts in all of them. The quality of music teaching was far from uniform. One teacher's methods were basic in the extreme, but he had an engaging personality and was very well liked and respected by parents. At the other end of the spectrum was a teacher with highly developed technical and performance skills, but a thoroughly indifferent attitude towards teaching. Still, she impressed the parents mightily at the concerts, always dressing luxuriously and putting on a great show. Overheard in both schools, after listening to their respective concerts, were parents praising both teachers: "Isn't he/she wonderful." It never dawned on them that they had absolutely no basis for comparison, since parents typically only hear the concerts given by one teacher in one school. In fact, virtually all the parents in each of the seven schools enjoyed their children's concerts immensely, and would have sworn by the excellence and effectiveness of the respective teachers, even though the musical skills the students were actually acquiring in the classroom varied enormously. Music is a subject area in which non-teachers at least have some superficial basis on which to judge the quality of the end product, and still the parents were at sea. The effectiveness of teaching math, reading, writing or other essential skills would be utterly beyond their ability to determine. Without a meaningful basis for comparison, and without close observation based on professional experience, such judgments are fundamentally worthless.

The experience of the concerts is symptomatic of the overall weakness in generalized opinions about schools. Polls consistently show that while most Americans believe that the educational system is failing, a large majority of parents have a favorable attitude toward their own school and their own children's teachers. This is not unlike public opinions of Congress: the institution as a whole has abysmal approval ratings, yet incumbents get re-elected at incongruously high rates. If schools are truly failing, then many of the teachers beloved by parents are not nearly as good as the parents think they are. But if the vast majority of teachers are in fact as good as parents think, and the system is still failing, then this failure could not primarily be the fault of the teachers.

Still the question remains: why then are teachers being singled out for the alleged failure of an entire system? One can only assume that there are other factors at play. Considering the zeal with which many states are simultaneously creating different performance standards for teachers and eroding their collective bargaining rights and tenure protections, we can only conclude that many have decided that teachers and their unions are primarily to blame for the supposed failure of American education. Rather than assume responsibility for the failure of government to properly address the issue of poverty, which remains the single most effective predictor of student performance, politicians of all stripes have instead decided that the obstinacy of the unions is at fault. In addition to diverting attention from the root causes of poor student performance, which would costs large sums of money to remedy effectively, reducing the power of teachers' unions instead saves money by potentially reducing pay and benefits, which, education being a labor-intensive enterprise, is the largest budget expense for public schools everywhere.

First, we need to de-couple the issue of tenure from the issue of unions. The tenure laws in most states pre-date the rise of teachers' unions, sometimes by many decades. The model for the tenure system came from universities, where it had been a means of providing teachers with the freedom to espouse their views without fear of political reprisal. The unions do in fact support tenure, as it provides protections against interference and summary dismissal, but they did not invent it nor does it guarantee a job for life, as is commonly believed. Tenure merely guarantees due process. In many states, firing a teacher, even with good cause, can be a lengthy and expensive process, but it is done more frequently than is supposed. Moreover, a large number of new teachers do not ever make it past their first or second year. The New York Times reported on August 17 that only 55 percent of New York City's teachers reaching the end of their probation are given tenure, a dramatic change from the past. Perhaps this is as it should be. Teaching is a demanding job, even in a good school, and it's not right for everyone. But the fact that teachers who ought not to be in classroom are given tenure is not a decision taken by the teachers' unions. In New York, for example, only superintendents have the right to recommend teachers for tenure, and only school boards can grant it. If you imagine that unions enjoy having to defend the misbehavior of teachers who should never have been hired in the first place, you need only speak to a union representative and ask. The last thing they ever want to do is fight to preserve the job of a bad teacher.

What about simply firing a teacher for poor performance? It is true that this is not easy or nearly impossible, given the regulations in most states and the contracts in most districts. But should it be easy to fire a teacher? Everyone in the private sector has more or less the same opinion on this issue: if I can get fired at any time, why should it be different for teachers? The proper response to that state of affair is: why should it be possible for anyone to be fired at any time? Does the absence of even a minimal level of job protection for most workers constitute an argument against such protection for everyone? Instead of taking away the rights of teachers and other public sector employees, we should all be fighting for more rights and better benefits for everyone. Making the lives of all working people uniformly more miserable sounds an awful lot like the socialism that many critics of public schools typically denounce.

In any event, the reasoning behind these protections initially was that teaching children was deemed too important for teachers to be subject to the whim of the principal, superintendent or school board. If a worker on an assembly line is suddenly removed from the factory, the assembly line does not know or care, but if a third-grade teacher is pulled from the classroom in the middle of the year, the students are directly and adversely affected. This does not suggest that a teacher who has committed a truly terrible act shouldn't be dismissed at any time, or that one who just isn't very good at teaching ought not to be pushed out of the profession at an appropriate time, such as the end of the school year. The system we have lived with for decades did in fact achieve a balance between the rights of the employee and the interests of the system. Tenure was not automatic, and gave administrators an opportunity to determine who belonged in the classroom and who did not. At the same time, it offered teachers a limited haven from the prying nature of a public that thinks it knows as much about teaching as educators do. The scapegoating of teachers, including the assault on their long-held rights that we have witnessed in a number of states in the last year or two, provides ample evidence that protections for teachers are indeed justified.

Ironically, the modes of "accountability" now being advanced by reformists will produce exactly the opposite effects of the ones intended. One critical and entirely overlooked aspect of both bargaining rights and tenure protections is that they enable teachers to do their vital work without regard to the consequences for their livelihood and their future. A recent documentary, "Dropout Nation" on the PBS series Frontline, depicts the extraordinary efforts by some administrators and teachers to keep at-risk students on track for graduation in an inner-city Houston high school. The film is simultaneously devastating and hopeful: devastating because of the unbearable burdens carried by the teenagers in the film — alcoholic parents, the threat of a mother's imminent deportation, gang violence, the temptation of drugs, pregnancy, homelessness, hunger — that no young people are truly capable of enduring without serious long-term consequences to themselves and society. In addition to these considerable life problems, they are expected to show up at school on time every day, focus on their class work, keep their emotions perpetually in check, and score well on tests. Every one of these students is smart enough to graduate and go to college, but the odds are overwhelmingly against them. The film nonetheless offers hope because of the remarkable work by the school's leaders to keep these kids in school and help them work through their problems. They define "above and beyond the call of duty." They make enormous sacrifices in time and energy, often risking their own safety, for the sake of these kids.

And why do they do it? This sometimes erupts as a rhetorical question from educator to student, usually in moments of frustration when the student is behaving badly or not pulling his or her weight: Do you think I'm doing this for me? These adults are surely not motivated by money or promotion. Hardly anything that they do in the course of a school day can ever be quantified. But if we change the system so that they have no choice but to worry mostly about the students' test scores, because their own livelihoods depend on it, then we are turning the question — Do you think I'm doing this for me? — on its head.

An analogy with the medical professions is apt: Do we want doctors to make a comfortable living so they won't make medical decisions based on financial considerations, or do we want them to be independent, competitive contractors whose primary motivation is personal profit and self-preservation? In the HMO era in which we live, we already know the consequences of applying market principles to a profession whose very definition and mission do not include a profit motive: defensive medicine, higher costs and lower outcomes. (More on this in the next section.) What makes us think that if we make teachers more vulnerable, we can somehow keep education magically immune from these undesirable effects?

The debate over rights and tenure reveals a fundamental weakness of the proposed new system: if we expose teachers to the public humiliation of having their employee evaluations shown to the world, and if we weaken or eliminate collective bargaining rights and tenure protections, we will disadvantage the earnest, hard-working teacher who pays less attention to test results, while favoring the self-serving teacher who knows on which side her bread is buttered, and nothing else. We will indeed make it possible to reward some teachers and for others to lose their jobs. Whether or not we will be improving the educational prospects of students is another question entirely.