Our "Reformers" Are Always Squawking About "Bad Teachers,"

but few people hear from the "bad teachers" themselves.

Of course it is the rotten principals who are largely responsible for terrible school conditions, and they have total power over teachers.

Little did I know I was entering a system where all teachers are considered bad until proven otherwise. Also, from what I saw, each school's principal has so much leeway that it's easy for good management and honest evaluation to be crushed under the weight of Crazy Boss Syndrome. And, in my experience, the much-vaunted "data" and other measurements of student progress and teacher efficacy are far more arbitrary and manipulated than taxpayers and parents have been led to believe.

There are many rotten principals, probably more rotten ones than good ones now because the good ones wisely bailed out of the system when the "reforms" were taking hold.

I had a few good administrators, but the last two were absolute shit, including this one I mentioned the other day who was demoted--and should have been outright fired--from Washoe County School District because of alleged sexual misconduct with a subordinate.  This man ruined many lives and careers, yet he is still allowed to teach students.  The media is allegedly looking into it, but ten cents says the local media will NEVER write about it.

Some of the comments after the article, which are worth sharing here because I know from bitter experience just how bad the workplace can be in public schools:

From what I've seen over the years, the administration is looking for teachers who are so 'dedicated' that they'll put up with petty tyranny, low pay, ridiculous amounts of paperwork, and undisciplined students-- in short, someone who sees teaching as a holy calling.

From what I've seen over the years, the administration is looking for teachers who are so 'dedicated' that they'll put up with petty tyranny, low pay, ridiculous amounts of paperwork, and undisciplined students-- in short, someone who sees teaching as a holy calling. 

Fifty or more years ago, schools depended on teachers who literally believed that it was their vocation...in the religious sense of the word. Now that teaching is no longer one of the few jobs available to females, and the ranks of nuns trained to teach gets smaller, the educational system still acts like a teacher should feel privileged to be able to 'educate the leaders of tomorrow.'

Another one:

Administrators Make or Break Teachers, and Hence Schools

An excellent article, and based on my own experience, probably not an uncommon story. Teachers are the Right's favorite scapegoats, but in my experience, failing schools typically boast administrators like your "Ms. P." Unfortunately, without a supportive and engaged administration, teachers in failing schools are fundamentally crippled in their attempts to teach at-risk children. (When is the GOP going to start going after incompetent administrators, who are much more highly-compensated than teachers? Probably about the same time that they start going after those "lazy deadbeats" who receive corporate, as opposed to individual, welfare.)

A "founding principal" in her "late 30s" is frankly unlikely to be one who spent very many years as a classroom teacher, and that's a problem. She expected you to manage your students' behavior without bothering her and her administrative colleagues, and that's a problem. She only visited your classroom when things went wrong, and that's ahuge problem. It's telling that she did not inform you of the parent's complaint, and ask for your side of the story, when she received the complaint--choosing instead to squirrel it away, like a secret weapon to be used if she ever wanted to bludgeon you or cover her own ass (or both).

I'm in my seventh year as a public school teacher (in a "right-to-work" state), and I have worked for two principals who included one or more of Ms. P's tactics in their own management arsenal. I left both jobs demoralized (traumatized, even). But I still believe that nasty little despots are the exception rather than the rule. Each year brings new challenges, but I am very impressed with the administration in my current school. Although we are a low-performing school in a low-income area, with a majority of our students labeled at-risk, and far fewer resources than we need, the administration supports its classroom teachers with extensive professional development (which involves actual training, not just "team-building" bunkum), and--most importantly--a "We Have Your Back" commitment. It's making a difference: Our students' performance is improving, and despite the challenges of teaching here, we are attracting excellent teachers.

I'm very sorry that the profession has lost you, sir. But . . . before you leave, could you tell me again about the starting salary of over $42,000? In my seventh year, I'm earning $32,000. (Although given the cost of living in the NYC area, I imagine your salary was barely enough to live on.) And I really, really want to hear more about the magical land of teachers who earn $100,000 per year and get a fat pension when they retire. The only pension I'll ever get is composed of the money that is deducted from my salary before I ever see it (something like 8-10% of my gross pay) and placed in a "retirement fund savings plan" for me. The state doesn't make any contributions at all. Oh, to spend even a two-week vacation in WealthyTeacherLandia!

And:

Bad Principle [sic]
I am totally amazed at the number of people responding to this article blame the kids and describe them in the lowest, nastiest and most racist manner possible. The real culprit here is the principle and all of the other moronic administrators like her out there. I worked for two morons like her in a public school system. They expect you to manage disruptive kids completely on your own without any help from them whatsoever. It's completely ridiculous. How many people do you think would obey a police officer if they knew he had no back-up in the form of other cops and a court system? Very few! But these morons expect teachers to do just that - managed troubled, neglected, abused and psychologically damaged kids completely on their own. Yeah. Right.
Kids like that can learn and they can be helped, but they need a highly structured and consistent atmosphere. Before the morons took over my school (there were 3 principles in the six years I was there) I had a principle who provided that. We had a "time out" room for kids who needed to be removed from class - and any kid who showed up there got an automatic detention - before the assistant principle who ran the room even said hello. Teachers were allowed to keep kids after school for detentions and there was also a school detention that teachers could assign, as well. If a kids was repeatedly sent out of class he got assigned to in-school suspension in which he had to sit in a room all day completing all school assignments and lots of extra busy work all day. Boring! The kids knew they could not get out of any of this and they knuckled under. And I was evaluated as a great teacher.
Then the morons came in and dismantled all of this. We teachers were told we could not send the kids out of the room for any reason, even they screamed "BITCH" at us from across the room. Suddenly I was a "bad" teacher because I refused to put up with that and did send them out for that. The last year I was there I couldn't manage, on my own, six boys being evaluated for severe behavior handicap. I was living the nightmare in full force. One even threatened to kill me. The "powerful" teachers union couldn't help because after all, each principle was allowed to set their own discipline policy. I quit at the end of the year, on Paxil, and completely burned out.
Bad administrators are the problem in the public schools. It starts at the school level and goes all the way up to the top. Don't let anyone tell you anything else. After all, who's running the show?

That person hit it on the head, and nobody in the "reform" movement even talks about this.  That is because they are cut from the same "moral" cloth as these incompetents, tyrants, and sociopaths.

Good administrators are rare

If only the public really knew the incompetence of crappy administrations. I work at an urban school with a 93% free and reduced lunch population. Most of the parents are disenfranchised who don't feel comfortable voicing their concerns to the school administration: concerns such as 45 kids to a classroom, poor counseling that involves 3-4 schedule changes in the first month of school, and demanding so much busy work of its teachers that there isn't much time to work with the students. In English and math classes,standardized tests occur much more often than once a year: we have 5 additional tests that take up 3 days each: 15 days for these tests that give us very little extra data beyond the main standardized test that makes or breaks administrator's careers.

Add to that the fact that these children enter school much further behind their middle-class counter parts. Nobody at home is checking their homework, nobody at home is making them read, nobody at home is creating academic expectations. There are always exceptions to the rule but accept that there is a rule.

Then we have assistant principals. We have these morons who will never make head-principal, and who got their principal license/degree from the University of Phoenix, and who really only want a bump in salary. They have no interest in academic subjects and aren't capable or doing the work that AP or IB teachers demand, yet these assistant principals have the authority to evaluate teachers. I know of plenty of situations (mine included) where the principal came in, didn't pay any attention to the lesson, and only wrote evals based on how colorful the word wall was. They live in a world of buzz words and earn 80k a year as nothing more than oxygen wasters. But they aren't seen as the problem.

Yes, I've seen horrible teachers. But they often leave on their own. IMHO the culprits are the administrators who don't support young teachers and who feel threatened by intelligent faculty members whose years of experience counter any new fangled this-is-it classroom remedy. Good teachers are being run out.

 

 As a substitute I would hear teachers talking about how lousy their principals were and chalked it up to burnout or whatever, but then I was in that same position, and now I KNOW what it is like to work in a hellhole for a rotten principal.  In my case, I had TWO shitty ones before I was illegally kicked to the curb.