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Re: Teachers and a Law that Distrusts Them
What's happening with Mike Winerip? Fired? Moving on? If so, where?
RSVP,
Pete Farruggio
At 06:30 AM 7/12/2006, you wrote:
TEACHERS, AND A LAW THAT DISTRUSTS THEM
New York Times "On Education" Column -- July 12, 2006
by Michael Winerip
This is my last education column after four
years. What I will miss most is the free ticket
it gave me into classrooms all over the country,
where I watched and learned from teachers.
I got to be there at 7:15 a.m. on the first day
of this school year with Irene Ray, a terrific
high school English teacher in Huntington, W.
Va. Ms. Ray had intended to leave small-town
Appalachia long ago for the big city, but there
she was again, for her 23rd first day, sipping a
Diet Coke, nibbling an Atkins breakfast bar,
more excited and jittery than her students,
wanting to know how their summer reading went,
whether they?d enjoyed ?The Scarlet Letter? or,
like Ms. Ray, preferred ?The Poisonwood Bible.?
Ms. Ray spent a week readying her room for the
first day, including adding to the favorite
quotations that line her walls. Bored students
distracted by iPods and the Internet? ?She?s got
new quotes,? whispered a girl, who was reading Ms. Ray?s walls.
I also got to be there at 3:15 p.m. on the final
day of school this year, in Dahlonega, Ga., at
Lumpkin County Middle School, when Pat New, a
science teacher, taught her last lesson, after
29 years. Ms. New, 62, had fought to the end for
her right to teach evolution, winning out
against a group of parents and students and an
administration that preferred not to make waves.
The columns about teachers generated the most
mail, but lots of others were fun to write.
Chronicling the mess-ups with New York State?s
standardized exams ? in math, English, English
as a second language, physics, reading ? was always great sport.
But the people who took me to the heart of
education? Laurin MacLeish, kindergarten teacher
in Orlando, Fla.; Roger Cline, diesel engine
teacher in Canton, Ohio; Jeff Kaufman, G.E.D.
teacher at the Rikers jail in New York City;
Liza Levine, English teacher in South Central Los Angeles.
Principals? A little bit. Superintendents?
Chancellors? State education commissioners? You
can probably still name your kindergarten
teacher (that would be Miss Goddard, Beechwood
Knoll School, 1957). But how about the secretary
of education during any of your 13 years in school?
The education press spends so much time writing
about people far removed from the classroom that
it?s easy to lose sight of those individuals?
real purpose ? to help teachers do their jobs
well, the best hope for student success.
As readers know, I?m not a fan of No Child Left
Behind, the 2002 federal law aimed at raising
education quality. Instead of helping teachers,
for me it?s a law created by politicians who
distrust teachers. Because teachers? judgment
and standards are supposedly not reliable, the
law substitutes a battery of state tests that
are supposed to tell the real truth about children?s academic progress.
The question is: How successful can an education
law be that makes teachers the enemy?
Even No Child?s strongest supporters acknowledge
that one of the law?s most important provisions
? to guarantee a highly qualified teacher in
every classroom ? has been the most poorly carried out to date.
So, to improve classroom teaching and make
teachers more enthusiastic about the law, I have
three departing suggestions for when the
legislation is expected to come up for reauthorization next year.
First, why not add a provision rewarding states
and districts that mandate small class size?
It?s an idea that enjoys great support among
parents and teachers and is easily carried out on a national scale.
Why small class size? Deborah Meier, the
teacher, principal, author and MacArthur Award
winner who has created successful public schools
in New York and Boston, says the best chance for
educating poor children well is surrounding them
with as many talented adults as possible. The
same premise drives one of the most hopeful
efforts in urban education today, the Gates
Foundation?s small schools movement.
Joe Gipson, a black public school parent in
California, which has had a mandatory cap of 20
in grades K to three for a decade, told me small
class size is the best thing that?s happened to
his children?s education, giving them what rich
private school pupils have. While small class
size is no guarantee that teachers will be good,
he said, with just 20, you can tell faster if
teachers are performing well, and get rid of them if they?re not.
Gov. Jeb Bush
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/jeb_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
is very popular in Florida, and in 2002, he
opposed a constitutional amendment to cap class
sizes, including a maximum of 18 for grades K to
three. He said it would be too costly. And yet
voters in Florida, hardly a tax-and-spend state,
voted for it. Every year since, the Republican
governor has tried overturning the class size
amendment, and every year he has lost, most
recently last spring, when the
Republican-controlled State Senate defeated his efforts.
?It?s a moral issue,? said Senator J. Alex
Villalobos, a Republican
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
whose wife is a public school teacher. ?Class
size is the great equalizer. Anybody who has
children understands this. We have a moral
responsibility to take care of our children.?
In 2003, 115,000 New York City residents signed
petitions aimed at setting class size limits,
and in 2005, 100,000 did. Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg has said the city cannot afford to do
more now, and has successfully stalled
advocates? efforts in court, but at a price to
children. A recent state audit shows that 26
percent of New York City children in grades K to
three are in classes of 25 or more.
The intent of the No Child law could not be more
important ? to narrow the achievement gap
between white and minority children. But what
angers public educators is that under the law,
schools get all the blame if students fail, when
they see many other variables at play, including
the crippling effects of poverty on families.
Studies show that the economic status of a
child?s family has a major impact on a child?s
performance on standardized tests. On the SAT,
for example, for every $10,000 increase in
family income, a child?s SAT scores rise about 10 points.
Which leads to my second proposal. We need a No
Family Left Behind Law. This would measure
economic growth of families and punish
politicians in charge of states with poor
economic growth for minority families.
FOR example, in Ohio, black families earn only
62 percent of white household income, one of the
biggest disparities nationally. So every year,
under No Family Left Behind, Ohio would be
expected to close that income gap. If it failed
to make adequate yearly progress for black
families? wealth, the governor and legislators
would be judged failing, and after five years,
could be removed from office. This way public
schools wouldn?t be the only institutions
singled out for failing poor children.
And if states succeeded in closing the economic
gap, test scores would be expected to rise,
giving politicians and teachers a chance to celebrate together.
A final concern with the federal law is that it
is so driven by state testing that there?s too
much time devoted to test prep, too much time
spent drilling facts for survey courses, and not
enough emphasis on finding something children
will fall in love with for a lifetime ? the
Civil War, repairing engines, science research, playing the trumpet.
Fortunately, the remedy can be found on Ms.
Ray?s walls in Huntington, W. Va., a quotation
from William Butler Yeats: ?Education is not the
filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.?
I recommend that as the official motto for a
new, revitalized No Child Left Behind law.
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