Louisiana Educator: Obama Needs Better Advice on Education #AFT14

Louisiana Educator: Obama Needs Better Advice on Education:

Obama Needs Better Advice on Education

Four well respected teachers who teach in high poverty schools got to have lunch with President Obama recently and give him their suggestions about how to get some of our best teachers to teach disadvantaged students. One of the teachers who has ablog wrote a post describing the meeting and made several valid points about the challenges facing teachers in such schools.

But he forgot to mention the most important point that should have been made in this discussion with the president. The biggest obstacle to getting excellent experienced teachers to teach in high poverty schools are the policies promoted by his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan  that drive the best teachers out of those schools. Using No Child Left Behind rules and Race to the Top incentives, Duncan has bashed and stigmatized all educators who work in the most challenging schools. Why would any self respecting professional educator want to teach in a school that is always referred to as a failing school or is in constant danger of being closed or reorganized (forced into turnaround mode) requiring the firing at least half the teachers and all administrators?

The problem starts with semantics. When a school serves a high percentage of at risk students who happen to score lower on the almighty standardized tests, the system classifies the school as a failing school. You see it is not politically correct to ever place responsibility on the students, the parents or even crime ridden communities where children have to spend most of their energy just surviving from day to day. No, the system of evaluating schools Duncan has encouraged stigmatizes all educators and administrators in such a school even if they are doing a relatively good job for the students they serve.  For example, in Louisiana recently, all alternative schools statewide (schools that specialize in serving low performers, students at risk of dropping out and major discipline problems) were all rated as "F" schools. But by definition, these schools were serving low performers. The real purpose of such schools is to try in every Louisiana Educator: Obama Needs Better Advice on Education: