They've Lost Everybody

It used to be that a handful of teachers at department meetings would be on board with the latest reform jive.

They could be counted on to talk the talk, use the jargon, and just generally get excited about whatever the latest greatest education fad was that the DOE was trying to sell us.

This year I have noticed that not one teacher in my department is excited about the latest greatest fad - Danielson and Common Core.

Even the teachers who did some of the Common Core PD a few years ago and were first excited about the reforms have turned on them.

I warned teachers in my school a few years ago that these reforms were not being done with us, they were being done to us.

I told people that they were meant to make it easier to scapegoat teachers for all the problems in the school system and ultimately fire a whole bunch of us.

A few years ago, many teachers in my department didn't see the reform movement that way

But now when I say these kinds of things, people just nod their heads and agree.

They know Danielson isn't meant to improve teaching - it's meant to give administrators an easy tool to fire teachers.

Similarly, Common Core is not seen as something meant to improve academic achievement but is seen as yet one more underfunded mandate that is being used to scapegoat teachers for all the ills in the system.

Maybe this is the way the DOE and the NYSED and the Regents want it - everybody so beaten down and demoralized that our PD department meetings sometimes resemble a prisoner of war camp.

But I wonder how it is they think that can push these reforms through with almost no teachers on board with them other than a handful of teachers either too naive or too green to see the agenda behind the movement.

The education reformers are an arrogant lot, so maybe they think they can mandate this stuff from above and put the accountability systems in place and use the media to bludgeon any slackers in the system and it will all work out fine.

But what I hear when I go to meetings with colleagues - even ones who used to be on board with the reforms - is "Boy, I can't wait for this shit to fall apart under its own unworkability."

Doesn't seem like a reform movement with legs when the practitioners who are supposed to put this stuff into practice have turned against it.

I am coming to see this the more we have these Danielson meetings.

There is nobody sitting in these meetings who believes the reform jive at face value anymore.

Nobody.