Sunday, April 8, 2012
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Priestcraft in Education
A definition of priestcraft from the internet is this: "priestcraft - a derogatory reference to priests who use their influence to control secular or political affairs." I would add "or for money" to that definition. Another definition that perhaps fits even more with education is this(with two words to change): "priestcrafts are that men preach(teach) and set
themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and
praise of the world; but they seek not the welfare of Zion(children).”(2 Nephi 26:29) I believe that public education has suffered a great deal from the effects of educators involved in this abusive practice who seek not for the welfare of the children, but only to promote themselves or their pocketbook.
One of the most damaging things for public education is when educators use their position to gain higher position or income by promoting a program or product they developed. This self-interest causes them to use children, and parents' concern for their children, to gain increased income or standing. Usually those doing this are able to hype the kids, or their parents, long enough to make the program or product appear worthwhile - enough so to sell it or use it to gain promotions.
The supposed benefits usually fade away after they are gone, disappointing those left holding the bag. This disappointment has built up politically until there are many who, not only don't trust educators, but actively fight against public education in general. "Priestcraft" in education is what has created the "fads" in education. Fads like open classrooms, whole language, new math, and other controversial programs would be examples.
Ironically, competition, which is billed as the silver bullet of accountability to route out these fads, actually increases and promotes this kind of abuse. When accountability and evaluations are based on competition in education, those most guilty are most able to gain promotions, power, and more money, because they are those most likely to use or misuse data to promote themselves.
Large district size contributes to this, because it gives a higher ladder to climb, places to hide accountability whether by complexity or distance, and bigger budgets to raid. Thomas Jefferson taught that government is safest the wider it is shared. That was why our government was spread between three branches and three separate levels of government by our forefathers. Spreading that control not only makes abuse more difficult, it helps train more people in self government.
I do not know a way to ban false philosophies in a free society. I have no trust in legislative attempts to guarantee "good" education, nor to guarantee a quality teacher in every classroom. I do believe that by sharing the governance of education and pushing it to the most local level (by dividing our large schools and school districts), is the safest, most likely way to avoid the abuse of the system by educators practicing "priestcraft" for their own advantage at the expense of the children.
One of the most damaging things for public education is when educators use their position to gain higher position or income by promoting a program or product they developed. This self-interest causes them to use children, and parents' concern for their children, to gain increased income or standing. Usually those doing this are able to hype the kids, or their parents, long enough to make the program or product appear worthwhile - enough so to sell it or use it to gain promotions.
The supposed benefits usually fade away after they are gone, disappointing those left holding the bag. This disappointment has built up politically until there are many who, not only don't trust educators, but actively fight against public education in general. "Priestcraft" in education is what has created the "fads" in education. Fads like open classrooms, whole language, new math, and other controversial programs would be examples.
Ironically, competition, which is billed as the silver bullet of accountability to route out these fads, actually increases and promotes this kind of abuse. When accountability and evaluations are based on competition in education, those most guilty are most able to gain promotions, power, and more money, because they are those most likely to use or misuse data to promote themselves.
Large district size contributes to this, because it gives a higher ladder to climb, places to hide accountability whether by complexity or distance, and bigger budgets to raid. Thomas Jefferson taught that government is safest the wider it is shared. That was why our government was spread between three branches and three separate levels of government by our forefathers. Spreading that control not only makes abuse more difficult, it helps train more people in self government.
I do not know a way to ban false philosophies in a free society. I have no trust in legislative attempts to guarantee "good" education, nor to guarantee a quality teacher in every classroom. I do believe that by sharing the governance of education and pushing it to the most local level (by dividing our large schools and school districts), is the safest, most likely way to avoid the abuse of the system by educators practicing "priestcraft" for their own advantage at the expense of the children.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Problems in Education Caused by Government and Size
Having districts and schools get too big, and the rise of
government interference, have been very devastating to education. Districts getting too big cause schools
to also get too big, as I have explained on my website, www.smallerschools.org. The site also shows data supporting and
explaining why size can be so negative.
Government interference mainly started when John Kennedy
used education as an issue to get elected in 1960. He blamed the schools for the USSR getting a man in space
first. This accomplishment had
nothing to do with schools and everything to do with the fact that the USSR had
spent so much of their budget in this pursuit, and we hadn’t. By promising federal funds, he got just
enough votes to win. His
successor, Lyndon Johnson, fulfilled this promise in 1965. We did get to the moon first, but it
was because we invested in NASA, not for anything the government did to or for
the schools. Federal funding was
followed by legislation year after year, seldom with sufficient funding for
implementation, adding to the burden imposed on local schools. The legislation then invited judicial
rulings that further increased requirements without funding
There were many educators who began to see, first in the
federal government and later in states, a source of money and power by
promising reform and training to improve teachers. After almost 50 years, there is little evidence that these
diversions of funding made any improvement. Indeed most of the “reforms” in teaching only undermined
good teaching, such as the constructivist-based philosophy of teaching, which
produced such failed programs as Whole Language, New Math, and Open
Schools. Most of the efforts to
reform teachers and the system have only complicated education and weighed down
good teachers.
Until these events are reversed, education will only get
more expensive, more complicated, and with less quality provided.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Common Core Curriculum
That is what the Common Core "State" Standards are bringing, the same "standard" for everyone nationwide, which will become the same curriculum. No one will be able to compare with anything different.
Then if the wrong things are made the standard, the WHOLE nation goes over the cliff, instead of just a district or two, before we can wake up and change it.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Sweden's and Indiana's "Choice"
In the past month the Deseret News has had several editorials supporting school vouchers or tuition tax-credits, and there are bills being written for the legislature to implement them next year. There are things we can learn from other countries as we consider adoption.
Sweden’s adoption in 1993 of vouchers, following Milton Friedman’s advice, made it universal and simple. The funding follows the student regardless of their parents’ income. Any school, non-profit, for profit, or religious can receive the government funding at the same amount as a public school. The school has to be all-inclusive, provide national standards, and have its performance monitored. They may not charge their students fees beyond the voucher. Private school enrollment has increased from 1% to about 15%. This is all according to Sweden's former State Secretary of Schools, Odd Eiken, in The Daily Caller.
This month’s Liberty Magazine, whose mission is to protect religious freedom, is reporting that there are new sweeping additions to their educational system this year. Among other things, the national curriculum will now include a very explicit sex ed. class for 11 year olds. Home schooling will be outlawed. As a result many home schoolers are fleeing the country in order to preserve their control over their children's education.
“In addition to the new home schooling restrictions, Wallqvister (Swedish Education Ministry political adviser) explained that all nongovernment-run schools—already financed by the state (vouchers) —will now be forced to adopt the national curriculum. No more praying, no more alternative teaching approaches, and no more options." What was that about vouchers providing "choice?"
After almost 20 years these private schools cannot now afford to pull out either. This certainly was not on the horizon for the private schools when it was implemented. Now their only “choice” is to obey or fold.
Indiana passed the first state-wide voucher program in the U.S. this year. According to Adam Schaeffer, Policy analyst, Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom (a conservative think tank) “…the voucher program will not only expand state control over and homogenize participating schools by requiring adherence to a single state-designed test, evaluation, and curriculum, it will also cut into the market for non-accredited (non-voucher) schools. The likely effect is a serious loss of education freedom and diversity of options in the medium-term and a near-total loss in the long term.
If you read his article, you can see the absurdity of what will now be required of private schools in Indiana accepting a voucher, and how it will push out those who wish to remain free by NOT accepting the voucher.
Think of the form of government of all the countries that have adopted vouchers. They’re all socialist! Vouchers and tuition tax credits allow the governments more control over the private schools, which PREVENTS competition! Conservatives must not be taken in by the voices claiming competition and choice, for neither will be provided with vouchers or tuition tax credits.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tenure
I read an article called “Who Deserves Tenure” by Chester E. Finn, Jr. in the June 2011 Education Matters disparaging tenure. There were several problems I had with the article. The question is not about who “deserves” anything. Tenure is not, as the author states and popularly believed, a right to lifetime employment. “Tenure,” or the right to not be fired without a cause and due process, is a tool designed to give the same stability to teaching, when the winds of philosophy blow back and forth, that judges need. It also is a cost containment tool.
The author of this article is a strong conservative, as am I. I have seen situations where teachers with a conservative philosophy were protected ONLY because of tenure. The teaching profession, K-12 and higher ed., is very much driven by philosophies, which regularly change. Tenure protects teachers, just like judges, from pressure to fire them because their philosophy becomes unpopular in the moment. True, that can protect someone who has a faulty philosophy. More often than not however, it protects good teachers from administrators with faulty philosophies or momentary pressures from a mob-mentality group who have been whipped into frenzy.
I have seen administrators who, for instance, were pushing “new math” or “whole language” that would have fired good, experienced teachers who resisted the drive to impose that style of teaching. Many times newer principals or superintendents really believe in a purist view of a particular program or style, or they want to show how capable they are as an administrator by implementing a particular program quickly. Sometimes teachers just don’t want to change, but I believe most of the time, teachers that are resisting have seen similar programs come and go or have valid reasons why it is not in the students’ best interest.
I have observed curriculum leaders and college of education professors, who typically have a rather liberal philosophy, telling conservative legislators, board members, and others how terrible tenure is – that it makes it hard to implement reforms. Little do these policy makers realize that without tenure, these teacher trainers would more easily implement the very philosophies the policy makers oppose! Teachers are actually more conservative in general than those who train them. These trainers would dearly love to get rid of tenure, so they could strong-arm teachers into installing their ideas more fully.
It is ironic to me that conservatives are the loudest in calling for the elimination of tenure, but if tenure were eliminated, there would be many more liberal ideas than conservative ideas instituted, because curriculum leaders and professors are the ones in the key positions to do it.
It is naïve to think that administrators would get rid of all the bad teachers and keep all the good ones. We sometimes assume that because administrators are paid more or in authority that they are better or more knowledgeable than the teachers they supervise. Often they are less experienced or more focused on climbing the administrative/political ladder than on building children. To give them unrestrained power over a teacher’s future would not be dissimilar to giving the President authority to remove justices with whose decisions he disapproved of.
Tenure is also a financial consideration. The author correctly states that it “…is a valuable employment benefit that substitutes in part for salary….” Without tenure there are two scenarios that would play out in education. 1. It would become much more expensive in an attempt to convince people it was worth investing at least four years of college to become a teacher despite the likelihood of being fired when your salary increased. 2. More likely, the instability created would cause constant turnover, which has been proven to drive scores down in schools.
There will probably always be those who would be willing to step up to the plate, thinking they can teach well with no experience or training. But without some job security, who would invest years of college and honing of style to become master teachers, knowing that at any moment they could be fired, whether for budgetary reasons, a group of frenzied citizens, or most likely a philosophical difference with a new administrator?
I’ve said for years, if they will triple my salary, I’ll give up tenure and take my chances. Then I’d be an independent contractor, but I’d have to charge enough to make up for lapses in employment, moving costs for changing jobs, and managing my own retirement, etc. Come to think of it, I’d need more. Also when hired, I’d be team building only so long as I felt it was in my own career interests. The problem is teaching is not like professional sports or entertainment where one can hire an agent to represent you and where the money is because you play before thousands or millions of people who invest nothing except money to see you. Educating requires getting students to work to improve their minds, even when sometimes there is little support at home.
There are horror stories like “rubber rooms,” etc. I submit that there are other causes for these problems, particularly the size of districts. In large districts unions get too much power trying to compensate for too much power in the bureaucracy. It is in large districts that poor teachers and administrators can hide. Smaller schools and districts have much less problem with this issue, because people can’t hide. They usually remove or improve on their own; indeed they feel the possibility of improvement, which is usually lacking in large bureaucracies.
If we really want to improve governance in education, we would study the absolute need to divide in order to grow, indeed in our country, because it is not an education issue. I have research on this issue at www.smallerschools.org. The source of the problem is not tenure. It is the size of the organization, and it has implications far beyond education alone.
Tenure may not have “come down from Sinai,” but it has evolved over a couple of centuries of trial and error. Just like some who would throw out our form of government for supposed flaws they see, those who would throw out public education, yes, and tenure, despite their flaws would get something much worse.
The author of this article is a strong conservative, as am I. I have seen situations where teachers with a conservative philosophy were protected ONLY because of tenure. The teaching profession, K-12 and higher ed., is very much driven by philosophies, which regularly change. Tenure protects teachers, just like judges, from pressure to fire them because their philosophy becomes unpopular in the moment. True, that can protect someone who has a faulty philosophy. More often than not however, it protects good teachers from administrators with faulty philosophies or momentary pressures from a mob-mentality group who have been whipped into frenzy.
I have seen administrators who, for instance, were pushing “new math” or “whole language” that would have fired good, experienced teachers who resisted the drive to impose that style of teaching. Many times newer principals or superintendents really believe in a purist view of a particular program or style, or they want to show how capable they are as an administrator by implementing a particular program quickly. Sometimes teachers just don’t want to change, but I believe most of the time, teachers that are resisting have seen similar programs come and go or have valid reasons why it is not in the students’ best interest.
I have observed curriculum leaders and college of education professors, who typically have a rather liberal philosophy, telling conservative legislators, board members, and others how terrible tenure is – that it makes it hard to implement reforms. Little do these policy makers realize that without tenure, these teacher trainers would more easily implement the very philosophies the policy makers oppose! Teachers are actually more conservative in general than those who train them. These trainers would dearly love to get rid of tenure, so they could strong-arm teachers into installing their ideas more fully.
It is ironic to me that conservatives are the loudest in calling for the elimination of tenure, but if tenure were eliminated, there would be many more liberal ideas than conservative ideas instituted, because curriculum leaders and professors are the ones in the key positions to do it.
It is naïve to think that administrators would get rid of all the bad teachers and keep all the good ones. We sometimes assume that because administrators are paid more or in authority that they are better or more knowledgeable than the teachers they supervise. Often they are less experienced or more focused on climbing the administrative/political ladder than on building children. To give them unrestrained power over a teacher’s future would not be dissimilar to giving the President authority to remove justices with whose decisions he disapproved of.
Tenure is also a financial consideration. The author correctly states that it “…is a valuable employment benefit that substitutes in part for salary….” Without tenure there are two scenarios that would play out in education. 1. It would become much more expensive in an attempt to convince people it was worth investing at least four years of college to become a teacher despite the likelihood of being fired when your salary increased. 2. More likely, the instability created would cause constant turnover, which has been proven to drive scores down in schools.
There will probably always be those who would be willing to step up to the plate, thinking they can teach well with no experience or training. But without some job security, who would invest years of college and honing of style to become master teachers, knowing that at any moment they could be fired, whether for budgetary reasons, a group of frenzied citizens, or most likely a philosophical difference with a new administrator?
I’ve said for years, if they will triple my salary, I’ll give up tenure and take my chances. Then I’d be an independent contractor, but I’d have to charge enough to make up for lapses in employment, moving costs for changing jobs, and managing my own retirement, etc. Come to think of it, I’d need more. Also when hired, I’d be team building only so long as I felt it was in my own career interests. The problem is teaching is not like professional sports or entertainment where one can hire an agent to represent you and where the money is because you play before thousands or millions of people who invest nothing except money to see you. Educating requires getting students to work to improve their minds, even when sometimes there is little support at home.
There are horror stories like “rubber rooms,” etc. I submit that there are other causes for these problems, particularly the size of districts. In large districts unions get too much power trying to compensate for too much power in the bureaucracy. It is in large districts that poor teachers and administrators can hide. Smaller schools and districts have much less problem with this issue, because people can’t hide. They usually remove or improve on their own; indeed they feel the possibility of improvement, which is usually lacking in large bureaucracies.
If we really want to improve governance in education, we would study the absolute need to divide in order to grow, indeed in our country, because it is not an education issue. I have research on this issue at www.smallerschools.org. The source of the problem is not tenure. It is the size of the organization, and it has implications far beyond education alone.
Tenure may not have “come down from Sinai,” but it has evolved over a couple of centuries of trial and error. Just like some who would throw out our form of government for supposed flaws they see, those who would throw out public education, yes, and tenure, despite their flaws would get something much worse.
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