The “Mea Culpa” Culture in Public Education: failure is the worst sin.

updated 4/14/19

Mea Culpa, Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. (Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault — Prayer of Confession, RC Church.)

The media has something similar, except it’s known as ‘mea culpa’ culture. Essentially, it allows them to print and broadcast any amount of utter codswallop and then later hold their hands up and admit: “We got it wrong.” A good example of this phenomenon is the case of The New York Times and Saddam Hussein’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” — Bryan MacDonald, RT Question More, 8-17-14

A Teacher’s Mea Culpa. On July 14, 2014 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a front page story about a teacher who — after a seven years in teaching — had decided to leave her job in the School District of Philadelphia.

Originally with ten or so friends from Teach of America, she decided to stay beyond their original two-year commitment and work in Philadelphia. “Starry-eyed” and looking forward to a decades-long career teaching in the School District, she started teaching in a middle school. (Teaching middle school is a hard way to begin. My first day was rough. See My First Classroom Teaching Experience.) She really seems to have worked hard at reaching her students. She spent a lot of her own money to buy needed school supplies when they were not provided by the school district.

She began her Philadelphia career in a middle school where I had supervised education students from Widener University in 1994 and ’95. The school was big, crowded, architecturally very difficult to provide supervision for and, by my observations, full of disorder, rough-housing and bullying in the stairwells and secondary halls.That she persisted as a teacher there is an indicator, I think, of her dedication — or hubris?

Then our teacher was transferred to a troubled high school (my wife spent a year there, ’95-’96) where she had to cope with trying to teach algebra to classes with special education students mixed in despite her never having had the training to teach them. Electronic teaching aides — with missing pieces — were provided. She bought what she needed to make them work. Most of her “algebra students” knew nothing above the third grade level of math. Fire alarms would go off frequently, necessitating either evacuation of the school, or illegal disregard by administration, risking a catastrophe. When she called for help with students’ fighting, it would take “seven minutes” for someone to come.

After being transferred again to an even more troubled high school, she needed to take a leave for medical reasons. After a 10 days’ absence for oral surgery, she was told by a school district doctor that she could not return to work for three months for fear that she might “get hit in the face.” The Inquirer printed a statement — on page 1A — she made after deciding to leave:

My students weren’t able to make progress this year. I did them an injustice. The School District did them an injustice. They did not get the education they should have.

One wonders whether the moral education she has as a child had ever sunk in: how could she possibly confess to having inflicted an “injustice” — an “injustice”! — on her students when she had continued work so hard and long with them under very difficult conditions? What about administration? Did they have no responsibility? The teacher “corrects” this tendency on our part to spare her a martyrdom:

It’s not the administration’s fault. “My principal was working hard, but there was one of him.”

The Evidence of Fault? There are several issues here:

a. What has the teacher construed as evidence of such injustice?
b. Has an injustice actually occurred?
c. Is there a deeper issue she’s just not ‘fessin’ up to?

What did that teacher take as evidence of injustice being suffered by students? Their behavior:

"Students don’t verbalize it. They act on it. They run the halls. They smoke in school. They cut class."

In other words they acted like many students in schools, both public and private, in affluent neighborhoods; also, as well as in colleges and universities.

Has injustice actually occurred? Usually the justness of a person’s act is judged by whether they have the ability and resources to prevail in a situation. If the circumstances they faced would be normally overwhelming, their failure is not a case of injustice. Patients who die from ebola have not been unjustly treated if they die despite earnest and professionally correct treatment by their doctors.

There is a deeper issue. Another comment the young teacher makes points to ambition, a motive, which, — though not uncommon in newcomers and often admired — throws a different light on the whole story. “I’m going to get a nursing degree. Teaching degrees just don’t get you anywhere!”

Was this teacher’s mea culpa really a sincere confession of injustice? Or is it a strategem to acquire new employment by showing herself ready to make excuses to obscure administrative and organizational faults? “Hire me and I’ll cover for you!"(See The Social Consequences of Defensive and Counterdefensive Attributions.)

"Buffering" personnel, who "run interference" for their higher-ups, are much in demand. (See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making? ).

Failure is the Greatest Sin. In this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave have appeared over the years numbers of — shall we be generous and call them — “confused, misguided or misinformed people,” who have promulgated the idea that despite all external circumstances that impede us, the positive thinking person will prevail in achieving whatever his or heart truly yearns for.

Failure is the fault of the individual who fails in life, because positive thinking, alone, is sufficient to avoid failure. Many education departments in many a university teach this dogma despite otherwise fervent secular commitments. (See Lurpofactsomosis: Reinvigorating American Education).

The teacher featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer seems to have a “positive attitude” of that ilk. Initially, she joined Teach for America, helping her to avoid the training period and costs of more conventional university access to experimenting with public school pupils. (See Can Education Be Made A Science?). She was probably inculcated with the attitude that her above average personality and intelligence — as proven by joining TFA — , as well as avoidance with “typical educators” would, if coupled with “positive thinking” allow her Michelle-Rhee-like ascent into to the upper echelons of educational reformers and policy-makers.

Far from the problems of dealing with “unjustly” troubled kids in middle- or high school classrooms.

For more information and to examine these issues further, see Cannonfodder: preparing teachers for public schools.).


Cordially
--- EGR

Schooling Practice: ignoring power-nurture conflicts

“Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing -- Thomas J. Peters

New teachers worry about professionalism. They worry whether their peers, their superiors and even their students and their students’ parents will take them seriously. It’s a worry about being accorded the respect they think they deserve.

Why do they worry about respect? Because it gives them the authority they need to bring their students into the paths specified by the school’s curriculum. So they bolster that authority by following and preaching policies, rules and methods. And, behold, it generally works. They are acknowledged to be “the teacher.” And the students do “school activities” as they are bidden.

But teachers face, every day, day-in-and-day out, young, needy, human beings. The teacher’s inclinations are to slip into the role of counselor, parent, older sibling, friend. But then they would have to loosen, to give up on emphasizing policies, rules and methods. This undermines their authority, little enough as they have, and distracts from the stern demands of curriculum.

There are just too many individuals in their classes. And they confront, perhaps for the first time clearly in their lives, that fact that the idea of an “average student” is less a reality than an abstraction. Abstractions don’t have needs. Real kids do. The amount of individual attention parents want for their individual children is just not a possibility given even a small group.

So, to avoid the appearance of favoritism, or neglect, teachers -- often with heavy heart -- learn to apportion their attentions among their many students, knowing that some will find the teacher’s help hardly -- if at all -- nurturing; and others, almost an imposition.

Complicating this basic tension are official importunities that professionalism requires that teachers concern themselves, simultaneously, for special needs, gender, bullying, ethnic, cultural and personal differences among students. Missing any of these issues might result, during a professional observation by administration, in a less than satisfactory evaluation.

And there is also, the inescapable, often deep, moral dilemma: How much of the individual student’s comfort, freedom and self-esteem should be sacrificed, when necessary, for the good of the group?

For references and to examine these issues further, see Power in Schooling Practice: 
The Educational Dilemmas

Cordially
--- EGR

Control in the School: illusions and realities

edited 102719

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. -- Stephen Vincent Benet (1935)

Back in those many years when I was teaching public school and studying nights to get a doctorate -- I was investigating procedures for predicting human behavior -- an old college chum of mine, an up-and-coming Philadelphia lawyer, asked me why I didn’t go into school administration.

I asked him why he thought I should do that. He replied, “So you can have more power, more control and influence.”

He was almost insulted when I replied that power, control and influence -- in public education, at least -- were only likely randomly related to administrative position.

One of the most boring jobs I ever had was as the headmaster of a putatively academically focused, private school. The most important thing I had to do -- which ate up time, futilely -- was to “lunch” with rarely interesting people whose only claim on my attention was their potential for donorship.

I was supposed to be agreeable to each individual member of a governing board who, in depth, differed greatly among themselves what the school was about. (It was all “hale, fellow, well met” at the slogan level, e.g. “Excellence in All Undertakings.”) Each individual board member tried to enlist me as an agent working for him against his less-insightful fellow board members.

Power, control, influence? Not much of that when the friends of board members could act as solicitors for special interests to have my quite ordinary decisions subjected to time-consuming review and reversal.

Teachers who have difficulty with difficult students are often criticized as “lacking control” or other presumably “normal” teacher skills. This criticism comes not infrequently from administrators who escaped the classroom so their own “lack of control” would not be subject to easy criticism.

Teachers who do have control, on the other hand, have to listen to administrators and fellow teachers tell them how “fortunate” they are to have “such good students.” No doubt such statements are intended to help skilled teachers to maintain a proper humility.

For references and to examine these issues further, see My First Classroom Teaching Experience


Cordially
--- EGR

Testing Fraud in School?!!! Is It Even Imaginable?!!!

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. -- Thumper’s Mommy

I won’t mention any names or locations, lest enthusiastic casino owners with enthusiastic hair-dos label me a terrorist, but I read recently in my local papers that accusations have been tendered that standard test results in a local school district have been “adjusted” to raise the averages.

Of course, school officials deny any such manipulations, invoking Brotherly Love to attest to their righteousness. That doesn’t impress me, you see, since I, personally, witnessed, on several occasions during my career in that school district, the “reconfiguration” of data to avoid “negative interpretation” by “outsiders.”

More than one principal has recounted to me how their appointments and promotions were contingent upon “re-evaluations” that satisfied their superiors. Teachers, too, told how they were instructed to fill blackboards with test-relevant information in the very rooms where standardized tests were given.

But, of course, I and my confreres might have been mistaken: it’s hard to keep your head clear when alarms go off at random during the school day and fluorescent bulbs buzz, blink and wriggle incessantly, year in, year out.


If you wish to pursue these delusions further, see CONTRACTING A REAL PERFORMANCE


Cordially
--- EGR

The Teacher Tenure Bogeyman

A common misstatement of “teacher tenure” is repeated incessantly by certain politicians and in the media. Supposedly, past a certain probationary period, public school teachers cannot, come Hell or high water, be dismissed.

This is nonsense. From my experience, as a union member, a building-level union counselor and, later, an administrator, neither statute nor accurate practice supports this misapprehension.

About all that tenure assures is the teacher’s right to a process of review established to justify, if necessary, his or her dismissal. Tenure is the fair alternative to being dismissed merely because of administrative dislike or political expedience. It is not tenure that prevents bad teachers from dismissal; but, "politics."

I have participated in getting teachers dismissed. It is, in fact, extremely difficult to remove teachers from their positions, no matter how abominably they perform in the classroom, if they have friends or relatives in high places. Nor is it likely they will be touched if there is a teacher shortage. Law requires, not a competent teacher, but a licensed adult to “cover” a class. Licenses are cheaply obtained.

Administrators are busy people, almost always “putting out fires” in their school community. It is really too much to expect them to be able to fairly and consistently evaluate the teachers – often many teachers – in their school.

And then there is the third issue: careerism. Administrators make substantially more money than teachers, in general, and, at retirement, receive substantially higher pensions. In Pennsylvania, a superintendent who averages $150,00 a year (a low salary) in any three years of his or her career and has put in 30 years service in any capacity in a public school system, receives a base monthly pension of approximately $90,000/yr for life. (Variations may occur depending if transfers to other funds outside the state pension system are made at the time of settlement.)**

A classroom teacher whose highest three years of salary during 30 years of service average $65,000 will receive a base pension of $39,000 – less if withdrawals are made. The point? Teachers who “rock the boat” threaten not only an administrator’s possibility of promotion; but, also their retirement income.

Principals get promotions if they don’t rock the superintendent’s or other local politicians’ “boats,” or if they step on those teachers who might rock the boat for them. Promotion in public education administration is substantially political, rather than based on clear, widely accepted technical criteria.

So it is that teacher tenure impedes the expedient, not-to-be-reviewed dismissal of whistleblowers, or of academically demanding teachers, or of targets of some vehement though likely evanescent community unhappiness.

The fourth issue is cowardice. Some people want to be leaders and bask in the deference accorded them by their subordinates. But they cannot discipline their troops when needed. So the most glaring incompetence will be tolerated, especially if it is accompanied by obsequiousness.

To examine these issues further, see Teacher Evaluation: Educational Process for Pedagogical Improvement Or Punitive, Political Tool?
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** The general formula is this: Base pension per year = 2% x (years of service) x (average of three highest yearly salaries). For example, 2% of 30years = 0.60 If superintendent's three highest paid years whenever they occurred were $130M, $150M, and $170M, averaging $150M, then 0.60 x $150M = $90 before transfers, deductions and adjustments. Many retire with both 40 years service and higher salary averages.

Cordially
--- EGR

Mental Meringue: conjecture as educational theory

edited 5/21/20

Two groups (among others) abet the destruction of our public schools as educational systems: boards of education and professional educators .

Board members -- pursuing megalomaniac visions and frequently not understanding what it takes to run a real school with real warm bodies in it -- are too often ready to sell out to any political interest that assures them continuity of office.

Professional educators -- through their formal and in-service education -- have been so stuffed with flatulent conjecture, minimally substantiated, often contradictory, sketches of theory, mental fluff that passes for science, that they cannot deal effectively with simple organizational and classroom problems.

Undisciplined conjecture, expanded through leaps of logic and magnified by fear or fervent hope generates the bulk of topics of discussion not only in Education, but also in the world at large.

Public schools, especially, are vulnerable to political meddling, to intrusions by ideologues of all kinds, for whom conjecture is a way of life, so long as others bear its consequences.

To examine these issues further, see Conjecture Pollution: Poisoning Educational Practice


-- EGR

Pursuing a Career in Education. It Ain’t About Student Achievement.

Just like many a big private or parochial school, big public schools are bureaucracies. And many have come to be run by administrators – escapees, often, from the classroom -- for whom career takes precedence over place. “Be true to your school!” is preached to students, few others.

A principal looks to become superintendent; a superintendent, mayor, perhaps, or state commissioner of education. “Don't rock the boat,” “Suffer fools gladly,” “Go with the majority opinion – no matter how blatantly uninformed,” are rules for getting ahead. So it is that really dealing with problems in today's schools places one's career at risk. In many places around this Home of the Brave and Land of the Free, principals (and teachers) have been removed for being too concerned with student achievement or well-being.

Consequently, some principals will deal with the problem of student misbehavior by refusing to allow it official recognition. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Tough kids aren’t bullying: they’re just “fooling around.” Girls who complain of sexual harassment are merely “flirting.” School suspension rates will be reduced by some administrative procedure – “in-house” suspensions which do not affect attendance rates, -- rather than by trying to deal with the reason for those suspensions -- an iffy if not overwhelming task.

Student achievement rates will be raised by pressuring teachers to grade less stringently. Plagiarism is accepted as a research method. Parents, especially in middle-class neighborhoods, collude in this chicanery. After all, it helps their kids get into “good” colleges (where they continue to cheat their way through advanced degrees and professional certificates). None of this, of course, helps students learn or adds to human knowledge or well-being, but such machinations can do wonders for an administrator’s career.

To examine these issues further, see Opting Out of Public School: Eluding the Bureaucracy

Cordially
EGR

Micromanaging Teachers: Is Boredom the Goal?

Back in the sixties, my high school newspaper quoted a fellow student: "There comes a point when boredom becomes a mystical experience." Now that I'm approaching my own sixties, I find myself revisiting that quote more and more frequently.

Unfortunately, I revisit it most often when I am out in the schools. And it's especially sad that many of those teachers know their teaching is usually boring -- sometimes pointless and even unjustifiable. They are just doing their jobs as instructed. Most, clearly, will not last long.

That's sad enough, but I'm even more upset when I run into new teachers who actually believe that the intellectually stultifying teaching which has been imposed on them is a good thing, or at least "normal."

To examine these issues further, see Trivializing Teaching

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-- WAC

Specialist Positions: does your school really need a kluge-maker?

Edited 071719

On being drafted into the navy, Murgatroyd gave his profession as "kluge-maker" and said he was one of the world 's best kluge-makers. Whenever he was asked what he was doing, he said he was making a kluge. Not wanting to seem ignorant, his superiors kept giving him commendations and promotions, until he reached the dizzy heights of commodore.

One day the admiral came to inspect the ship. When Murgatroyd explained he was a kluge-maker, the admiral asked Murgatroyd to show him what a kluge was. "Interesting," said the admiral, "but what does it do?" In reply, Murgatroyd dropped it over the side of the ship. As the thing sank, it went "kluge".(Pronounced kloo-guh.) -- Adapted from this Shaggy-Dog Story

A very common misconception in many organizations is that creating a special position means getting something special done: a confusion of role with function. Clearly role and function are not the same. A principal who picks up a piece of trash does not thereby become the janitor. But not everything, if anything, a principal does is some special kind of “principal-activity” that couldn’t be done by anyone else.

Public school systems tend to be top-heavy with administrator roles whose functions could often be better served by distributing them among staff closer to the arena of action. Only political taboos would be violated.

To examine these issues further, see
On the Viability of a Curriculum Leadership Role: avoiding confusion of role and function

Cordially
-- EGR