David Reber Letter

This letter, from Mr. Weber, has appeared in a number of online publications, and in my opinion, speaks clearly to the mounting frustration that some educators are feeling toward this Secretary of Education, and by extension, toward the president who appointed him.

Conrad Wold


A letter from David Reber, who teaches high school biology in Lawrence KS

Mr. Duncan,

I read your Teacher Appreciation Week letter to teachers, and had at first decided not to respond. Upon further thought, I realized I do have a few things to say.

I'll begin with a small sample of relevant adjectives just to get them out of the way: condescending, arrogant, insulting, misleading, patronizing, egotistic, supercilious, haughty, insolent, peremptory, cavalier, imperious, conceited, contemptuous, pompous, audacious, brazen, insincere, superficial, contrived, garish, hollow, pedantic, shallow, swindling, boorish, predictable, duplicitous, pitchy, obtuse, banal, scheming, hackneyed, and quotidian. Again, it's just a small sample; but since your attention to teacher input is minimal, I wanted to put a lot into the first paragraph.

Your lead sentence, "I have worked in education for much of my life", immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year "education" career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan, are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education reform: that the number one prerequisite for educational expertise is never having been a teacher.

Your stated goal is that teachers be "...treated with the dignity we award to other professionals n society."

Really?

How many other professionals are the last ones consulted about their own profession; and are then summarily ignored when policy decisions are made? How many other professionals are so distrusted that sweeping federal legislation is passed to "force" them to do their jobs? And what dignities did you award teachers when you publicly praised the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island?

You acknowledge teacher's concerns about No Child Left Behind, yet you continue touting the same old rhetoric: "In today’s economy, there is no acceptable dropout rate, and we rightly expect all children -- English-language learners, students with disabilities, and children of poverty -- to learn and succeed."

What other professions are held to impossible standards of perfection? Do we demand that police officers eliminate all crime, or that doctors cure all patients? Of course we don't.

There are no parallel claims of "in today's society, there is no acceptable crime rate", or "we rightly expect all patients -- those with end-stage cancers, heart failure, and multiple gunshot wounds -- to thrive into old age." When it comes to other professions, respect and common sense prevail.

Your condescension continues with "developing better assessments so [teachers] will have useful information to guide instruction..." Excuse me, but I am a skilled, experienced, and licensed professional. I don't need an outsourced standardized test -- marketed by people who haven't set foot in my school -- to tell me how my students are doing.

I know how my students are doing because I work directly with them. I learn their strengths and weaknesses through first-hand experience, and I know how to tailor instruction to meet each student's needs. To suggest otherwise insults both me and my profession.

You want to "...restore the status of the teaching profession..." Mr. Duncan, you built your career defiling the teaching profession. Your signature effort, Race to the Top, is the largest de-professionalizing, demoralizing, sweeter-carrot-and-sharper-stick public education policy in U.S. history. You literally bribed cash-starved states to enshrine in statute the very reforms teachers have spoken against.

You imply that teachers are the bottom-feeders among academics. You want more of "America's top college students" to enter the profession. If by "top college students" you mean those with high GPA's from prestigious, pricey schools then the answer is simple: a five-fold increase in teaching salaries.

You see, Mr. Duncan, those "top" college students come largely from our nation's wealthiest families. They simply will not spend a fortune on an elite college education to pursue a 500% drop in socioeconomic status relative to their parents.

You assume that "top" college students automatically make better teachers. How, exactly, will a 21-year-old, silver-spoon-fed ivy-league graduate establish rapport with inner-city kids? You think they’d be better at it than an experienced teacher from a working-class family, with their own rough edges or checkered past, who can actually relate to those kids? Your ignorance of human nature is astounding.

As to your concluding sentence, "I hear you, I value you, and I respect you"; no, you don't, and you don't, and you don't. In fact, I don't believe you even wrote this letter for teachers.

I think you sense a shift in public opinion. Parents are starting to see through the façade; and recognize the privatization and for-profit education reform movement for what it is. And they've begun to organize --Parents Across America, is one example.

. . . No doubt some will dismiss what I've said as paranoid delusion. What they call paranoia I call paying attention. Mr. Duncan, teachers hear what you say. We also watch what you do, and we are paying attention.

Working with kids every day, our baloney-detectors are in fine form. We've heard the double-speak before; and we don't believe the dog ate your homework. Coming from children, double-speak is expected and it provides important teachable moments. Coming from adults, it's just sad.

Despite our best efforts, some folks never outgrow their disingenuous, manipulative, self- serving approach to life. Of that, Mr. Duncan, you are a shining example.

Can't afford to get sick

Bend over, Buster. The here come the health care insurers again. In the May 13th issue of The New York Times, columnist Reed Abelson notes how the largest insurers in the US are enjoying record profits for the simple reason that people are not making claims. Simply, people are not going to the doctor like they have in the past. People are still getting sick. People still have health issues. The problem is, insurance premiums have gotten so pricey that folks are seeking policies that carry higher and higher deductibles. In order to pay the monthly insurance bill, people are now buying policies that have deductibles of $4,000 or more per year. A guy is on the hook for his first $4,000 of medical expenses before the insurance kicks in. So what happens? People continue to pay their outrageous insurance premiums, but they never get to the point where the insurance company pays. Growing revenue vs. lower payouts equals record profits.

I researched the stock prices of the three giant insurers that Abelson referenced in his article: Cigna, Aetna and United Health Group. I had no doubt what I would find. Record profits can only correspond to high stock prices. Sure enough, from their record lows last July, these stocks have taken off. Cigna was $29 per share last July, $48 now. Aetna was $26. Now it’s $ 44. United Health Group went from $28 to $50. Not a bad return for 11 months. Wish I’d bought some, except these profits and surging stock prices have come at a cost to Americans. What a business plan! Raise premiums so high that customers will opt for a policy that they will likely not use because it’s too expensive to use it. Huh? Speaking of raising rates, in Oregon, according to Abelson, Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield plan a rate increase of 22% for individuals.. No matter how bad the premiums get, we pay them. We’re afraid not to. What a perfect business model.

Of course, so many of us had so much hope that President Obama and the Democrats who controlled both houses would somehow, some way, come to the rescue and blow up a game designed for American consumers to lose. The result of their work: reform that isn’t reform. A health care system that enriches the already rich insurance companies and does nothing, absolutely nothing, to lower monthly premiums. Obama and the Dems were a major disappointment in regard to health care reform. A disappointment to everyone except for the shareholders of these companies and the executives who run them.

Goodbye, Donald

One of the more obscure benefits of the successful raid on Osama bin Laden is the removal of Donald Trump from the daily news cycle. It was just two weeks ago that “The Hair” was standing in front of a helicopter with his name emblazoned on the side, as he spoke to the assembled media types, claiming to be “So proud of myself…” for forcing Barack Obama to reveal his birth certificate. Which was worse, the daily ego blast from The Donald or the fact that the media, for a few days, hung on his every word?

Finally, a story of such importance exploded that the media was forced to actually report on something of substance. Suddenly, Trump has been dumped. The Donald is The Gonald, thank God. Trump, where are you? Looking at those pictures of President Obama and his team of top advisors, all gathered together, watching a monitor as the drama of the raid unfolded, it was impossible not to compare that image to Trump sitting down at his table surrounded by his “team” on “The Celebrity Apprentice”. Imagine if Trump was in charge of such a crisis. President Donald Trump, a comfort in crisis!

It took a shocking event to bring the media back to some serious journalism, and focus its attention on something meaningful. One could hope that talk of Donald Trump as any kind of serious candidate will fade away, and that we can turn to more serious issues instead of goofy birth certificate theories, but it seems more likely that we’ll get bored again, the media will run out of big stories that fall in its collective lap, and we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming: the Donald demanding to see Barack Obama’s junior college transcript.

Dignity in crisis

As the tragic events in Japan have unfolded in the last month, first the earthquake and then the subsequent nuclear crisis, it has been nearly impossible not to be fixated by the behavior of the Japanese citizens, and to compare their civilized and dignified composure to the reaction of Americans when we have faced a natural disaster.

I look at news coverage from Japan and see gentility and empathy between their citizens. Scenes show elderly Japanese being carried to safety piggy- back style by younger folks, as one might carry a child. People without basic necessities wait in line patiently until everyone has received his or her share of something as simple as clean drinking water. In one of the more amazing stories of selflessness coming out of this crisis, Japanese citizens in the quake zone are overwhelming their local police departments, not with requests for improved conditions for themselves, but rather to return items that they have found. Among these items: cash. People are literally turning in currency that they have found. When told that there was no identification with the notes, local police offer the finders a form to sign so that they may have the money if nobody claims it within 90 days. Not surprisingly, police report that very few sign the form. The money isn’t theirs, and if the rightful owner isn’t found, well, the government will be needing it in the rebuilding process.

Compare these scenes to the ones in the US following Hurricane Katrina. Recall the scenes of people openly looting not only stores, but the homes of private citizens forced to evacuate. Police firing on looters and looters firing back. Think back to those scenes outside the Superdome.

We can learn a great deal about a people when we examine how they handle adversity.

Teachers Under Fire

Oprah doesn’t like us. Barack Obama thinks we aren’t getting it done. Movies are made about how incompetent we are. We’re responsible for everything from near bankrupt governments to inner city poverty. China owns our country, and it’s our fault. We’re America’s public school teachers, and we’re the problem. Whatever the problem is these days, we’re it. As I finish my 32nd and last year as a high school English teacher, I wonder how a profession that managed to turn out luminaries like Steve Jobs and General David Petraeus and Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan suddenly, in the eyes of the public, and the media, got so stupid, so incompetent, so fast. Public school teachers are America’s favorite scapegoat. I’m not sure how it happened, but if Oprah isn’t giving you any love, you know things have gotten bad.

One of the problems with being a scapegoat (there are many) is that whenever scapegoats try to defend themselves, they come across as, well, defensive. Whiny even. A scapegoat is automatically in the position of having to prop himself or herself up. When we teachers try to defend ourselves we invariably talk about the difficulties of teaching large classes of frequently unruly, uninterested kids. We defend ourselves by telling anyone who will listen that we have to go back to school in the summers to get more education. We talk of having to spend money out of our pockets in order to have supplies for our students. We invariably mention the hours we spend at home grading student work. All these complaints are valid. The problem is, nobody but teachers themselves care. We appear to just be trying to justify our own value. It’s an awkward position, being a scapegoat.


Allow me to give a little personal background. My career is probably pretty similar to the careers of many of my colleagues. As a young man, I completed my student teaching at a racially diverse Seattle high school. My first job, for which I was woefully unprepared, was teaching 10th grade English in a dusty, depressed little Eastern Washington wheat and hay town. I hated it. After a couple of years, I moved to an equally depressed little Southwest Washington logging town and for some reason, loved it. For the last 26 years, I’ve found mostly satisfaction teaching in a large suburban high school north of Seattle. I’ve taught maybe 7,000 students and worked with probably 300 teachers, and I’ve noticed a couple of things.

First, the single most important factor in determining the academic success of the individual student is not the teacher, as so many educational “leaders” have been telling us recently, but rather the involvement of the parent. Teachers are important, no doubt. Money to keep classes small is fundamental. But the single most important factor in a kid’s success is the extent of the parent’s care for his or her child’s progress. For the last few years, I’ve had the mostly pleasant experience of teaching honors level students. There are two things that are always obvious, time after time about these kids. They do very well in school, and also, their parents are everywhere, all the time. These folks live in my school email. They check the academic progress of their kids obsessively. If their student is going to be absent, they want that work so it can be completed during the absence. They go to parent -teacher conferences. They’re possessed. Sometimes they make pests of themselves, but never do they have anything but the success of their kids in mind. I get tired of these parents sometimes, but I admire them.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of the teachers I’ve worked with have been dedicated, hard working and extremely self critical. We beat ourselves up regularly. This is one reason that the merit pay idea doesn’t stand a chance of improving teacher performance over the long run. No teacher says, “I’m going to teach harder so I can get $10 grand more.” Teachers work hard because we know there’s a price to pay if we don’t. Weak, unprepared teachers become known as such to their peers. There’s a painful stigma attached to it. It’s embarrassing. A weak lesson plan results in bored, disruptive students and a migraine headache for the teacher. I’ve been there. It’s a nightmare. Work that isn’t corrected and returned in a timely fashion sits on the teacher’s desk, a reminder that the job isn’t getting done. Teachers may not know how to correct their weaknesses, but every teacher I’ve ever talked to knows on a deeply personal level what his or her weaknesses are. It’s such a personal profession. In my 32 years in the business, I’ve known maybe five colleagues (all males, strangely) who were just going through the motions, not caring about teaching or the progress of the kids. There have been others, perhaps seven, who simply were not meant to be teachers. It wasn’t for a lack of effort. They wanted to succeed, but they struggled with important aspects of the job, usually classroom discipline, were personally miserable, and usually left of their own accords. Again, this is in a career of working with 300 teachers.

I don’t know how we teachers got to be the center of the bull’s eye, but today, we sure are. Maybe it’s the economy. Hasn’t there always been a general understanding that a guy would never get rich being a school teacher, but there was job security for the most part and the benefits were good? These days there are so many folks who have neither job security, nor any job for that matter. Many in this economy have lousy or no benefits. Certainly, an anti -tax wave is rolling over our country. Maybe the critics of teachers simply feel they aren’t getting their money’s worth. I don’t really know why teachers have so suddenly come under attack. I just know that my fellow teachers and I are the same public school teachers who taught Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Colin Powell, and yes, that queen of American daytime TV, a self made billionaire, Oprah Winfrey, graduate of Nashville East High School, class of 1971.