When I wrote my blog entry in response to the viral video resignation of a K-12 teacher, I asked for your responses, especially those of you in higher education. Wow, did I hear from you!
I have approximately 26 pages of responses, largely from my LinkedIn groups, and that alone has somewhat renewed my faith in education. This blog is an update where I will share some of those responses as well as some of my current thoughts on the problem.
Diana, I wonder whether you can juxtaposition your situation with Robert’s comment:
“2) Do I feel I am not valued as a professional? No, quite the opposite. Perhaps I am a privileged minority, I don't know. I have been a tenured professor at a respected university for many years. It has been a marvelous career.”
As for myself, I would have stated what Robert said, until roughly the final ten or so years (I am now, thankfully, retired): IMO, things there are just incredibly awful right now. Robert might have the good fortune of being in a place where the same levels of pathetic change have either yet to reach, or at least have been removed from departments such as Mathematics.
So, Diana, can you tell us a little more about your situation? Are you indeed fulltime tenured in higher ed and seriously thinking of leaving (I’d say, “Don’t do it!” BTW). Are you in Mathematics, Education, or another department? Etc. Thanks.
By Art
As you can see from the quote above, one professor, Robert, has enjoyed a sense of worth, respect, and privilege from his career in higher education, whereas another, Art, felt that way initially but not in the last decade of his service to education. I tend to agree with Art that, "Things are incredibly awful right now." As per his request, let me tell you a little about my situation.
Yes, I was in a full-time tenured position in higher education in a Mathematics department and yes, despite receiving advice just like Art's, I left. That was the Fall of 2010 and, in hindsight, I had no idea then how "awful" it was out there; however, I will state, for the record, I think I would do it again even if I had known: that's how much I needed to leave. But I'm getting a bit ahead of the story so let me back up a bit and tell you some of my history and how I got to this point professionally. To do that, I need to give you a bit of personal history & perspective as well. Cue the smoke and "flash-back" music...
To begin with, I wanted to be an engineer; an aerospace engineer in fact, and I was planning to go to Embry-Riddle because, in researching schools, I decided they were the best. I always loved learning how things worked and had a keen interest in flying (my Dad was a helicopter pilot in the Army and later ran a small airfield where I got to work in the summer servicing the planes & learning how to fly). In fact, I learned to drive a stick-shift car by practicing trying to get it in 5th before I ran out of runway! Ah, those were the days! Anyway, my parents' divorce precipitated my Mom and I moving to Nashville and, rather than going to a new high school for one year, wonderful adults in my life (including my parents and teachers) arranged it so I could start college instead. The only problem: in my 16-year-old mind, Belmont's engineering program was not up to scratch, so I chose mathematics instead (thinking I could transition to engineering in my graduate degree). What was wrong with their program you ask? Well, I didn't like the fact that I could only take "core" classes at Belmont and would have to take all the "real" engineering classes at nearby Vanderbilt. I laugh to think about it now, but you have to give teenaged me props for having a firm opinion (misguided though it may have been). :-)
While at Belmont I had the great good fortune to experience wonderful mathematics teachers who were tremendously involved in NCTM's efforts in creating the Curriculum & Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. Teachers like Dr. McCowen and Dr. Crumpton were instrumental in my decision to change from a career in engineering to a career in mathematics education. Until recently, I never regretted that decision as I found that I was really good at teaching mathematics. The most common student comment I receive is, "I never really 'got' math until your class." (along with, "This was the hardest class I've ever taken in my life.").
Upon graduating with my Ph.D., my plan was to teach high school mathematics for several years, trying out all the strategies and techniques I'd been learning and determining which really work, then move on to academia. My plan was to teach K-12, doing my time "in the trenches", thus building my ed cred where I could regale my class of college students who wanted to be teachers when they grew up with stories of what I did with my 9th grade algebra classes or how I taught conic sections to my high school geometry class. Not for the first time my career plan did not go as expected. I didn't count on high schools not really being keen to hire someone with an advanced degree. So, being young (not yet 30) and adaptable, I instead went corporate and followed the money: I took a job with a big corporation as a technical trainer (it's a whole other story to explain my technology-related geekness and love of all things gadget & techy).
I only lasted a year in corporate America. Quickly I discovered that Dilbert was absolutely right. The huge business mindset with its corporate culture and group think was NOT a good fit for me. I knew it was time to leave when, after yet another policy change, I was required to complete my weekly time-sheets broken down into 15-minute intervals. When I listed from 4:30 - 5:00 pm on Friday afternoon as "completing my weekly timesheet", I was called into my supervisor's office. Needless to say, after being told to change my entry to "paperwork including completion of required company reports", I gave notice of my intent to leave.
I will spare you all the minute details and stories from my academic life (as this blog entry would rapidly become novel-length), and instead summarize what prompted me to write the initial blog entry and why I responded so viscerally to the K-12 teacher's video resignation letter.
After I left the corporate empire, I had many wonderful experiences in interviewing for my first tenure-track higher education position. Despite the grueling hiring process (something that my non-academic friends think I'm crazy for going through), I enjoyed being treated with respect and an attitude that reflected an appreciation for what I could bring to a department or program. This was before 'value-added' became a thing and when common courtesy was still practiced in the interviewing process. That was also when you could expect to get a response after you spent hours and hours applying for a position that required a lengthy application, a full CV, official college transcripts from all universities attended, five letters of recommendation sent directly to the department, copies of professional work, a statement of teaching philosophy, samples of scholarly publications, and summary of research interests. That was during the time universities were not run as businesses.
I had three solid offers my first-time "on the market" as a young academic and chose the one that seemed the best fit. My years there were filled with many professional "highs" and very rewarding work with students. It was also filled with difficult lessons I learned about how academia really works, the role of politics, and how jealously those in power guard their little kingdoms from change or risk. Some of the shine definitely rubbed off the profession for me during this period of my career. I experienced being "the outsider": as a mathematics educator, I was viewed as not "mathy" enough for the "real" mathematicians (located in the mathematics department) and not "teacher" enough for the "real" educators (located in the education department). I was also an outsider because I was a female in the very male-dominated mathematics and computer science department.
Add to that my gall in pointing out to TPTB (the powers that be) where we (the university) were failing the pre-service high-school mathematics teacher by not having classes where they got to experience someone teaching in the way we expected them to teach (aka NOT lecture) and you begin to get a sense of my never-ending battles. I fought many fights with administration and other faculty in order to teach my students mathematics AND methodology. Why? Because the courses were labeled MAT which meant the math department got to count the FTE and therefore that the words "methodology", "teaching", or "education" could not be included in the titles because those, of course, were reserved for EDU classes (counted by the education department). Madness, all of it. In the end, my fighting paid off as the department, school, & university made much-needed changes in order to better prepare our future high school math teachers. But the war was hard won, and I had the scars to prove it.
I decided to make my next professional move and sought an academic home that was a better fit. Like the first time, my next time 'on the market' was also mostly positive (Save for that one interview where the old white guy in the department asked me if I liked coffee. When I said yes, he responded, "Great, can you make some? We're out." Needless to say, that university didn't make my short list.) In my next position, I joined the mathematics and computer science department at a university and was pleased to hear they had a "mathematics education" subset of faculty within it. As before, I learned hard lessons amongst the many professional successes. As before, I had battles with administration, apathy, culture, politics, and the status quo. Despite these issues, I progressed in rank and earned tenure. However, as the years went on, there seemed to be no end to the battles and I was tired of fighting. The hardest lessons eventually prompted my resignation: lack of equity, lack of alignment between stated values and actions, and the general feeling that, once again, I was an outsider, this time to the entire field of education.
The lack of equity lesson I learned when I realized that a male colleague in my department who was hired the same semester I was, at the same rank I was, and the same salary I was, was making over $24,000 more than I was after the same number of years of service. During that time, my salary increased a total of 17.9% (approximately 2.5% per year). His salary, by contrast, increased 68% (almost 10% per year). Adding salt to the wound was the additional fact that I had higher student evaluation ratings. In a move that demonstrated my naiveté despite my many years of experience, I went to the administration convinced that this was a simple oversight that would be easily corrected. It was not an oversight. The Provost explained, sad-faced, that "faculty salary compression is a known problem and we are working hard to resolve it" but, alas, there was "nothing" he could do. Many creative solutions to the problem were presented to me, including getting a "competing offer" (i.e. being disingenuous and "leading on" another university by stating my interest in their position only to obtain an offer letter to be used with my current university). Much like my feelings about the 15-minute-interval timesheet, I was not amused by the games and decided to stop playing.
The lack of alignment between stated values ("We put students first!") and actions ("If there are 50 desks in the room, the course should be capped at 50 students. It doesn't matter that the teacher has stated a maximum of 30 students is all that can be adequately accommodated in the required collaborative projects in the class.") was a lesson I started learning in my very first job (not just in education) and have been learning ever since. However, seeing this disconnect come up again and again in academia was disheartening as I, again perhaps naively, believed that institutions of higher education were better than that.
In the end, it was the feeling that I was an outsider, that my values were not shared by the institution I was working for, that caused me to finally, sadly, walk away. Interestingly, many, MANY of you have told me you've made the same choice:
Been there, done that, don't regret it!
Yes, I believe our current education system is broken in many ways. I remember veteran teachers saying that NCLB and Race to the Top were just the latest ideologies and had different hoops for educators to jump through. They also said that these programs would soon be replaced by other programs with different hoops and we would all have to realign our priorities and goals accordingly. This was said with a fair amount of resignation which implied that we had to accept it and adjust in order to try to fit some teaching in while achieving the latest standards set by business minded individuals if we were to maintain our personal goal of having our students achieve at their highest level.
I left teaching a year ago for many of those same reasons. The teachers cannot do it all, especially when their creativity is being curtailed so they conform to the educational blueprint. The administrators are doing what they have to do to save their own jobs.
I personally know so many who have walked away from their jobs in tears, explaining "They just wouldn't let me teach!" These words echo through so many many schools.
I started teaching college some twenty years ago, by assisting with those dreadful, large, beginner math courses. I could bring the abysmal failure rate down a bit, and I could lower the students' math anxiety a bit, but not nearly enough. It was plain that whole method worked poorly and could not be fixed. I just said "No" to teaching any course I could not radically re-design.
Sadly, if you try to "Stand up for what you believe in and evoke change from the inside," as Christopher says, you will just be fired. And it's a lot harder to make your voice heard when fired than when quitting.
If teachers could truly band together and stand up, that might work; but this will never happen in an economy where almost everyone simply cannot risk losing their jobs without risking losing their homes or ability to feed their families.
Many of you also shared my experience with politics, administration, & arbitrary rules and came to similar conclusions about the corporate influence over education.
The powers that be seem to want to treat every student as an identical product, with identical abilities, therefore with identical needs. This allows those powers to mandate a number of things, almost all detrimental to the education of children.
We need to get the politicians and business people out of education and put it back in the hands of the educators.
Thanks Dr Diana P for directing my attention to this. I have been in the position of Deputy Principal having been a high school teacher for most of my working life. I lasted only weeks. It seemed that the higher one goes in high school education the further one is removed from the classroom. This is the problem. For being a capable, hardworking teacher I received a promotion to a purely administrative position. It was then I realised that my passionate 'skill set' was so removed from what I was expected to do. What did I do? Higher Education- a Masters and now in a Doctorate to lecture at a University. The same political landscape exists, but the respect for the domains of academia and administration seemed more clearly defined. For your blog regarding higher education, it seems that this "education thing" has become a business and the business is broke. Policy is derived from what will be the cheapest solution not necessarily the best. Publish or Perish is an old adage that often rears its head. The fact is that some people are better lecturers, but poor at bringing research money into the University and the opposite- those who win research grants easily but are poor lecturers of their subject. So how does system accomodate that? Universities are having to be crude business decision makers and this might not be the comfortable place for academics... I hoope this has provided some thought on the topic from a different perspective.
I can't say that I disagree with much of what is said in the video. I will be teaching a college class this fall for the first time (after previously teaching in high-school and middle-school), and I will be interested in seeing what, if any, differences there are in the student participation and in the administrative approach.
Diana wrote on her blog: " To all my colleagues in two- and four-year colleges, universities, and other aspects of higher education: Do you also feel as if education in the United States has taken a dangerous path?
My answer:
Absolutely. This has been true for many years, around 30 anyway. The problems have whipsawed from one extreme to another. The teacher in the video is describing one extreme. (I am speaking here of K-12.)
In a word, we have a political problem. Money, votes, and power determine where things go. People are too readily swayed by demagoguery. The people truly responsible for where our education system is headed are politicians and the wealthy. They could turn things around in a heartbeat, but that would reduce wealth for the wealthiest and lose politicians their "whipping boys" that they flog mercilessly to inflame voters and gather votes (and money).
That video (a bit over-long at ten minutes) repeatedly indicated one of the true villains: high-stakes testing. State-wide testing has been around for very many decades, but the results did not affect careers or funding. NCLB changed all of that. Repeal it and make state-wide testing results secret, to be used for overall improvement of education, not for punishment.
The next villain is bad administration. Most school administrators come from the ranks of teachers but require a very different skill set for their jobs than do teachers. A great teacher can turn out to be a rotten administrator. Running schools and districts is not easy. Some liken it to a business, but it's not even close. You simply cannot use those same processes and succeed. We've seen that over and over and still repeat it.
Someone's crazy here. One business practice we can use is professional recruiting that will give us good principals and superintendents. These must be inspiring and innovative people who have great people skills as well as management skills.
Teachers' unions are not actual villains but have contributed to our problems. Many focus on the bad and ignore the good. The video indicted the union as not standing up for or supporting teachers who were being abused. The problem lies deeper. Unions have focused so much on job security and the like that they have ignored the more important issues of teacher pay and respect. Once a job is all about not being able to be fired and having a pleasant retirement, the work itself becomes secondary. I don't know when those unions went off the rails, but they must reform themselves or be tossed out. That would be bad because teachers should have a united voice in their jobs and futures. Without unions, they're at the mercy of the larger districts.
These three things will not fix all of our problems but will move us in the right direction. A true fixing requires a broader societal reform, especially in our politics that have heavily influenced by a few rich people who do not even use our public schools and could care less.
Even so, we should do what we can to --
1. End high-stakes testing once and for all,
2. Recruit talented and inspiring leaders for our schools, and
3. Reform, not remove, teacher unions.
As expressed by many of you, I was also hesitant to completely "break up" with education. Instead, again like many of you, I've sought to contribute in ways outside of the current system. In my case, the desire to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics and STEM was the primary reason I started my educational resources business. Running a small business has yielded a plethora of additional experiences for me, both good & bad, but there's not room for that discussion in this blog. If there is a silver lining to the awful state of education, it may be that a whole new batch of experienced educational consultants are now available to schools who are truly seeking the best for their students. Here's a typical response I received along those lines:
Hi Diana. Thanks for inviting responses. I officially resign from teaching at the end of this month. After 17 years of math teaching I resonate very much with the video you have posted. Instead of backing down I decided to step out as an educational consultant to help teachers in the classroom. I see the wave of stress in the schools and how desperate the situation is. I am offering coaching and consultancy to teachers as well as ways to help their students manage the stress from exams and the latest ideas or standards that are being tossed out.
Finally, I will report that my career path is continuing its unexpected route as I may be teaching 9th grade algebra at a local high school this fall. It's a public school (not charter, not private) and completely ruled by standardized tests so I recognize the possibility that I may once again be an outsider. I realize I may only last a year, once again being unwilling to play a game with our students' ability to think and reason mathematically, choosing instead to teach understanding, making mathematics make sense, and create a population of numerate citizens rather than teaching to the test. But I can't help it, for now anyway, I must continue the fight and keep faith that education can once again focus on what's important: the students. As always, I welcome your thoughts: contact me.
The Solver Blog
Author: Dr. Diana S. Perdue