It's like this:
Student does some awesome project, earns good grades, graduates: student succeeds!
Student skips class, blows off assignments, can't graduate: teacher failed.
There isn't really respect for the profession or role teachers play anymore. There is no tangible incentive for good, qualified people to become teachers. Only an endless array of blame and punishment (for teachers, never for students). Then, as long as teachers are generally despised, it's easier for politicians to point and say that schools are failing and push whatever profitable agenda they want. See DeVos.
Seriously, as a teacher I was rated "highly effective" last year, the highest score possible. Thanks to the district's new "performance based" pay system, I earned a bonus of $40. That's $40 total. It's an insult. They'll celebrate their new pay scale and try to get us excited about it and work so hard all year--and then $40.
Almost everyone working above the actual teachers is two-faced in some capacity. At least, in my experience. They'll say all sorts of stuff about giving the best education for every single child, every child deserves to succeed, etc. Then, at another smaller meeting, the very same administrator would say something like "never mind that, forget about the ones you know will fail, focus on getting as many of the mid-level students to pass the state test, we need to hit those numbers".
Seriously, I'd get paid to spend a day at a professional development session on differentiation of education to tailor my teaching to the the various needs of individual students, then be told by one of my bosses during review week to split all of my worst students into a special group so that an unqualified substitute can teach them nothing while I am free to teach the "good" kids unhindered (fyi, I'm not doing that, my colleaues and I rebelled on that point).
My school will applaud themselves at increasing their graduation rate. But it's not like they're educating those students that wouldn't graduate better. They're exploiting loopholes and manipulating schedules. They're cracking down on teachers that give students the Fs they've earned. The unwritten rule is to pass them along with a D, an F could put the kid's ability to graduate at risk. Like, no shit, ya think? Here I thought grades were earned, not assigned. Nope, it's all about manipulating those numbers from the back end to secure that federal funding.
No Child Left Behind (and its slightly tweaked replacement) is just ironically misnamed asinine shit (like many laws and programs). Essentially, kids at poorer schools in poorer neighborhoods aren't learning, aren't graduating, and aren't succeeding. Part of this is because the schools can't afford to give them the education they deserve. Here is how No Child Left Behind helps them:
Poor School: We need help, we need funding, we literally can't afford to have facilities, books, and staff to teach these poor children.
Federal Government: Well, increase your graduation rate and your test scores first, then we'll help you. Do better. Help must be earned.
PS: ...How does that make any sense? We need the help now in order to do better. Were you even listening?
FG: That's the deal. Don't you leave those children behind now!
Seriously, schools that were doing fine get rewarded with funds, schools that struggle had no way out, despite the name of the program. Oh, and it's all numbers based, relying on graduation rates and standardized tests. So, do you have a student that is an English Language Learner (ELL)? Well, they probably won't pass standard tests, they don't even know English! We need to hit those numbers, so leave the ELL behind.
These standard test scores are also used to evaluate teachers' performance. Half of my rating, half of my score, is based on how many of my students passed the state test. It's a math test that is designed to eliminate false positives caused by guessing and rote repetition and memorization. Students are presented with new and novel math problems that they have to utilize their deep understanding of Algebra I/Geometery/Algebra II to solve. Sounds great, if you plan on majoring in mathematics.
These tests are harder than the SAT or ACT, and they're worth 30% of the kids' overall grade in the class. I'm all about rigourous assessment, but these tests take it too far. The questions are very convoluted--for instance, it could be a word problem that assesses the student on solving an exponential equation, but it will also require knowledge of graphing, transformations, factoring polynomials, and domain and range for good measure. Miss any of those things, and you are deemed unable to solve exponential equations. If you're an ELL or you can't read, well, you're screwed. Not being able to read automatically means you also can't do math, whether or not you really can.
Oh, and the test is in April, so we only have about three quarters of the school year to learn the entire school year's worth of material. And I can't really assign homework for the extra practice the students need, because no one will do it. And I can't give failing grades to the students for not doing their homework, because that would hurt the school's score. So I have less than a full school year to teach these kids all the basics--never mind practicing any challenging problems when they won't do homework, I can't enforce it, and there's no time in class for it. And these test scores will determine if I have a job next year. Every year.
Then there are the buzz words. Differentiation I've already mentioned. It's publicly expected of every teacher, but nobody does it because it's a gargantuan task and the admins are telling us privately to just forget the lower kids and make sure we hit those numbers. Another one that I've seen a lot is evidence-based practices. Oh, all of our teaching decisions and practices should be evidence-based. Like, we make decisions based on data we get from our students, and we employ practices that are backed by evidence.
I took two distinct teaching courses, paid hundreds of dollars for them, in which the professor claimed that all practices must be evidence based. Then we were taught that we should follow Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences to make sure that every student can succeed in their own way, based on their own strengths. Quick Google search, whaddya know, Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences has no empirical evidence to back it up. None. Zip. Zilch. But it seemed to work for some teachers, so I guess anecdotal evidence is good enough.
Then there's the data. Sitting in meetings, looking at unit test data arranged in various ways. We can see scores, average scores, and learning standards that have been met or not. We are told to analyze this data. We are expected to make decisions based on it. We can get chewed out if our test scores are below average for the district.
But this "analysis" goes no deeper than high number=good, low number=bad. They even color code the numbers, red number bad, yellow number okay, green number good. That's the extent of the "analysis" that is carried out in our district. When they give us the numbers, they don't even provide the standard deviation. If I had the standard deviation, I could explain to my boss why we shouldn't be chewed out for our slightly-lower than average test scores. I could demonstrate that the difference is not statistically significant, but was likely just due to random chance. We teach our students how to do this kind of basic analysis. It's important. But our administrators stick to red bad, green good.
Okay, I need to stop, sorry to whoever actually read all that.
