\doc\web\99\17\teachlv.txt


Pass this on to that author.


Hey, Lynn, who is that author again? They're obviously not linking it
with the adoption of the new "high standards" which means Seattle has
finally adopted OBE. The standards on one hand are far more ambitious
than the state EALR, for examples, kindergarteners are expected to
write stories and story problems, and be able to recognize
parallelograms. On the other hand, skills like ratio, rate and
proportion which are tested on the 4th grade WASL are NOT on this
list, and neither is 10th grade math - log, trig, and real algebra.


OBE puts teachers through the wringer as much as the kids and 
parents.




From:           	Lynn M Stuter <lmstuter#icehouse.net>
Subject:        	ED:  teacher resignations on the rise....


I contacted the author of the piece in the Seattle Times about the
increasing number of teacher resignations.  I sent him the following message:


Are you aware of a report, put out in 1991 by the The National LEADership

Network Study Group on Restructuring Schools and the US DOE, OERI, entitled
"Developing Leaders for Restructuring Schools; New Habits of Mind and
Heart"?  The following quote is from that report and defines why teachers
are leaving the government schools in droves....


"Some potential and practicing administrators are just not appropriate for
restructuring schools and no amount of education and training will make
them so.  Many of the skills and behaviors required of leaders of
restructuring schools are either too costly to develop or unresponsive to
traditional training.  ......  


Administrators without the required competencies need to be helped to
understand and accept the mismatches between the school's culture and their
own beliefs and preferred behaviors.  Where training, along with other
appropriate measures, is not sufficient to create the needed match between
administrators and their settings, we need to help them move to other
educational setting or out of education.  .....  


We need to create learning environments in restructuring schools that
support the development of appropriate behaviors.  And we need to do it all
collaboratively, tapping the knowledge, experience, energy, and commitment
of all members of the school community."


Lynn M Stuter
Education Researcher
Washington State


<<<I found his response rather interesting, albeit indicative of the
ignorance of the media to what education reform really is:


>I wasn't aware of the report.
>
>Is your interpretation from these excerpts that teachers are leaving because
>restructuring is occurring but it's being administered by people who aren't
>qualified to do so?
>
>Thanks for writing.


<<<I responded thusly:


No, teachers are leaving the profession because they are coming to the
realization that performance-based education is affecting their ability to
teach children in the classroom.  Teachers initially believed that
performance-based education would only affect the children.  It doesn't.
Several things are now happening to teachers as well, that they had no idea
would happen:


1.  Teachers are now be graded according to how well their students master
the state Essential "Academic" Learning Requirements (EALRs) as measured by
the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).  Neither the EALRs or
the instrument established to measure them are objective in nature; both
are subjective.
2.  Teachers are being certified according to their ability to demonstrate
competency in moving children to mastery of the state EALRs, not on their
ability to immerse the child in a broad but intensive liberal arts
curriculum in the classroom.  Teachers are discovering that core knowledge
is out, social and life related issues taught in the context of unit themes
are increasingly (and more especially in the higher grades) the focus of
time spent in the classroom.  Chief among those social and life-related
issues is environmentalism which is not based on fact, and such things as
sexual orientation, prejudice, discrimination, health care....  Core
knowledge is only incorporated as used and applied (applied academics) in
addressing those social or life related issues.  Assessment tools are
intended to measure whether children are exiting units on social and
life-related issues with the wanted beliefs.
3.  Teachers have lost academic freedom because their focus in the
classroom is to teach to the state EALRs which are not, by any stretch of
the imagination, core knowledge in nature.
4.  Teachers are discovering that, just as the students are expected to
exit the education system looking like the state EALRs, so are teachers to
conform to a set of outcomes intended to augment students exiting the
system looking like the EALRs.  This conflicts with the individual beliefs
of many teachers who believe that education is for the purpose of producing
intelligent children rather than a workforce.


There are more reasons than this, but these are the more apparent.
Teachers who refuse to conform are being helped to realize that their
talents are better utilized elsewhere.  The same is true of principals and
superintendents.


I realize that you may find what I have stated hard to believe.  I would
encourage you to contact some of these teachers and ask them why they left.  


LynnS