Confessions of a Bad Teacher: The Shocking Truth from the Front Lines of American Public Education

The Shocking Truth from the Frontline of American Public Education Sourcebooks, , John Owens describes his frustrations upon leaving the publishing industry after 30 years and pursuing a second career teaching high school English in a New York City public school at the height of the education reform movement. Owens joins New Books in Education for the interview. To share your thoughts on the podcast, you can connect with him on Twitter at JOwensTeacher. Trevor Mattea is an educational consultant and speaker. His areas of expertise include deeper learning, parent involvement, project-based learning, and technology integration.

The NBN is a non-profit enterprise dedicated to promoting public education. All our hosts are volunteers. But the network has expenses. A lot of them. So please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the NBN. No amount is too small: Campaigns for school reform and corporate-style management of our public schools are sweeping the country.

As a result, individual principals have been given a stunning amount of power and leeway to decide who's a good teacher and who's a bad teacher. With that much authority in the hands of a few top administrators who have little accountability for their decisions, it's easy for good management and honest evaluation of teachers to be trampled during administrators' efforts to deliver stellar results in unrealistically short periods of time.

On top of that, precisely what defines a "bad teacher" isn't clear. There are too many factors-from standardized test scores to subjective department evaluations-and the criteria vary from state to state, school district to school district. But from what I've seen, unless a teacher turns in grades and standardized test scores in the highest level of academic achievement while the students perform in class as the educational equivalents of the von Trapp kids in The Sound of Music , there's a chance of being branded a bad teacher.

Too many of America's schools are run on the belief that everything would be great if not for these bad teachers. Today, the term seems to be used almost interchangeably with the word "teachers" itself. The bad teacher witch-hunt is destroying our schools and robbing our children of their future. My experience on the front lines of education has brought me to the conclusion that America's public school policies are drowning children, not helping them.

Many good, well-intentioned, and truly effective educators across the country are reaching, stretching, trying desperately to save these kids, but those in charge increasingly beat them back, insisting that these teachers are not using the appropriate method of rescue. Meanwhile, the children are carried off downstream, flailing. This is not an exaggeration. Throughout the country, we are told that everything we have been doing in our schools is wrong. The education system that once was the envy of the world has become a hopeless, costly, out-of-control dinosaur.

Further, we hear that the only way to save American education is through school reform-to manage our schools as though they were businesses, employing powerful, hard-nosed leaders who make tough rules and use data to measure students' progress and teachers' accountability in order to punish those who impede success.

This version of school reform is rooted in the appealing notion of using scientific studies to determine what's needed and how to fix it. A report from the U. Department of Education's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education envisioned school reform this way:. The primary responsibility of schools undertaking comprehensive school reform is creating programs that result in improved student achievement. One of the most important tasks in this process is choosing highly effective reform strategies, methods, and programs, those that are grounded in scientifically based research.

But these days, "scientifically based research" has been replaced by "data"-test scores, class grades, and, as I saw, virtually any number that can be recorded and crunched. The current version of school reform, as championed by those such as Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and now chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, has a common-sense ring to it with mantras such as "put students first, support effective teachers, and continue to hold everyone accountable for results.

But the more subtle and much more important point is that all too often Bush and others like him replace "scientifically based research" and "highly effective reform strategies, methods, and programs" with data-driven grades for schools and data-driven rewards and punishments for teachers.

As Bush put it in a article on Politico. A--F systems [for grading schools] are more intuitive to parents and the public. They also help leaders to clearly differentiate rewards and interventions for schools Many states and school districts are now adopting more advanced data systems, linking student performance to teachers. For the first time, we can measure teacher effectiveness using transparent objectives and standards. It's a data-driven solution that speaks of efficiency and the digital genius that has built technology powerhouses such as Microsoft and Google and made billionaires of hedge-fund managers.

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But it masks the real truth. We see the success stories in films such as Waiting for "Superman," which portrays teachers' unions as venal, data-averse impediments to better schools and casts "reformers" as visionary leaders heroically struggling to overcome the forces of self-interest that are holding children back. We also hear how charter schools produce amazing results.

Released from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools, charter schools often are free to extend the usual school day by several hours, require weekend classes, and demand extensive parental involvement. Charter schools are often independent-sometimes for-profit-operations that, at least in the public imagination, are managed by tough, visionary leaders who gain the freedom to run the school their way in exchange for accountability in producing results.

But the brilliance, easy answers, and immediate measurable results of school reform have not been proven. Studies going back nearly a decade conflict with the popular image of the magically successful charter school. In December , the National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP released research showing that fourth-grade charter school students do no better than their public school counterparts on math and reading assessments, and in some cases score lower.

The group portrait shows wide variation in performance. The study reveals that a decent fraction of charter schools, 17 percent, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools. While the CREDO study is-so far-the gold standard on the topic, headlines from the industry publication Education Week also vividly demonstrate the confused and quite often lackluster state of charter school achievement:.

Proponents of charter schools and school reform, politicians, and business leaders dismiss these dubious results with one explanation. The reason charter schools and school reform haven't been an unqualified success is simple, they say. It's because there are so many bad teachers, and we can't get rid of them fast enough. The truth, of course, is not so simple. Teachers have become scapegoats for a broken system that isn't being fixed, but rather is being gradually destroyed.

The real problem, it seems, is that with so many issues plaguing our educational system, blaming teachers is easier than doing a massive system overhaul. As a result, many of our public schools have been put in the hands of "visionary managers" who insist that strictly enforced procedures and data-driven business principles will revitalize American education. They are, in many cases, misguided or tyrannical number-crunchers who use their skills with spreadsheets and theatrics to make parents and taxpayers believe that our children are being educated-and educated well, at that-when in fact, they are just bit players in a giant pageant of data and window dressing.

Along the way, these administrators secure their power by demonizing the people closest to our children, their teachers. Consider, for instance, Michelle Rhee, one of the most famous proponents of school reform. The student achievement numbers she's reported from her own teaching career have been questioned, and while chancellor of the Washington, D. When pressed to back up her claims, Rhee "clarified" that actually only one teacher was dismissed due to sexual abuse allegations, and she didn't address the other issues.

Teachers' union officials pointed out that Rhee presented no evidence for her charges. Still, the damage was done. Meanwhile, Rhee, despite her record of suspect data and unnecessarily vilifying teachers, remains a powerful, listened-to voice in American education.

According to my personnel file at the New York City Department of Education, I am "unprofessional," "insubordinate," and "culturally insensitive. As if that's not enough, I tend to place students in a "dangerous and unsafe situation," and I might be a racist. Mind you, I didn't set out to be a "bad teacher. I am a middle-aged professional, but I'm not lazy. I'm great with kids and I love literature. My love of words has taken me from a troubled, working-class childhood to a wonderfully happy, successful life. I have been writing-and teaching others to write-for a long time.

And I have enjoyed helping younger writers build great careers.

During a three-decade career as a writer, editor, and corporate executive, I had traveled to more than a hundred countries, met heads of state, and picked up some wisdom about getting along and getting ahead in life that I thought was worth sharing with those just starting the journey. I wanted to make an impact directly with kids in the classroom. There was something else at work here, too. For want of a better word, I will call it patriotism. The flood of immigrants into New York City in recent years has been astounding. Currently, nearly 40 percent of the city's residents are immigrants, according to data compiled by the Weissman Center for International Business at Baruch College.

Queens and Manhattan have seen huge influxes from China. The Bronx and Brooklyn are teeming with Dominicans. Africans, especially from the central belt of the continent, are numerous in the Bronx. Needless to say, the children who have come with or been born to these recent arrivals are the future of our country.

They need teachers and mentors, guides to help them navigate what often is a new world. Teachers like the ones I had growing up. Teachers who can present a passion for the greatness and potential of learning and the greatness and potential of America. Teachers who can make kids want to be upstanding, successful Americans. The school where I landed touted itself as a model of school reform. Its website presented a showcase of high standards and a passion for learning. The interview that sealed the job was more about practical concerns than such lofty ideals, but what did it matter?

It was the job offer I had clinched, and no matter what, I was determined to help poor kids, immigrant kids, and kids who simply needed people to inspire them, believe in them, and encourage them to succeed. Instead, I experienced firsthand school reform gone terribly wrong. Students who did nothing were passed, and students who did nothing more than cut and paste from Wikipedia were deemed high performers.

Special-needs students were swept along with their classmates while their real problems were swept under the rug. Disruptive students were permitted to rob their classmates of precious teaching time. Teachers who were skilled, enthusiastic, caring, and hardworking were held accountable for every ill in the school and every problem each student faced, most of which were entirely unrelated to their classes.

Some teachers were able to survive the system with luck, savvy, and years of skills to rely on, or with sacrifices to serve the administration's interests, rather than the students'. Some, like me, were not so fortunate. And all because the data could be worked over-or even invented-to give the appearance that the kids were learning and that the principal was indeed a visionary leader. As common as this is, the media spotlight rarely shines on the schools that are failures of reform. Schools run by tyrannical principals. Schools where the much-vaunted data is easily manipulated.

Most importantly, schools where our children aren't getting the education they need. When it was clear that my teaching career was doomed, I decided it was time to bring this issue to light and wrote an article for Salon. The article went viral, and Salon's comment section swelled:. Thousands of people reached out from all over the country to tell me how much of a major problem this is throughout America.

Assistant Secretary of Education and best-selling author Diane Ravitch tweeted my article to her 18, followers. From blogs to discussion boards to emails I received from readers who tracked me down through LinkedIn, the message was clear: It was the truth behind so much of today's school reform. That's why I wrote this book-to tell the story of this outrage, of this total failure of visionary managers and easy solutions for our broken educational system. Across the nation, in communities of all sizes and at every rung of the economic ladder, hundreds of thousands-perhaps millions-of children are cheated of a real education, and hundreds of thousands of passionate, hard-working, results-oriented educators are demonized and belittled because America is looking for easy fixes.

Another reason for writing this was to explore solutions to our public education woes and offer advice for parents, teachers, students, and anyone else who understands that education truly does represent the future of America. Toward that end, I have included some key facts and figures that illustrate the scope and depth of our national problem, as well as crucial lessons I learned from my time at Latinate and from the hundreds of other educators, administrators, parents, and students I've spoken with since then. And, although I'm supposedly a bad teacher, I also respectfully offer some suggestions to add to our national dialogue.

This is not a book about policy. It's a book about people-primarily the people I taught, taught with, and worked for during my career in education. Each is an individual, though I'm sure there are people much like each of them at schools around America. As we journey through the school and the education system, you'll meet students, parents, teachers, and administrators and hear their stories. There are some dedicated saints and a couple of unmitigated villains. Most, however, are just ordinary people grappling with extraordinary situations.

And there are lessons for all of America's parents, educators, and taxpayers in their stories. Among the people you'll meet are:. You'll also read firsthand reports from other teachers across America and what they face in this era of school reform and bad teachers. My school's situation and mismanagement were terrible-both for the teachers and for the students.

Yet the school was not ranked among the worst of the hundreds of high schools in New York City. In some ways, the data placed it in the top tier of city schools. That a school this awful should be highly ranked shows just what a mess we're in. But there are steps that we as a nation can take to clean up this mess. It must start, of course, with an honest search for answers. And honesty demands that we stop the polarizing bad-teacher witch-hunt, which isn't solving our public education issues.

At the same time, we must stop believing in superhero principals and administrators as the quick and easy solution to this problem. They are myths, products of popular imagination. As much as America might want them to, visionary managers are not going to save our students and schools. In fact, from what I've seen, the opposite is true. In today's educational system, not only does power corrupt, but combining power and data corrupts both the person and the data. And that leaves us worse off than ever.

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• CONFESSIONS OF A BAD TEACHER by John Owens | Kirkus Reviews.

Instead, we need to address directly and honestly the needs of so many of our children both inside and outside the classroom and how those needs affect our ability to educate them and their abilities to learn. And despite what school reformers lead America to believe, no teacher can provide or be responsible for everything every child needs. Only by taking an honest approach to solving the problems can we save the drowning children who are in our public schools. Thank you for using the catalog. Confessions of a bad teacher: Public schools -- United States.

Education -- United States -- Anecdotes.

Educational change -- United States. Summary An explosive new look at the pressures on today's teachers and the pitfalls of school reform, Confessions of a Bad Teacher presents a passionate appeal to save public schools, before it's too late. Publisher's Weekly Review Owens took quite a pay cut when, determined to make a difference in the lives of children, he left a high-level publishing job to teach English at a public school in New York's South Bronx.

Choice Review Although this book's title gave this reviewer much angst, after the first chapter, it was clear that Owens was not a bad teacher. Booklist Review Owens' book began as an article on Salon. Library Journal Review Owens changed careers at midlife to follow his heart and become a teacher. How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education After we read the section of Homer's The Odyssey where Odysseus and his men confront the Cyclops, we watched a movie clip of how the clever Greek hero blinded that wine-swilling, man-eating, one-eyed monster and escaped.

Department of Education's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education envisioned school reform this way: While the CREDO study is-so far-the gold standard on the topic, headlines from the industry publication Education Week also vividly demonstrate the confused and quite often lackluster state of charter school achievement: But why believe me? I'm a bad teacher. The article went viral, and Salon's comment section swelled: