FORWARD

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

     What’s really wrong with American Public Education today is the ravenous greed of vulture capitalists like Bill Gates who are interloping in an area about which they know nothing.  They are denizens in a foreign land, pushing their agenda in this more than one-half trillion dollar industry which they just discovered.  I have been saying for years that this cataclysmic disruption that these billionaires have caused in American Public Education has resulted in much more harm than good.  These billionaire school “reformers” are in actually school deformers.  They have wreaked havoc on the landscape of American schools on the scale of Hurricanes Hugo and Katrina.

     The educational kibitzing that these billionaires have engaged in has undermined public education here in the United States, and we believe that it is the desire of many of them to totally destroy public education as we have known it here in the United States.  They have donated millions upon millions of dollars to charter school organizations as well as to organizations which seek to tie evaluating a teacher’s performance to the test scores of the students.  The latter may sound good on paper but it is wholly unrealistic.  I am thinking about the poor teachers at schools like Sylvan Middle School in Atlanta.  I remember a few years back when I at Sylvan Middle School and talking to the principal of this school in his office.  He called me to his desk and pulled out a side drawer showing me several weapons that he had confiscated that year from the students.  This principal looked at me and stated, “John, this is a shitty school.”  Those were his exact words.

     Yes, in the United States (especially in the urban areas), we have some “shitty schools,” and they are not “shitty” because of the teachers.  The teachers are working under the most horrendous conditions, but it is educational interlopers like Bill Gates (who obviously is a marketing genius relative to computer software) who want to blame the “shitty schools” on the teachers.  No, ole Bill, it’s the students and their parents who are the problem.  The problem is poverty and crime-ridden neighborhoods.  In this same “shitty school” in Atlanta, a teacher told me a few years later (under another principal) that he went into the boys’restroom, and some kid had scrawled all over the mirror, “8-12 run this shit.”  Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Dell, and the Waltons don’t know jackshit about how to deal with “8-12” kids and “shitty schools.”  Instead of blaming the teachers in these “shitty” schools, these billionaire interlopers ought take a number, get in line, and kiss the teachers’ asses for teaching in these “shitty” schools.

     I suspect that Bill Gates, with his billions of dollars (estimated to be over 72 billion) might have gotten a tad bored as the inordinately wealthy tend to get, and he and Melinda decided at breakfast one morning that they would take over the American schools and make them work.  (His welcome is apparently wearing out on the Microsoft Board of Directors; I saw in the media recently that some of the key shareholders want him off of the Microsoft board.  This is not so unrealistic.  Remember what happened to Steve Jobs with the Apple board.)  So, Bill and Melinda take on American Public Education as their new little project.  But, perhaps it’s not so altruistic as this.  Perhaps Billy Gates sees huge profit potential in this more than one-half trillion dollar industry called “public education,” if he could just harness a “common curriculum” which would use his software applications which would be piously called “digital learning” applications.  You know…the same ones that Microsoft is already in the process of developing for Pearson, the largest educational publisher in the world, today.  Ah…money, it all gets back to money.  Well, that’s what it’s all about, folks.  It’s all about the cheddar, not the children.

     Recently, I heard an interview in which Bill Gates made some rather revealing comments.  He stated:  “[I]dentifying common standards is not enough.  We’ll know we’ve succeeded when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards.”  Gates also talked about “creat[ing] just these kinds of tests—next-generation assessments aligned to the common core” and “[w]hen the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching” [emphasis added].  Finally, Gates observed in this same interview, “For the first time, there will be a large uniform base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better” [emphasis added].  I presume that Billy Gates just couldn’t contain his excitement.  For him, the largess of public education is like a little kid in a candy shop.

     Bill and Melinda Gates sent their children to matriculate at the elite Lakeside School in Seattle, the same school where Bill and co-founder of Microsoft Bill Allen attended.  Melinda Gates is on record of wanting many, many more standardized tests than the ones which already shackle our school systems today.  And, ole Bill has pushed Arne Duncan, the U. S. Secretary of Education who doesn’t know his ass from deep centerfield, to tie the receiving of Federal Race to the Top funds to (1) the states having to implement teacher evaluations tied to student test scores and (2) the states not having any limits on charter schools.  But, would Bill and Melinda like for the Lakeside School’s teachers to be treated so brusquely and for the students to be fed low-grade testing husks for their curriculum needs?  Diane Ravitch, in one of her insightful tomes on public education, wrote:  “He [Gates] fondly recalled his teachers at Lakeside, the private school he attended in Seattle, who ‘fueled my interests and encouraged me to read and learn as much as I could” (The Death and Life of the Great American School System:  How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, p. 212).  I suppose that what is good for his and Melinda’s children and what is good for their children’s teachers is not good for the rest of us.  Bill Gates is a Gnostic interloper in the field of public education and, quite frankly, it’s the likes of him and Melinda who are ruining public education.  They just need to enjoy the facile petina of their private schools and get the hell out of public education.  They are in over their heads.  But, I am reminded of what St. Paul wrote:  “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

     It’s the billionaires (especially the Gateses) who are pushing those damnable standardized tests.  They essentially look at two skills:  Mathematical and Verbal-linguistic.  Damn the idea that there are several types of intelligence which are not even tested.  (Dr. Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education has identified nine or ten or more different types of intelligence which essentially go unnoticed or ignored because of the very narrow and shallow tests which are whipping up our public schools into a testing mania.)  Damn the idea that our children still need a rich curriculum that includes a wide variety of subjects which are not currently tested (history, science, art, physical education, music, civics, government, literature, etc.).  Damn the idea that creativity and ideas should be nourished among the students or that our teachers should be freed up to be creative with their children and to stray off the path of those damnable prescriptive curriculum packages or to stray one scintilla from the cookie-cutter teaching methods which are mandated.  Yes, damn any type of teaching and learning that takes place at the Lakeside School in Seattle.  This is just for the children of the so-called elite and effete, for those children who are already determined to be the Gnostic leaders of the craftsmen and tillers of the soil.  Yes, apparently the billionaires want the children of America’s public schools to keep their heads down and learn the essential math and verbal-linguistic skills…so that they can work efficiently in this new global economy that people like Bill Gates are trying to usher in.  So, yes, damn the enrichment!  Standardized testing full speed ahead!  Before I leave this subject of these dastardly tests, let me share a worthy quote from Einstein, who by the way, was not considered so smart while he was in school.  This quote is attributed to Einstein:  “Everyone is a genius but if you judge a fish on its ability to a climb tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  These standardized tests, the same tests which would not be tolerated at the Gateses’ tony Lakeside School in Seattle, are destroying our children and making them think that they are stupid and worthy of only disengaging from their school work and eventually dropping out.  So many of these children are now standing on the street corners, selling dope, and waiting to be sentenced to the state prison, thanks, in part, to these damnable standardized tests!

     Are there any problems in our public schools today?  Sure.  There are problems in any profession or industry.  There are corrupt and unethical physicians and lawyers.  They are some cheating and incompetent accountants.  There are elected officials who aren’t worth a plugged nickel.  We see evidence of incompetence, unethical behavior, and bad practices in every profession.  But, do we turn upside down a profession just because a few members of that profession need to be weeded out.  Do we throw out the entire barrel of good apples because of one or two rotten apples?   Of course not.  We don’t impose a tight net on an entire profession just because of few bad apples.  We don’t suffocate the entire profession and put all of the members of that profession on training wheels because of one or two incompetent members.  We use a loose net to catch these people.  This reminds me of a true story that a retired principal told me recently at my niece’s wedding.  My brother serves on the school board where this incident occurred, and he asked this retired principal to tell me the story.  The retired principal leaned over and started whispering what had happened when he was telling an incompetent teacher who had totally lost control of her classroom and was crying in front of the students that he was going to have to let her go at the December break.   He stated:  “I gently told her that I was going to try to work with her but that I was getting lots of complaints from the parents, the administration, and even from the superintendent about the conditions in her classroom.  So, this was on October 31^st when she had just gotten paid, and I told her that we would wait until the December break and then she would have to go but it would be a smooth transition.  I asked her if she understood the game plan?  She slammed her keys on the desk and blurted out:  ‘I resign.  Trick or Treat, muthafucker!’”  So, yes, this teacher probably didn’t need to be teaching, and the principal was letting her go in as a humane manner as possible.  But, he certainly didn’t expect the sudden resignation and the Halloween greeting!

    Public school educators can take care of their own problems just as can attorneys, physicians, or accountants.  Quit insulting them and treating them like tall children.  Treat them like the professionals that they have been educated to be.  Anything short of this is disastrous.  © Big Daddy Publishers, 2013.

Principals without Principles:  The New Generation of School Administration are Bent on Evaluation and Intimidation and are Really Full of Defecation!

Note:  This is Chapter 32 in the upcoming book, The MACE Manifesto.

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

     Yes, full of shit.  If you are teaching in an American public school these days, more than likely you are working in a school with a principal who is full of shit.  If you are not working for a principal who is full of shit, then you are one of the fortunate ones.  So, consider yourself quite lucky and stay put at that school.  But, when a new principal comes along at your school, he or she likely will be a full-of-shit principal who is high on himself or herself and thinks that you need to be treated like a hired hand.  This new principal will not be bent on treated you as a colleague and a professional, but as someone who has to be managed in a top-down, heavy-handed manner.  These principals operate under what I call the MITE Theory, a theory that is faulty, rotten to the core, and based on a bad premise.  The “M” in MITE stands for “Micromanaging.”  These principals feel that it is their job to micromanage and snoopervise you, calling into question each discretionary decision that you make.  They don’t trust your professional judgment based on your professional knowledge and wisdom.  In fact, they get quite perturbed if you deign to make a decision or a move in your own classroom without first asking deferentially for their permission.

     The “I” in MITE stands for “Intimidating.”  These principals think that part of being a principal in a school is intimidating the teachers and everyone else on the staff.  It is though they get off on scaring the teachers and other staff members.  They had rather be feared than respected and loved.  They are not loved and don’t seem to care.  They are angling for another promotion, trying to get to the almighty central office.  Many want to become one of the head honchos in the school system and eventually to be named an Educational Slut (Superintendent) themselves.  They have learned by observing that the way up the corporate school ladder is to step on subordinates and kiss the asses of their superordinates.   The cheese and grin like shit-eating dogs when their supervisors are around, but when they are dealing with teachers and others on staff, they come across like a modern-day Attila the Hun.

     The “T” in “MITE” is closely akin to the “I.”  It stands for “Threatening.”  They threaten the teachers and others on staff with a loss of their jobs and credentials.  Since the evaluation process is now tied to the State-run credentialing agency (the Professional Standards Commission in Georgia), they know that an adverse Annual Evaluation can jeopardize a teacher’s pay raise and that Unsatisfactories on two consecutive Annual Evaluations can keep a teacher being able to have the necessary certification to teach.  They know that they have the teachers’ livelihoods in their hands.  They use this power to the maximum.  This encourages the teachers to become sycophants who will do many unethical things which these principals want, even engaging in systematic cheating on standardized tests, as we have clearly observed recently in school systems like the Atlanta Public Schools and the Daugherty County School System here in Georgia.  Yes, these principals operating under MITE threaten the teachers’ jobs on a regular basis and sometimes even rudely and brusquely say stuff like the following in faculty meetings:  “You either do what I am telling you or I’ll have your job.”  Many are actually this blunt.  And, they seem to enjoy inflicting emotional and mental pain upon the teachers.  Often, this emotional and mental pain results in physical ailments and, in some case, I believe premature death.

     The “E” in MITE stands for “Evaluating.”  Yes, they seem to think that their entire job is about evaluating the teachers and others on staff.  What about facilitating or supporting the teachers?  What?!  These are foreign elements in their mentality.  They are, as they have been indoctrinated into thinking, “the instructional leaders” of the schools.  Even though the principal might have been a high school Biology, History, or P. E. teacher, when this person all of a sudden is named the principal of an elementary school, they suddenly and with heavenly dispensation become the all-knowing instructional leader of the elementary school, knowing the best way to teach First Graders how to read or Third Graders how to successfully perform long-division.  Why would a former high school Biology teacher presume to think that she or he knows more about teaching a First Grader how to read than a veteran First Grade professional educator of 20 or more years?  It makes no sense.  How would a former Second Grade teacher who is now an Assistant Principal in a high school know more about teaching high school Chemistry than a 15-year veteran teacher of high school Chemistry?   This pattern could be repeated over and over.  It is senseless.  But, this whole evaluation model that principals think is the summum bonum of being a principal is flawed.  You have insensitive non-experts spouting their opinions on evaluation bubble-sheets about the expertise of a teacher in a classroom when in reality these administrators don’t know their butts from deep centerfield.

     As a whole (mind you that there are exceptions to this general rule), the principals these days are insecure, petty, mean-spirited, small-minded, silly, stupid, and spineless.  They don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain or to pour piss from a bucket.  But, they, in their Nazi-like mindedness and sycophant posturing, seem to enjoy inflicting pain on their fellow humans (teachers).  They get their jobs in many cases simply because they are senseless and total boobs.  They question nothing and goose-step to each and every whim of their bosses.  They have eaten so much shit climbing the corporate ladder within the school system that they have acquired a taste for bureaucratic feces.  We used to call them brownnosers but they are now called ass-kissers.  Today, they just eat shit.  And, that might be harmless enough if their actions or lack of actions didn’t impact on the teachers and students.  But, these administrative dumbasses are not just silly, stupid, and spineless, but they are also extremely petty and vindictive.  Furthermore, all of them want to major in curriculum and instruction and minor in student discipline.  No, let’s correct that.  Not “minor” on student discipline; they actually just “ignore” student discipline.  And I often wonder how many of them can actually spell the word “curriculum.”  Heck, it doesn’t matter what the curriculum is if the students are bouncing off the walls!

     Whenever these petty and vindictive principals perceive that the a teacher deigns to mention that the administration should support the teachers in disciplinary matters or when any teacher shows in any way that he or she does not have the same willingness to eat administrative shit with what these principals consider all due alacrity, they get bent out of shape and go on a bureaucratic rampage.  It is as if these little administrative gnomes are thinking and saying:  “If I had to eat shit on a regular basis as I climbed the corporate ladder, then I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let these bitches and muddafuckers get away with dissing me!  I’ll make their lives miserable!  Let’s see if they can pass any of my evaluations or get any merit pay!  Hell to the nah!  It ain’t happening!”  And our schools continue to suffer under these pissified, myopic, and feckless leaders, but, hey, the appointed superintendents are able to survive for almost three years with gargantuan salaries and benefits and the ultimate buy-out packages.  This is how the school game is played these days.  And these so-called school leaders keep pontificating about doing “what’s best for the children,” but they aren’t doing jack-shit for the children; it’s all about their fat wallets.  The emperor is naked as a jay bird and no one, besides the crazy folks MACE, seem to have the nerve to state the obvious. 

     This new generation of school administration couldn’t tote the water buckets (or jock straps, as we might say in the less gender-sensitive days) of the administrators of yesteryear.  These administrators of yesteryear made no pretense of being “the instructional leaders of the schools.”  Rather, they made sure that the students behaved, and they did what they needed to do to insure that this happened.  I remember a math teacher telling me at Washington County High School (where I was a 27 year-old Assistant Principal):  “When Bobby [made-up name] started his foolishness in class today, all I had to do was mention that I was about to send him up to see you and he straightened up immediately.”  This is what the teachers need.  This is what they crave.  They can perform near miracles in the classroom when they know that their administrators support them.  I remember one of the things that my father did when he was the only Assistant Principal at one the largest high schools in Georgia back in the 1950s and 1960s.  He said that he knew that Coach Armstrong [again, made-up name] was not very academically-inclined but a heck-of-a-coach.  He also knew that the very petite Chemistry teacher was not that good at controlling her class but knew her subject well and could teach effectively if she were supported in the area of discipline.  So, he called in Coach Armstrong and said, “Coach, I want you to help Miss Clinkscale [another made-up name] while she is teaching her Chemistry class.  You sit to the side of the gym [yes, it was a large class in the gymnasium] and if any students gets out of line, you call them out and paddle them [the girls weren’t paddled back then].”  The coach did as he was asked.  The students behaved, and Miss Clinkscale did a marvelous job teaching the Chemistry class.  This was “Team Teaching” at its best. 

     Yes, these principals made sure that the students behaved.  This was number one in priority.  Because student discipline in not the top priority today, the public schools are spinning out of control and consequently academic achievement is not taking place either.  These principals made sure that the halls were quiet and clean…and that students were not just wandering around the halls like they do today.  And, the students had better get to class on time…before the bell rang.  I asked the teachers at the schools where I was an administrator to simply close the doors of their classroom and not allow the students to come in until they had note signed by me.  Usually, we simply gave the students a “tune-up” (translation: a paddling).  Yes, this took care of the late-to-class phenomenon.  The students got to class on time, and you could almost hear a pin drop in the halls. 

     These principals in yesteryear made sure that the grounds were well-groomed.  The grass was cut and trash was picked up.  The grounds were safe and secure.  It saddens me to see on the news in recent days that mildew seemed to have taken over parts of the beautiful Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta.  This is Dr. Martin Luther King’s alma mater.  Washington High’s storied structure is still, in my opinion, the most beautiful high school in Georgia.  Architecturally, it is a masterpiece.  But, this summer the halls (or at least one main area) were flooded, and the news reports stated that he band uniforms had been infested with mildew.  So sad.  I don’t believe one of the old-style principals would have stood for this.  I believe that an old-style principal would have worked night and day (even if he had to do it himself) to get rid of the water in the halls.  These older principals took pride in how their school buildings looked.  Leadership matters.

     These principals of yesteryear got out of their offices and walked the halls.  The principals of this new generation sit in their offices and write memos or letters of direction to teachers.   They need to get up and down the halls to make sure that the students know them and also know that they are there to support the teachers.  Only by supporting the teachers can the students have a decent environment in which to learn.  They walked the halls to friendly greet the students and teachers.  The older principals knew that they needed to maintain a high-profile in the school building.  They asked the teachers and coaches and band directors what they needed to get their jobs done.  They did the same thing with the custodial or lunchroom staff.  They made sure that the air condition and heating units were working properly.  And, last but not least, they made sure that the lunches (and in some schools, breakfasts as well) were served hot.  What they didn’t do is snoopervise and intimidate and threaten the teachers and staff.  It never dawned on them to do this.  This was unthinkable…until the devastating “accountability movement” started traversing this county from California in the mid-1970s.  This movement which ostensibly was going to improve our public schools has just about ruined them beyond repair.  This is the classic example of The Law of Unintended Consequences.  This movement gave birth to this new generation of administration which is characterized by dumbass, heartless, spineless, and stupid principals with no principles.  © Big Daddy Publishers, 2013.  

 Dr. Trotter Appears on CBS's Peachtree TV on Sunday Morning...Talking About Atlanta Public Schools.