Well, yeah, it’s a parable, if by parable you mean “a story we blessed well better sit up and pay attention to!”
But it’s a true story.
Our friend, the teacher Kathy Paxton-Williams related the story:
I had an appointment this afternoon and a friend (a retired ESL teacher) was my substitute. Here was her posting this evening:
“I just had the worst subbing experience ever! I was at a local elementary school doing my ESL thing during the very worst of this afternoon’s hideous rainstorm when the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate. The fire dept. showed up, of course. Seriously, it was rainfall of Biblical proportions. The asphalt playground was literally ankle deep and it just kept coming down. We were out there for about 8 minutes with absolutely no shelter. When they finally rang the bell, we couldn’t get back in the building because the key cards wouldn’t work. What a fiasco!!! I had no jacket and no umbrella– and neither did most of the kids. Half of them went into total meltdown. I got soaked all the way through every item of clothing on my body. My shoes were sponges. I had to wring out my bra when I got home (no, not exaggerating). This happened around 1:30, so they decided to notify parents that they could either pick up their kids or bring them dry clothes. Oh, shit, what a nightmare.
Why did this happen you ask? Because the roof leaked– which it has apparently been doing for a few years now– into the fire alarm system and set it off. This is what happens when the useless superintendent gets a 30% raise, hires herself a $15,000/mo consultant to sandbag teachers, and then employs a staff of spin doctors to cover her ass instead of fixing schools. I am not a happy camper!”
Good day for an appointment!
Among the lessons, friends (keep passing the loaves and fishes until everyone has had something to eat, please):
- No: more testing, no matter how rigorous nor expensive, will not fix this problem; in fact, diverting money from this problem to make zowie-grosso tests is an enormous part of the problem.
- Neither opposing the Common Core State Standards, nor imposing those or any other standards will fix the problem.
- No, firing the teachers won’t fix the problem — cannot make the roof stop leaking.
This is daily life in classrooms all across America. In Dallas Independent School District, my classroom regularly heated to 90º in August, February, and every other month. My colleague across the the hall had a classroom that stayed at 50º, at the same time. No administrator could fix it, they claimed. I’ve taught in schools where the library roofs leaked, and where classrooms regularly flowed with water in storms. Worse, I’ve been to schools where those problems occurred from the plumbing and sewer hookups. Classrooms where the doors don’t close, or open; where the windows are stuck open, or closed; where the room carefully engineered for 22 students had 36 desks and 40 students; where the electrical outlets sparked a glorious 4th of July salute whenever a student would try to sneak a phone charge.
To make schools work, teachers must be able to work. For teachers to be able to work, we must provide them with all the support that makes any workplace safe, and which makes classrooms comfortable for students and teachers to focus on learning.
Check around your local schools. Are they in peak physical condition? Do all the support systems work? Are the toilets and restrooms clean, working, and safe?
How many tests could fix any of those problems? How many teachers must be fired to get a roof to stop leaking?
Why would we torture our children, instead of letting them learn?
The most effective school, ever. “Aristotle and his pupil Alexander,” engraving by Charles Laplante, a french engraver and illustrator, 1866. Wikimedia image. Note the roof does not leak in this school.
More:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] A parable about why education reform isn’t working […]
LikeLike
Many years ago, in Louisiana, I was teaching a three-week summer course in AmHist for local teachers. Long class and on the break we’d sit arond abd chat. On one break I asked if they could make one change that wouldn’t cost the school district money but would seriously make their work easier, what would that change be? A middle aged teacher who looked like a Norman Rockwell butter-wouldn’t melt-in-her-mouth model, promptly said “turn off the damn PA system!” The others clapped.
P.S. She didn’t really say “damn.” She said something else. It started with an “f”.
LikeLike