I got made at Education Week last week. I even publicly commented to them about it - I'm not a big FB comment proponent because too often you run into crazy there. But I saw a post with a provocative title and caption that compelled me to click after spending a week with 900+ education professionals who spent an intense 4 days focusing on innovating teaching and technology. And that's just one of hundreds of conferences going on throughout the year.
Yes... do those teachers out there know what to do with it? No doubt we will find one more thing that teachers aren't doing correctly.
The first comment was by a teacher who described the PD her district offered for technology that had EVERYTHING to do with standardized testing, and nothing to do with innovation teaching - for the past 2 years... it broke my heart because I know that teacher wants more for her students.
So I was feeling a little annoyed when I went to read the article. Imagine my surprise when I read it and agreed with it 100%, because THIS is what the article was actually about - inequity in Tech training and use due to socioeconomic differences between schools and districts.
So, geez, Ed Week, what is the message you're trying to communicate? A continuing monologue about unskilled teachers the media has been perpetuating since A Nation At Risk was published in 1983, or the dialogue we must have if we are to address instructional inequity due to wide variances in school funding? Because those are two different things...
This has been one of the black clouds growing over me the past decade, fueled by social media: The widespread notion that our nation's schools are filled with poorly trained and ineffective teachers.
Here is what I believe. The media loves to report on the ends of the bell curve and call it the norm (if it's negative), or what the norm should be (if it's positive). And I can't prove it, because I'm not a statistician, but I believe the bell curve exists all around us - some are just flatter than others.
Here is what I know. I just spent this month in the presence of hundreds of teachers working on their skill set, collaborating with other teachers, and spending hundreds of their "summer break" hours to be better teachers. There are dozens if not over 100 various PD trainings going on all summer long around the country. tens of thousands of teachers are constantly working at sharpening their skills for the sake of the learners coming into their classrooms next year. Yes - there are teachers who don't unless required to. Some of them are also good teachers - certainly proficient. Many are at the low end of the bell curve and we all work with them and wish for leadership that would either provide effective coaching or get rid of them. But they are not the norm.
Read articles carefully. Pay attention to what is being shared and watch out for words like "many" and "most" and "always" without offering any evidence. Don't treat research as definitive. Look for meta analysis of research. Pay attention to what you do see and do the math yourself. I think the true story about education is not being shared and it's up to us to call our "reporters" on the carpet for clickbait story titles and weak reporting. We must be better readers - what our teachers hoped we would grow up to be.
