Let the Teacher's Teach: A Discussion of Obstacles to Effective Teaching

Let the Teachers Teach:

A Discussion of Obstacles to Effective Teaching

Benterah C. Morton, M.Ed.

Louisiana State University

Author’s Note:

Benterah C. Morton is a doctoral student at Louisiana State University in the College of

Human Sciences and Education school of Education’s Curriculum Theory Department.

Let the Teachers Teach

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Abstract

“Just let us teach!” has been repeated by teachers across the country for many years.

Unfortunately, the multiple intrusions into education by federal and state governments,

politicians, foundations, media, and others have provided obstacles for teachers that prevent

them from effectively teaching students. This discussion begins with the constitutionally

omitted delegation of power to guide public education to state governments. From there the

conversation outlines a limited history of public education reform and its removal of power

from the classroom teacher to state governments and finally from state governments to the

federal government. After reviewing multiple obstacles to effective teaching set in place by

state and federal reform mandates, suggestions are provided to help classroom teachers

overcome those obstacles and focus on what is most important, the students.


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Let the teachers teach: A discussion of obstacles to effective teaching

When crafting the Constitution, the founding fathers of the United States did “not

mention education and therefore it is a power given to the states” (Spring, 2010, p. 52). This

delegation was carried out for many years with limited interruption from the federal

government. However, after the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik in 1957, things began to

change. There was a shift in America’s focus on education from teaching Reading – wRiting –

aRithmetic (the 3 R’s) to focusing on Math and Science instruction. Many see this shift in

priorities as the beginning of the intrusion of outside forces in classrooms across the country.

Outside forces including politicians, foundations, media, and many others appear to weigh in

much more than those working with children day in and day out, the classroom teacher.

Schools have begun to lose control of who is being educated and with whom they are being

educated, what is being taught and how it is to be taught, and how to evaluate the progress of

the program. With the various mandated invasions of outside forces in the teaching practices of

educators, how can teachers be expected to prepare students to lead our future? What tools or

ideas could be applied to reaffirm the understanding that teachers are leaders in curriculum

and an integral part of the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next?

In the beginning: American education

In 1776, the founders of the United States of America drafted the American

Constitution. As they drafted, they spelled out how our government and many other essential

government structures would work. With all the attention to detail they paid in drafting such a

timeless document, it appears odd that it does not mention education. I believe their exclusion


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of this topic was intentional. Spring reminds us, “The U.S. Constitution does not mention

education and therefore it is a power given to the states” (2010, p. 52). This unspoken

delegation of authority to states allowed racial segregation, but also provided for educational

autonomy “historically, most decisions about curriculum, teaching methods, and recruitment of

teachers and other staff were made by local schools” (Spring, 2010, p. 53). Teachers, with the

local community in mind, were able to decide what knowledge was most worth as well as the

best instructional methods for teaching the necessary knowledge (Spring, 2010). Many of the

lessons were taught in a way that Dewey would approve; with the students being able to

identify a humanlike significance in their work and to understand the values socially accepted in

the region (Dewey, 2001, p. 17). The education being carried out across the country was

successfully meeting the needs of the students and their communities. Unfortunately, one

group of students was being systematically excluded from this type of successful educational

opportunity. African Americans were being denied access to schools across the country because

of their race.

Evolving view of education: Intrusions

In 1954, the Supreme Court decided on the Brown v. Board of Education case. Their

decision determined that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional on the basis that,

“in the field of public education the doctrine of ’separate but equal’ has no place. Separate

educational facilities are inherently unequal” ("Brown v. Board of Education," 1954). The court

decision in 1954 began to change the face of education across the country. It was the first

intrusion of the federal government into classrooms as they decided who was to be educated

and with whom they would be educated. People in the South were so unhappy with this


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“racialized” curriculum intrusion on their state laws that desegregation “did not occur until the

late 1960s and early 1970s, under the presidential administration of Richard Nixon” (Pinar,

2004, p. 7). Attitudes about segregation have improved greatly over the last 30 years, and

students of all races are provided with equal access to successful educational opportunities.

The second intrusion of the federal government in public education occurred

immediately after Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Crippled by the fear of

losing the Cold War to the Soviet Union, the federal government intrusively navigated the focus

of education from instruction in the 3 R’s to a focus on Science and Math instruction. Changing

the focus of instruction was another step away from local governance of education and a step

closer to federal governance. Still another step away from local governance came with the

founding of the Education Commission of States in 1967. The commission’s goals were to “Give

voice to diverse interests, needs and traditions of state; Enable them to cooperate and

communicate with one another; Promote their working together to focus national attention on

the pressing education issues of the day” (Spring, 2010, p. 53, emphasis added). The trend to

move the governance of education from the local and state governments to the federal

government had begun.

The 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform marked

the beginning of multiple intrusions into the American classroom by the federal government all

in the name of educational reform. A Nation at Risk reported that, “our society and its

educational institutions seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the

high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them” (Gardner, 1983). The report

concluded, “that declines in educational performance are in large part the result of disturbing


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inadequacies in the way the educational process itself is often conducted” (Gardner, 1983). In

The Politics of American Education, Spring recalls that the report “blamed the allegedly poor

academic quality of American public schools for causing lower rates of economic productivity

than those of Japan and West Germany. In addition, it blamed schools for reducing the lead of

the United States in technological development” (Spring, 2010, pp. 7-8). The report went on to

state, “if only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we will still retain in world

markets, we must rededicate ourselves to the reform of the educational system for the benefit

of all” (Gardner, 1983, emphasis added). A Nation at Risk signaled the beginning of a full assault

on American education in the form of educational reforms. Even though it was believed that

the report “was based on false data and assumptions” (Spring, 2010, p. 8), there were a

number of mandates that responded to its recommendations, each of which served as an

intrusion into the American classroom.

Current view of education: The Obstacles

Federal obstacles.

In The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are

Undermining Education, Diane Ravitch (2011) describes what happened in the country in the

years following the publication of A Nation at Risk. She recalls that nearly every state devised a

task force of some sort to define school reform in their state, and President George H. W. Bush

(1989), with the assistance of the governors from across the country, set goals for American

schools to be reached by the year 2000. These goals included being first in math and science;

90% high school graduation rates; mastering “challenging subject matter”; all adults being


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literate and competitive in the global economy; and all schools being free of drugs, alcohol, and

violence. Ravitch (2011) concludes by noting that none of these voluntarily implemented goals

were attained, and that they were designed by elected officials, not by educators.

President William J. Clinton followed a path similar to that of his predecessor by also

promoting voluntary school improvement standards in 1994. The next president, George W.

Bush, was the first to transfer his school improvement plans into educational reform mandates

by signing No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB) into law in 2002. The legislation was based on

four basic principles: every child would be tested yearly in grades 3 – 8 on state designed tests

in reading and math, reform decisions were to be made by states not federal government, help

to improve low performing schools would be provided, and students would have the ability to

transfer from consistently dangerous or low performing schools (Ravitch, 2011, p. 94). “NCLB

opened a new era of testing and accountability” (Ravitch, 2011, p. 150) and posed a wealth of

obstacles to teachers carrying out meaningful instruction on a daily basis. Standardized tests

were being used to make decisions about people’s lives. The focus of assessments on reading

and mathematics forced instructors to focus primarily on those subjects and neglect unassessed

subjects (Ravitch, 2011, p. 96). Finally, the new law set the unrealistic expectation that all

students in the country would be proficient by 2014. This was not the first time that unrealistic

expectations were imposed on American education by politicians. Unfortunately, the pressure

to abide by federal law caused some states and educational systems to resort to decisive

schemes to obtain a proficient rating. In an effort to game the system, Texas’s definition of

proficient changed yearly depending on the scores obtained by the students. Atlanta Public

Schools in Georgia went a step further and allegedly held “grading parties” to change their


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students’ answer sheets to reflect better scores. Each form of gaming the system that was

utilized resulted in elevated student scores, but not because of the decisions made about

instruction in the classroom and not because the students were learning more. The federal

mandates to focus on accountability had become more of an obstacle to sound instructional

practices than a benefit to them.

When writing about educational reform, Pinar remarked “the American school reform

movement is dominated by business thinking and is thereby obsessed with the ‘bottom line’”

(Pinar, 2004, p. 16). The introduction of the Race to the Top campaign by President Barack

Obama in 2009, brought about just the type of reform described by Pinar, reform that focused

on data driven accountability for students and teachers and directly linked teacher

performance evaluations to student scores, reform focused on the bottom line. It appeared as

if the politicians and businesspersons making the rules were truly more focused on data on the

bottom line that represented growth in schools than the actual academic growth of the

students. It appeared as if there were a human capitalistic purpose for public education

focused on supplying educated workers to the workforce while avoiding programs that

promoted social justice (Spring, 2010, p. 87).

Indirect obstacles.

Race to the Top’s business-like model was a direct result of the influence “venture

philanthropist” Bill Gates had on the Obama Administration. Bill Gates and other

philanthropists appeared well intentioned as they poured millions of dollars into educational

reform efforts. Supporting charter schools was a reform effort behind which philanthropists


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stood. President Obama was so pleased with their projected benefits that he “announced that

charter schools were a major pillar of his school reform plan” (Spring, 2010, p. 167). No matter

the support garnered for charter schools by state and federal government and large

foundations, “nothing in the record suggested that… any charter schools was better than any

public school” (Ravitch, 2011, p. 146, original emphasis); their academic effectiveness was

inconclusive. Critics of charter schools reported that charters’ numbers were skewed because

of their ability to counsel behaviorally and academically challenging students to leave their

program. These students along with those who did not “win” the lottery to attend charter

schools were sent back to the local public school. The conclusion was drawn that “the

continued growth of charter schools in urban districts will leave regular public schools with the

most difficult students to educate, thus creating a two-tier system of widening inequality”

(Ravitch, 2011, p. 145). How would public school teachers be able to teach in an environment

predicated by forced inequalities in educational opportunities? How would public school

teachers teach the large population of students from poor neighborhoods who were poorly

motivated and disinterested in school?

Charter schools are only one example of indirect obstacles to classroom teachers.

Another indirect obstacle is the propagation of alternative certification programs like Teach for

America (TFA). Alternatively certified teachers are required to have a bachelor’s degree in any

field. They, like TFA members, “received only a brief training period in the summer before their

jobs commenced, yet were supposedly more successful than teachers with paper credentials

and experience” (Ravitch, 2011, p. 189). Placing untrained teachers in high needs classrooms, in

some cases, were detrimental to the students in the classes as well as the surrounding teachers


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that spent time training their alternatively certified peers. Aside from the benefit of having a

degreed warm bodied person in the classroom, “the evidence [of TFA] was far from conclusive”

(Ravitch, 2011, p. 189).

Multiple mandates and programs with limited results or inconclusive results have

riddled educational reform efforts. NCLB strengthened accountability in some aspects, but

destroyed the lives of students, teachers, administrators, and schools that were retained,

released, demoted, or closed as a result of inconsistent standards and expectations. The goals

set to be met by Race to the Top are just as unattainable as those set forth by NCLB because it

measures all programs and students by one measure and not multiple measures. Teachers

know that using one assessment to gauge growth does not account for the different strengths

and weaknesses of the students. Politicians do not appear to know this simple truth. Although

some alternatively certified teachers have experienced success similar to that of traditional

teachers, the evaluation of the program is still inconclusive. How do we overcome political and

educational amnesia and remember the past and refrain from repeating past mistakes? (Apple,

2004, p. 27).

Overcoming the obstacles

With the various mandated intrusions of outside forces in the teaching practices and

expectations of educators, how can teachers be expected to prepare students to lead our

future? What tools or ideas could be applied to reaffirm the understanding that teachers are

leaders in the classroom, in curriculum, and an integral part of the transfer of knowledge from


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one generation to the next? Pinar suggests, “teachers can become witnesses to the notion that

intelligence and learning can lead to other worlds, not just the successful exploitation of this

one” (Pinar, 2004, p. 31). In this context, teachers are urged to look beyond the now and plan

for the future of humanity. As the obstacles of mandated curriculum, standardized tests, poor

training, diverse classrooms, etcetera, are introduced into classrooms, teachers must still teach.

Dewey would encourage them to teach lessons: that connect to the students everyday life

experiences, that are motivating to the students, that involve doing instead of sitting (Dewey,

2001). Teachers are encouraged to shuck off educational amnesia and teach the curriculum in

such a way that students become positively contributing citizens instead of worker bees in the

hive of society, buzzing to and fro, not able to think for themselves.

Federal mandates at times appear to be a form of oppression to marginalize the public

education system as an avenue to social justice. It becomes the task of the teacher to oppose

the status quo and fight “for freedom and justice, and… recover their lost humanity” (Freire,

2000, p. 44), and their lost profession. Teaching is an honorable profession that should be given

its due respect and admiration. Fighting for equity for students in education will take teachers

one step closer to regaining the esteem the profession has lost after the introduction of

programs that imply that anyone can teach. “The quest of the oppressed, ‘to recover their lost

humanity’ (Freire, 2000, p. 44) is not a clear cut path, but an arduous journey. There are

multiple facets that must be evaluated and analyzed” (Morton, 2013).

Finally, teachers can take action by seeking out and capitalizing on opportunities to

teach businesspersons, politicians, and their local communities about the student centered

needs of classroom instruction. Discussing the varying expectations and necessities may seem


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farfetched and inappropriate because “the basic rules of activity that govern our perception

tend to cause us to picture conflict as primarily a negative quality” (Apple, 2004, p. 91).

However, conflict is not always negative; when appropriately wielded, it can produce positive

results for all involved. Furthermore, the true heart of an educator is to educate. Who is more

qualified to defend through seminars, presentations, written letters, panel discussions, social

media, etcetera, the cause of the classroom teacher than the classroom teacher? Few others

are able to understand the compassion teachers have for their students. Even fewer are able to

empathize with the educator’s struggle to overcome federal and state intrusions into the

classroom and still provide a quality education. When all else fails, take the mandates for what

they are and continue to focus on what is most important, the student. This may require

teachers to practice creative insubordination. Ladson-Billings (2009) describes creative

insubordination as opposition to the system, she writes:

The teachers I studied work in opposition to the system that employs them. They are

critical of the way that the system treats employees, students, parents, and activists in

the community. However, they cannot let their critique reside solely in words. They

must turn it into action by challenging the system…. In their classrooms, they practice a

subversive pedagogy. Even in the face of the most mundane curricular decisions these

teachers must make a stand. (2009, p. 140, emphasis added)

In the end teachers must look for ways to attain the necessary goals while at the same time still

adhering to the required expectations.


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In conclusion, there have been a variety of obstacles placed in the way of teachers

effectively educating the children in their classrooms. Many of the obstacles are put in place by

state and/or federal mandates devised by politicians or businesspersons to serve a purpose

other than educating children. The health of our society depends on the classroom teachers

doing whatever it takes to educate the children in their care.


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Bibliography

Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum: Routledge. Brown v. Board of Education, No. No. 1, 347 483 (Supreme Court 1954). Dewey, J. (2001). The School and Society: &, The Child and the Curriculum: Courier Dover Publications. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed: Continuum International Publishing Group. Gardner, D. P. (1983). A nation at risk. Washington, D. C.: The National Commission on Excellence in

Education, US Department of Education. Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children: John

Wiley & Sons. Morton, B. C. (2013). Writings in/from the margins Freire. Louisiana State University. Pinar, W. F. (2004). What is curriculum theory? : Routledge. Ravitch, D. (2011). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are

undermining education: Basic Books. Spring, J. (2010). The politics of American education: Taylor & Francis US.

Let the Teacher's Teach: A Discussion of Obstacles to Effective Teaching

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