Introduction to my blog

In this blog, I aim to report and reflect in an impartial and informative way on my experiences teaching in a high-needs public school in New York City.  I will pay special attention to the effects of current legislative efforts to improve public education, such as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the new teacher-evaluation system, and the new Common Core curriculum standards. 

I’m calling this blog “A Teacher’s Reflections from the Middle Lane.”  By “middle lane,” I mean that I am neither a partisan of the kind of changes advocated by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the makers of Waiting for Superman (charter schools, merit pay, testing, closing so-called failing schools, etc.) nor of the Teacher’s Union, the current educational system or those who blame poor test scores and graduation rates on the students themselves. 

Clearly, the education system has many problems, but the solutions are complex – and neither camp has a lock on all wisdom. Saying we need better teachers and must get rid of bad ones sounds good, but it’s easier said than done.  How are good teachers identified? Student test results are easily manipulated, by selecting high-performing students or fudging test scores, as we saw in Atlanta. 

Also, putting the focus solely on teachers ignores the larger societal forces at work. Many factors beyond teachers’ control influence education outcomes: poor student attendance, lack of student motivation, absent family support, a paucity of literacy immersion during the formative childhood years, not to mention incompetent administrators.

I know many children who attended New York City’s specialized public high schools where the graduation and Regents pass rates are 99.9%.  Were their teachers so much better than those at the school at which I teach? Maybe a bit -- but not enough to account for the vast difference in outcomes. What teachers rightly hear when they are made the focus of blame is an attack on their union.

In this blog, I won’t defend the status quo, with its lack of accountability. We graduate way too many students who are not even close to being ready for college work or to join the work force. Nor will I defend the teachers’ union right or wrong. 

Rather, I aim to give the reader insight into the world of inner-city teachers and students and the effects of school reform on their lives, along the way offering my perspective on the assumptions that underlie both sides of the education-reform debate.  That is, I’m striving to chart a rational course in “the Middle Lane.”