Teachers on a paper trail. Does it lead to greater learning?
One of the surprises in talking to teachers over the years is that their biggest complaint is not unruly students or uninvolved parents. What really discourages teachers is the paperwork, the ever-increasing and ever-changing litany of demands from the central office, state agencies and federal government to fill out this form and churn out that report.
Across grades, systems and states, teachers are overwhelmed by the pressure to submit detailed lesson plans, agendas and daily goals. A survey earlier this year of 43,000 Maryland teachers found that while they are generally happy with their class sizes and teaching conditions, they despair over all the paperwork.
A 1987 study found that teachers on average spent eight hours a week on paperwork. The hours may well be higher now since many current school reform models seem to measure success by the stacks of reports produced.
The emphasis on relentlessly documenting their every move in the classroom whittles away at their autonomy and their discretion, teachers say. They also maintain that there’s no evidence that better record keeping inspires better teaching.
A top researcher once told me that his best advice to new teachers was ignore all the central office notices and directives in their mailboxes for the first three months and concentrate on their craft.
A mentor teacher shared with me that her inexperienced colleagues seldom come to her in frustration with students. It’s the impositions of the administration that brings them to her door.
What bothers me is that these paperwork laments also come from seasoned teachers, the pros in the classroom with long histories of success with students. I am stunned at the bureaucratic shackles put on even proven teachers.
I met a lot of effective teachers a few weeks ago at an Education Trust conference in Washington, D.C., honoring schools around the country making great strides with high need kids.
At the National Association for Gifted Children conference in Atlanta more recently, I listened to other acclaimed teachers talk about how they strive to accommodate the advanced learners. And in recent classroom visits around Atlanta, I watched as clever teachers engaged their students in innovative math and reading classes.
Struck by the commitment and talents of these high-performing teachers, I had a sudden idea for a reform that would be cheap, easy and could start tomorrow:
Leave the terrific teachers alone. Allow them to devote all their time to their students.
Decide which teachers in each school building are performing well. Most principals already know their stars, but student achievement data could also be used as a determinant.
Free those teachers from meetings, professional development, lesson plan submissions, data collection and every other piece of minutiae, paperwork and reporting that diverts them from their students.
Not forever. Start with six months and see what happens.
Enable these professionals to chart their own course, set their own goals and trust them to do well. Focus on the struggling teachers instead.
Don’t fret if the great teachers are doing it their way and departing from the system-wide script. If they’re succeeding with their students, who cares who wrote the script?
A friend in the computer industry has been through multiple reorganizations and has come to recognize two signs that a company is sinking fast: No more free bagels in the break room and a sudden insistence on written and detailed records of time on task, forcing employees to devote precious time to writing about selling computers rather than getting out and actually selling them.
That insanity appears to be spreading to education where documenting classroom performance is preventing teachers from performing.
Yet, I can’t believe that Superintendents Cindy Loe or Beverly Hall want their best teachers harangued over incomplete lesson plans. I don’t buy that J. Alvin Wilbanks or Fred Sanderson think their top teachers should alter successful practice because an off-the-shelf reform model calls for a different approach. Edmond Heatley can’t care if teachers write daily goals on the board if their students are learning.
The late British historian C. Northcote Parkinson aptly summarized the cost of focusing too much on paperwork: “The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself.”
–By Maureen Downey, AJC Get Schooled blog
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70 comments Add your comment
Recently Retired SE GA Teacher
November 29th, 2010
4:20 pm
@ HS Public Teacher – Everything ( and lots, lots more) you mentioned is continuing to be required in the local school system from which I recently retired. Maybe they got this idea from Dekalb County. The paperwork is the killer for most teachers. I know many teachers who work on plans,newsletters, and grading when they really should be interacting with the students. Many of them work on assignments for advanced degrees which usually amount to nothing but an increase in pay.
dd
November 29th, 2010
4:40 pm
paperwork (or time spent on it) isn’t the issue. Complete lack of reward for being an outstanding teacher is (and of course……..ikes how scary…….penalty for those who are mediocre)
Dawgdad
November 29th, 2010
5:59 pm
What the heck do you people expect from a government school. I am a 35 year old retired government employee. Government is mediocrity, consumed with documentation, performance standards, performance evaluations, time reports, leave slips, graphs, charts, acronyms, etc.
Our students deserve better. We can’t start here, have to blow it up and start over. It is like remodeling a house with a rotten foundation.
Roy Barnes
November 29th, 2010
6:30 pm
If you morons would have voted for me, I would have given you the pay and respect you deserve…plus I would have solve the problem of global warming and bring about world peace.
Mary Hollowell
November 29th, 2010
7:39 pm
Maureen, you are our hero. We have heavy bureaucratic shackles in teacher education, too – arduous, useless paperwork that detracts from doing genuine good work. I can only imagine that the excessive reports justify some high-paying jobs in the state department.
The paperwork is out of control. The scripts are too long and are carved in stone, and report after report sits in cyberspace or gathers dust. It is a good leader’s responsibility to protect educators from it, not perpetuate it. Thank you for opening this enormous can of worms. I, too, am pondering solutions.
MS. Teacher
November 29th, 2010
8:40 pm
Amen “Teaching Family”! Teaching is no longer a family friendly profession. This makes me very concerned about what we’re going to be dealing with in the next 5-15 years as our current teachers retire and we have fewer and fewer young teachers coming into the profession. The benefits, and time off just aren’t there anymore. Why work 10 hour days and have vacation equal to that of my husband in the corporate world…but make 1/3 of his salary? At my school, we have only had 2 student teachers under the age of 40 in the past 5 years. Granted, these individuals had wonderful potential, but let’s be honest…they weren’t getting into education for the long haul. Honestly, I’ve been in this for 12 years, and it just keeps getting worse…I have fantastic scores, great relationships with my students and their parents, and truly enjoy teaching…but I’m sadly considering getting out after this year and all of the continued BS from the “big whigs” who haven’t been in a classroom in 20+ years.
Political Mongrel
November 29th, 2010
9:49 pm
The vast majority of this useless paperwork foisted upon teachers is not to make the teachers better, it is to make the administrators above to look better. It is to create, as Emerson said, ‘a foolish consistency’, one that stifles creativity and wastes time and paper. Maureen has hit this nail right on the head; leave teachers who have proven their effectiveness alone and turn them loose. Give them support and freedom.
The flip side of this is the willingness and understanding of the administrators involved. Over one eight year period I had an assistant principal who couldn’t tolerate anything I did, followed by one who liked my methods, followed by another who was utterly intolerant of any deviation from her vision of perfect education (like mine), followed by another who put me up for a teaching award. Even veteran educators often can’t agree on what’s good and what’s bad, much less on solutions. Hence the never ending fad-of-the-year cycle.
AlmostRetired
November 29th, 2010
10:03 pm
I want to retire because of all of the paperwork. I love the students and I love teaching, but I can’t be an effective teacher when I spend so much time on documentation. The amount of paperwork required of is is proportional to the number of administrators we must answer to…
Frustrated Veteran Teacher
November 29th, 2010
10:18 pm
I have read many of the posted blogs and totally agree with my fellow educators. It is awful the things that we ( highly educated and dedicated teachers) have to go through. I have been teaching for over 20 years and have a proven track record of success with my students just as many other teachers have as well. However, everytime we turn around, they (County Office) are adding something else to our plate (Academic Galleries, Teacher Report Cards, Data notebooks, faculty meetings, grade level meetings, required after school activities, and the list goes on). Nobody talks about the countless hours we put in to doing a great job. They think that things magically get done. There are many days that we put in 10 or more hours just to make sure that the paperwork is completed and that we are ready for the next day. Oh, don’t forget the after school activites. And, let’s not talk about pay cuts and furloughs. They cut our pay and place more work on us. Someone asked me, “Don’t you all get overtime pay or comp time?” I laughed and responded, “WHAT IS THAT?”
If I could just have one wish, it would be that the powers that be (County Office) would come back into the classroom for one month, do everything that they are requiring us to do, and get paid the same pay that we get paid. Come walk in our shoes. Let’s see how long will they last. I do not think they would.
Lastly, I am hearing a lot of veteran teachers talking aout leaving the profession. Well, you know, even an old dog gets tired.
jackie
November 29th, 2010
10:33 pm
I am so sorry about those young women and men in the teaching profession today. I am a veteran teacher with 37 years and I regret that my son and two daughters-in-law have chosen education as their fields. They are quite frustrated at times due to the unbelievable “fluff”, as I call it, that is demanded of them. I know that the students are not nearly as well educated and prepared in today’s schools because the teachers can’t find time to teach due to the many paper trails. I know this because I left a system to completely retire in June of 2009. Thank goodness I could do that, but I can’t see how teachers will last longer than 5 years with the endless demands. Many administrators, from the Superintendents to the Principals are highly ineffective and the Central Office usually staffs their “friends” in the high paying, or created positions. I once didn’t agree with Neal Boortz about the low performing Government Schools but I do now. God Bless those Teachers who still care.
Toto: exposing the man behind the crown
November 29th, 2010
11:29 pm
Wow. Samuel must have been a prophet. He told those Israelites what would happen if they traded the God of Abraham and Isaac for an earthly king. His list of bad news can be found in I Samuel 8:9-20. Sounds like our current Wall Street/government overlords. The bottom of the list says, “He will take the tenth of your sheep; and you will be his servants. And you shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.”
Time4change
November 30th, 2010
5:26 am
Amen! Teachers who produce paperwork are not necessarily good teachers and vice
versa, why can’t administration see this disconnect! I will print this article and keep it in my files. Thank you!
Long Time Teacher
November 30th, 2010
3:20 pm
Amen! I have been teaching for over 20 years, in an assortment of states, districts and schools. I have taught the children of lawyers and doctors, as well as prostitutes and crack-addicts. I have worked with children who were abused, and children who were cherished. I have been cussed out, threatened, stabbed with pencils, punched in the face, and hit with a chair. I have been praised, honored, and nominated for Teacher of the Year. I have taught in schools that did not make AYP, and schools that won state and national awards. I have worked in schools with state of the art technology, and schools that could not afford text books. I have worked in schools with brand new facilities, and at schools that had classrooms fashioned out of refrigerator boxes, lead in the water, chemicals contaminating the play yard, asbestos in the walls and barbed wire surrounding the grounds. I have been in schools that had visits from the state governor and in schools that had gunfire drill practice.
In short, I have seen a lot. Yet, through it all, the good and the bad, I have always felt I was making a positive difference in children’s lives. I have always loved my job, and felt fulfilled (though exhausted) at the end of the day.
Thanks to the, as you say, “ever-increasing and ever-changing litany of demands from the central office, state agencies and federal government,” I am, for the first time, really feeling as though I am NOT making a positive difference. Instead, my students and my teaching are suffering as I struggle to fulfill the paperwork and documentation requirements foist upon my by the growing bureaucracy of Education. Best practices are being sacrificed in the name of expediting accountability. Good, solid teaching is being sacrificed in the name of covering a curriculum which has become too burdensome, and often not developmentally appropriate. Meaningful instruction is being sacrificed in the name of a one-size fits all approach of standardized testing.
I still love teaching, but I seem to do less and less of it each year as more and more of my time gets eaten up by meaningless clerical work and date gathering for the powers that be. When some of us voice our concerns, we are told to “get with the program” or risk losing our jobs.
I no longer feel fulfilled at my job. When I finally get to go home this evening, I will be both exhausted and defeated.
I have always spoken honestly with the student teachers who have come though my classroom, letting them know the challenges they will face, but also telling them how rewarding the profession can be. Lately, I find myself less and less encouraging.
Good teachers are leaving. Who can blame them?
Shannon
November 30th, 2010
4:09 pm
This deserves more than a blog buried at ajc.com. Time for a few AJC reporters to shadow some teachers for a week or two and document everything they document. Give the public a real breakdown of the time that teachers are expected to spend on bureaucratic tasks. Let the AJC make a real difference for the first time in a long while–it used to be at the forefront of civil rights issues and other progressive causes.
Except that the AJC probably doesn’t have the resources to do this kind of investigative, long-term project. It’s a vicious cycle: reporters get canned to make a better bottom line, subscriptions go down because quality has gone down; more reporters are let go; more subscriptions are lost; more reporters are let go, etc.
But this is a real, pervasive problem. Everyone who knows a classroom teacher is aware of it, but nothing is done about it. That’s just the sort of thing a little muckraking could help. Pity we don’t currently fund in-depth journalism. It’s all surface stories and off-the-cuff blogs.
Ole Guy
November 30th, 2010
5:39 pm
I suppose it’s time to revisit an old (probably) worn out issue…the issue of collective bargaining, a unified PROFESSIONAL voice, and maybe just a little control over the professional careers of Georgia’s teacher corps. Teachers, I am addressing each and every one of you…it is no mystery that you (collectively) have become the whiping post of every lil ole issue in education. As long as YOU permit the powers that be to continue this trend, IT AINT NEVER GONNA STOP! Every time some lousy educational bureaucrat wants some paper work done, YOU will wind up the goat. If you want to continue hiding behind the cloak of anonimity, affraid of your personal well being, go for it. YOU will probably remain safe with your jobs, UNTIL some bureaucrat decides it’s time to once again stir things up. I don’t how much longer you’re gonna remain content to operater under this cloud of fear and apprehension, which you surly must feel. How does this impact on your own health, the quality of educational services you deliver, and, at the end of the day, the quality of education YOU are sending out into the world.
Think about, teachers. The sooner you gain a collective voice, tell these bureaucrats to go to hell and let you do your jobs, and begin teaching without the constant cloud of uncertainty hanging over your classrooms, and over your careers, the better off you will be. You, AND your students, will be proud of the education you will be able to deliver.
Wendy
November 30th, 2010
10:07 pm
After it is ALL said and done…we are not teaching all we are is glorified secretaries. After 32 yrs in the profession, it has become unbearable! The top administrations have becoming so heavy and over paid the folks in the trenches are drowning, starving and working part-time jobs because we CAN’T GET A COST OF LIVING RAISE! The people who are NEVER in front of a struggling student are the ones that are sent to ALL the educational conferences…spending all the professional development dollars. The teachers are told that they can’t go because the students will lose instructional time… that is some deep bull! When all the unnecessary paperwork is choking and driving anybody with any sense away from the profession of teaching. Teaching is not a learned profession…either you can or can not teaching. Most good teachers are good because it is in their blood not in a ream of paper documenting how did they do that! WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!
Challenger
November 30th, 2010
11:19 pm
The challenge is for anyone who is certified to teach that has moved to administration to COME BACK TO THE CLASSROOM or THE DAILY TEACHING TRENCH for nine weeks! Now with this you will need to write lesson plans, align standards, differentiate the lessons, complete benchmark testing, weekly assessments, conduct and implement any and ALL reform programs, attend IEP meetings, attend SST meetings, gather and document RTI data on YOUR failing (referred) students, enter attendance online before 8:30 am, document progress monitoring, take lunch count, have the principal sign that you saw the scheduled students, develop good IEPs, send weekly progress notes, return parent phone calls and emails, attend to ill students before they get to the nurse, do morning duty and or afternoon duty, be available for tutorial before or after school, and any other foolishness that is requested of you that was needed YESTERDAY but they forgot to ask….oh yes and TEACH THE STUDENTS. Do this all between the hours of 7:30 am and 3:30pm…and the job is yours for as long as you want it! Something is going to have to GIVE because the constant turnover of teachers will always keep the “students’ progress” in terrible limbo!
Teacher goes public to private, exits the paper trail | Get Schooled
December 2nd, 2010
8:46 am
[...] am still getting a lot of response to my piece on the overwhelming amounts of paperwork and documentation now required of teachers. The demands have grown so much that teachers have little [...]
veteran teacher
December 3rd, 2010
2:45 pm
Why has no one mentioned that the excessive trivial paperwork also takes time away from the important teaching and learning experience of teachers grading papers to provide useful feedback for students? There is virtually no time during the school day to grade essays, for example, because so much of our time must go to administrivia. Good teachers want to respond to student work, and many of us spend 10-20 hours per week beyond the school day grading papers because there is no other time to do it. A new teacher left after her first year saying, “I didn’t realize that I would have no life but school, and I’m a newly wed who wants to make my marriage work.” She is now a pharmaceutical rep with a financially successful career and a happy marriage. Teachers are overwhelmed with paperwork of all kinds.
Teacher goes public to private, exits the paper trail » iThinkEducation.net!
December 3rd, 2010
8:29 pm
[...] am still getting a lot of response to my piece on the overwhelming amounts of paperwork and documentation now required of teachers. The demands have grown so much that teachers have little [...]