Are teachers doomed to fail no matter what they do?

I have written over 70 articles on Medium.com since 2020, mostly about education, the K12 system and also about teachers. One thing all of those articles have in common is a recognition that teachers are behind the 8-ball no matter what they do.

• If teachers "teach to the test" the students fail.
• If teachers get creative with their lesson plans, the student still fail.
• If the teachers ask for support and self-care, guess what? Yes, the students still fail.

I have spoken to thousands of teachers since the March 2020 Pandemic shut down. Most of those teachers told me that they don't believe their students were failing. But when I pressed them on their definition of failure, they all cited grades.

America has a major information problem on its hands. What I mean is, no one knows "WHAT" should be happening in classrooms and schools.

Teachers are moving in one direction, administrators are moving in a different direction and parents disagree with both directions. The bottom line is that no one is in any agreement with the focus of our school system.

I have been building a team to fix schools since the shut down. There are teachers, admin and parents who want to see schools in America succeed. There are people who want teachers to receive the level of respect they deserve and also get the type of high-level professional development they need.

And there are administrators who would give the shirt off their back to help teachers and students, but the system itself prevents them from doing anything worthwhile.

Here's the Problem

The problem is the K12 system itself. We cannot expect to squeeze one more ounce of juice out of this lemon. It was developed in 1875, we live in 2022. My fellow Americans, "put a fork in it." Our K12 system is done.

It's time to redesign the system.

I wrote a comprehensive 4-part series on medium outlining the problems, the obstacles and the solutions to fix the whole thing. The only approach that will work is to start with rewriting the curriculum, then providing every single teacher in America with the same high-quality professional development and then coach administrators to become teacher coaches themselves, so if a teacher ever has a question or runs into an obstacle in class, they can help and provide support.

But the feedback I got from hundreds of people who read the series was "It's too long."

This is all I have to say -- "WOW! Really?"

The Obstacles

There are real and present obstacles standing in the way of any positive change from occuring in our school system. Not everyone is fully aware that the system itself was designed to prevent change from happening.

Anyone that has researched and read Professional Learning Communities At Work, knows what I'm talking about. Dr. Richard Dufour outlined 17 reasons why reform efforts fail inside schools. Seventeen!! Not one, two or three, but 17!

Another huge obstacle that has to be overcome is the deep-rooted anger, hatred and distrust that everyone that works inside a K12 school has for everyone else. If you are an educator, in whatever capacity, you literally don't trust anyone else that works in your school or outside your school.

I have never seen this level of anger and distrust in my 20 years as an educator.

This is a deep-rooted obstacle and unless someone can address that, there is no hope for our future as a nation and our school system. To be quite honest, we should just pack up now and all go home.

Understanding Anger

I challenge you to find someone else who understands anger and distrust more than me. I understand where it comes from. And I also understand why it can't go away unless everyone stops yelling at teachers and principals and agrees that the K12 system has completely collapsed.

We need to agree the school system isn't falling apart, it's in ruins already.

There is nothing left to save. The curriculum is outdated, obsolete and irrelevant in the 21st Century.

And this is where the anger begins. For some reason there are educators who will still defend the curriculum. Folks, if you are defending the curriculum we use in schools, you are only showing how much you don't understand curriculum design or writing.

The frustration I feel is I can't teach educators the basics of education.

I would love to try, but the minute I open my mouth, an angry teacher has to give their 2-cents, which has no basis in research, data or best practices, but is just fueled by anger, anxiety, and resentment.

I am writing this post on LinkedIn as some type of appeal to teachers and principals. I understand how you feel. I am not trying to negate how you feel. I feel the same way, but I can't waste students time anymore. I have to bury my feelings, my anger, my resentment and my distrust because we are allowing a new generation of kids to be tortured by us.

And the longer we don't fix the K12 system, the more our students have every right to hate all of us for not standing up and defending their rights as citizens. We have no moral high ground when we allow our negative emotions to get the better of us.

Implementing Solutions

I am not a celebrity. I am not famous. In fact, most of you have never heard of me before this post. I have 20 years, hard fought years, inside K12 schools. I started in the classroom and moved out to administration.

I was not the most effective teacher, but what I knew I needed to do as an administrator was fully understand what it takes to become a highly effective teacher. I needed to know how to answer any and every question my teachers might ask me. So I hit the books. I read everything I could get my hands on and I also conducted more observations and walk-throughs than most administrators.

In the beginning, my teachers thought I was spying on them. They thought I didn't trust them. So I sat them all down and explained what I was doing. They couldn't believe it. A principal who was trying to learn how to be a teacher? So they asked me, "Why are you doing that?"

The answer is principals, supervisors, department chairs all need to know and understand what it takes to be an effective teacher. Teachers need to trust that when they go to their administrator and ask a question, that they are getting reliable and research-based answers.

I can sit with any teacher and help them teach or reach any student. I know that's a bold statement to make, but that's how much I studied about teaching best practices.

I have logged over 250,000 hours inside K12 classrooms, observing, taking notes, collecting data and then implementing strategies based on that data. I became such an expert on highly effective teaching that I started the most respected Teacher Development Program in NJ. I had a waiting list of teachers who wanted to come work at my school, because they would be apart of this development program.

We offered to teachers over 70+ hours of the most targeted and highly valuable professional development courses in my state. And this was all free to staff.

Dealing with Frustration

Only teachers seem to realize that being a teacher is a life of frustration. You write and plan a lesson and it bombs in class, hence frustration. You deliver a lesson and every student, but one gets it, hence more frustration. You want to do your best, but there is a small group of students that require a higher level of experience teaching than you have, hence more and more frustration.

Teachers believe that principals do things against them on purpose. Yes, there are rare instances when this does happen. I have seen it and I have had to talk to principals and ask them why they have lost their minds. But the truth and reality is, principals are between a rock and a hard place.

Most principals don't know what it takes to be the most effective teacher you can be, so they make decisions that reflect being ignorant and naive. Teachers assume educators that move into administrator roles should know what they are doing, except, isn't that how the K12 system treats teachers?

Everyone, principals, parents and students all expect a teacher to know the answers to every problem that ever occurs in your classroom, but is that realistic at all? Of course not, so then why do you apply the same standard to principals?

The answer is because that's what the system wants you to do.

Moving Forward

One of the 21st Century skills we need to be teaching kids is how to build a team to accomplish goals. Fixing the K12 system is impossible if we try and do it individually. The system was brilliantly designed to destroy single warriors, but it cannot fight all of us at the same time.

That's why I have a team of teachers, admin and parents who want to fix the system. We are not fighting with each other, we are fighting together.

We are not angry with each other, we are angry with the system.

And we work together to solve the problem.

What we need is every single teacher, admin and parent in the United States to understand that our curriculum needs to be rewritten. Common core outlines a 19th century basic skills roadmap. That roadmap is necessary in elementary school.

But after the 5th grade, students need to be exposed to 21st Century skills. I am linking articles so you can read about all of these things. There is a lot you need to read, I'm telling you upfront so you don't complain to me later, "But Schwartz, there's a lot to read!"

Don't blame me for the system keeping this information hidden from you. If you want to change schools, you need to put on your SURVIVOR hat and start outsmarting the system. It's time we built an alliance of teachers, admin and parents and VOTED THIS SYSTEM off the island.

I am sick and tired of students graduating from high school and having zero clue what to do next and having zero skills to even try something. The answer is not sending them to college. Students are not even prepared to go to college. Again, you just don't know the data. According to the US Department of Education, nearly 40% of college students never finish their degree programs even after 6 years of matriculation.

Come on folks! How much more data do you need to see that this system has reached its expiration date. It's time to move on. It's time to redesign a new system, one that is updated to handle the 21st century.

Join this team. Join with me in rebuilding our schools. The 19th Century American school was the crowning jewel of the world, which is why every developing nation copied us. Now we need to redesign our system again, so we have the most advanced school system for the 21st century and the rest of the globe will shake in their boots again.

If we can implement the strategy that I have laid out in my articles, every other nation on earth will be saying, "Oh geez, the Americans did it again!"

Our current school system makes us look dumb. Our current school system makes us look weak. We need to fix our schools, so the rest of the world realizes we fell asleep for a few decades, but we are back and better than before.