#Fear and #Nothing in Atlanta Public Schools. Top teachers share their views.

Many teachers said they feared repercussions if they expressed concerns to their principals or supervisors. One teacher said it wasn’t only fear that held her back; it has having spoken out many times with nothing ever changing.

Hence the hashtags fear and nothing in Atlanta.

Called ECET2 (Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching), the teacher-led Saturday forum at the W Hotel was attended by high performing Atlanta teachers. I served on two of the panels discussing how teachers can get their voices heard. (There were other panels, most of which dealt with improving instructional practices.)

It fell largely to Westmoreland to reassure teachers the new APS leadership, under former Austin superintendent Meria Carstarphen, wanted to hear from them about what wasn't working.

(Carstarphen spoke at the opening of the ECET2 event.)

As a former APS teacher, Westmoreland said it pained him that teachers felt intimidated to speak out and encouraged them to feel safe reaching out to board members, several of whom were also former educators.

(An APS graduate, Westmoreland attended Princeton, returned to Atlanta as a Teach for America recruit and then won election to the school board – all before his 27th birthday.)

He cited a recent example of an employee speaking out and being heard. A registrar at an APS high school emailed Carstarphen the bathrooms weren’t being cleaned. Carstarphen hopped in her car, drove to the school, photographed the unseemly latrines and sent the photos to the operations head with a request to spiff them up and keep them so.

It was done. And the principal did not feel undermined, said Westmoreland.

Now, of course, his anecdote raises the question – which Westmoreland and I discussed during a break – of whether a superintendent has the time to respond to every employee email, including ones about dirty bathrooms at a high school, in such an emphatic and dramatic way.

I understand Carstarphen's compulsion because it's aggravating when basic housekeeping is ignored. It fuels the perception APS is a mess and a morass.

But there are more pressing problems the superintendent has to address, many of which were raised by teachers Saturday.

Among them:

-- Disconnects in math instruction. The disconnect exists in the supplemental materials elementary schools are adopting and also in what students are learning in elementary, middle and high school. It was clear from teacher comments there needs to be better alignment in math in APS.

Part of the problem is that the APS central office math leadership team -- underwritten by Race to the Top -- was dismantled when the federal grant money ran dry. This may be a case where central office staff mattered.

Central office has become the byword for waste and bloat, but central office employees also provide oversight and leadership. When those jobs disappear, the responsibilities either fall on the schools or don't get done.

In our veneration of school-based leadership, we cannot disregard the importance of someone with a big picture view; otherwise you have elementary schools teaching math one way -- EngageNY, for example -- while another school uses a different program. Those kids will all converge in one middle school, and someone needs to make sure they are speaking the same language and are at the same place in their math instruction.

--Speaking of math, panelist Whitney Naman, a Springdale Park Elementary School math teacher who holds a doctorate from the University of Virginia, said Georgia needs to examine whether it's swung too far in demanding high level math of every student.

Had she been required to take trigonometry in high school, Naman said it would have been a disaster. While she came to love math and excel in it, she wasn't ready for trig as a high school student. And many of the children she works with now will not be able to handle it, she said.

Naman is a member of the state Superintendent's Teacher Advisory Council and has written math curriculum for the district and the state.

How Georgia teaches math is a frequent discussion on this blog  -- the controversy over our high school math approach predates Common Core.  We still don't seem to have it right.

--Several teachers of young children made passionate pleas to reconsider testing mandates, especially those requiring kindergartners and first graders use computers for some testing. The steps and passwords to access APS computers and then the test sites sounded daunting to me, never mind a 6-year-old.

Plus, teachers said there were ongoing technology challenges in many of the schools, which makes computer testing a nightmare. Everyone agreed that APS -- with its own testing and benchmarking on top of the mandated state exams  -- needs to scale back.

-- In the final panel of the day, Westmoreland mentioned how shocked Carstarphen has been with the violence in Atlanta schools, kids fighting kids, parents fighting kids, parents fighting other parents.  He said she didn't see anywhere near this level in Austin and wants to figure out why it's happening and how APS can stop it.

--Westmoreland said the daylong workshop reconfirmed for him the need to create a teachers' advisory council. Taking a walk around the W Hotel during a panel break later in the day, he spotted Carstarphen driving by -- apparently the woman is everywhere -- and jumped in her truck to tell her APS needs to move on creating a council. She agreed.

On a final note, the APS cheating trial -- now entering its eighth week -- reflects the worst of Atlanta.

The ECET2 workshop showcased the best.

The participants were all remarkable teachers, and their commitment to their craft and their students was apparent in their comments and their questions.

But it was also apparent they were weary of changing edicts, policies and visions and were succeeding in spite of the system, not because of it.

That is what Carstarphen has to fix first.