A reader in Tennessee nominates his state as the worst in the nation in terms of implementing the usual stale ideas to “reform” the schools.
How could it not be in contention to win the race to the bottom when it was one of the first states (Delaware was the other) to win the Race to the Top? That guaranteed that Tennessee would adopt every untested and harmful policy idea that Arne Duncan’s team could think up.
Conservative Republicans control the state, and they like the Obama agenda. Go figure. Could it be because Obama’s agenda is a more muscular version of NCLB? Republicans love the tough accountability, they like cracking the whip on the teachers, and they love privatization of public services.
Where other people (like parents and teachers) look at schools and see children, the reformers in Tennessee (and elsewhere) look at schools and see entrepreneurial prospects and a steady stream of government revenue.
So naturally the state is committed to evaluating teachers based on student test scores, and those who don’t teach tested subjects get evaluated by some other teachers’ work. Makes sense, no? And surely there will be lots of new charters in Tennessee to “save” the children.
Then, to add to that state’s woes, the new state commissioner of education, Kevin Huffman, is not only Michelle Rhee’s -ex, but was formerly the PR director for TFA. That guarantees a very big foot in the door for the ill-trained novices who only Teach For Awhile. Huffman hired a charter school leader from Houston to take over the state’s lowest performing schools. Tennessee will soon be charter school paradise, or at least paradise for TFA.
And then there is all that Gates money in Tennessee, now deployed to figure out how to have an effective teacher in every single classroom in the state. Watch Tennessee overtake Massachusetts on NAEP rankings. Wait a minute, isn’t Tennessee the birthplace of value-added assessment under William Sanders, the agricultural statistician? Didn’t Tennessee start measuring value-added by teachers in the 1980s? Why aren’t they already number one?
Yes, Tennessee is a contender.
| Last year, TN and our TfA commissioner of ed and Michelle Rhee’s ex, Kevin Huffman, rushed into use a similar teacher evaluation system purchased from the Milken Foundation (the same Michael Milken of securities fraud fame) that measures teacher competence on a 1 – 5 Likert scale, aptly named TEAM. 1-5 is the same crude metric I used to rate my hotel stay and my car dealership. Sensitive to the effects of nuanced teaching practices, it’s not. If scored according to the TEAM trainer, on 15% of all teachers will gain or keep tenure protection. 85% will be subject to firing. Tied into the teacher’s average TEAM score is 40% VAM scores from the TCAP state assessments in reading in math. Teachers who do not teach reading and math were forced to use the VAMs of the school TCAP average or arbitrarily assigned either the school reading or math average score. Recommendations by an “independent” committee to improve the system suggested adding more tests to include all subject areas. With the republicans well in control of all branches of government in TN, teachers here have lost their collective voices. In 2010, Ramsey with the help of ALEC ended tenure, collective bargaining, auto deductions for TEA dues, and kicked all teacher reps off of the state retirement board. Three of the largest school systems in the state have Broad trained superintendents. The day after Walker in WI survived his recall, TN’s Lt Gov Ron Ramsey announced he’d propose vouchers in the 2013 legislative session. For profit, online teacher education is proliferating. Requirements for certification to teach are being dumbed down at the same time requirements to raise achievement are increased to levels nearly impossible. Further, state university teacher education programs are being evaluated according to their graduate’s VAM scores. Huffman posted the VAM scores on the TN website and guess which teacher ed program scored the best? Teach for America! The results were so skewed and improbable that several schools requested the raw data, only to be rebuffed, with great umbrage, by the state. TN politicians in collusion with wealthy privatizers in both the Democratic and Republican parties are using the full force of state power to crush involvement of teachers and parents in decisions about our children’s schools. God help us all in TN. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Given the litany of ill-advised and deleterious policies TN has adopted the past two years, I’m skeptical that programs associated with the Pathways to Prosperity Partnership will amount too much (or come without a hundred strings attached and standardized testing to boot), but as someone who has clamored for robust technical and career paths, I hope my skepticism proves unfounded: http://news.tn.gov/node/9058
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Here’s an article providing some details on how Gates has donated his way ($90 million dollar/14-year grant) into undue influence in Memphis: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/nov/18/memphis-city-schools-formally-accepts-90-million-g/.
A particularly salient excerpt from the article:
“The city schools will use $1.9 million to video the work of 1,000 teachers under the guidance of Harvard economist Thomas Kane.
The videos will help supply groundwork for the seven-year project to raise the teaching level in Memphis City Schools. Under the plan, the most talented teachers will be moved quickly to inner-city classrooms where they are needed the most, in hopes of ending the system’s decades-long rut of dismal achievement records.
The district will redesign how it evaluates teachers under the $155 million endeavor, funded primarily by the foundation and supported by the Memphis Education Association, the teachers union.
Teachers will be judged on performance, peer critique and subject knowledge, not the number of degrees they hold or years they’ve worked.
The district will unilaterally raise salaries and pay the top tier of teachers salaries approaching six figures.
Supt. Cash says the expectations will be understood by “every professional in our system. If they fall behind, they are going to get it.
“We will work quickly to remove you,” he said of teachers who don’t perform, “because these children need all the support and positives they can get.”
Veteran teachers will have the option of participating in the new system. New hires will not.”
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WOW!! Unfrigginbelievable. Glad I don’t teach in Memphis. How are they going to recruit good teachers with that nonsense?
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Concerning TFA and teacher retention. From TFA’s own Heather Harding when asked by Anthony Cody, “In the only external study done on Teach For America teachers’ retention, Donaldson & Johnson (2010) report retention rates for three consecutive cohorts: 61% stay longer than two years, 44% persist into a third year, and 35% into a fourth year. These numbers are not much different than national trends that find nearly 50% of all new teachers leave the profession by year six.”
She is stating that 65% of the TFAers leave after three years. Yet this is “not much different than national trends” according to her as “50% (which is not a good stat-see below) of all new teachers leave the profession by year six”. Seems like quite a big difference, even using the flawed/skewed figures, to me considering it takes a minimum of five years to get to be an “experienced” teacher and I say more like ten years.
See: “Deepening the Debate over Teach For America: Responses to Heather Harding” @ http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/04/deepening_the_debate_over_teac.html
Response by Anthony Cody: The Donaldson and Johnson study is not the only external study — it is based on a survey with a relatively low response rate, also biased by the fact that those who have left the profession are more likely to be non-respondents. Based on actual record data from districts and states (cited above), TFA teachers leave teaching at rates of 80 to 90 percent by year 4, and other beginning teachers leave at rates of about 25 to 30% in that same time period.
The statistic of 50% of all new teachers leaving the profession is not accurate, as those studies show. National studies (the Schools and Staffing Surveys and the Baccalaureate and Beyond data base) find that for public school teachers, about 30% leave in the first five years. However, within that 30% there is a big difference among those who enter with full training and those who enter (like TFA) without full training. For example, Baccalaureate and Beyond data found that only 14% of fully trained teachers had left by year 5 as compared to 49% of those entering without training. Schools and Staffing followup study data found that teachers who entered without student teaching and key coursework (on child development, learning, curriculum, etc.) left at more than twice the rates as those who had this training.
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I should have put quote on the last two paragraphs as that response is in the aforementioned article.
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Sorry, make that “quotes”. AY AY AY, disculpame, por favor.
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What will happen if those super duper teachers refuse to go in to schools the system says they are needed? I believe the Blues will be sung beyond Beal Street in Memphis!
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The former director of Tennessee’s Race to the Top STEM initiative now in Rhee camp.
http://www.studentsfirst.org/press/entry/sky-gallegos-joins-studentsfirst-as-director-of-national-electoral-initiati
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