Matt Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute demonstrates what bad ideas StudentsFirst (NY) has when it comes to improving teacher quality.
The organization discovered that most teachers with unsatisfactory ratings are in high poverty schools. SFNY has a strategy to solve the problem: punishments and rewards.
Di Carlo points out that the organization seems woefully uninformed by research, experience, or evidence. He writes:
“Look, almost half of new teachers in NYC schools serving lower-performing students leave their initial schools within two years. And this is primarily because these are very difficult schools in which to teach, especially when you’re just starting out. Yes, some of this turnover is inevitable and some of it is healthy, but much of it is neither. And there’s plenty of productive middle ground between massive, costly, undifferentiated efforts to reduce attrition across the board and an agenda that focuses solely on rewarding and punishing teachers with performance measures that have zero track record.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking of bad ideas, in Wisconsin we have a few of our own. Our state supt. Tony Evers is requesting $625,000 ($25,000 per school for 25 schools) in his budget request that he submitted to Gov. Walker. Teachers in low performing schools will go to one of the 25 high performing schools to “learn” how to teach better. So, teachers who teach high poverty, high special ed, high ELL, high limited English, high minority population are going to go to schools with almost no minority population, Affluent, less special needs, English proficient schools to learn how the “good” teachers teach. The kicker is that the rich, host schools get the $25,000 grant as a bonus. Am I missing something here, or is this a bad idea?
Please tell me you have this wrong. Anyone with….a month of teaching experience….will know how silly of an idea this is.
Do you have a link?
On page 26 under Proposed School Turn-around Activities here is an excerpt “The department is proposing to establish competitive three year grants to schools rated in the ―Significantly Exceeding Expectations‖ category to host school-based demonstration visits and professional development for lower performing schools to observe and learn about effective instructional practices. These grants would be similar to the existing charter school dissemination grants. The featured practices must be based on the results of an externally facilitated diagnostic review. The grants would be a maximum of $25,000 per year and be provided to an estimated 25 schools. The department is requesting $625,000 annually beginning in FY15.” If you open the Excell spreadsheet of the data for the school report cards, you will discover the demographics to which I have referred in my original post for the “sig. exceed exp.” Here is the link to the budget request http://pb.dpi.wi.gov/files/pb/pdf/budreq1315.pdf ….go to p.26 as
indicated on the actual page of the doc.
Ha. StudentsFirstNY tweets:
“The authors address it w/ a decent amount of discussion (much of which is pretty good)” – @shankerblog on our report: http://bit.ly/WVEOYJ
Having been superintendent in larger districts where there was a difference in SES among schools we found that teachers (and Principals), when given the opportunity would GENERALLY migrate toward the schools with higher SES. The reality is that most teachers attended higher SES schools and wanted to work in the kind of school environment they grew up in— where parents came to back-to-school-night and kids came to school every day healthy and well fed. The “reformers” don’t appreciate how tough it is to work in a school of 3000 where 25 parents show up for the monthly PTO meeting because it’s dangerous to be on the streets at night… or to meet 3 only parents on back-to-school night when you have 120 students on your class roll… or to have 20-30% of your students absent every day… or to wait months to get social services or special education support for children… or to read how you are “failing” when you are working harder than anyone in the school district to connect with your students… That contributes to the desire for teachers to transfer within districts to higher SES schools… and money wouldn’t really make “good teachers” stay in those schools because the best teachers in low SES schools are the ones who have a huge heart…
Well written! My point exactly. Thank you for sharing.
Interesting editorial about how police lie, and the potential reasons they do. Could this apply to teachers when given bonuses for raising test scores, like Michelle did in DC?
Some of you will find this interesting because the central argument is that much more can be accomplished within existing district/union contracts than is sometimes believed.
The authors say sometimes building principals and supts make excuses about what they can’t do, when the contract provides flexibility that is not being used.
http://educationnext.org/combating-the-culture-of-cant/
Here’s a portion of the article
SPRING 2013 / VOL. 13, NO. 2
“When big-dollar attorney Dan Weisberg left his private-sector position in 2003 to join the New York City school system, the district was having a hard time getting principals to provide honest assessments of low-performing teachers. Each negative piece of feedback was subject to a three-step grievance and arbitration process and, as Weisberg explains, The final two steps were a big deal, because [principals] had to leave their building and go downtown, which could take hours. Principals complained about it and used it as an excuse for why they couldnt document poor performance when they saw it.
When Weisbergs team asked the principals why they couldnt attend the hearings by phone, he notes, The answer we first got was, No, we cant do it. Weve never done it that way. And we said, Where is that in the contract? Where is that in some policy? And the answer was nowhere. So we just did it. It was a small thing, but it showed principals that we cared, that we understood this was very burdensome and we were trying to make their lives easier. It had a concrete impact in encouraging principals to take action to document poor performance.
When it comes to reforming American education, todays would-be-reformers get it half right. They correctly argue that statutes, rules, regulations, and contracts make it hard for school and school-system leaders to drive improvement and, well, lead. They are wrong, however, to ignore a second truth: school officials have far more freedom to transform, reimagine, and invigorate teaching, learning, and schooling than is widely believed.”
The article also says nice things about Yes Prep and KIPP, which some of you reject. But the key point about how sometimes administrartors make excuses about what can’t be done with existing contracts is, I think, an important acknowledgement.