At a hearing in Albany, NYC Chancellor Carmen Farina disagreed bluntly with Governor Cuomo ‘s proposal to base 50% of teacher evaluations on student test scores and 35% on the judgement of independent evaluators, people from outside the school.
“I think 50 percent based on tests is too much,” Ms. Fariña told state legislators at a budget hearing on Tuesday, in comments that were echoed by representatives of other large school districts. “We need a human touch any time we evaluate anyone for anything.”
She also objective to the “independent evaluators.”
“Ms. Fariña said that teachers needed to be observed over time, watched for things like whether they engaged with parents or gave special attention to students who needed extra help, and that “flybys” could not replace that.”
“There’s so many other things,” Fariña said. “I was a teacher for more than 20 years and if I was only measured in test scores, that would only have been a little bit of my work…..”
“I absolutely believe that holding teachers accountable only on test scores and outside evaluators is not a good idea,” Fariña said in response to questions about Cuomo’s plan.
Cuomo told the Buffalo News that:
“The test is really the only easy answer because it is objective numerical data and it was the same test with the same demographic,” Cuomo told a group of reporters and editors from The Buffalo News on Tuesday.”
The difference between Farina and Cuomo is that she has been a teacher, a principal, a superintendent, and now Chancellor. She is a veteran educator who knows teaching and learning. Cuomo has no experience in education but insists that he knows how teachers should be evaluated.
It is clear that he is over his head. He doesn’t know that most teachers don’t teach tested subjects. How does he propose to evaluate teachers of the arts, physical education, foreign languages, teachers of K-2, and high school teachers. It is a shame that he is unfamiliar with the extensive research on test-based accountability and VAM.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think he chooses to be purposefully ignorant, choosing to believe that such deriders of data must not be objective and have a motive in protecting teachers.
He is too political, small minded, and adversarial. Education needs a skill set he lacks as he lives in power structures, and that he laughs off as being driven by self interest though I may be stretching my inferences there.
M states: “I think he chooses to be purposefully ignorant,”
As shown by Cuomo’s statement “The test is really the only easy answer because it is objective numerical data. . . “
Yes, I like what Carmen is saying, but I am worried about what she is not saying.
Then HOW MUCH (sounds so American, to measure and count with an eagle eye, that is) should count with regard to test scores? 20%? 40%? 7%?
How do you measure the impact of all the other confounding variables that affect student performance?
It’s too bad . . . . really it is.
The reform movement stood to really stimulate children and provide standards that stretched and cultivated thinking. I’m not referring to CCSS, but the whole idea that something could have been improved upon and raised the tide for all floating boats has lost almost all credibility.
The ideals of achievement are now colored by an imbalanced sense of scores, a numbers fetish, an ignoring of poverty and its causes, a corruption of politicians and entrepreneurs who seek to profit off the backs of vulnerable children, a plutocratic will to break unions and destroy collective bargaining (doing so by using children as the mask that hides the ugly and polluted visage of greed and decay of people like Eli Broad), a willful ignoring of research on human and pediatric development, a starving of the public commons in order to fatten the private producers, an intent to destroy collectivism and put forth individualism and Darwinism as a new religion, and a wanton and reckless disregard for equality by scapegoating educators instead of looking at other individuals, organization, systems, and institutions that cause, sustain, and grow poverty.
How is it that 24% of children in America are impoverished and almost 50% live in a family whose income is at or below the poverty line?
And teachers have caused that?
Really?
Not our tax system? Our ways of pummeling students of higher education with debt to make money off of them? Our lack of quality affordable universal healthcare? Our lack of mandatory paid sick days and vacation time? Our system that allows for offshore tax havens for companies like Apple? Our tax credit and housing laws that turn housing into a luxury commodity instead of a human right? Our work-to-mainly-pay bills lives that have prevented the middle class from building any personal wealth, even if frugal and careful with money?
This has only two trajectories, and I know one of them is going to depend on parents and teachers leveling with each other about what it means to be and get educated, and what it means to experience equality and equal opportunity.
Look to Canada (despite its unraveling healthcare system aided by the Koch brothers) to Australia.
Look to Western and Northern Europe.
You will find many systems there vastly different from our own, but you will find something far more powerful yet invisible: You will find the brains of their citizens and politicians to be wired differently than the body politic and citizenry here.
If you want answers, look to those places. They may hold the treasure chests of equity and social safety nets, but we have to be willing to believe that we possess and even own the keys to open them . . . . .
Excellent commentary. I discovered your website with all of your wonderful editorial cartoons about the absurdities in today’s environment of education. Impressive visuals and writing, and a generous spirit in evidence. Thanks you.
Thank you for your kind words, Laura.
Please SPREAD the images as much as you want for yourself and your colleagues because they are free to use and can be put into advocacy literature in any medium.
Laura, we are on the side of righteousness; most reformers are not.
This is class warfare.
Good will prevail over folly and evil, but we will have to continue to fight for it. This dynamic has been in place since the beginning of time. We Americans have been living in a set of parentheses for many years; now we are out of them in smack in the middle of the sentence!
Please keep posting . . . .
Oh, and BTW, my blog website of useable ed reform cartoons is at:
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/
I totally agree with you. Modern America is no longer a true democracy, but an oligarchy. The system is rigged against the middle class while he forget and blame the poor. Now they want to dismantle public education, which I still believe, is one of the most democratizing forces in America. That is why they are worth fighting for! I think we need to make the public aware of what is at stake. We need to frame the argument that the corporate based schools are anti-American. Here we have too many small minds controlling deep pockets.
Yes, indeed.
This is class warfare.
The plutocrats cannot rely on fossil fuels any more to grow their wealth, so now they have turned inward towards the citizenry, the public commons, the social safety nets, and the public servants.
Put up your dukes.
When Cuomo says that “it is the same test with the same demographic”, is he referring to the fact that the children are in the same grade when they take the yearly assessments?
That is definitely not a true demographic when you are comparing rural, suburban, and urban as well as English speaking or ELL students, or children on or above grade level vs those with learning, physical, or emotional disabilities. Of course, he also hasn’t considered other relevant indicators such as race and poverty or the fact that ages vary within a given grade as well as individual student readiness.
Perhaps the demographic he refers to is children who live in NYS and who attend public school.
Is Cuomo purposely being obtuse or is he simply an idiot? Sometimes when I listen to him speak I wonder how he ever graduated from high school.
Ellen T Klock
Ellen,
I don’t think he knows what he is talking about. This stuff is over his head.
Diane, what scares me is that he seems to be in over his head on too many issues, not just education. I voted for him the first time, but not the second. Fool me once, not twice. Hopefully others are taking notice. If Cuomo keeps insisting on opening his mouth, eventually he will end up chewing up both his feet.
Sadly, Cuomo is not unique in this regard. He is the rule, not the exception. It’s unfortunate that educated individuals like Yanis Varoufakis have not yet been empowered by the American people.
‘Not knowing what he is talking about’ is Webster’s definition of mansplaining.
Cuomo is over his head as Governor let alone enacting programs to judge teachers. After all he failed the Bar Exam 4 times before passing. (According to other postings on the internet.) Not exactly the brightest bulb on the planet and certainly no Mario Cuomo. I guess there was some “malfunction” in gene transfer at his conception.
On one hugely important issue, whether the citizens of New York should be allowed to have a democratically elected school board, Fariña and Cuomo are marching in lockstep:
“I want to clearly impress upon this body that we need full support of the state legislature for the continuance of mayoral control in New York City. The inclusion of mayoral control in the Governor’s budget is a crucial acknowledgment of its importance to the continued improvement of education in New York City.
“I have seen the extraordinary difference mayoral control can make in our ability to move our school system forward.”
Diane, you are fond of Keynes’s quote about changing one’s mind when the facts change. A little more than a year ago, you were bitterly opposed to mayoral control in New York. What facts have changed?
Diane never said that she changed her mind and now suddenly supports mayoral control and appointed school boards.
Time for Diane to get rid of another troll who loves charter schools and has repeatedly demonstrated that he is here to cause disruption amongst those who oppose corporate education “reform” and who posts unwarranted attacks against her on her own blog.
It sounds like that economist guy that would try to set traps in a display of passive aggressiveness about some obscure point.
I have to say, the portrayal of teachingeconomist here as a kind of fairy tale satanic figure has always amused me. Beware his dark art of economics! What sort of man asks “hypothetical” questions? Surely no honest working man. I tell you, this “teachingeconomist” is not what he appears. My sweet, innocent child, plug up your ears, and close your eyes, for what he shows you is not real. He comes to create confusion, to sow dissent, to destroy the simple, the good, and the virtuous!
“The corporate reformers don’t like school boards. They think they should be abolished or rendered toothless. In urban districts, the reformers want the mayor to have absolute control, unchecked by a school board with the power to question or overrule his decisions . . .
“[M]ayoral control . . . eliminates the role of the public in public education. It eliminates the democratic nature of public education.”
I transcribed those words from page 286 of my first edition hardcover copy of Reign of Error.
From the point of view of parents and the community, very little has changed between Bloomberg’s version mayoral control and de Blasio’s version of mayoral control. It’s still not democratic, parents still aren’t being heard, and decision-making still ignores stake-holders. It’s all fine and good that Fariña disagrees with Cuomo on teacher evaluations, but what she does agree with him should not be glossed over.
Oh yeah, Flerp, “teachingeconomist” is innocuous. Poor guy. He just wanted to promote school choice. No matter that he does not care what price is paid by school districts that siphon funds from neighborhood public schools in order to support privately run charters.
I suppose it’s also inconsequential that TE does not care when thousands of workers die in sweatshops for outsourced slave labor and he does not believe that even his own foster son should be paid a livable wage in order to support his children. Not to mention his repeated attempts to snare people into mobius loop conversations and his attacks on Diane.
Wrong. If anyone has no moral compass, it’s TE.
Teacher Ed,
“Time for Diane to get rid of another troll”
No, it’s not time “to get rid of another troll”. He helps to serve as an example of what shoddy thinking and reading we are up against. We can use his comments to sharpen our rhetorical/debating skills.
Diane should not have to serve as a punching bag just so that you can sharpen your debating skills, Duane.
Gentlemen,
Diane is a big girl.
I don’t think at all she is timid at all about dissenting views. In fact she favors an active, open, free voice, as she did write “Language Police”.
But she has laid down rules about people lying about her, insulting her and each other using acute, harsh, vulgar language, and about people threatening each other’s physical safety.
Those rules seem fair.
Everything else is fair game.
She has characterized some of my comments as “injudicious”.
I LOVE that woman! She’s right!
I have to restrain myself from saying ornery things to Raj, Harlan, TE, Tim, Joe Nathan, and the new guy on the block, John. Although i admit, it is so much fun to do so. These people are intellectual weebles who wobble but seem not to fall down. At least Joe is not afraid to tell people who he is. A more powerful thing to do would be to counteract their logic by informing them and other readers or to just plain ignore them.
I think Duane has a point. Their flaws are our sharpening tools.
I am learning from Diane, even at my age, to speak from facts, data, and historical accounts to craft persuasion. She is human, and am sure says colorful things in private. Who does not? But she sticks to the subject, attempts to keep everyone staying on the topic, and does not lose her cool (unlike me).
She is a role model of sorts, I think.
As for Tim . . . . . . Poor Tim. . . . . The school systems under his vision will be like a cut redwood, and one day, the plutocrats out there will be yelling, “TIM-ber” . . . . . . . . .
Bam! . . . . . . .
Of course Diane is a “big girl,” but that does not mean she has no need to have her back watched, especially when she is continuously subjected to attacks based on misrepresentations from detractors who vigilantly await to pounce on her. She should also know that her supporters are behind her if she decides to not take such abuse on her own blog anymore.
Tim @ 11:24,
What is the rest of the context in which those words are written? (My book is at school and we are off for a snow day.) My guess is that those were written as examples of edudeformer speak.
Gracias,
Duane
Ms. Farina should have said:
“Fifty percent of teacher evaluations based on test scores is 50% too much! I reject the use of deeply flawed tests and cut scores chosen to produce artificially high failure rates as a way to threaten the careers of our hard working teachers. Governor Cuomo’s education agenda is a vindictive, political attack on teachers and their union and has not begun to address any of the solutions needed to improve the achievement of our struggling students, especially those mired in the debilitating grip of generational poverty, crime ridden neighborhoods, and family dysfunction.”
Diane’s post is concerning the evaluation of teachers. Seeing that as an opportunity to launch an attack against Diane shows us once again YOUR true colors, “teacher” Tim.
Diane’s post concerns a portion of the testimony Chancellor Fariña provided to the New York State legislature on a range of issues, and it lauds her for criticizing Cuomo. The very first issue the chancellor raised in her testimony was her opinion that it is vitally important that the legislature renew mayoral control, an opinion she shares with Cuomo.
Do you support mayoral control, Teacher Ed? I sure don’t, regardless of who the mayor is. Perhaps Diane herself can answer why she suddenly seems less concerned about the issue of mayoral control.
I think Diane has been remarkably frank about the fact that she is reluctant to post things that are critical of her friends or that hinder the long game. I think I can write that without risk of banishment.
My city has been under mayoral control for 20 years and we have never had an elected school board, both of which I absolutely abhor, but that was not the issue that Diane raised. You should learn from those who have the wisdom to pick their battles and try to figure out why that might be important.
Yep, the long game is truly critical. I can’t stand how my city has been under mayoral control for so long and has always had appointed school boards. However, if by some miracle voters pick a new mayor who does not support privatization and other aspects of corporate education “reform,” I will be content to wait awhile before demanding that mayoral control over our schools and school board be relinquished so we can have an elected school board, because that is not the only option in this political climate.
Who knows what could happen next? The last thing I want to see is control of my city’s schools transferred to the state, especially under our new right wing governor who has his own charter school named after him.
It has come to my attention that there is some confusion regarding the identity of the owner of this blog.
To fix this, we can do it the hard way or we can do it the easy way.
😏
But why dilly and dally? Let’s get right to it—“Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all.”
While there are more than a few letters in common between “Diane Ravitch” and “Carmen Fariña” they are not, in fact, the same person.
😳
So the former may on occasion cite, or refer to some, particular opinions or sentiments of the latter without, I hope, the two being considered one and the same person with the former sharing all the opinions and sentiments of the latter.
In fact, on a posting of 1-28-2015 on this very blog, the aforementioned “Diane Ravitch” indicated support for an opinion of a certain “Lamar Alexander” concerning high-stakes standardized testing. Turns out that doesn’t make them one and the same person either because, most interestingly, the former indicated disagreements in other areas with the latter.
To sum up: “Diane Ravitch” is not interchangeable with “Carmen Fariña.”
As always, glad to help.
😎
I’m a teacher in NYC. Under Farina, the evaluation system is the worst it’s ever been. We have 15 minute drive bys by administrators with agendas or retaliation in mind. Their sycophants get a free pass, targets get harassed. There is absolutely no accountability for incompetent and vengeful administrator evaluators.While I didn’t vote for Cuomo and can’t stand the man, I would rather have an independent evaluator.
Independent evaluators wouldn’t necessarily be better though if you’re a target under your current administration they would be.
It depends who chooses them. If it’s up to Cuomo and/or a contract he or someone who works for him chooses, it will come down to the will of that person or people – and as we’ve seen from the Board of Regents and the PEP, groups can be controlled.
If it’s some mutual agreement, what you end up with is something like the current arbitration process where the arbitrator wants to make both sides happy and so usually splits the baby in punishment/challenges so that both sides will agree to them again.
I don’t think Cuomo means for the independent evaluators to be independent except in appearance. The not-so-subtle message to whoever wants the job is to find a way to fire teachers and justify it through their “professional” opinion.
I’m well aware many administrations do not treat their teachers with respect, but I would not assume that taking most of their power will all of a sudden make them welcoming and supportive guides.
In theory, If you have a vindicitive principal it would be better to have an “independent evaluator” if you are a teacher. However, the million dollar question will be if there are any connections between the “independent evaluator” and the principal. If these two people have no contact with one another then there can be no set agenda to use the “independent evaluator” as a hitman for the principal. If there are cahoots between the two then it is a total sham from the start.
While I may be a somewhat conspiratorial, I question the motives of Cuomo’s camp having control over 85% of a teacher’s evaluation. This is a recipe that may lead to firings en masse. First of all, 50% is based on VAM, which is baseless by definition. Do your truly believe that the “independent evaluator” will be fair and unbiased? This “evaluator” most likely will be a front for the corporations that want to fire New York State teachers! This is a dangerous plan in my opinion that will permit the state to control the evaluation process allowing them to fire at will. My guess is they will target senior teachers first. You may as well walk in the showers so they can turn on the gas! Read between the lines, and follow the money.
RL – Be careful what you wish for – in Buffalo we have “drive bys” where a team of administrators from “downtown” plus the principal stop in to see randomly selected teachers “perform”. Schedules are posted outside the doors and heaven help you if you aren’t teaching the lesson you claimed you were going to teach. Then the team proceeds to pick apart what the teacher is doing. Better be sure your objective is written in the board and you point to it as you recite it for the class. And if it’s a continuation of an ongoing skill taught the day or month before, better explain the concept again for the reviewers benefit.
I’ve seen veteran teachers torn apart – ones worthy of a teacher of the year award.
It’s brutal.
Ellen T Klock
#retiredbutstillhavenightmares
I am a teacher in NYC, too. Farina has continued the practices as the previous administration. It is very stressful because admins do have agendas. Some of those agendas are linked to Tweed. Admins get calls to let them know if they gave too many effectives. They get pressured to make more teachers developing or ineffective. I will have to first see Farnia in action before I believe she is for teachers.
That being said, I respectfully disagree with you about the independent evaluator. They will actually be worse because, while an administrator may fight/make excuses for your score, the independent evaluator never will. Cuomo wants to fire a certain amount of teachers every year. These independent evaluators get Cuomo the quota he thought he would get from the principals.
This quote from Cuomo jumped out at me for two reasons: “The test is really the only easy answer because it is objective numerical data”
First, he acknowledges that he is NOT looking for the BEST answer, he is looking for the EASY answer… and secondly, the phrase “objective numerical data” may not have been accidental, as blogger Cathy O’Neill (aka the Mathbabe) points out in this post:
If you aren’t familiar with her work, she is a Columbia statistician who has written several posts on the flaws with VAM… and when you read the post, be sure to click on the advertisement for University of Wisconsin’s VAM consulting services and notice the states and cities they are serving…
Oh, thank you–I was wondering whether anyone else had noticed that. Let’s all go for easy answers! Mine is to pass all of my students at the beginning of the semester–then they won’t have to figure out how to carry a 15-course community college credit load while working 40 hours a week.
Jane,
Yes, that was the quote that stood out for me. I think it was a politician’s “getting off message/talking points”. A little bit of truth actually leaked out of that statement as wgerson pointed out about the “easy” part. Truth is not supposed to leak out like that.
What I really don’t like about this plan to strip all administrators of power to evaluate staff except with a truly token amount of “points” in the rating (15% = significant but not enough to really weight an observation meaningfully – it will only decide things in truly borderline cases but generally will either not matter or not be enough to compensate for a flawed year).
It also assumes a perfection in the scoring we know doesn’t exist, and given how the cut scores for the Regents have been a political football in recent years, even if let’s say the next 2 years were genuinely fair tests, Albany will always have public education in a noose in any given year by controlling how hard the tests are. Teachers and students can’t change as fast as they can change the test and its associated cut scores.
Add a completely new test section one year and you can sink public education overnight.
Given that Cuomo proposed to break the monopoly of public education, is it really a good idea to give Gubernatorial control of something that functions “like a business” a machete that can become completely unreasonable on any given day?
In NYC, the BOE was derided was slow and plodding, never accomplishing much and generally not being able to get things done. I think though that while a perpetual stalemate is not good, the master and commander that can slash and burn his army according to his current battle plans is not great either.
With how important education is, SHOULD one person hold so many lives in their hands (both students and educators) and be able to rock the system overnight? The current set up in NY isn’t perfect, but gets a little bit of both.
What Cuomo wants is king-like control of schools across the state, and he’s asking for the tool with which he has stated he already intends to kill them. I hope the legislature seriously asks the question if a 1 year 1 billion dollar infusion to their districts is worth the kind of damage Cuomo could wreak with the power he’s asking for.
Then I hope they wonder what their voters will think of them if they accept the money and Cuomo goes ahead with his stated monopoly busting plans (because union busting would be wrong, but monopoly busting has civil rights roots).
It is said that the mark of a genius is to be able to hold two conflicting concepts in the mind at once: “genuinely fair” and “tests”.
The reality is……there’s been a long history of anti-intellectualism in the United States. Think of Adlai Stevenson being derided as an “egghead” back in the 1950s and then listen to the nonsense being parroted right now by our own “mini-Nixon”, Andrew Cuomo.
Richard Hofstadter penned the landmark book on anti-intellectualism in 1963, and David Masciotra recently updated that idea, applying it to 2014.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/09/richard-hofstadter-and-america-s-new-wave-of-anti-intellectualism.html
I quote at length from Masciotra’s article:
“Anti-intellectualism, according to Hofstadter, is a ‘resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life.’ He was very clear in his insistence that Americans are not dumb. There is great intelligence in Americans, just as there is great professionalism. The problem is that professional intelligence is mechanical and functional – utilitarian. It is about the completion of an assignment, and the execution of a formula. Due to it having the operative mode of a machine, the preferred way of exercising the mind, for many Americans, takes on what Hofstadter labeled ‘mediocre sameness.’ There are only so many ways to do a job, and since many Americans learn at a very young age, that their entire lives are about the job they will one day have, they begin to think with the variety of appliance assembly methods in an instructional manual.”
Sounds to me like the way Andrew Cuomo, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, and John B. King think……
Anyone who has endeavored to help our kids in public schools knows that we can all be subjected to the power, the greed of these sorts of mini-Nixons, these anti-intellectuals on a daily basis. And, isn’t it somewhat amazing that many of the current crop of self-styled school “reformers” like to think of themselves as critical thinkers….and yet what they are really encouraging is mindless obedience to machine-like thinking. They are anything but new!
BTW Thank God for snow delays. More bad weather so I get to actually sit here and THINK for a little while. On a regular school day I’d already writing my learning objectives on the board, gearing up for another race against the clock…. the 40 minute, bell driven assembly line.
Gotta go shovel out now. Stay warm and safe those of you who live here in the North.
Someone should point out to Cuomo that easy answers are not always the best answers. That comment revealed far more about him than it did about education or anything else, really.
Although I do not like Mayoral Control as a reform tool or as a system of school governance, I think it is interesting that as soon as Bloomberg was out of there, Cuomo seems bent on getting rid of Mayoral Control.
I would argue that it is important for DiBlasio to have control for some time, as it would be very difficult to fight some of the negative effects of Bloombergs education system without Mayoral Control. Especially when Cuomo seems so focused on circumventing DiBlasio at every turn. Maybe if DiBlasio wins a second term he could voluntarily bring back elected school boards.
Cuomo has never recommended repealing mayoral control of New York City’s schools, and he has frequently suggested the possibility of bringing it to other cities, like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester. Here is a recent example: http://www.rochesterhomepage.net/story/d/story/cuomo-supports-mayoral-control-for-failing-schools/54151/SQnhjdvSQk68ElxqTgT_mw
Cuomo’s position is that mayoral control should not allow the mayor to prevent state-granted charter schools from operating in a district, so he helped push through legislation requiring the city to grant charters space or help pay for their rent. Apart from that, De Blasio has the same unaccountable, iron-fisted grip on the school system that Bloomberg did.
Tim, you are right, Cuomo is a huge fan of mayoral control. He thinks it is the way to wipe out democracy in every school district. With mayoral control, big money can sway the mayor to open more charters. I would not agree that de Blasio’s grip is as tight as Bloomberg’s.
And if someone on his staff told him that many teachers are getting evaluated on students they either don’t teach or in areas that are not tested he would change his agenda? I think he does know and just doesn’t care because this main goal is to break up the public ed system. Duncan also knows this and to claim these guys are clueless is naive. They are shrewd and calculating.
I think that this is part of the hedge fund agenda. They don’t care about the validity of what they are proposing. The goal is to brake the union and take over.
Of course, as a 20 year veteran of the DOE and BOE, I agree with Ms. Farina about the value (or lack thereof) of bringing in outside evaluators to supervise teachers. Where does the money come from to pay these evaluators? I ask that because in all the years I have taught, I have become convinced that the most effective way to improve education, especially for the academically challenged students, those who need the most support but rarely get it, would be to reduce class size.
I have just retired from a “failing” school. Every week we had a new set of consultant coaches claiming to have “the” answer. The saddest thing is most of their “solutions” have been around since the 1970’s and 80’s with a different acronym or name. (Seriously folks: “PLOP) Whether the consultants come from the district superintendent’s office or the great states of Florida and Alabama where they proved the value of their recommendations, these people are paid and that money might have been better used to reduce class size.