Archives for the month of: September, 2012
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Rhee’s Teacher Evaluation Program Bombs in DC

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
28

This is a stunning article about the teacher evaluation system that Michelle Rhee put in place in the District of Columbia. The article was written by Ben Nuckols of the Associated Press. He is not usually an education writer, but he dug deeper than many education writers.

Rhee fired about 1,000 teachers during her time as chancellor.

Since her evaluation system was put into place, 400 teachers have been fired.

Since the evaluation system was put into place, the federal test scores for the District went flat.

Some teachers get big bonuses. One teacher, at the end of the article, says she is rated “highly effective” and she turned down the bonus.

As Mary Levy, a long-time analyst of the DC school system, says in the article: We have gone from a system where almost no one was terminated, no matter how bad, to the other extreme, where good teachers as well as bad are terminated,” said Mary Levy, an attorney and a longtime analyst of city education policy. “The latter is probably more damaging due to the stress and demoralization it causes.”

Advocates of merit pay and test-based evaluation claim that it will strengthen the teaching profession because teachers will be drawn to the chance to earn a big bonus or higher salary.

This isn’t happening. As the article says, “But many teachers aren’t sticking around long enough to enjoy the higher salaries. The district has one of the highest teacher turnover rates in the nation. Half of new teachers leave the system after 2 years, according to Levy’s analysis, compared with about one-third nationwide. Levy recently began examining individual schools and found two-year turnover rates as high as 94 percent at one elementary school and 66 percent at a high school.

Tim Daly of the New Teacher Project, founded by Rhee, says it is too soon to judge the evaluation system. Give it 5 to 10 years, he says.

Question: Why are we foisting on the entire nation a method that has not been proven successful anywhere? Why not give it 5-10 years and see what happens before making it a national mandate, imposed by state legislatures at the behest of the Race to the Top?

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations

Why Are the Media So Upset about an Inexperienced Referee?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
23

A reader reacted to an earlier post about TFA by noting how upset the media are about an inexperienced referee. She sees an important parallel:

Isn’t it ironic that the news stations and many fans are more upset about a second-rate referee making a bad call in a football game, but they are not so worried about untrained, novice TFA teachers practicing on our kids for 180+ days and then ditching the profession?

No wonder the teaching profession is doomed.

Will the politicians and corporate reformers be working to dismantle the referees’ union as fiercely as they are the teachers’ union?

It gets even better: Governor Scott Walker says it is time to bring back the referees’ union so there will be competent referees on the field.

Why is it more important to have experienced referees in NFL football games than to have experienced teachers in our nation’s classrooms? Why is it okay for referees to have a union but not teachers? Is sports more important to the future of our nation than education?

Categories Education Reform

A Sound Mind in a Sound Body

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
13

As everyone knows by now, there are districts that are eliminating recess and physical education because they want that time to devote to test preparation.

The test scores determine who will get a bonus, who will be fired, and whether the school lives or dies.

This is awful for children. They are active, growing, and in need of a break from study.

Now comes more evidence that physical activity is good for mental activity.

Actually, physical activity, play, unsupervised play is good in and of itself.

Whether it is walking, running, jumping, playing games, or just messing around, children and adults need time to engage in unsupervised activity.

This is the time when imagination runs free and children can be creative. They don’t choose a bubble; they aren’t stressed. They dream and imagine and live in other worlds than the one we have constructed for them.

Last year, I attended the Aspen Ideas Festival and I was invited to a private event where Secretary Arne Duncan spoke. The event celebrated the publication of a book by a friend of his who runs an organization called Kaboom. Kaboom enlists volunteers to build playgrounds; it has built over 2,000 of them. Secretary Duncan’s wife is affiliated with Kaboom (she was identified that way in the video introducing Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention).

At that Aspen party, Secretary Duncan spoke in a heartfelt way about the value of unsupervised play, the need that children have to “tinker” and make things without someone telling them what to do.

I was very impressed, but for the fact that only days earlier, the U.S. Department of Education had issued guidelines about testing children in kindergarten, first and second grades.

Please help me. How can one value unsupervised play time while judging children by test scores?

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K

Why Is TFA Collecting Your Nickels and Dimes?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
17

TFA is clearly a very successful operation. It places some 10,000 or so young college graduates in the nation’s schools each year, after giving them five weeks of training. They commit to stay for two years but some stay for three or four, and a few stay longer. Districts pay TFA $2,000-5,000 for each recruit.

According to a recent article in Reuters, TFA has assets of $300 million.

TFA has an awesome fund-raising machine. It won $50 million from the U.S. Department of Education; another $49.5 million from the very conservative Walton Foundation; $100 million from a consortium of four foundations; and untold millions from corporate donors.

This reader wondered why JC Penny was collecting donations for TFA. Another reader said that other big corporations are also fund-raising for TFA. When I went to my bank’s ATM, I was informed that I could donate $1 to TFA.

This reader asks why TFA is so aggressive in advancing its own power:

1)enormous sums of money are being thrown at TFA (hint: they may be valuable to someone’s bottom line)

2) TFA members getting into policy positions after 2 or 3 years of teaching (why waste time getting expertise. Be an impatient optimist)

3) State Ed policy positions becoming increasingly closed to people who don’t have TFA or Broad credentials (according to someone I know who is highly placed in a State BoE)

4) public education going through a corporate funded regime change (Walton/Broad/Gates)

5) TFA being associated with a broader movement that is being used to dismantle and take over public schools (coincidentially lining pockets)

6) TFA participating in expedient policy (such as 60 students in a class in Detroit)

7) the complex connections between TFA leadership and other interested parties in the edreform movement. One might follow the money (Murdoch/Klein/Rhee)

But, if you’re still having trouble following the argument, let’s just quit. Sometimes humor makes the better point.

http://edushyster.com/?p=606#more-606 or this: http://edushyster.com/?p=541
Categories Education Reform, Teach for America TFA

An Ironic Story

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
39

Viola Davis, the film star who appears in the anti-union, pro-charter movie “Won’t Back Down,” recently appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres show.

Davis is a graduate of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. This is the school that was targeted for closure in 2010, where there was a pitched battle between the district/state leadership and the teachers in the school. When Davis won an Academy Award in 2010, she gave a shout-out to her alma mater, Central Falls High School, and that gave the teachers there a big boost.

So now she is a star in a movie that encourages parents and teachers to “seize control” of their public school and turn it into a privately managed charter school. This is known as the “parent trigger” and is advocated by the rightwing group ALEC, which developed model legislation to encourage privatization of public schools.

When she appeared with Ellen, she was fund-raising for the Segue Institute, a charter school in Central Falls, not for the high school that educated her. Ellen gave her a check for $10,000 for the charter school.

The film will be shown in Central Falls, cosponsored by the charter school and the Central Falls Drama Club, to benefit the charter school.

One more irony: Ellen, who is openly gay, is promoting a film produced by Walden Media, owned by Philip Anschutz, an evangelical and fervent conservative, who funded anti-gay campaigns in Colorado and California.

So many ironies.

Categories Parent trigger, Unions

Charter Schools in South Carolina: No Better than Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
2

By now, there should be a standard headline that reads: “Once again, charter schools are found to get no better results than public schools.” Some get worse results.

Here is the latest from South Carolina.

There are some high-performing charter schools; some low-performing charter schools. On average, the results from charter schools are no different from those of public schools. Many of the South Carolina charters get worse results than the public schools.

Yet state after state is increasing the number of charters, taking resources away from public schools to educate a small number of children and not getting different results.

The outcome will be the recreation of a dual school system: one for the motivated, the other for an underfunded, overregulated public school system with larger than average numbers of English language learners (the charters don’t want them), special education (the charters don’t want them), the unmotivated (they don’t apply to charters), the low-performing (the charters don’t want them), and the behavior problems (the charters kick them out).

This is nuts.

Why are we undermining one of our nation’s essential democratic institutions?

Categories Charter Schools

Why Is the South So Easily Fooled?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
29

When I lectured in Chattanooga last week, I noticed a strange phenomenon. When I said things bluntly, people gasped. At one point, for example, I responded to a question by saying that the Legislature should not cut education to give tax breaks to corporations. The audience noticeably gasped. There were several moments like that. It occurred to me that the politicians in Tennessee are so eager to attract corporate investment, that it is a sacrilege to question the strategy of cutting education to fund corporate tax breaks.

A thoughtful comment by an educator in Tennessee:

Thanks for the visit. It sparked much needed conversation around these issues. The South seems so willing to sell out to invading corporate giants…perhaps b/c of our long history of poverty. Last to industrialize, means last to unionize, means furtile ground for the invaders. We are the third world the Romneys used to have to go abroad to find and exploit. But, as the Chicago strike indicates, we are not alone in the fight to protect our basic negotiation rights. Unfortunately, I fear that we in the south will be dependent upon the outrage of our northern counterparts who have historically had more practice protesting against those who would sell our souls to the company store. The Rhees of the world will have more traction here for all the reasons the now insulted 47% here still vote Republican: poverty, ignorance, and prejudice. However, nothing feuled the privatization of education in the south like desegregation. As a teacher here for the last twenty-five years, I can attest it is still the prime mover. I’m pretty sure this is true nationally. NCLB is just a clever way to come into this effort through the back door…undetected apparently even by our first black president.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Poverty, Tennessee

Superintendent Tony Bennett Has a Plan

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2012 //
8

Tony Bennett of Indiana is so sure that he knows how to reform schools. He knows that reform is all about threatening teachers and schools, holding their feet to the fire, and testing ceaselessly.

He has a new idea. He wants to take over districts with low scores. Indianapolis is in his sights. He wants to take it over, shut it down, possibly privatize it.

There is an election in November. Glenda Ritz is running against Tony Bennett. She is an educator. She wants to improve schools, not privatize them. This is a chance for the citizens of Indiana to stop the assault on public education and on the state’s teachers. This is their chance to repel Wall Street’s effort to take over the public schools.

Categories Indiana

The Georgia Federation of Teachers Denounces Charter Legislation

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2012 //
9

Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia is supporting a constitutional amendment to create a commission to approve charter schools despite the objection of local school boards. This proposal was drafted by the rightwing ALEC organization, which is heavily funded by big corporations and counts 2,000 state legislators among its members.

This is the statement issued by the Georgia Federation of Teachers about the constitutional amendment that would curtail the powers of local school boards:

Children, Not Profits, Are Our Priority
Georgia Federation of Teachers President Verdaillia Turner
on the Charter School Amendment

The Charter School Amendment is not about supporting parents or student achievement. It is about granting the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker unprecedented power over billions of local and state tax dollars via creating a new state agency which will control billions of tax dollars for private interests. This agency would be appointed by the governor and accountable only to the governor. This agency would siphon precious tax dollars away from 1.7 million Georgia school children. It would support and fatten special schools for select people by exacerbating class and racial segregation. The Charter School Amendment is about “who chooses and who loses.”

Children, not profits, are our priority. We agree with Georgia’s State School Superintendent, Dr. John Barge. Until all of Georgia’s schools are financed appropriately, and students and teachers are no longer furloughed, it is unconscionable to fund a new state agency or support the objectives of the Charter School Amendment. The money for these special “for profit” schools will create a dual state school system and will cost Georgia’s taxpayers billions of dollars.

While the powers at the state capitol deceive the public by pushing for less government, they are creating more government via another state agency to add to the 128 state agencies that already exist. And while the powers at the state capitol deceive the public and claim that they support local control, they are attempting to take local control away from locally elected school boards, the men and women most accountable to the public, by pushing this amendment. And while the powers at the state capitol claim that this amendment is about expanding parental choice and helping students achieve, they deceive the public by taking over 6 billion dollars from public schools and setting up Georgia’s citizens for an educational Enron encounter. Over 70 school districts are operating with a deficit. At least 4 school districts are broke, and over 20 school districts are still furloughing teachers and students. Parents already have a choice. Local boards of education may and do grant charters. And if a board denies a charter petition, the Georgia Department of Education has an appeal process. The only “choice” as per this amendment is the choice to finance private schools at the public’s expense!

If we can’t trust the state with Medicare, transportation, or to use dollars earmarked for the foreclosed homes our families and students need, why would we trust the state with our children?

This amendment is not about charters, achievement, or parental choice. It is about giving five people who will only be accountable to the governor, free range unprecedented control and power over our billions of tax dollars. And it is about big profits for private interests on the backs of our children and at the expense of Georgia’s taxpayers.

###

Georgia Federation of Teachers
(404) 315-0222

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Privatization

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2012 //
16

A reader watched Jeb Bush on television today. She reports:

I am watching Jeb Bush talk on msnbc…he says to give teachers the deal that if students learn more you get paid more. He says it is complicated but it is doable, particularly with new assessment tools that exist. He says you should get paid more if your students make better gains than the teacher who has like type kids next door, paid more if you work in a more difficult school, paid more if you are teaching science and math, and that differentiated pay was part of issue in Chicago. Joe asks why teachers resist it and Jeb says that is why it is called collective bargaining. The union most represents the teachers who have been in the system longer. LIFO is protected by the union to protect the teachers who pay more dues.

He ends by saying that middle class families think they are doing ok because they are benchmarking themselves to the inner city. They are not (doing ok). He says we need to benchmark ourselves to the best of the world. This should be something that is a national purpose. The relatively exciting thing, he says, though he isn’t naive about this…”This is a place where there is not as much partisan fighting either. This is almost Switzerland.”

So the Republicans have co-opted the “caring for the poor inner city child and the power of knowledge” message, and the Democrats are letting the privatizers take over a bastion of our democracy. And my own children are sick of being tested instead of learning. Maybe we could just MOVE to Switzerland…or Finland.

Categories Bush, Jeb
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