Archives for the month of: February, 2013
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

A Compleat Guide to the Corporate Reform Movement

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2013 //
46

Leonie Haimson, who leads Class Size Matters in New York City and was a co-founder of Parents Across America, has worked with other parents and with educators to compile a comprehensive list of corporate reform organizations and to identify the lingo of the reformers. She asks your help in reviewing the list and letting her know about errors and omissions.

Review the list of organizations and definitions. You can let her know your thoughts at the email she provides or in your comments here.

;

;

Many parents, teachers and concerned citizens are confused by the superabundance of well-funded advocacy organizations, consulting companies, and research groups promoting the corporate education reform agenda. These groups adopt a free-market approach to education reform by expanding privatization through charters, vouchers and online learning, judging schools and teachers through standardized test scores, and advocate for the Common Core standards. In order to be helpful, we have prepared a list of such organizations, along with their prominent staff, boards and funders, many of whom are interlocking. Many of these groups are the beneficiaries of the Gates, Broad and Walton Foundations.

This is a working document, and if you see an organization mistakenly included here, or you have suggestions for other changes, please email us at info@classsizematters.org with your comments.

One can also tell if an organization is allied with the corporate reform movement by its rhetoric. For example, the use of such buzzwords as “transformational”, “catalytic”, “innovative”, “great teachers”, “bold”, “game changer”, “effective”, “entrepreneurial”, “differentiated instruction”, “personalized learning”, “economies of scale”, “informational text”, “instructional efficiency”, “college and career ready”, and/or the term “disruptive” used in a positive sense provide clues that the organization or individual is associated with the corporate reform movement.

Other evidence of such an alignment may be if an organization uses “Children First ” or “Students First” or “Kids First” in its title, along with a claim that they represent the interests of children rather than adults (i.e. teachers); or if they have the propensity to attack anyone who disagrees with their policy agenda as defending the status quo. Also indicative of corporate reform leanings is stating that “education is the civil rights issue of our time” and/or the tendency to use the word “crappy” (a descriptor used frequently by Michelle Rhee of StudentsFirst and Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform.)

The use of the above buzzwords is replete, for example, in this recent press release from the Pahara Institute, an organization funded by the Gates Foundation. The Institute announces that they are awarding salary enhancements to a long list of “fellows”, including Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform, James Merriman of the NY Charter Center and Joel Rose of the New Classrooms (formerly the School of One), who head corporate reform organizations included in our list. The Pahara press release uses the word “reform” nine times, “transformational” six times; “entrepreneurial” four times, and the word “bold” twice, in a little over two pages.

Another good example of the rhetoric of corporate reform is this memo from the Broad Foundation, proposing a new program to highlight their cadre of “change agents”, who will “accelerate” the pace of “disruptive” and “transformational” change; who are “bold, visionary leaders with a proven history of breakthrough reforms” and an “aggressive reform agenda”, including “entrepreneurial founders and CEOs of revolutionary CMOs [charter management organizations] or non-profits.”

Yet another example of this overheated but essentially empty rhetoric is a report hyping the Rocketship chain of charters: “Rocketship’s differentiated staffing model offers further opportunity for transformative innovation.” Here transformative innovation appears to mean parking kids in front of computers for two hours per day to save money on staffing.

Often this agenda offers a simplistic, yet strangely contradictory set of positions:

  • Teacher quality is paramount, and yet schools should be able to get rid of experienced teachers in favor of Teach for America recruits with five weeks of training, most of whom will last only two years.

  • There is a need for differentiated instruction so each child can receive individualized feedback, but the smaller classes that might make this possible should not be considered, and instead, class sizes should be increased to save money and to create greater “efficiencies.”

  • Personalized learning will instead be achieved through software programs and online learning, though real personal contact will be lessened or entirely taken out of the equation.

  • Schools must adopt the Common Core standards to encourage higher order critical thinking and writing, but their success in reaching these goals will be measured through standardized tests taken and scored by computers.

  • Districts should lengthen the school day or school year, but they should also lessen the emphasis on “seat time” to allow students to get through school more quickly.

  • For traditional public schools, there is a need for standardization, including prescribing 50-70 percent “informational text” in assigned reading; at the same time, deregulation through the proliferation of autonomous and privately managed charter or voucher schools should occur, with little or no rules attached.

  • Parental “choice” is encouraged, by expanding the charters and voucher sector, but when hundreds or even thousands of parents vehemently protest the closing of their neighborhood public schools, or demand smaller classes, their choices are ignored or rejected with the claim that they are not educated enough to understand what’s at stake.

  • Teachers should be “empowered” through online learning, and the profession should be “elevated” and “respected”; but when teachers overwhelming oppose merit pay, the use of test scores in evaluation systems, or insist that the best way to improve their effectiveness and actually “empower” them would be to reduce class size, their views are cast aside.

If you have more examples of corporate reform rhetoric or systemic contradictions, please leave them in comment section below. Please also take a look at our corporate reform spreadsheet, offer your observations, and let us know if we should make changes by emailing us at info@classsizematters.org. Thanks!

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization

Uncommon assessments for common core?

By garyrubinstein
February 6, 2013 //
17

Guest Post by Gary Rubinstein
garyrubinstein.teachforus.org

‘Rigor’ is in, and the common core standards promise to raise the achievement in this country by raising expectations which students always rise to meet.

As a staunch “status-quo defender,” it might surprise ‘reformers’ that I have some pretty radical ideas about how I’d change the math curriculum in this country if I could. While they tinker around with teacher evaluation formulas which could, at best, raise test scores by a little, I would like to see a complete overhaul of what we teach in math.

When I heard that the common core was going to address the problem that the math we teach is “a mile wide and an inch deep” and that we need to teach fewer things, but better, I thought that this was an excellent idea. It was something I was thinking about for a while. It is not possible to deeply teach too many topics in a year. It would be like trying to have a class read fifty novels in a year in an English class. It would not be possible to cram that much in and do it well.

As I learned more about the common core, I got concerned since they didn’t really seem to be removing many topics from the curriculum. Instead math teachers are told to teach to a greater depth of understanding in the same time frame. Another important issue is how students will be assessed to see if they have achieved a deeper understanding.

Since I teach at one of the top high schools in the country, Stuyvesant High School, and since I try to usually teach to encourage a deep understanding, I wanted to share with Diane Ravitch’s vast audience what a common core math activity could look like, what the assessment might be, and why the actual assessments will never accomplish what they were supposed to.

I chose 8th grade geometry standard 8.G.B.6 which states “Explain a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem and its converse.”

Now the Pythagorean is probably the most famous thing in all of math. In Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance they even refer to it in “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General”.

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

At the end of ‘The Wizard Of Oz,” The Scarecrow, after receiving his ‘brain’ even takes a crack at it.

OK. So after that gentle introduction, I’m going to remind anyone who might have forgotten that the Pythagorean Theorem describes a relationship between the lengths of the three sides of a right angled triangle. Specifically, if you add together the squares of the two shorter sides it will equal the square of the longest side.

In the diagram below, AC is 5 units and BC is 12 units. To use the Pythagorean Theorem to determine the length of AB, you would calculate 5*5=25 then add to that 12*12=144 to get 25+144=169. Then you would have to find the square root of 169, which is 13 since 13*13=169.

Generally students are ‘told’ the Pythagorean Theorem. Sometimes they are shown a formal proof of it using something called similar triangles, but that proof is not very convincing or memorable.

When I make a math lesson, my goal is for it to be thought provoking, relevant, or both. So when I teach the Pythagorean Theorem in common core style, I’d want to get my students thinking about why the relationship is true, and a good way to do this is with some very cool geometric diagrams. In the old days (300 B.C.) when people would say “In a right triangle the sum of the squares on the legs equals the square on the hypotenuse,” they meant it literally. ‘Square’ did not mean to multiply something by itself, but the four sided shape that we learn about as toddlers. So saying “a squared plus b squared equals c squared” in this context means that the combined areas of the yellow and blue squares are equal to the area of the orange square.

To get kids thinking about why this might be true, I’d have them examine a few pictures. Here’s one that should keep any curious person staring and thinking for at least ten minutes.

I’d ask students to try to justify why the five pieces that make up the big square are identical to the five pieces that make up the small and medium sized squares.

I’d then have them think about, and then discuss in pairs, this famous image.

My hope is that most of the class would be intrigued by this image to realize that since the left hand square is made up of four triangles and the orange square and the right hand square is made up of the same four triangles and the yellow and light blue squares, then the orange square must have the same area as the yellow and light blue combined.

For my ‘assessment’ which is also what would be natural on the common core, I’d present another picture kind of like these, only harder.

Now here’s where the common core assessments will break down. As a teacher the way I’d assess my students would not just be if they “figured it out.” While I’d be pretty happy if some students figured this one out, I could be satisfied if nobody figured it out. If I saw my students concentrating on it, talking about it with their neighbors, thinking about it and not giving up for twenty minutes, making some progress, developing some theories and then testing those theories, smiling — enjoying this challenge. That’s what I’d want to see and I seriously doubt that the common core will, or can, accomplish this.

By the way, in case you’ve been intrigued by this, I’m going to put the answer down so you have to scroll to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Charter Schools and the New Segregation

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
49

A reader offers his observations:

Charter Schools, a failure that cannot be measured.

January 12, 2013 by Joe Hernandez

As I drive happily and optimistically through our South Florida roads, I can’t fail to notice the familiar signs we are all accustomed to viewing, the burger chains, gas stations and the strip malls. As an educator and more specifically, a school psychologist, something catches my eye in a decrepit, run down strip mall, a charter school. I pull in, curious, as to what this school has to offer, as it looks like any other store I could walk in, including an adult book store a few hundred feet away and a gun shop to go with it! I ask the friendly young lady behind a window, what type of school is this? She happily explains that this is a Kindergarten through Eigth grade charter school. Curiously, I ask where are the classrooms? She answers, they are behind that door, but I’m sorry, visitors are not allowed back there. So I ask, may I see the school counselor? I have some questions about enrolling my children here. The young lady quickly snaps back and says, “I am the school counselor”. Being of a mental health background I naturally ask, what experience do you need to be a counselor here? She quickly responds, none, that is just my title. I enroll students here. I only work part-time here. At this point, this so-called counselor is beginning to become suspicious of my intentions. So she asks, would you like to see our administrator? I answer no, not now at least, I am going to read the application completely first.

I settle down into what appears to be an old sofa of a doctor’s office, in fact, the whole charter school appears to be an old office renovated for educational purposes, complete with the obnoxious sliding glass window you need to knock on to get the attention of the office aide/school counselor to turn in your application. In the far distance, I can here the familiar laugh of children and a teacher screaming at the top of her lungs “shut up”. I look around the small waiting room, and I cannot help to notice a young lady wringing her hands, with an impatient look. Next to her, is a stack of papers and a textbook. Curious, I ask her, how do you like this school? She quickly responds that she is very disappointed. Very disappointed I ask? Yes, she says, as she begins to recount how she arrived to this school. I was offered something called a McKay Scholarship where I could choose any school I wanted private or public. Acting naive, I asked, isn’t this a good thing? She answers back, well, on the surface, everything looks great. The school is small, the staff is friendly, and the students all have to wear uniforms. So what is the problem?, I ask. She quickly explains that in order for her “application” to be accepted she had to sign a waiver. A waiver I ask? Yes a waiver. You see, when my child was in public school last year, she was receiving special education services for her Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. This school, like most other charter schools do not have the resources that public schools have. So you are required to sign a waiver stating that even though your child has “special needs” you agree that the school does not have to provide any accommodations. Surprised at this revelation, I asked the parent, and you agreed to this? Well, the school seemed so eager to please, I felt at ease that my child could learn here. So what are your plans, I ask the mother. I am going to ask the administrator if the staff could at least look at her previous year’s work and have some compassion. I looked back at her and asked, and when will the administrator see you? She snapped quickly, they told me in half an hour, but as you can see, you and I have been close to an hour here and there is no administrator in sight. I again ask naively, is this common? Oh, you don’t know? I said no, I am applying here. She looks at me straight in the eyes, think twice about the decision you are about to make. There is one administrator for the ten charter schools this company runs.

At this point, I had heard or you can say learned enough. I quietly exit the waiting room and venture to the back alley of the strip mall to see for myself what type of Physical Education field or playground this charter school had to offer. As I passed numerous, obnoxiously smelling dumpsters, I observed a fence, a 20 by 20 feet area approximately, that had a group of students doing some jumping jacks. There were no swings, slides, fields to run through, nada! Just concrete and space to do some kinesthetics!

By this time, my charter school curiosity had been fulfilled, I had seen enough what this “free, unregulated, market model” had to offer our children. I believe my experience with this randomly selected charter school, in a local strip mall may not be representative of all charter schools. I suspect that charter schools, located in our more affluent/wealthier neighborhoods run at a higher standard. Naturally, this defeats the notion of an “equal education for all”. Some may disagree with me and say, there is no more segregation in our education system. I beg to differ, charter schools are creating and contributing to what I call the new “socio-economic segregation” of our times. It is the cancer that is draining the resources of an education system, already stretched to its limits, and that has long been regulated to serve all of our children, hungry, poor, rich, disabled, gifted etc.

Joseph Hernandez, ED.S.
School Psychologist

Categories Charter Schools, Florida, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Special Education, US Education

Silence of the TFA Lambs

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
13

Gary Rubinstein wonders why so many of TFA’s new teachers have been so quiet, not blogging about their first-year experiences. He gets a ton of responses.

Is this, he wonders, the silence of the sacrificial lambs?

Categories Education Reform, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching

How Testing Has Corrupted Education

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
6

EduShyster has written one of the most disturbing posts ever.

It is about the business of raising “achievement.”

It is about how “achievement” refers not to accomplishment or courage or integrity or grace under pressure, but….test scores.

It is about how the business of raising test scores is very lucrative for a few corporations.

It is about how our federal government is using our tax dollars to create a racket, er, industry for those who know how to raise test scores by putting kids into “lockdown” while they practice the tests again and again until their scores go up.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit

Louisiana Believes In That?

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
1

Crazy Crawfish is after Jindal and White again.

And who can blame him?

These guys are almost beyond parody.

They have another wacky idea about education that will make someone very rich.

The kids–not so much.

Categories Humor, Louisiana, On-Line Education, Technology, Computers

Who Is Buying Your Data?

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
9

A reader offers these comments:

“Teachers are ‘free’ to teach ‘personally’ “… that is if we and our kids are willing to sell their identity for products and to data consolidators.

We need to stop web-based education. Period. Dangerous stuff. Incorrect and manipulated numbers that will cause kids to fail, teachers to be fired, schools to close, communities to wither…

Financial and societal costs that we can’t begin to imagine.

I am reading a book titled “I Know Who You Are And I Saw What You Did; Social Networks and the Death of Privacy.” Commercial enterprises are all looking for data to mine and sell–even if it has nothing to do with their so-called product.

For example, MyEdu (a virtual counselor for higher education) claims to help the student “Manage college. Get your degree faster.
Land the perfect job or internship. It’s FREE! forever!)
https://www.myedu.com/students/

Check out their privacy policy. https://www.myedu.com/about/myedu/privacy/

It doesn’t matter that their claims selling their education snake oil would never be brought to a court of law. Heck! That’s corporate free speech to hawk garbage and make claims…

Margaret Spellings (former US Secretary of Education and now on MyEdu’s Board was right when she said,“It’s a gold mine of data.”

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/ut-system-sought-quick-wins-with-myedu-partnership/nRkBj/

All the data can be sold to data consolidators like, Aexiom (described by former CEO John Meyer as “the biggest company you have never heard of”) and LexisNexis (which bought competitor ChoicePoint for $4.1 billion in cash).

We have electronic avatars that negatively impact our real selves. Spokeo is a website that is loaded with errors that employers and potential landlords use.

While the internet seemed like the perfect tool for democracy, Eli Pariser (“The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You”) wrote, “Personalization has given us something very different: a public sphere sorted and manipulated by algorithms, fragmented by design, and hostile to dialogue.”

Great to know this website exists! Blogs and News on Data Mining, Web Mining and Text Mining
http://www.kdnuggets.com/websites/blogs.html

From this link, I see a new one posted on JAN 10, 2013.
Smart TV and Data Mining “data mining coming to our home…” http://www.aboutdm.com

Categories Education Reform

When Your Best Is Never Enough

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
12

Diana Rogers, a regular reader of the blog, writes about her experience and her school:

I’ve worked for twenty years in a district that has a wonderful staff. There have been a few unsuitable teachers throughout the years, and the administration had no trouble identifying them and getting rid of them; a few others who just needed a bit of guidance were mentored and became better teachers.

I know I have become a better teacher each year, and I have worked hard at becoming better–taken 65 semester hours of post-graduate work, attended numerous workshops and seminars, read professional books and journals. But more important, I learned from my students and their parents, and from my colleagues. I did not “peak” after a few years, but got better and better each year at understanding my students, being able to explain material to them in ways they could grasp and retain, and at knowing how to bring parents into the teaching team as their children’s biggest supporters.

I have done everything I have been asked to do. And so have the other teachers I know. I don’t see all these “bad” teachers that are always being talked about in the media. But in recent years we have been asked to do not only the stupid, but the downright impossible, and even the harmful. Yes we are getting demoralized, attacked from all sides by non-educators who think they understand education better than professional educators. On the whole, teachers are idealistic strivers who try to do everything they can to help their students succeed. I see this every day.

And now we have to waste time on endless testing, data compilation, test preparation, and changing our curriculum to align to the Common Core.

We have to worry about our contracted pensions being taken away from us.

We have to spend enormous amounts of time assembling a portfolio of evidence to prove that we are good teachers, and are even told not to expect to be rated as excellent as we were in the past and as our administrators know we are.

This time could certainly be better spent polishing and improving our lessons, researching materials and methods, or giving feedback to students. Even though I take stacks of work home nightly and spend a huge chunk of the weekend and much of my vacation time on grading, preparation, and other school-related work, there are still only so many hours in a day, and they are not enough to do what I am required to do without adequate resources or support.

The conditions teachers work under are not the fault of school administrators any more than that of the teachers. Administrators endure the same unreasonable pressures of impossible demands, unfair evaluations and limited resources as teachers do. They are caught up in the same effort to do what is being asked of them when what is being asked is not reasonable or right.

Schools will not become better if people like me and the many fine, experienced teachers I know are driven out by impossible demands, abuse, and loss of job and retirement security.

I want to believe that sensible thinkers will prevail and that the tide in this insidious madness of false “reform” will turn.

I cannot understand why there is not recognition and enormous public outcry against the dismantling of public education in our country.

I’m hoping that the harm being done by those whose interests are not the welfare of our country and its children will finally be understood and that people of good faith in the general public and in our government (if there are any left there who are not controlled by big money) will do what is needed to save public education before it is too late.

Categories Pensions, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, U.S. education

Susan Ohanian on Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
41

If you don’t like the Common Core standards, you will enjoy reading Susan Ohanian’s blast at them.

Ohanian thinks that the CC is a massive error at best, a sordid conspiracy by the elites at worst.

What do you think?

Categories Common Core

Deshotels: Telling the Truth about Teacher Reforms in Louisiana

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2013 //
16

My guest blogger today is Mike Deshotels of Louisiana.

Deshotels taught Chemistry and Physics at Zachary High School near Baton Rouge starting in 1966. He served as Research Director for the Louisiana Association of Educators and moved to the position of Executive Director for the LAE/NEA before retiring. He now writes a blog called The Louisiana Educator. The site is louisianaeducator.blogspot.com.

Here he explains how Governor Bobby Jindal is reforming the teaching profession in Louisiana.

The Truth About Teacher Reforms in Louisiana

Diane Ravitch asked me to write a guest post on education reform in Louisiana and suggested that I attempt to tell the untold story. Upon considering this, I realized that there was a major untold story about the destructive attacks on the teaching profession in Louisiana. I chose to tell this story because I fear similar efforts may soon be attempted in many other states. If you believe in teaching as a profession, be forewarned. The profession could be dismantled in your state just as we are witnessing in Louisiana.

Outsourcing of teaching jobs: I posted a story on my blog at http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2012_09_16_archive.html about teaching jobs in Louisiana verses chicken processing jobs. Our governor Bobby Jindal talks a lot about attracting highly-skilled or college-trained jobs to Louisiana. He has a Department of Economic Development that uses a special taxpayer supported fund to attract high tech business to Louisiana. But contrary to his rhetoric, a couple of years ago some of his legislative allies in North Louisiana became alarmed about a chicken processing plant that may close down and ship operations and jobs to another state. The Governor’s economic development department stepped in and subsidized this company with millions of our dollars to bribe them to keep their chicken butchering operations in Louisiana. Later on, I was informed that about half of these unskilled workers are actually coming over the border from Arkansas. Soon after this Governor Jindal pushed a new law in Louisiana that will allow for outsourcing of teaching jobs to out-of-state virtual providers. (Course Choice Programs may soon be coming to your state!) So now K12 and Connections Academy and others will be allowed to recruit students from Louisiana along with their education taxes to pay for computer based virtual courses taught by persons from out of state. The new law also allows our state DOE to waive some of the certification requirements of these far away teachers. Who knows, soon our kids may be taught by teachers in India. This outsourcing was approved even though statistics show that our much maligned public schools perform much better on average than any of the virtual schools.

Teacher certification standards reduced: Now because of education reform in Louisiana, public charter schools are allowed to hire non-certified teachers. All one needs to teach any subject or grade in a charter school in Louisiana is a bachelor’s degree in any field. Just last week, the Jindal controlled state board repealed a requirement that all public schools go through periodic accreditation by an independent accrediting agency. This means that there will be no independent checking of teacher certification. In the same meeting the state board repealed requirements for staffing schools with guidance counselors and librarians and also reduced PE classes. I assume these actions are supposed to minimize distractions to test teaching and test prepping.

Teacher Evaluation Based 100% on VAM: A law was passed in 2010 requiring that all teachers in Louisiana be evaluated starting this year with a new evaluation instrument based 50% on student performance. The other 50% is supposed to be based on observations of the teacher’s classroom techniques by his/her supervisor. But contrary to the law, our state superintendent has adopted rules requiring in certain cases that value added student performance (VAM) may count for 100%. Our new state superintendent, John White, who has zero experience in teacher supervision or evaluation has mandated that when a teacher’s value added score falls in the unacceptable range, the teacher will be rated as unsatisfactory no matter how good the rating on the principal’s observation portion. In addition, DOE overseers will monitor the performance of local evaluators to see if their observation results are in line with the VAM portion. It is expected that corrective action may be considered against any evaluators who do not rate teachers similar to their VAM score. Even worse, since all the teacher observation data is entered on a state computer system, the computer can be programed to point out discrepancies between the VAM and the observer evaluations. That’s why many conclude that the teacher evaluations will be based 100% on VAM data.

Unreliable VAM data used for teacher evaluation and termination: Since VAM will be so important in a teacher’s evaluation, one would assume that the VAM is an extremely reliable system. It is not! We now have enough data from trial runs of the VAM in Louisiana that we can do analysis of the reliability or the stability of VAM data. Stability of VAM refers to the amount of variability of a teacher’s VAM score from one year to the next if the teacher teaches exactly the same way both years. Analysis by Wayne Free of the Louisiana Association of Education’s Instruction division was verified by another study conducted by independent researcher, Dr Mercedes Schneider. Dr Schneider found for example, that if a teacher is rated as highly effective one year, the chance that the same teacher will be rated as highly effective the next year is only 46% (that is without changing any teaching practices). A similar result was found with teachers scoring in other rankings of VAM. Thousands of teachers can easily drop from a satisfactory rating to an unsatisfactory rating from one year to the next even though their teaching remains exactly the same. State officials say that’s OK because a teacher is not required to be terminated based on only one year’s VAM. But only one year of an ineffective rating on VAM will automatically cancel a teacher’s tenure, which means the teacher can be fired immediately without a hearing of any kind.

Teacher evaluation program administered by a two year teacher: If teachers were a bit nervous that the new evaluation system may abruptly end their careers, they were pushed to outrage when they learned that the statewide evaluation system will be administered by a TFA corps member with only two years of teaching, no valid teaching certificate, and no experience in supervision. (http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-10-05T06:52:00-05:00&max-results=2&reverse-paginate=true) Many teachers consider this appointment by the state superintendent to be an insult to the entire teaching profession in our state.

The rigged tenure process: One of the reform laws passed in the last legislative session changes the tenure process for teachers recommended for dismissal. Now the tenure hearing panel will be composed of three hearing officers. One is to be appointed by the local superintendent, one appointed by the teacher’s principal and the third appointed by the teacher. So if the principal and the superintendent agree that the teacher should be dismissed, the hearing process begins with two out of three votes against the teacher. Unlike the previous procedure, there is no judicial appeal. Teachers may wonder why bother with such a kangaroo court?

Teacher seniority banned: The Jindal reforms have replaced seniority rights with the teacher’s most recent evaluation rank. For example, a teacher with 20 years of superior evaluations, but one year of unsatisfactory evaluation possibly because of VAM, would place the teacher at the top of the list to be laid off when the school system orders a RIF.

State Superintendent sets quota for teacher dismissals: As part of the new teacher accountability system included in the Louisiana ESEA No Child Left Behind Waiver approval, the guidelines have set a minimum of 10% of teachers to be found ineffective and placed on a track for dismissal by the new evaluation system each year. (This 10% rule only applies to teachers receiving a VAM score) I asked the state superintendent if the 10% would be applied each year or if it would be limited in some way. He responded that such a quota was to be applied each year until the State Board determined that it was no longer necessary. This idea looked so good to a local school board committee advised by a couple of TFA staffers, that the school system’s new strategic plan will require that the bottom 25% of teachers in the system based on the VAM evaluation would be fired each year!

Remove teacher union payroll deductions: For the coming legislative session, Governor Jindal and his business allies are proposing to eliminate payroll deductions for teacher union dues. But they want to specifically exempt a particular teacher organization that has gone along with all the reform efforts. Many believe the purpose of this proposal is to punish the teacher unions who along with the School Board’s Association have been successful in getting the courts to declare the method for funding the Governor’s vouchers to private schools unconstitutional.

So how are the Louisiana teacher reforms working so far? Here is a link to a recent article in the Baton Rouge Advocate (http://theadvocate.com/news/4902526-123/rate-of-teachers-retiringspikes) that describes a 27% increase in teacher retirements last year with an even greater increase expected this year. Some superintendents are reporting that these early retirements often are some of the most respected teachers in their systems who may be impossible to replace with equal talent. That’s how the teacher reforms in Louisiana are working so far.

Categories Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »