Washington State legislators refused to accept Arne Duncan’s demand that teachers be evaluated by a flawed and erroneous method, and the state seems certain to lose its NCLB waiver.
“That would mean that, starting in 2014-2015, school districts throughout the state would lose control over roughly $38 million in Title I funds designed to help low-income students.
“Loss of the waiver would also mean districts throughout the state would have to redirect an additional $19 million in Title I money toward professional development and teacher training, according to OSPI.
“It’s going to result in the loss of programs for our students who are the most in need,” said Sen. Bruce Dammeier, a Puyallup Republican who supported changing the teacher-evaluation system to keep the state’s waiver.
“The U.S. Department of Education told Washington leaders in August that the state’s waiver would be at risk unless lawmakers moved to mandate the use of statewide tests in teacher evaluations.
“Schools today may use solely local tests to measure student growth when evaluating teachers and principals – a standard the federal government has deemed unacceptable.
“But several lawmakers said they didn’t want to interfere with the state’s new teacher and principal evaluation system — which is being used for the first time this year — just to meet federal demands.
“Of course I am concerned from the perspective of a local district,” said state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, a Seattle Democrat who chairs the House Education Committee.
“Yet I am concerned on the other hand that we (would) establish bad policy for the entire state of Washington.”
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/13/3032949/teacher-evaluation-change-to-keep.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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Washington State legislators stand strong against
Blackmail from White House
To evaluate teachers with junk science
http://bit.ly/1e4dwuz
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And now the anti-teacher union drumbeat has started up here once more: “Teachers are selfish, the union controls the Democratic Party, etc.” Stand on Children, League of (non)Education Voter, Dumbocrats For Education defoRm were all bashing teachers prior to this, saying we were putting at-risk students even more at risk. What can put students more at risk than making standardized tests even more high-stakes and creating a situation where teaching to the test feels like a necessity to save your job? Students would not be the top priority then.
I’m glad most of our WA legislators were able to see that and protected our existing legislation, even though I got at least one response back where the legislator was more concerned with how sending out a letter to all parents about how Washington’s schools were considered failing (per federal guidelines because we did not change one word in our legislation) would cause issues for her. Waah.
Arne Duncan – you can take your cudgel and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Washington State said no to a bully.
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Hats off to Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos. She stood against great pressure from the Governor, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Republicans to pass a flawed proposal.
Washington State is asking their students to pilot Common Core tests, which would be used to evaluate teachers. Madness and I am glad Santos Tomikos Santos showed enourmous courage and strength.
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Oh, but the SBAC now needs more time. The tests aren’t ready, so testing has been delayed at least a week. The fun continues! Some schools have now said no, the schedule change will mess them up too badly.
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What?! The Smarter Balance pilot is not ready yet? Haven’t they had years and lots of $$ to get this up to speed? Sounds like the Obamacare website…
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I have some advice for the Washington state education department. Keep the $19 million in Title I money for the kids, not professional development and training. The vast majority of it is a waste of time and money. It just lines the pockets of the education bureaucracy and the educational product development autocracy.
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Amen. Until PD training moves away from CCS implementation, PDs are useless. I also have advice for teachers who are asked to be PD trainers. DON’T accept to put yourselves in such positions that enable CCS and race to the top to continue. It only makes our jobs tougher to eliminate corp takeover, when teachers contradict themselves.
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Agree 100%. The CCSS “trainers” I’ve encountered have never taught a single lesson to a real class using the standards. They have never been evaluated using the current version of the state test with the highest historical cut scores, and they have been out of the classroom so long that many didn’t even teach under NCLB at all.
These are the “experts” who are paid to teach us, the actual classroom teachers, how to do our jobs because everything we know, everything we do, and everything we can do is now wrong and not “rigorous” enough nor tied to “college and career ready” BS.
It’s such a farce that I often laugh and cry at the same time. And I take some consolation that the turncoat teachers who have escaped the classroom and actual interaction with children and teaching will themselves be caught up in the horrific cycle they are perpetuating. They think they are safe and free from the atrocity of VAM and constant Danielson bullying but they are not.
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Agreeing with the Texas comment (I’m a middle-school teacher in Pittsburgh). “Professional development” has come to mean “pushing the evaluation system on teachers” more than anything else. The Title 1 kids need real support. What a good statement THAT would be from Washington: pro kids as opposed to anti-teacher.
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Will Washington state’s congressional delegation lobby the White House. Is there some way to tie together granting a waiver to support of other legislation, a tactic well used by The Republican Party. Time for progressive Democrats to ‘take off their gloves’.
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Our Gov met privately with good buddy Arne and sold us out. Luckily the legislature did not. I can’t see our Dem Senators going against Obama and his BFF, Arnie, to get us the money or waiver some other way. The state just added $58 million into the K-12 budget – way less than they should be adding, but better than previous years – so I think we’ll be able to manage.
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Inslee works for the 1%
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Too true, Sarah in Seattle
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WEA blew it. When asked why they were not putting more effort into defeating the charter school initiative, leadership said time and money was going into electing Inslee because he’d be a friend to education. Screwed once again.
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The sell-out to the plutocrats working to deform the K-12 educaiton system has been thoroughly bipartisan. The criminals in both parties know who writes the checks. Don’t look for a lot of Dimocrats to come to the rescue of kids and teachers. On this, they are as clueless as are the Repugnicans.
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Bold move and a testament that money can’t buy the corruption of Oligarchs trying to buy their way into education policies. Now for other states to resist being puppets. Hope this makes national news.
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And right in Billy’s own front yard!
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Diane, Are you aware that Indiana has hit the “pause” button on Common Core?
http://indianapublicmedia.org/stateimpact/tag/hb-1427/
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If every legislature throughout the country had the fortitude to stand up to Arne in this manner and all stood to lose their ED-Flex waivers and Title I monies, then finally Congress might do something to rein in the dictates coming out of US ED that have absolutely no basis in education research. United we stand, individually we’re being trampled by federalism run amok on all matters pertaining to education policy.
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If every super. of every district teamed together with each other things might have changed. They could rally every district to fight against it all. Too many have gone along with the punitive education policies to save their own necks. As a result, we have education systems all over the country being bullied by a small group in Washington.
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Yeah. . . the “new normal” they call it.
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Now its time for Washington State to take the federal government to court
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I wish!
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Would a hashtag of “#asshat” be over the top when Tweeting this?
Denying funds is one thing; threatening to hold the Title I funds hostage is distinctly bullying. 😡
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Yep. They could use money targeted for charter schools to fund Title I instead. Be interesting to see how they figure this out. I’m sure the voters would clearly understand this move.
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They have bullied people all through the Bush and Obama years.
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Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
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After reading this post, a pivotal question becomes if the federal government and the DOE can be sued for “mandating and designing” curriculum (the DOE is not permitted to do so according to constitutional law) not directly but indirectly through the force of funding (which, BTW, come from US taxpayers), the power of which is so impactful that it is the legal equivalent of mandating curriculum.
This should be one of the critical points and legal arguments made if states can get together and collectively sue Arne Duncan, the president, and the US DOE . . . . . .
A lawsuit would be a great use of taxpayer money . . .
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Unfortunatey, no one sued back in the day of the Reading First fiasco, where states and districts were “informed” by US Dept of Ed officials which curricula they would have to use and which assessment (DIBELS) they would have to use in order to get Reading First grant monies.
http://www.fairtest.org/dibels-pedagogy-absurd-hurts-children
I’m guessing they won’t do it now, or if they do, it’ll be a Tea Party-run state who will be doing it because they are racists rather than because they actually care about students. Regardless of how I feel about Obama’s education policies, I won’t ally myself with people who think women should have no say in control of their bodies and who think slavery was a good thing. The enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend, in this case.
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They should be. What Duncan and Obama are doing is clearly illegal.
Myself I prefer both be impeached,and yes, cabinet members can be impeached.
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Many of us contacted Legislators and used this blog’s information to help persuade them to consider the folly of using brand new, unproven tests to evaluate teachers. Thank you, Diane for providing the examples and courage to stand against Arne’s tyranny.
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Washington State, we just march to the beat of a different drummer. Just getting charters (and our charter law will likely end up in our state Supreme Court), TFA gets NO traction here (about 20 teachers over 3 years- they are dying for charters to come) and we just don’t care a lot about Duncan and his bullying. We HAVE a newish teacher evaluation law, thank you, and we don’t need him mucking it up.
We are also going to get a very strong student data privacy bill passed next legislative session. See studentprivacynow.com.
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Have you seen a “Teachers First” reaction to this? I’d be curious who they allied themselves to. They do trumpet CC and take Gates funding, and my guess is that since most of them are TFA, they probably saw no issue with test scores being used to evaluate teachers. I am choosing not to look at distasteful sites this today.
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Speaking of common core professional development and enormous cost. Every teacher in my district is required to attend 2 full day common core trainings, and the district has to provide the substitutes. Why doesn’t anyone every think about that rather hidden cost? I attended the 1st district training last fall, but had previously attended many building-based trainings. We had our little parking lot, learned about how the common core was designed by educators, contributed to building our airplanes midair, and got into groups to unpack standards, and to transform them into IEP goals. Almost forgot the part about walking around the room to put our wows, wonders, and oh nos on gigantic chart paper.
Here’s one of my letters…
Thank you for your response, but I am not particularly optimistic about actually being listened to about how wrong it would be to be evaluated based on student test scores.
Student growth data sounds so harmless and honest. After all, if a particular concept or skill had been taught and taught well to students, surely those students would eagerly demonstrate their knowledge on MSP or whatever new test our tax money will be used to buy. Only really ineffective teachers would not manage to effectively teach their students to pass their tests. As a special education teacher, perhaps I should write IEP goals to focus on the skills needed to pass the tests at a level 2. There are plenty who do exactly that, and focus all specially designed instruction of those goals. The very same has been pushed in the common core trainings I have attended. Only it is morally wrong, and perhaps even legally.
The IEPs for my students are written based on what each individual qualifying student needs, as per evaluation findings, present level of performance, progress towards goals, and team decisions. I can’t see my way clear to writing IEPs to produce the right test scores. Many of my students are significantly below grade level because of their disabilities, and they have other social and emotional issues that impede their progress. Their “student growth data” would not show up on any standardize test score, but it is significant and they have every reason to be proud.
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Well said.
You describe a situation we all know too well by now.
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It’s really time for somebody to take the feds to court over their violation of the separation of powers in dictating education policy.
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I totally agree, Susan.
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Yep. Lawyers would be good here.
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Duncan has completely scoffed at the law prohibiting the US Dept of Ed from forcing curricula on people.
The CCSS in Mathematics is CLEARLY, as E. D. Hirsch, Jr. said on this blog a few months ago, a curriculum outline, and Duncan made adopting this mandatory if states were to get their waivers and thus their funding.
But in an oligarchy, the legal system belongs to. . . ?
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Bravo for Washington State!
If only the same thing would happen here in NY.
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I find it amusingly ironic that Gates lives in Washington state. Now is the time to step it up people and show both sides of congress that we are mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. Everyone that reads this blog should make sure they tell 1 new person a day about this travesty and have THEM tell 1 person a day until the truth overcomes the “truth”. I think the drums are playing the war beat now………….
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Even more ironic is that Microsoft doesn’t pay it’s fair share of state taxes, thus contributing to the funding shortfall that hampers K-12 education in Washington State and opens the door to the Gates Foundation meme of failing public schools.
But I guess that doesn’t really fit into his worldview. Facts are so inconvenient, after all.
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Ironic, yes. Surprising, no. Bill knows how things work around here, so he’s being very careful in how he pushes his reforms. His foundation knew that the only way they’d pass the charter initiative was to pay for signatures, so they forked over the money. They’ve funded a group called Teachers United and made it look like a group of concerned teachers who gather to talk and make grassroots changes. How many “teachers who are concerned” groups do you know with an office in high-rent Seattle, a program director (former TFAer), an office staff, and a budget? All funded by Gates. Bill knows he has to slip in through the backdoor to get anywhere in WA.
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Oh, but the standards and the evaluation systems were freely adopted by the states. Just go to the CCSS or US Dept. of Ed. or Achieve or Thomas B. Fordham websites and read all about that.
Liars.
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Achieve has an entire PR campaign dedicated to repeating the lore of vast support and states free willed adoption of CCSS.
They doth protest too much.
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Reblogged this on Carolina Mountain Blue.
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Off topic, but …I find it ironic that BG lives in Washington State, and doesn’t seem involved in protecting the environment or helping fund programs to prevent pollution runoff or raise awareness about non-point source pollution? I’ll be happily proven wrong on this one, but where are the environmental education programs? There was nothing about cleaning the water of Puget Sound, or restoring native fishing areas last I checked out the foundation web site.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Microsoft’s home state.
Bravo!
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My gut reaction is that the average person, or even the average teacher in WA, does not equate Bill Gates with school deform.
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By way of comparison while still trying to keep politics out of this, but, several states including Indiana have refused to accept huge amounts of money to help people in dire need of health care. These states have refused to accept ACA, Obamacare.
Whether good or bad, depending on your political view, this refusal of Federal money is playing an important part in the lives of these states citizens.
My view: It is so very sad when political agendas interfere with those things which would improve the lives of its citizenry. There are always differences of opinion in political matters but for me, this has reached the point of being intolerable.
How to fight back? Only real education to know the best facts according to scholarly research and then act. Unfortunately both things are lacking in way too many U. S. citizens and we suffer the consequences.
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“Almost tenderly, the slave laid the sheep on its back on the ground. Despite the breeze from the water, the air was close with the smell of blood and wine and incense, hot animals and men. The haruspex split the belly. The entrails slithered out: large, white and sausage-like, faintly marbled with pinks and blues. Porsenna’s strong hands delved inside.
One after another he cut and wrenched free the organs – heart, lungs, liver – a grim parody of a demented housewife.” *
Kind of funny how, 2000 years later, you get some fancy degrees and some fancy credentials and some fancy job titles and some fancy junk science formulas and some fancy marketing & you tell King Gate$ & you tell Emperor Broad & you tell Sycophant Arne the teacher bashing VAM Doublespeak they want to hear, AND you get to be a highly paid high priest of VAM Doublespeak!
rmm.
(*Wolves Of The North, Warrior Of Rome Series, Sidebottom)
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OOOPS! it is “demented midwife.” darn non trifocal fuzzy vision glasses!
If I wasn’t 54 I might have to go back to college to get some advanced degrees in poli sci and education-whatever, instead of just my lowly math b.a.
ALL I see in this fight is Arne & Co. successfully pitting poor kids against teachers to push his VAM lies.
rmm.
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Yes, there is some irony that Mr. Gates doesn’t have much traction on public education issues (beyond throwing money everywhere and creating faux education groups) in Washington State.
He barely won – in a 4th try – passing charter schools in Washington State. All that Gates and Walton and Reed Hastings money – and it only passed by 40K votes. (AND if the teachers union had gotten their act together, it would have gone down.)
I think pointing out his basic hypocrisy:
-“small classes don’t matter if you have a good teacher” – when every single parent and teacher knows that even a good teacher cannot establish relationships when you get over 24-25 students AND when his own children go to schools that advertise… small class sizes
– “ed reform will take 10 years” (and a Harvard profession just said this “10 years” line about CC so go figure, this is a new ed reform mantra) – on the backs of whose children?
– Common Core is great except not for his kids. Or Duncan’s. Or Obama’s.
I got asked at the Network for Public Education conference if I feared Bill Gates and his power in public education . My answer always is, “No, he should fear me.”
As Diane says, “we are many” and that is how we will beat his money and his power.
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