Archives for the month of: March, 2014
Newer Entries »

Newark Plans to Lay Off More than 1,000 Teachers

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
34

Teachers, students, and parents protested the decision by Superintendent Cami Anderson to lay off about a third of the teachers in Newark, NJ, more than 1,000.

Anderson plans to close many public schools and replace them with charter schools.

Anderson did not attend the meeting of the elected advisory board –and has announced that she will no longer attend such meetings–because she did not like the tone of the last meeting, where residents vented their rage against her and her plan for greater privatization.

Newark has been under state control since 1995. Anderson was appointed by the Chris Christie administration, which favors privatization.

Categories New Jersey, Students, Teacher Tenure, Teachers

KrazyTA Sets the Record Straight on VAM of a Different Sort

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
22

One of the blog’s regular contributors writes from California. I am sorry to say that I have never met him, but he can be counted on to write some of the wittiest comments on the blog, almost always punctuated by maxims and axioms gleaned from his reading. Everyone who is a regular reader knows his writings and commentary. Here are his thoughts on the brouhaha about salaries for school leaders:

KrazyTA writes:

I apologize in advance for the very long length of this comment.

For the residents of Planet Reality who visit this blog, The New Charter/Privatizer Math of RheeWorld, or A Lesson in Resisting Rheeality Distortion Fields.

Venality Added Measurement/Venality Added Modeling.

February 1, 2014 comments on this blog in order of appearance, with link below:

[start quote]

MS: Carmen Farina earns about as much as Eva Moskowitz annually but no one minds that. Yet another double standard perpetuated by the anti-choice extremists.

DR: Carmen Farina oversees the education of 1.1 million children

Eva M: 7,000.

Carmen has a 40-year pension.

Eva: $499,000 and she is not an educator.

No spin in this zone.

MS: Yet another double standard. Shocker. Carmen is earning $412,000 a year. Quite a payday, but that is ok, because she is part of the establishment, they have different rules. Only Reformers get criticizm for ‘excessive pay’.

DR: MS: Carmen Farina spent 40 years as an educator. She earned a pension. Now she is chancellor of a system with 1.1 million students.

Eva Moskowitz is a politician, not an educator. She runs a chain of charter schools with 7,000 or fewer students. She is paid $499,000, more than the president of the US. That is ridiculous.

Are you suggesting that their responsibilities are equivalent?

1.1 million is more than 7,000.

MS: I can honestly say I think Eva pays herself too much. It is too much of a political lightning rod to take that kind of salary in my view. I think she earns every penny of it, but given the politics, she should not take that much of a salary IMHO.

[end quote]

Next immediately following comment from February 2, 2014:

COSMIC TINKER: Charter schools are all about the children and union teachers are greedy? That is opposite world.
In NYC, “16 charter school CEOs earn as much as $500,000 a year.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/funds-drained-article-1.1578760

Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/01/30/a-reviewer-of-reign-of-error-has-some-advice-for-readers-of-this-blog/

Eva Moskowitz: $499,000 a year and for the students, a number higher than the oft-repeated 5000, i.e., the above 7000. $499,000/7000 = approx. $71.29@student, which I will round down to $70@student. *Impressed with how “fair and balanced” I am?*

Carmen Fariña: $412,000 a year and for the students, a number lower than the above, 1 million students, proving once again that I am bending over backwards for Eva M., $412,000/1,000,000 = $0.412@student, which I will round up to 50¢@student. *”Fair and balance” am me.*

Now on to the Venality Added Modeling system to see how the two stack up against each other. $70/0.50 = $140. So for every 140 Benjamins that Eva M. is squeezing out of each and every one of her “most precious assets” [thank you, Michelle Rhee!] Carmen F. is getting 1. And they say you can’t measure the quality of venality by a quantity of $tudent $ucce$$?

Señor Swacker, even you must be taken aback by my VAManiacal adroitness. And Robert D. Shepherd, you must admit I’ve handily surpassed every benchmark set by the Potemkin Village metrics of the old Soviet Union. Chiara Duggan, if you gave 50¢ of voice for every $70 worth of choice that the charterites/privatizers bring into play…but I digress.

How can anyone possibly not understand by means of the above hard—we’re talking tempered steel!—data that Eva Moskowitz is worth 140 times more than Carmen Fariña? That Eva M punks Carmen F? That Eva M works 140 times harder, better and more efficiently than Carmen F?

As a noted theologian of the High Holy Church of Testolatry [charterite/privatizer denomination] has declared in no uncertain terms: “Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t.” [Dr. Steve Perry, “America’s Most Trusted Educator,” channeling rapper Jay-Z]

And just notice what Cosmic Tinker pointed out: EduExcellence as measured by the Venality Added Modeling system isn’t just confined to Eva M. It’s everywhere you can find a self-styled leader of the “new civil rights movement” of our time—except, of course, in those pathetic public schools aka factories of failure…

So remember, the next time someone criticizes data-drivel, er, data-driven instruction and management by the numbers and curricular bullet lists, just hit ‘em between the eyes with this indisputable meganumerical bomb—140 to 1 ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at, boobala.

The future is charters and vouchers and privatization because $tudent $ucce$$ is the ₵en¢ible tsunami that will swamp all opposition.

Rheeally!

Although on Planet Reality where Rheeality Distortion Fields don’t function nearly as well as they do on RheeWorld, there is a better than 98% “satisfactory” [thank you, Bill Gates!] chance of certainty that the future belongs to those struggling for a “better education for all.”

Really!

😎

“Laughter is poison to the pompous.”

And a healthy antidote to mathematical intimidation and artless obfuscation and delusional invention…

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Charter Schools, Education Industry

Nashville Superintendent Says No to Merit Pay: Not Today

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
12

The state of Tennessee, led by State Commissioner Kevin Huffman, whose education experience was limited to his brief tour of duty in TFA, wants to tie teacher pay to evaluations based on test scores (50%) and observations (50%). This method (known as VAM) has been thoroughly discredited by research and by years of failed experience. The Tennessee acronym (deceptive, of course) is TEAM, as if all the teachers and administrators got together and did a big rah-rah for the TEAM that was being judged by a Junk Science metric.

Lo and behold, Jesse Register, the Director of Schools in Nashville, sent out the following memo. Here is a man with guts and glory:

From: Register, Jesse
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 10:29 AM
To: MNPS Teachers – All
Cc: MNPS Teachers – All
Subject: Update on Teacher Pay Plan

I need to inform you of an important update to our proposal to change the way we pay teachers.

Our teacher pay plan task force has spent months developing the proposal and the last several weeks traveling to your schools, talking with you about the proposal, and listening to your questions and concerns. We appreciate your feedback.

At this time, we have decided to defer the decision on tying teacher pay to TEAM evaluations. We still will move forward with changing the way we base pay on advanced degrees and how we recognize and reward teacher leadership, but we will not recommend basing raises on TEAM composite scores at this time.

We may revisit this matter in the future as the evaluation system is refined and as the state and local school systems get more experience with it. We also will continue speaking with you about the evaluation system and hear your thoughts on what you like and what you don’t like.

For now the work continues. Our Strategic Compensation Steering Committee made up of teachers, parents, and district administrators will keep meeting and developing the proposal.

While all of that happens, you can keep up to date on this process by reading Monday Memo and checking the Employee Portal.

We believe in a strategic pay plan that rewards and retains the very best teachers. We will work to make that a reality here in Nashville.

Thank you for helping us through this process, and thank you for all you do for your students every day. Together, we will make Metro Nashville Public Schools the top-performing urban district in the nation and the first choice for Nashville’s families.

Jesse Register

Director of Schools

Categories Education Reform

Breaking News: Durham, NC, May Join Opposition to Anti-Tenure Law

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
4

The school board of Durham, North Carolina, is planning to join Guilford, NC, in opposing a state law intended to remove any due process rights from teachers.

“The board was unanimous in its decision authorizing Chairwoman Heidi Carter to work with the attorney for the N.C. Association of Educators and to provide an affidavit supporting the association’s lawsuit to maintain the tenure rights of teachers.

“It also authorized the school board’s attorney to ask the attorney for the Guildford County Board of Education if it would be “helpful or practical” for Durham to join any lawsuit it might file against state legislation requiring school districts to offer contracts to 25 percent of their teachers.

“It’s our way of showing our strongest support for our teachers who work so hard for us,” Carter said.”

Categories North Carolina, Resistance, Teacher Tenure

How Test-Based Reform Will Ruin Lives and Our Society

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
135

Time to be data-driven!

Carol Burris decided it was time to test the extravagant claims of the New York Board of Regents and Commissioner John King by checking the numbers.

The Regents and King made a grand pretense of delaying the date when the Common Core tests will be used for graduation. It is all a charade, she writes.

Consider what would have happened if they had used the Common Core tests as graduation standards this year:

“If these scores were used last year, the New York four-year graduation rate would have dropped from 74 percent to 34 percent. But even that awful rate would not be evenly spread across student groups. A close look demonstrates just how devastating the imposition of the Common Core scores would be for our minority, disadvantaged and ELL students, as well as our students with disabilities.

“The Percentage of 2013 4-Year Grads who earned the Common Core “pass” scores (required for students who enter high school in 2018)

“Low SES (socioeconomic status) students – 20 percent

“Students with Disabilities – 5 percent

“English Language Learners – 7 percent

“Black students – 12 percent

“Hispanic students – 16 percent

“Even if we project 10 years forward, given the expected incremental increases in test scores, far too many students will not earn a high school diploma. A full doubling (and in some cases a tripling) of rates for the above groups of students would not approach an acceptable outcome. We would be taking already too low graduation rates and making them far worse.”

Despite the inflated and misleading claims that Common Core would advance civil rights, the numbers show that the poorest and neediest children not only fall farther behind but the achievement gap grows larger. How will our society prepare for the huge failure rates that the Common Core seems sure to generate?

Burris shows that students in New York persist longer in college than students in top-rated Massachusetts.

Test-based reform is a failure. High school grades matter far more than standardized tests.

She concludes:

“This should come as no surprise. Student grades reflect not only classroom learning, but also work ethic, cooperation and attendance —the stuff that really matters for later life success. How do we increase those behaviors while using sensible accountability systems—that is the right road to travel.

“If our destination is to make all of our students college and career ready, we need to open doors for students, not shut them with sorting and punitive testing. Creating unreasonable graduation standards that will marginalize and exclude our most at-risk students while we implement untested standards linked to high-stakes testing, will not get us where we want to be. It is a road on which too many students will be lost.”

Categories Common Core, Graduation rates, Students

Robert Shepherd’s Reformish Lexicon

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
22

Robert Shepherd, a frequent contributor to this blog, has started his own blog.

Our of our brilliant friend’s first contributions is a “Reformish lexicon
” in which he attempts to translate the language of “reform” into plain English.

If you have more words for him, send them in. There are many more. He has only scratched the surface.

Categories Coleman, David, Common Core, Corporate Reformers

Peter Greene Knocks the Highly Qualified Teacher Talk Outta the Park

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
63

Peter Greene has a ball with the U.S. Department of Education’s latest fantasy plan: Every child has a civil right to a “highly qualified teacher.”

Who is a “highly qualified teacher”? Any teacher who can raise test scores or anyone who belongs to Teach for America and leaves before the third year of test scores are reported.

It is all super but here is the laugh-out-loud deconstruction of Duncan-style logic:

“Discussion of teaching as a civil right often circles back around to the assertion that poor students have more lousy teachers than non-poor students. This assertion rests primarily on a model of circular reasoning. Follow along.

“A) Teachers are judged low-performing because their students score poorly on tests.

“B) Students low test scores are explained by the fact that they have low-performing teachers.

“Or, framed another way, this argument defines a low-quality teacher as any teacher whose students don’t do well on standardized tests. The assumption is that teachers are the only single solitary explanation for student standardized test scores. Nothing else affects those scores. Only teacher behavior explains the low scores. That’s it.

“Ergo, the best runners are runners who run down hills. Runners who are running uphill are slow runners, and must be replaced by those good runners– the ones we find running downhill. Or, the wettest dogs are the ones who are out in the rain, while the driest ones are the ones indoors. So if we take the indoor dogs outside, we will have drier dogs in the yard. While it rains.

“As long as we define low-quality teachers as those who teach low-achieving students (who we know will mostly be the children of poor folk), low-achieving students will always be taught by low-quality teachers. It’s the perfect education crisis, one that can never, ever be solved.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, U.S. Department of Education

Bruce Baker: De Blasio Is Right; Charters Can Afford to Pay Rent

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2014 //
16

During his mayoral campaign in 2013, candidate Bill de Blasio said that he would charge rent to charter schools using public school space, in relation to their ability to pay.

Bear in mind that charters in New York City enroll 6% of children, while the public schools enroll about 1.1 million children.

The charter schools cried foul, and the rightwing Manhattan Institute issued a study with dire warnings about the burdens that de Blasio would inflict on the charter sector.

Bruce Baker of Rutgers University dissected those claims and found them unwarranted.

He writes:

“The report’s central conclusion that charging charter schools rent will reduce the number of high-quality schools in the city is particularly misguided and hardly supported by the crude, poorly connected and poorly documented analyses presented. As noted above, there exists no clear explanation of how deficits were calculated, including whether available assets of individual schools were considered or whether parent organizations’ ending balances or assets were considered. Clearly these are of relevance for determining the fiscal impact of paying rent.

“Second, the assertion that existing charter schools are of “quality generally above that of district public schools” (p. 4) cannot be supported by comparisons of average proficiency rates without regard for students served or existing resource advantages.

“Third, the report cherry-picks “high-performing” charters to draw broad conclusions regarding the negative impact of charging rent on the future distribution of “good schools.” Considering that the city remains responsible for approximately 1 million school children spread across approximately 1,700 schools, the assertion that charging rent to these two cherry-picked charters, or all 84 co-located charters in the author’s sample, will lead to “fewer good schools overall” (p. 4) is an enormously unwarranted stretch.

“Finally, the report fails to acknowledge that the fiscal constraints facing both the city district schools and by extension the charter schools that rely on the city budget, are in large part caused by persistent underfunding of the state school finance formula (shown in Table 4). The state continues to underfund New York City schools by $2.6 to $2.8 billion,”

Categories Bill de Blasio, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New York City
Newer Entries »