Peter Greene reports that teacher tenure (aka, the right to due process) is under attack in Pennsylvania.
Not surprisingly, StudentsFirst is in the mix, urging the legislature to strip teachers of any and all job protections.
He concludes:
So the bottom line of this bill would be that any district can fire teachers at any time, based on an evaluation system that rests on bad data generated by bad tests using a formula repudiated by the statistics experts, combined with observations that are still largely subjective. Under rules like this, it would simply be foolish to go into teaching as a career. At best, it presents the standard choice as best written into law by North Carolina’s education-hating legislature– you can either keep your job indefinitely as long as you don’t ever make yourself too expensive, or you can get a raise and make yourself a more attractive target for firing.
It’s as if these folks are really committed to discouraging people from going into teaching.
The bill has bipartisan backing (can teachers please stop automatically voting Democrat) and of course the big fat love of Governor Tom Corbett. It’s not a done deal yet; if you are a Pennsylvania teacher, a good summer project would be to start contacting your representatives on a regular basis and encouraging them to say no to this dumb bill.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pennsylvania has a history of antagonism in education going back to Andrew Carnegie.
I am still trying to learn why the respected and conservative school accrediting organization, Middle States in Pennsylvania, which supports those who are challenging standardized testing with their film “Standardized”, is unable to issue policies of support for teachers with their links to “Bad Ass Teachers” and “United Opt Out.”
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Teachers in PA are asking, where are the voices of our unions? I believe that both of our unions have gotten themselves in a fix. The only way to oppose this draconian move is to say, along with parents, our unions want all of our children to have effective schools and teachers. The “evaluation systems” that are being used to tell us who those “effective teachers” are, are bogus. The twin evils of destroying teachers unions, and charterizing/privatizing public education, go together, and are in the hands of the same people. Our unions should be saying this. But they have gotten themselves into a bind. In too many cases, our unions have been complicit in developing the “effective teacher” evaluation systems and are NOT speaking out against VAM, for example, or RISE-type systems, or Tripods, even as so many many others (including professional testers) are doing. If you accept these “evaluation tools” to be valid, you cannot say don’t use them. The whole machine of destruction works together; our unions do not.
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Kipp,
Weingarten worked hand in hand with Gates to implement Common Core, Endless Testing and VAM. It is a marriage made in heaven for the hedge fundies. Teachers have unwittingly become the victims of the elaborate scheme. Teachers in Newark and New York City have chosen the crumbs of odious contracts that work to their own detriment by weakening tenure protections, eliminating seniority transfer privileges, and promote EWR agreements and charter lite schools. Many of my colleagues are mesmerized by the lure of a few extra dollars and refuse to see the forest for the trees. We will pay dearly for our lack of sophistication and financial ineptitude.
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Rep. Jake Wheatley just posted a comment on my FB page. Here I share with you his comment, and my response.
Jake Wheatley Kipp or Garland do you have children in public schools? Have you encountered some of the schools across PA that for a number of years and for numerous reason have not produced the type of quality education we all expect and desire? My legislative district has many wonderful teachers and schools but despite their efforts over the years far too many of the children have fallen further and further behind. The question of defining effectiveness was one of the reasons our local teachers and school board worked hard to come together to try and figure out a fair and equitable process to determine an evaluation system that lifts teachers up because we all know inherently that not every teacher is on the same level with their development and instruction. So, if we know that to be the case shouldn’t we have a system that allows for those who may need additional supports or some teachers who have such skill and effectiveness that they should be used in a more meaningful way, how is that a problem or somehow a destructive step? Further, if we are facing economic realities then shouldn’t we not simply layoff good teachers because they have less seniority than others. What if the more senior teacher is less effective or has not been able to demonstrate their effectiveness as well as their colleague. This bill, to me, is about trying to find a middle ground for school district who have to face tough economic realities and are letting teachers go based only on seniority currently. What we are saying is there should be other factors in their process if they must let a teacher go.
Kipp Dawson Jake, thank you so much for participating in this conversation. Yes, both of my daughters are recent graduates of Pittsburgh Public Schools, which they attended grades K-12. I currently teach in PPS. Of course our schools could be better, and our children could be getting more from their time in school. But, respectfully, as a parent as well as in my capacity as a teacher (who daily feels privileged to be teaching our wonderful middle school students) I believe the “evaluation system” is one aspect of a big DECLINE in the effectiveness of our schools. It is part of a package that includes increased class sizes, decreased support for our most needy students, closed neighborhood schools, charterizing/privatizing of schools and resources, and blaming teachers for all of the ills our society has been pounding on our most struggling citizens. I believe that the “evaluation process” has been shown by experts to be so faulty as to subject both children and teachers to punishment for problems far from their/our control. I believe that the testing frenzy that steals time and money from our children is hurting them. I welcome this conversation with you. I ask you, please, to look at the Philly schools which are the victims of this “reform” machine and stand with us against any more of this madness. Our children deserve so so so much better.
.
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http://www.salon.com/2014/06/06/one_percents_twisted_new_heist_whats_really_behind_privatization/
Good piece on privatization and the decline of the middle class that of course also applies to the bipartisan effort to privatize public schools:
“What this report really looked [at] was the effects of government outsourcing, at the local and state levels, on jobs and the impacts it has on the community and ultimately on the issue of income inequality. What we see is that … when state or local government outsources, these jobs are no longer good, public-sector jobs that provide a decent wage and benefits, but instead become jobs for a contractor that pay very low wages and typically have very few or no benefits. And really what is kind of alarming about this is [that] outsourcing public services sets off a downward spiral in which reduced worker wages and benefits can hurt the local economy and the overall stability of middle- and working-class communities. By paying family-supporting wages and providing important benefits like health insurance and sick leave, governments have historically created what we’re calling “intentional ladders of opportunity” to allow workers and their families to reach the middle class. And this has been especially true for women and African-Americans, for whom the public sector has been a source of stable, middle-class careers. Unfortunately low-road government contracts reverse this dynamic. So while corporations rake in increasing profits through taxpayer dollars and while CEO compensation continues to soar, the examples in our report show that the workers employed by state and local government contractors receive those low wages and few benefits.”
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I’m sorry that this is happening in Pennsylvania. I’m sorry it’s happening anywhere.
I’m stunned that this is still breathlessly reported as some kind of aberration or odd occurrence that defies understanding and produces shock and outrage and calls of unfairness.
This has been the plan from the beginning. Those who began the reform movement and all their neoliberal/neoconservative successors have despised unions all along and destroying unions has been one of the cornerstones of the reform movement all along.
What’s the easiest way to destroy a union whose existence is protected under US law? Ensure that is is starved to death by denying it dues-paying members. The easiest way to do that is to eliminate the jobs held by members and/or remove their rights to organize and bargain. That’s why the Taylor law was passed. That’s why we have so-called “Right to Work” states. That’s why the Supreme Court is fiddling around with fees charged to non-members who benefit from collective bargaining. That’s why Congress and Obama ran far, far away from card check legislation and refused to support unions when Wisconsin began stripping them of their collective bargaining power, starting a domino effect across the country. You also purchase influence over the union leadership and the professional organizations that are supposed to lobby and provide defense through a collective voice, like the NCTE, IRA, NCTM, etc.
How could people not be aware of these things and the fact that this has been happening for over a decade since the passage of NCLB?
A few years ago I could understand why the majority of teachers were unaware of the destruction coming their way (although NCLB was about as blatant a beginning as could be imagined) but not being aware that the ultimate goal is and has been the complete destruction of public schools and the elimination of the profession of public school teaching is akin to willful hiding of one’s head in the sand. The knowledge is no longer hidden or hard to find or obscured by attempts to discredit and silence those who tried, Cassandra-like, to warn us for so long. (Gerry Bracey, Susan Ohanian, and a few others come immediately to mind).
I guess this is why the unions have gotten by with selling the rank and file down the river while easily retaining control and raking in the big bucks from the reformers. When the unions collapse due to lack of members Weingarten and Van Roekel will not be fearing hunger, homelessness, or unemployment, like the rank and file are facing due to VAM, Danielson voodoo, Marzano snake oil, and teacher-bashing legislation being passed almost daily with hardly a peep of protest.
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I teach in a public middle school in the Philadelphia suburbs. At our faculty meeting this past Thursday the faculty was “honored” with an award for academic excellence from Gov. Corbett, the award based on our students’ test scores on standardized tests which resulted in our school having a School Performance Profile (our PVAS, read VAM, number) of 92 out of 100. The district administrator who presented the award lauded the teachers for doing such a great job. My colleagues and I, who in recent years have had to deal with demotions, layoffs, hiring freezes, and larger class sizes due to Corbett’s anti-education budgets, know better – that the reality is that no matter how strong our faculty, the test scores are in the main a reflection of the socio-economic status of the students we teach. My wife, who teaches 15 miles from me in Philadelphia in a school with an SPP of 52 – well, those teachers, who work without even half the resources and supports I have – they know too that their test scores are not a reflection on their abilities but have everything to do with the poverty, crime, broken homes, lack of food and adequate health care, and dilapidated schools which their students have to endure every day.
Interestingly, the district I serve will surely use our high SPP to demonstrate to the community that their policies of low taxes, education funding cuts, denigration of the teachers and their union, and higher class sizes have not damaged the education provided students. And the Philadelphia administrators will naturally use the low SPPs there to justify the loss of seniority and tenure rights, the closing of schools, the wholesale firings of teachers, and the privatization of the school district..
How did our union leaders not see this coming when they signed on to these phony evaluation schemes and the Common Core?
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From an inner-city Pittsburgh, thank you,
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I am an Ohio teacher at the end of her teaching career. I have one more year to teach. This present movement has been very upsetting to watch. Unless something major happens to swing the pendulum back to normalcy, I honestly think that teaching as a profession will die. When I went into teaching almost 30 years ago, it was a very respected profession, one in which I was proud to be a teacher. Today, I feel like a “nothing”, a monster who does not do a good job and needs to be stomped on and destroyed and replaced by someone who knows what they are doing.
We are in the first step of their plan. No one in their right mind will want to go into teaching. You are already seeing that. I usually had 2 student teachers per year. My school has not had a student teacher in 3 years. My last student teacher said that 4 professors used to carry out the student teacher program. Today, one professor barely keeps busy with it.
I think the explanation is very simple. Our country and economy is destroyed. Everything is manufactured in China. Education is the last thing they can control and make money on – billions of dollars. Online and charter schools need teachers to “go away.” They know they can teach our kids now and make a lot of money doing it.
A lot of the younger teachers do not realize that their careers are being destroyed. The older teachers, like me, are horrified with the toxic changes. I was always a HUGE Walmart shopper. I am not anymore. I completely stopped shopping at Walmart because of the huge money contributions the Walton family make to the demise of my job. I am shocked that the Walmart Walton family would become involved in the demise of public education when educators shop at their stores. I now shop exclusively at Kroger and K-Mart. I am only one person, but I know Walmart is not making as much money as they did last year. If Walmart is messing with the well-being of my profession, I will not give them one dime of my low teacher salary.
I wish all teachers the very best. All you can do is fight the good fight. I dearly love my students and I love to teach, but sadly it is not enough anymore. The politicians have succeeded in making my profession and the lives of my students miserable in the educational setting.
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The anti-teacher propaganda is relentless. Take a look at the tabloid HLN. It seems like every single night that quack Dr. Drew Pinsky highlights some sex scandal involving a teacher, and then he has a panel which goes on a rant night after night about how awful these teachers are and how could this happen. Never mind there are something like 3 million teachers in this country, and these perverts are an extremely tiny minority. They play these scandals up to undermine people’s trust in teachers.
It’s truly insidious.
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Our politicians, in contrast, are such models of moral probity.
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Does quackmed Pinsky rail on about the sex scandals among Christian ministers, politicians, law enforcement officials engaged in domestic violence, etc….? Perhaps we as teachers need a national day of protest in cities and state capitols across the nation, as wekk as our local legislators’ offices. We can wearsolidarity red t-shirts like the courageous strikers in Chicago.
I wonder if BAT could organize this, since our unions are too busy cozying up to the powers that want to destroy our profession …
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Pardon the typos; coffee hasn’t fully kicked in yet,
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To what might one compare the ignorance of our state and national legislators with regard to Common Core, school grading systems, VAM, and the new Common Core summative standardized tests?
I ask you: What profundity is equal to this?
the Grand Canyon?
the Marianas trench?
the black hole at the center of our galaxy?
Dante’s 9th circle of hell?
Pascal’s vast, terrifying empty spaces between stars?
I just read Charlie Crist’s attack on Governor Rick Scott for not being pro-Common Core enough. Here in Florida, our Gubernatorial candidates are debating which of them is most Deformish.
This was just after I read the new collection of love letters to the Common Core on the National Public Radio’ website (NPR receives funding from the Walton, Broad, Arnold, Helmsley, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations).
And that was just after reading about Rick Scott’s convening folks from public institutions of higher education around the state to create various linkages between the Common Core and higher ed and a talk by Bill Gates about the need to create common assessments for colleges and universities.
And that was just after I read on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute website that “a group of foundations” had come together to fund a new organization–a national Censor Librorum–to review textbooks and online materials for compliance with Lord Coleman’s List and issue an imprimatur: Nihil obstat.
There are some days when I think that the fix is so far in that there is no hope whatsoever. We shall have a Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth in the United States. Our kids will be strapped into chairs and monitored with galvanic skin response wristbands for gritful compliance as they do their Pearson/Gates, Inc., worksheets on a screen in preparation for THE TEST, in a room with 400 other kids all working at tablets under the bored eye of a single, low-paid, at-will (contingent) employee of the state walking among them to make sure that their tablets are working. And the most gritful among them–those who perform most assiduously in their bubbling of bubbles will be rewarded with college, which will be more of the same: worksheets on a screen, videotaped lectures vetted by the Curriculum Commissariat, standardized assessments for standardized minds. Training will have become a long slog through treacle for the the children of the proles, with a low-paid service job as the reward on the other end.
The technocratic philistines will have won. And the teaching profession, K-college, as we knew it, will be dead. And so will be humane learning. Except in the sanctums of the the children of the Elite, untouched by this madness.
And we shall just have to watch the ugly edifice of Ed Deform be built over the entire country and wait until it comes crashing down of its own sheer shoddiness and dead weight, as inevitably, of course, it will.
And then, only then, I think, in these moments, will we look back on the terrible cost of those legislators’ ignorance, of the plutocrats’ rapaciousness, and of the Vichy collaboration with deform on the part of hireling policy wonks and PR shills masquerading as education reporters and edupundits and educonsultants and teachers’ unions quislings, who took the money and pledged allegiance to the dark lord of deform.
“Three bling for the educrats under the sky,
Seven for the edubullies who on teachers throw stones,
Nine for mere teachers doomed to die,
One for the Snark Lord on his dark throne
In the Centres of EduExcellence where the shadows lie.
One BlingRing to rule them all, One BlingRing to find them,
One BlingRing to bring them and in the darkness bind them
In the Board Room of Gates where the shadows lie.”
Song from “The Lord of the Blingring,” book DCLXVI of the Blingringelungenlied.
For more on classic Rheeformish songs and spells, see “Prosody of Financial Statements and Other Rheeformish Poetry” in “Grimoires and Other Rheeformish Literature,” Appendix 10 of the Rheeformish Lexicon.
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Republicans enact anti-union legislation. The anti-union, ALEC, is dominated by Republican state legislators. Because of a Republican court decision, unions can’t protect their members on strike.
In November, the privatizing Koch’s and hedge fund owners, will spend whatever it takes to defeat the Democratic and independent politicians, who are trying to work for the 99%.
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Totally agree about the no assumptions re: Democrats part.
No assumptions.
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The deformers have become masters at this stealth legislation.
Pass an impossible mandate: all your students must reach proficiency, or you will be broken on the rack.
Then, offer a waiver IF you agree to VAM your teachers and to adopt the Core or something Corish.
Then, call the Core a state initiative.
This bill in PA, another example. Pass a law that says that districts are not economically disadvantaged will be freed of the restraint of having to make decisions based on teacher seniority. In other words: seniority dies in almost all PA districts, and the few wealthy districts in PA keep their experience educators. And the poor districts will then be free to bring in the legions of Teach for Awhile scabs.
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from the Rheeformish Lexicon:
teacher. 1. Pimply adolescent from a wealthy private school given five weeks of Teach for Awhile training prior to spending two years going Great Grates with dark-skinned children before going on to his or her real job in investment banking. 2. Low-wage worker hired to oversee 600 students (“Class size doesn’t matter”) to make sure that they are obediently outgritting the Singaporeans and that their tablets are in working order. 3. Computer running computer-adaptive software tagged to Lord Coleman’s List (“Teaching, there’s an app for that”). Archaic usage: Whiny union member with ersatz degree from an education “school,” responsible for failure. See failure.
failure. What U.S. public schools did before they were replaced by virtual charters run by the grifter brothers, cousins, and golfing buddies of politicians and plutocrats.
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Thank you Bob. You put it all into brilliant clarity.
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cx:
This bill in PA, another example. Pass a law that says that districts are economically disadvantaged will be freed of the restraint of having to make decisions based on teacher seniority. In other words: seniority dies in almost all PA districts, and the few wealthy districts in PA keep their experience educators. And the poor districts will then be free to bring in the legions of Teach for Awhile scabs.
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Exactly. And, again, where are our unions.
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I have a recurring nightmare in which I am trying to discuss teaching Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World with one of these gerbil-brained twenty-four-year-old Common Core pom pon squad cloned teacher-bots from TFA.
“No,” I keep saying. “These were not meant to be policy manuals.”
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It is not that easy to hold conversations with TFA teacher clones. They inhabit a higher moral plane and are passing through my world en route to bigger and better endeavors.
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NY teacher: You and I know that yours and mine is the profession of the Buddha, of Yeshua of Nazareth, of Socrates, of Lao-Tze, of Zhuangzi, of Mullah Nasreddin, of Rumi, of the Baal Shem Tov, of Richard Feynman (would he be amused by the company I have put him in?).
There are better paid endeavors, certainly, but there is none higher.
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Kol hakavod Bob! You threw Baal Shem Tov into the mix. Feynman I have to Google.
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Bob,
Lectures on Physics? You are way out of my league!
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Sad. I’m a PA native and proud graduate of one of the best systems in southwest PA. This legislation will be debilitating to most schools in the state. Drive through central PAs mountains, and you will see how harmful this legislation will be. Here’s a prediction: with Cuomo at the helm, NY is next.
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Tenure is out the door in Hillsborough County, FL. I had to “retire” due to the scores I received under the Bill Gates Foundation evaluation system. My children’s scores were 10% higher than the top of the average range, but none of the evaluators liked what they saw. My teaching style didn’t fit the Common Core model. As I tried to teach under that model my children’s scores dropped, and that was the end of me.
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Dave, That is happening everywhere!!! It just happened to me too!!! I am an Ohio teacher, and I am in the last years of my teaching career. On the new teacher evaluation system this year, my 50% testing was “above average value added.” (I know it’s junk data which means nothing.) On my other 50% my new principal (the 1st one who has ever disliked me) gave me “developing” (even though I had high test scores) because he thinks I do too much direct instruction. Even though I do a lot of group activities, I have to do some direct instruction to get the good test scores I get. This new evaluation system will not track down the bad teachers. It is a “dog and pony” show which will protect the teachers they want to protect and discard the teachers they want to discard, even when those “bad” teachers get good testing results. My school district, parents, and students love me, but this principal who evaluated me is new and doesn’t know me. He is hateful and the power of this new system “went to his head.”
The Common Core model discourages direct instruction. Everyone is in groups, making the top students do all of the work. Then, the ridiculous thing is that the students have to do the high stakes testing all alone. Our public school system as we know it, thanks to Bill Gates, the Walmart Walton family, and ignorant politicians is in its last days. The small county schools in my county are already getting far less money from the state than they are used to. One public school will be kept open for the misfits that the charter schools do not want. Thank goodness I am almost out of this career. Believe me, we are very, very blessed to be in the last group of teachers who will get a full retirement out of this dying profession. Good Luck to everyone! Fight the Good Fight!!!
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It’s strange that they don’t know that they don’t have to go through all this distracting, messy and time-consuming “democracy stuff.” In L.A. the school district just ignores the laws and fires teachers.
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