Multimillionaire equity investor Rex Sinquefeld doesn’t like public education. Apparently he doesn’t like teachers either. He doesn’t think teachers should be evaluated by their administrators but by the standardized test scores of their students. Evidently he doesn’t know that this method of evaluating teachers has failed to work wherever it was tried; evidently he doesn’t know that even the District of Columbia, which was first to implement this method, has put it on hold. Mr. Sinquefeld also seems unaware that about 70% of teachers don’t teach tested subjects.
He was unable to get these ideas adopted by the Missouri state legislature so he created a Constitutional amendment, which will be on the ballot this fall. It is called Constitutional Amendment 3.
If it passes, the problems and costs will begin. Missouri will have to develop tests for every subject that is taught and administer them at the beginning and end of each course. How will Missouri measure the effectiveness of art teachers, music teachers, physical education teachers? Vast new sums must be spent to create and administer dozens of new tests.
Experience in other states shows that teachers in affluent districts will get higher ratings than those who teach children in poor districts and those with disabilities. The tests measure advantage and disadvantage, not teacher quality.
The bottom line with Mr. Sinquefeld’s proposal is that it will be very costly and it will not identify the best and worst teachers. It will reward teachers in high-income districts and punish those who choose to work with students who are English learners or have disabilities or are homeless.
It will take decision-making power away from local administrators and shift it to a centralized bureaucracy. It has been tried and failed in many districts. It demoralizes teachers by reducing their jobs to nothing more than test scores.
There are research-proven ways to improve education, such as early childhood education, reduced class sizes for the students who need extra help, regular access to medical services for those who can’t afford it, and experienced teachers. These strategies have a solid research base.
Missouri should do what works, rather than investing many millions of dollars in proven failure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you Diane Ravitch. I appreciate your blog and the updates on the multiple issues surrounding common core. I think that the U.S.Department of Education could help public education in our country through a more insightful approach and apply the ‘precautionary principle’ before pushing common core into our Nation’s schools.
Brandi Browskowski-Durow
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It’s probably good he’s in the “accountability” caucus of ed reformers. Is there a public school parent in this country who is happy when a politician or lobbyist starts talking about more/different testing?
Twenty years now. Test, test, test. It’s like a compulsion at this point. They cannot stop.
I was watching a sales presentation on “blended learning” and the children are tested constantly. It’s lesson/test, lesson/test, over and over again, for hours. They’ve simply found a more efficient and cheaper means to test them constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY.
They are going to be very, very good at taking tests! They are measured and ranked and sorted every minute of every day. The kids sit there and wait for the all-important number to flash on the screen and then proceed to the next lesson/test sequence.
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Coss-posted at
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Missouri-Rex-Sinquefeld-W-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Control-Fraud_Education_Teacher-140814-31.html#comment506538
with this comment :
I hope everyone follows my posts on what is afoot in education in the 15,880 districts and 50 states, because what is happening 1000 miles away impacts the road to opportunity– the institution of public education.
Teachers have been under a lawless assault for over a decade now, and the oligarchs are moving fast to ensure that they can silence the voice of the professional legally. Imagine if doctors were sent packing after they gain experience.
This is not about tenure, or rights of kids to have an education, it is about the control of what our future citizens will know. Keep abreast… like climate issues, this issue will determine the future, and they are counting on the apathy and the ignorance of a stressed citizenry!
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It’s funny that they can’t just sit back and wait for the US Supreme Court to effectively get rid of public employee unions. I think that’s in the cards. I sometimes wonder if it’s just a PR movement to lay the groundwork for a court decision with the public.
The vast majority of power in this country is on the anti-labor side. You wonder why they even bother with what is a wildly unfair fight. They’re almost ludicrously out-gunned, the few remaining labor union members. I think it goes to the anti-labor side’s sense of privilege, there should be NO opposition. None! They can’t rest until it’s completely gone, because really, how dare these workers expect “rights”.
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Missouri should look at Delaware. We have actually gone through this process of making measures that can evaluate all school personnel. We did it because we won race to the top. The result is ridiculously complex, yet utterly meaningless, it is practically a joke. At least there was RTTT money to spend to get the process done, but it cost MILLIONS. Millions that could have perhaps been spent on really helping kids. I say perhaps because of the many strings attached to RTTT money. But what we did is literally helping no one.
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Amendment 3 also takes away tenure, gets rid of seniority as a factor when layoffs happen, requires that at least 51% of a teacher’s evaluation be based on those test scores, and requires districts to submit their proposed teacher evaluation systems to the state for approval. And the spokesperson for Sinquefield is trying to say that it GIVES local districts more control, and of course that it rewards good teachers.
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Connections I want to make: Sinquefield in 2006, his role in a state takeover of st. Louis public schools to open the way for some disastrous charter schools, the 2014 Normandy schools from which the shooting victim Michael Brown just graduated, and the 2006 murder of a former slps special education student….12 bullets, August 18, 2006. I will give you a link to a dead website…school watch…it belonged to a st. Louis alderman who was jailed last night in Ferguson, Missouri……the puzzle remains complex…..146 posts, in chronological order from August 10, mostly about the craziness going on in St. Louis schools at that time……about half way through, I post an account of the august 18 murder, and it continues to the school board voting emergency funds to protect the president of the board of education….there were fears that she would be next…..welcome to Missouri…….https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=17752941&postID=115519016223042999
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Last night, in Ferguson, Missouri, alderman Antonio French was one of the journalists who was jailed without explanation….his presence has been missed from the days when he was a source of information neglected by, or many would say covered up by the rest of the media. He seems to be getting back in that role. I took issue with a columnist named Bill McClellan for his article.
McClellan: All killings should spark outrage : among other things, he made fun of Antonio French….related to the looting which took place. But for me, there was an irony in his theme that all murders should spark outrage….which, to me, led in the direction of making the unarmed Michael brown’s shooting less unusual than it is. Ironic, because I remember the way the media, including him, failed to follow up on the still unsolved murder of Tim Bacon. I posted under the name Spiro removed……after the initial post, (it was the online post dispatch article, shortened and credited to different writer, and not mentioned much, ever again)…….you can sense the shock outrage unfolding……Man, 21, slain in barrage of shots on city street
By Steve Giegerich
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/19/2006 I should emphasize……..I do not suspect Sinquefield to have been in any way connected to this…..but there was a general context in which no efforts to solve the case went forward. Many months later, McClellan sent me an e-mail about what homicide detectives told him….which I posted and made him angry…..the information was not offered anywhere else that I know of…..I thought it was suspicious. 4 and a half years later, the boy’s father received the st. Louis police report. I will just leave at this, until somebody reads enough to want to ask a question……that might not happen. The Normandy School district has been taken over by the state……in an extremely rough way, while Michael Brown was a senior.
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