Former CNN talking head Campbell Beown is dissatisfied with Néw York’s budget deal, which extends the probationary period for teachers from three years to four years and makes it easier to fire teachers based on test scores, whether tenured or not.
“CAMPBELL BROWN FIGHTS ON: The budget deal recently inked in New York sets out tough new rules [http://bit.ly/1G7uZkC] for evaluating teachers and granting them tenure. But education reform activist Campbell Brown isn’t planning to wait and see how the new system affects the quality of the teaching corps. Her Partnership for Educational Justice plans to press ahead with a lawsuit [http://bit.ly/1NEBytV ] challenging tenure and job protection statutes. The suit, modeled on the successful Vergara case in California, argues that New York laws protect incompetent teachers from dismissal and thus violate students’ right to a quality education. While the budget reforms have promise, Brown said it’s still way too hard for districts to lay off bad teachers, especially those with seniority. “We are glad that Albany appears to have finally woken up to the crisis in our public schools. But make no mistake, they have a long way to go and there is much work ahead,” Brown told Morning Education. “This will have no bearing on the legal case moving forward.”
Clearly she won’t be satisfied until tenure is completely eliminated and teachers can be terminated for any reason without a hearing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Brown, like all Reformers, will not be happy until all teachers are fired, schools are shutdown, and the entire education system is remade in her image under control of the people pulling her strings. Scorched earth policy coupled with a messiah complex.
Why bring her up again and give her the notoriety she does not deserve?
We must pay attention to those who are out to destroy us. Ignoring them does not make them harmless.
Why?
Well she is leading a lawsuit against teachers.
NO? Really? I am shocked! But why publicize her efforts for her?
Education reformers are apparently more interested in having NO MORE TEACHERS TO EVALUATE than actually reformng education!
“We are glad that Albany appears to have finally woken up to the crisis in our public schools.”
And WE are numb with frustration that YOU (and Albany) cannot wake up to the crisis in our inner cities and poor rural communities, our crisis in family dysfunction, our crisis in crime ridden and drug infested neighborhoods, our crisis regarding income inequity and an unlivable minimum wage, and our crisis in generational poverty and the hopelessness it breeds.
You’re right, we do not have a crisis in the Public Schools, we have a crisis with childhood poverty! It naturally is more pronounced in our poor urban districts where childhood poverty overwhelms Teacher’s ability to perform.
Certainly churning Teachers and converting urban Public Schools into Charter will not help with Education but it will line the “profiteers” pockets!
Too bad we can’t layoff news readers like Campbell Brown who know nothing about education but get a controversial issue thru which they can get their 15 minutes of fame and believe me, 15 minutes is way too long for this pseudo journalist. Just because she is a member of beat down the teacher movement gives her no credibility on this issue, in other words, who gives a flick what Campbell Brown thinks. Walk a day in our shoes and then tell me how teachers are taking advantage of all their protections. This beat the teacher deform movement is vile and will come back to haunt our communities when all the dedicated, concerned, highly qualified educators leave the profession to be replaced by no qualified, temporary teacher drones who merely follow instructional dictates instead of leading and developing innovative instruction. And the student result, kids who know how to pass test but know nothing about their chosen area of concentration. I don’t know about you but it’s chilling in all its implications for society and all the jobs these students will be tasked with.
And WHAT exactly makes Campbell. Brown an “expert” on education?
Amazing how we give credence to people like her, glorified news readers, that claim to be “journalists”. I suppose her being married to a powerful and wealthy man that is part of the “reform” movement gives her as soapbox to stand on.
Will Charter school teachers have the same evaluation horror inflicted on them?
‘Just wondering.
Charter schools have high teacher turnover. Most teachers won’t be around long enough to get an evaluation.
In NY charters are exempt from the evaluations and the chair of Regents wants to excuse the high-preforming (rich) schools also. In the high preforming districts it would be difficult to set up charters. It is much easier to simply take over poor urban districts!
And there’s something wrong with that because?
Robert,
There is something wrong with that because private charter schools seldom do better than the public schools they replace, and the community loses something overall. The community loses property, good paying jobs, a school committed to the community it is located in. It loses stability – the public school would always be there, but charters often leave in the middle of the year, or close without warning.
So nearly every stakeholder loses, especially the kids, nearly every time. I know there are the occasional charters that do as well as or better than the public schools, but pinning your hopes on outliers of success seems poor public policy, IMO.
No because they can fire at will so presumably they evaluate their teachers all the time and will remove them when they are no longer “effective” though they are not required to have any metric to gauge that effectiveness save the almighty test score.
It truly seems like she’s clawing for attention at this point. Any protections from her point of view seem flawed, no matter how long it takes to get them, how hard it is to get them, or how easy it is to cut through them with test scores.
New York no longer resembles anything like California was before this (and there were striking disparities before) – and the Vergara case is also far from settled. There is much evidence that the ruling was not impartial since they truly could not prove 1:1 that X “ineffective” teacher harmed any of those children, and did so because they were unable to be removed from a classroom due to tenure.
Campbell Brown is now proving that what she seeks is attention from the media and rich people to support her. What was her initial interest in this? Sexual predation? And how tenure protects these pedophiles?
What I fail to see is that if this is indeed her true intention, is she just completely blind that these moves create a profession that only the lowest will be drawn to because noone who can do anything else will want to become and stay a teacher – and that constant churn of teachers creates opportunities to introduce tons of unknown adults into the lives of children which would seem to open up opportunities for predators rather than preserving the tons of GOOD teachers who would never hurt a child, and many who have thrown down themselves to protect them.
Who is truly the self serving one in this discussion?
If this is about harming students there is enough research and evidence to demonstrate that teacher turn over harms students:
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/07/29/teacher-turnover-negatively-impacts-student-achievement-in-math-and-english.aspx
Tenure helps to ensure low turn-over rates. I hope the union lawyers do their research.
M: you wrote—
“that constant churn of teachers creates opportunities to introduce tons of unknown adults into the lives of children which would seem to open up opportunities for predators rather than preserving the tons of GOOD teachers who would never hurt a child, and many who have thrown down themselves to protect them.”
The only thing I would amend is to strike the words “seem to.” I agree. Campbell Brown is pushing hard to open [in practice] the flood gates to let in the very child predators she claims [in public] she is against.
In other words, she is trying to drastically increase the possibility of egregious abuse of children in public schools.
Utterly despicable.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Earth-shattering news:
Unfunny comedian dissatisified with jokes.
The gift that keeps on giving
“Seventy-six Campbell Browns”
(parody of Willson Meredith – Seventy Six Trombones, from “The Music Man”)
Seventy-six Campbell Browns led Reform Parade
With a hundred and ten charter-schools close at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows
Of the wolves-in-sheepy clothes,
The cream of ev’ry famous scam.
Seventy-six Campbell Browns caught the morning shows
With a hundred and ten public schools closed behind
There were more than a thousand Rhees
Springing up like weeds
There were schemes of ev’ry shape and kind.
There were cherry-picking VAMstud-ies and Gates platoons
Blundering, Blundering all along the way.
Double-billed baloneyums and big buffoons,
Each buffoon having his big, fat say!
There were fifty foolish Canons of Reformery
Blundering, Blundering louder than before
Teacher nets of ev’ry size
And reformers who’d improvise
To game the passing student score
Seventy-six Campbell Browns hit the TV shows,
While a hundred and ten public-schools blazed away.
To the rhythm of Test! Test! Test!
All the kids began to wretch,
And they’re wretching still right today!
I thought this was kind of nice, in Ohio:
“Over 17,000 Ohio educators responded to survey on assessments by @peggylehner – great interest and response.”
This is a direct result of the public school advocates in this state. They did this. They forced state legislators to pay attention to local people.
It took 15 years, but Ohio is finally having an ed reform debate that isn’t dominated and directed by national ed reform groups 🙂
You’ll get there in NY. You just haven’t had “reform” as long as we have 🙂
Those of us teaching in NY really need to watch this case. It’s no joke. The Staten Island Judge who is assigned the case seems inclined toward Brown’s position. Read his language when he threw out NYSUT’s attempts to have the case dismissed. Scary stuff here. After the Cuomo/NYS Legislatures recent destroy-the-profession laws, this is VERY MUCH the other shoe that could drop and put a nail in NYSUT and teacher’s careers statewide. 2015 will probably go down as the darkest year for teachers in NY state ever.
Keep an eye on this case. Don’t disregard it. Pay attention to the details. It can (and probably will) get MUCH worse here in NY.
Here is a link to a report on the article. Note the quote from judge Minardo. Calling the parents and students anti-tenure case “viable constitutional claims.” Doesn’t seem like a guy inclined to side with tenure, etc. Also search the Judge. Definitely seems like a real pleasant fellow who’d side with teachers….NOT!
http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/230482/new-york-teacher-tenure-lawsuit-progresses-in-court/
NYSUT’s lawyers are doing a real bang-up job so far. B-squad seems to be on the field again in NYSUT jerseys.
Why can’t it go both ways: we expect teachers to be competent, but what about the students? Why cannot we “fire” bad, incompetent, students (those that make no effort or concern about preparing themselves to be good and productive citizens)? Maybe, we could fire their parents too? Why not fire the administration who puts up with such apparent or supposedly incompetent teachers? Why not fire the test-makers, who create such impossible and developmentally-inappropriate tests, that make the students look bad, which “proves” the incompetency of said-teachers?
Why not look at more than test-data to determine teacher competency? Just like we measure other professions by multi-variable, multiple-trait, measures and metrics. Do we fire legislatures who write well thought-out bills, only not to have them pass on the floor? Do we fire governors only by the measure they increased state GDP, and ignore their influence on crime and social well-being?
Why must “the buck stop with the teacher” when they are so many other contributing factors as to how well students do in school (if even our metrics for “well-ness” are valid and reliable, which is certainly not the case for test-data driven curriculum and pedagogy!!!)
What about firing inept, disinterested, and failing, parents?
how about not voting in a-hole politicians?
Campbellyaching moment is yet to come…
What’s going on in NY right now to public school teachers is basically the most forecasted, long-visible, most observable-from-a-distance, obvious perfect storm EVER.
And yet people are shocked and dumbfounded.
And yet NYSUT’s big response so far: try to open up a dialog with Regent Tisch…possibly one of the most anti-teacher, pro-reform, pro-privatizing forces in the state. Good luck on that. That’s NYSUT’s big response to the atom bomb that this most recent legislation is.
Tragic.
Embarrassing.
Humiliating.
I think Campbell Brown should more worry about the fact that her face looks like she just head-butted a belt sander.
And why would anyone listen to Campbell Brown?
I know you don’t like poor and inappropriate language Diane–so cover your ears.
F.U. Campbell Brown. From a veteran teacher of 25 years, you can’t hold a candle to me.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
What’s with th8is woman????? Doesn’t she have better things to do with herself other than attacking public school teachers? GET A LIFE, CAMPBELL BROWN!
Maybe those of us that are public school teachers should get together, and protest the inane salaries that these media celebrities command. It’s not as if most of them are Walter Cronkite or Edward Murrow these days, if we want to compare people like Campbell Brown to the greats.
THIS- sorry for the typo.
Well, here we go again with the public school reformer Campbell Brown. Does anyone realize that when you keep poking at the public schools no one in their right mind would want to enter into the teaching profession with all this ludicrous, non-sensible theories about how to fix the public schools. Does anyone realize that keeping this up will only cause a national crisis to arise in the teaching profession? Oh, I forgot, we do not have to worry because the Campbell Brown’s of the world have all the answers. Gee, What a web we weave!!!