Steven Singer hangs a dunce cap on Pennsylvania’s legislature. Facing a budget crisis, they voted to eliminate seniority and cynically called their bill “The Protecting Excellent Teachers Act.”
He writes:
“If you live in Pennsylvania, as I do, you must be shaking your head at the shenanigans of our state legislature.
“Faced with a school funding crisis of their own making, lawmakers voted this week to make it easier to fire school teachers.
“Monday the state Senate passed their version of an anti-seniority bill that was given the thumbs up by the House last summer.
“Thankfully, Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to veto it.
“As usual, lawmakers (or more accurately their surrogates at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) who actually wrote the bill) spent more time on branding the legislation than appealing to logic, sense or reason. The bill called HB 805 was given the euphemistic title “The Protecting Excellent Teachers Act.”
“Yes, this is exactly how you protect excellent teachers – by making it easier to fire them.
“Currently, if teachers are furloughed, those with least seniority go first. Under this new law, teachers would be let go based on their academic rating. Teachers can have one of four ratings: Distinguished, Proficient, Needs Improvement and Failing. Under the new legislation, teachers rated Failing would be furloughed first, followed by those under Needs Improvement, etc. Within those categories decisions would be made based on seniority.
“It sounds great – if you know absolutely nothing about Pennsylvania public schools.
“First off, in 2015 our rating system found 98.2% of state teachers to be in the highest two rating categories. So at best this bill is next to meaningless.
“Second, like virtually all value added rating systems across the country, our rating system is pure bull crap. It’s a complicated measure of meaningless statistics, student test scores and mumbo jumbo that can be twisted one way or another depending on the whims of administrators, dumb luck and the phases of the moon.”
Be sure to read Peter Greene’s take on this legislation.
Citizens of Pennsylvania need to help Tom Wolf by voting out the vultures in the legislature. Wolf cannot undo the reckless policies of Corbett that plague Pennsylvania alone. Too many members of the legislatures are beholden to the charter industry, and that needs to change.
Cross posted at
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Facing-a-Budget-Crisis-th-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Alec_Budget-Cuts_Budget-Deficit_Diane-Ravitch-160517-967.html#comment597401
with links back to his site in the comment”
and that is not all… Diana Ravitch reports that “After nine months of feuding over the state budget, the Pennsylvania legislature–dominated by Republicans–and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf finally reached a deal. Wolf wanted a $400 million increase for education, mostly targeted to help the beleaguered cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The final deal included only half that amount. Pennsylvania will remain the state with the most inequitable funding for the foreseeable future.”
But speaking of funding scams..
.”The anti-privatization website “In the Public Interest” reports on an interesting development: The Department of Education issued a press release boasting of its commitment to transparency and noting that the agency had committed $1.5 billion to support new charter schools since 2006. When the CMD requested a list of the schools that had been closed or never opened, the Department claimed it did not have any information. Some transparency.
National: The Center for Media and Democracy files an appeal against the Department of Education’s claim that it has no records about closed or never-opened charter schools referenced in its “Commitment to Transparency” press release. “It strains credulity and common sense that, despite spending billions in taxpayer dollars on charters and putting out this press release–among several–on the accomplishments of the Charter Schools Program, the Department claims to have no databases, no data analyses, and no internal communications about the program mentioned in its press release,” CMD said in its appeal letter. CMD says it intends to file a lawsuit to compel disclosure if the DOE’s response to its FOIA appeal letter is inadequate.”
Nevada is catching up. Our evaluations will be 20 percent test based next year and with a low rating you lose tenure due process rights. In 2017-2018 evaluations will be 40 percent test based, and proposals for the next legislature offer the prospect of 100 percent test based ratings. My small rural K-12 school has been told we will be using high school ACT scores as our growth scores…..We will soon be looking for a new staff despite the fact we have 100 percent graduation, 15 students per year, for the last several years. I teach 3rd and 4th graders, and have never taught many of these high school students that have now come in. My principal is leaving and stated that we teachers needed to quit voting for these legislators that do not even care that the tests used to evaluate us are not aligned with our curriculum. They do not care that test based evaluations are invalid, they intend on blowing up public education and would gladly fire us all as they decry a teacher shortage. They also want to get rid of our pension.
The “I’ve got bills” “get out of jail free card”, strikes again.
“… it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society.” Noam
VAM has been “slammed” — quoting The Washington Post — by the very people who know the most about data measurement uses: The American Statistical Association (ASA). So every teacher who is unfavorably evaluated on the basis of students’ standardized test scores should vigorously oppose the evaluation, citing the ASA’s authoritative, detailed, seven-page VAM-slam “Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment” as the basis to have public employment boards and courts toss out any test-based Value Added Model (VAM) unfavorable evaluation.
Moreover, a copy of the VAM-slam ASA Statement should be posted on the union bulletin board at every school site throughout our nation and should be explained to every teacher by their union at individual site faculty meetings so that teachers are aware of what it says about how invalid it is to use standardized test results to evaluate teachers.
Even the anti-public school, anti-union Washington Post newspaper said this about the ASA Statement: “You can be certain that members of the American Statistical Association, the largest organization in the United States representing statisticians and related professionals, know a thing or two about data and measurement. The ASA just slammed the high-stakes ‘value-added method’ (VAM) of evaluating teachers that has been increasingly embraced in states as part of school-reform efforts. VAM purports to be able to take student standardized test scores and measure the ‘value’ a teacher adds to student learning through complicated formulas that can supposedly factor out all of the other influences and emerge with a valid assessment of how effective a particular teacher has been. THESE FORMULAS CAN’T ACTUALLY DO THIS (emphasis added) with sufficient reliability and validity, but school reformers have pushed this approach and now most states use VAM as part of teacher evaluations.”
The ASA Statement points out the following and many other failings of testing-based VAM:
> “VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation: Effects – positive or negative – attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model.”
> “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions.”
“System-level conditions” include everything from overcrowded and underfunded classrooms to district-and site-level management of the schools and to student poverty.
Fight back! Never, never, never give up!
In Canada the courts have repeatedly ruled that employers cannot arbitrarily or by legislative means change terms and conditions of teachers contracts. Their only choice is good faith bargaining.
Recent court decision in Ontario province reaffirmed this. Teachers right to free collective bargaining is now seen as virtually constitutionally protected.
Reblogged this on Rcooley123's Blog and commented:
The PA Legislature will do anything to avoid adequately funding public education in the state. We got rid of Governor Corbett. Now is the time to turn the legislature blue as well.