This letter came by email from a teacher in Massachusetts. Evidently, the Commissioner of Education believes there are some bad, bad teachers in his state, and he wants the power to remove them quickly. Bear in mind that by every current metric, Massachusetts is the highest performing state in the nation. It must have many excellent teachers. Why does Commissioner Mitchell Chester need a whip in his hand. This kind of power play is threatening and demoraling, as well as unprofessional.
For trying to intimidate teachers, for failing to congratulate them for their dedication, by demonizing them with actions such as those described here, Mitchell Chester now joins this blog’s Wall of Shame.
“Mitchell Chester is the MA Dept of Ed Commissioner who also had the serious conflict of interest as Chair of the PARCC Governing Board. He pushed for MCAS 2.0, which is 90% PARCC. He still has a job.
“MESSAGE SENT TO MA TEACHERS [apparently by the Massachusetts Teachers Association]:
“Below you will find some very disturbing information about DESE’s intentions around licensure changes that I have recently been made aware of.
“Back on March 10, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education released some proposed changes to the regulations around educator licensure…
“The concerning regulation changes are about how DESE can suspend, limit or revoke an educator’s license. In the current regulations, the Commissioner of Education can suspend or revoke a license if it is found that the “holder of the license is unfit to perform the duties for which the license was granted.” As you may have experienced, there are times when a member may have been investigated for some reason and DESE will also investigate to determine if the license should be suspended. In my experience, this happens in only the worst case scenarios.
“The proposed changes to the regulation give the Commissioner of Education, currently Mitchell Chester, much more flexibility in determining if an educator’s license should be suspended or revoked. The new regulations contain the following language changes: “The holder of the license is unfit to perform the duties for which the license was granted, or engaged in misconduct that, in the opinion of the Commissioner, discredits the profession, brings the license into disrepute, compromises student safety or the integrity of the student-educator relationship;” (the new language is in bold).
“As you can see, the new pieces of language have far-reaching implications and since it is determined based upon the “opinion of the Commissioner” our ability to contest these claims would be severely hindered.
“Some of the questions that come out of this are the effects on one’s First Amendment Rights by the broad nature of the statements: “discredits the profession” and “integrity of the student-educator relationship”. Do these statements mean:
*If you promote opt-out information, you could be subject to an investigation.
*If you state displeasure with any policies coming down from the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education or the Federal government, you could be investigated
*If you participate in a work action as part of a contract campaign, you could be subject to an investigation
“These are questions that have yet to be answered, but the MTA legal division has expressed to me and all the other field reps in the state that we should be concerned about this.
“Here is a general timeline that I know of at this point:
“The public comment continues until Monday May 1. In the coming days, I will have more information on MTA sponsored feedback on these regulations. If you are interested in giving feedback sooner, the website is:http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=24232.
“On May 20th, the MTA is co-sponsoring a rally at the Boston Common. Initially, this rally was to bring attention to the general concerns around education in the state, but I believe this proposal will become a focal point of this event. I have fliers that will be distributed early next week for this.
“On June 27, the BESE is expected to vote on these proposed regulatory changes. While no firm plans have been made for a presence at the meeting, I am almost certain that, if the Board moves forward with the changes, we will be asking if people would like to attend the BESE Meeting.”
Any questions please let me know. Also, if you want to forward this email to members, please feel free. Please read the attachment for further information.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What is it with people named Chester?
“The Chester Factor”
Mitchell Chester Finn
Tried to do them in
Teachers talked
And poets mocked
And Chesters just won’t win
This is certainly a dangerous change in language and authority that is sure to affect the teacher education programs in Massachusetts too.
Among other problems the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is a captive of money from the Gates Foundation. the grant ends in 2018.
I suspect that your new Hall of Shame will growing at a fast clip.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/19/massachusetts-receives-million-gates-foundation-grant/kLRxmCGoPPNMLdxsR69gyO/story.html
Beware of Gates’ endowments! I was nearly blinded by a student who detached my retina while teaching in NYC under the ‘experimentary small learning communities’ where teachers are ramblant and have no desk or assigned classroom, in a school population from the south Bronx.
Small wonder that my conservative friends look at this and think Stalin. Why do they not think Hitler or Somoza? The first rule of freedom is freedom of thought. Other freedoms follow from this. Guarentee teachers freedom of thought and you might have great teaching. Steal this away and suffer the death that naturally comes to totalitarianism.
As I wrote in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” teachers can’t teach children how to think critically if they are not allowed to think critically. They can’t teach freedom of speech if they are not allowed it.
Amen!
Am I right that you also stated, in that book, that there is simply no logic in trying to fire your way to success?
It’s time for Commissioner Chester to move on to his retirement gig with Pearson.
In other words, this would circumvent or gut tenure and due process.
Massachusetts public education is being run by a cabal of reformsters, many of them affiliated with a local thinkster tank, The Pioneer Institute. Jim Peyser, state Secretary of Education, is a former director of The NewSchools Venture Fund, having run the Pioneer Institute from 1993-2000. Gov. Weld named him as undersecretary of education in 1995, shortly after the introduction of charters to the state, for which Peyser was – and is – an advocate. In charge of higher education is perennial gadfly Chris Gabrieli, failed gubernatorial candidate, who has developed no fewer than three reformy edu-businesses. (Time on Learning – extended day and year no extra pay; TransformEd – measuring grit and feelings; and Empower Schools, which seeks to destroy union contracts and impose a “third way” in urban districts – so far 3 and counting). So, to use the local dialect, all of them are wicked reformy.
Things have not been going so well for Chester. He signed on as chairman of PARCC, but that boat sank under the weight of the Common Core. This past November, when he thought the charter cap would be lifted and privatization could proceed apace, that too went down to an ignominious 2-1 defeat, in the process awakening parents and taxpayers to the charter scam. He has lately signed on to be a Chief for Change. Reformsters, unlike teachers, don’t need tenure because they have sinecures.
I think this latest peevish salvo stems from Chester’s frustration at being unable to simply sign executive orders and command the world as he would have it. Recently, after testimony from Lisa Guisbond of Citizens for Public Schools, he was forced to revise a punitive policy for students opting out:
“On the related issue of state testing, I thought you should know that some teachers are being given these instructions for handling students whose parents have chosen to opt them out:
‘When a student opts out they will remain in the classroom, listen as the test directions are being read and given the test. If after 15 minutes the student doesn’t write anything down, then, and only then, may the teacher remove the test.’
A 4th grade teacher shared her reaction:
‘This is public shaming, will cause emotional harm, and is a travesty to the precious relationship between teachers and students. Remember we cannot say anything except the scripted words on the test document or we are threatened with job termination, legal and or criminal action.’
So we have a fourth grader embarrassed and crying and a teacher who could lose his or her job for consoling the child. The teacher must ignore this child in need and say nothing.
I trust that these instructions are in error, and that your humane instructions from last year, Commissioner Chester, that students should not be pressured or punished for opting out, remain in place. I urge you to communicate this to the field.”
http://www.citizensforpublicschools.org/less-testing-more-learning-ma-campaign/delay-and-revise-ma-essa-plan-to-help-not-harm-struggling-schools/
At the April 18 board meeting, one of the topics under discussion was the use of the scores from this year’s round of testing. Chester proposed to have 2017 scores included in the average for determining school levels. That was nearly unanimously rejected by the Board due to the use of several variants of tests in the past three years. Previously, it had been agreed that schools would be “held harmless” during the transition to a new test.
A recess was called, during which time Secretary Peyser expressed his belief that if the 2017 scores were not included, teachers would deliberately have students tank the exams so that they could increase scores in future years. In other words,he believes teachers across the state would INTENTIONALLY have thousands of children do poorly on tests in order to create a low baseline. NB: At the time of the discussion, we were already halfway through the testing period.
These people have no respect for the work teachers do. They do not believe we have any integrity. They do not treat us as professionals. It is indeed shameful.
http://who-cester.blogspot.com/2017/04/april-board-of-ed-accountability-reset.html#more
The real issue is that Chester is incompetent and devoid of viable ideas for reform!
Chester should be fired. He can take his own poison.
What other profession that requires a college degree and licensure does this ?
Don’t lose sight of what is happening in NH… Governor Sununu’s appointee, Frank Edelblut, is seeking broader authority from the State Board and the Governor is planning to appoint a cast of new Board members who will presumably give him what he wants… The GOP governors are all using the same playbook…
The Democrats are no better.
At the national level I agree… but in NH the Democratic governors supported NHDOE’s reluctance to seek a RTTT waiver and the former Commissioner’s advocacy for something other that standardized testing… Mr. Edelblut’s agenda aligns with Betsy DeVos’… and THAT is the GOP playbook that VP Pence and his allies are looking to build on…
I can see this. I mean, clearly the state commissioner knows a lot more than the building principal.
/s
Diane, What needs to happen for education reform? Our education system is clearly a failure. But why is it that ‘men in charge’ crack the whip more and more on us women who dominate the teaching profession!? We, not the state, pay exhorbitant costs for licensure and then we may be whimsically dismissed!
(I have an appointment with my NYS senator next month on how NYSED’ s license requirements made me homeless for the past three years.)
“Our education system is clearly a failure.”
What do you mean by this?
“Our education system is clearly a failure.”
Horse manure. Pure 100% unadulterated Grade B horse manure.
For one thing, right off the bat there is no “education system”. If anything there are around 14,000 “systems” otherwise known as community public school districts, the vast majority of which are governed by democratically elected school boards.
There is no monolithic “system” so your statement is false at face value.
And the harm caused is not just by “men in charge”, but by many “women in charge”, adminimals who only know how to implement others malpractices with an iron heel. This is not a gender issue at all. The issue is that adminimals care more about their own asses and pocketbooks and not about student equity and justice. (and that also goes for the vast majority of GAGA Good German teachers who allow those adminimals to abuse staff and children through the many nefarious educational malpractices now in vogue). Self-expediency by almost all involved trumps student concerns:
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
Unfortunately, phrases like “Our education system is clearly a failure” are falling into the “sun sets in the west” category.
It’s no longer a question of WHETHER our public schools are performing well so much as WHAT are we going to replace them with.
That’s what almost 2 decades of unrelenting media propaganda will do to you.
Talk about an uphill battle…
“Talk about an uphill battle…”
As the rough riding Roosevelt would have said:
CHARGE!!!!!
The singular, primary goal of management, is the survival of the organization that they are paid to run. It is an abuse of public trust and indefensible for employees to undermine public education, while picking up public paychecks to run the operations. No private organization would tolerate similar internal sabotage.
All minions of self-anointed ed reformers, including all Gates-funded Aspen Pahara Fellows, who hold positions in public education should be shown the door. That includes a member of the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education.
“The singular, primary goal of management, is the survival of the organization that they are paid to run.”
Not in a for-profit company. In that case, the singular duty of management (by law) is to make a profit for the owners (shareholders). Even if that means running the organization out of business.
At one time, management students were taught, the primary goal was shareholder wealth maximization, measured by share price. Prior to that it was profit maximization. Theory changed. It is now the idea of “survival”.
A discussion about whether it was the duty of management “to mind the store or to sell the store” resulted from the change. The conclusion was that it is up to the owners, not the managers, to decide to “sell the store”.
(The law about fiduciary responsibility was misstated by Trump during the discussion about his taxes.)
What occurs in practice may differ from management theory.
However, managers of public institutions have a duty to follow best practices reflecting their positions of public trust.
Wow! When opinions and perceptions are used
to determine if someone should ever work again in their profession, we should be concerned.
Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning" and commented:
Massachusetts: Commissioner Seeks Power to Remove Teachers Unilaterally
by dianeravitch
This letter came by email from a teacher in Massachusetts. Evidently, the Commissioner of Education believes there are some bad, bad teachers in his state, and he wants the power to remove them quickly. Bear in mind that by every current metric, Massachusetts is the highest performing state in the nation. It must have many excellent teachers. Why does Commissioner Mitchell Chester need a whip in his hand. This kind of power play is threatening and demoraling, as well as unprofessional.
For trying to intimidate teachers, for failing to congratulate them for their dedication, by demonizing them with actions such as those described here, Mitchell Chester now joins this blog’s Wall of Shame.