Jeb Bush created an organization called “Chiefs for Change,” comprised of state superintendents who shared his views about vouchers, charters, high-stakes testing, accountability, VAM, and digital learning. Then, as members lost their elections and their jobs, the Chiefs shrank from nine to four. Not what you would call a show of force. To avoid meeting in a very small room, the Chiefs decided to open their ranks to include district superintendents. Its newest members are Chris Barbic, who runs the little all-charter Achievement School District in Tennessee, and Mike Miles, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District. Dale Erquiaga, the new state chief in Nevada, also joined. Deborah Gist, a long-time member, will not have to give up her membership when she moves from being state superintendent of Rhode Island to superintendent in Tulsa.
Scott Walker has a plan. It is called “reform,” but in reality it is destruction. He (acting through the legislature) is holding funding for public schools flat (he wanted to cut it); he is increasing funding for charter schools and vouchers; he is imposing draconian budget cuts on the University of Wisconsin system; and he is lowering standards for entry into teaching. One analysis says the voucher expansion proposal would drain $800 million from public schools over a 10-year period.
Tony Evers, the veteran educator who was elected twice as state superintendent of education, says Wisconsin is in a “race to the bottom.”
Wisconsin has decided to reform its teacher licensing standards—by eliminating them! Anyone with any bachlor’s degree can teach any subject, a change inserted into the state budget without hearings.
Even those without a bachelor’s degree are eligible to teach, as Valerie Strauss notes: “That’s not all. The proposal would require the education department to issue a teaching permit to people who have not — repeat have not — earned a bachelor’s degree, or potentially a high school diploma, to teach in any subject area, excluding the core subjects of mathematics, English, science, and social studies. “The only requirement would be that the public school or district or private voucher school determines that the individual is proficient and has relevant experience in the subject they intend to teach. And, the department would not be permitted to add requirements.”
Politico.com says that high school dropouts moght be eligible to teach middle school and high school under the legislative plan to drop standards.
The state Department of Public Instruction released this critique of the latest assault on the teaching profession.
Governor Scott Walker and his allies in the Legislature are working full-time to privatize public education and destroys he teaching profession. State Superintendent Tony Evers made these statements. He is a hero for standing up fearlessly to the know-nothings, joins the blog’s honor roll as a champion of education.
His office issued this blast:
“Legislative action slides teacher licensing standards toward the bottom”
“MADISON — Major changes to teacher licensing voted into the 2015-17 state budget, without a hearing, puts Wisconsin on a path toward the bottom, compared to the nation, for standards required of those who teach at the middle and high school level.
“Adopted as a K-12 omnibus motion by the Joint Committee on Finance (JFC), the education package deregulates licensing standards for middle and high school teachers across the state. The legislation being rolled into the biennial budget would require the Department of Public Instruction to license anyone with a bachelor’s degree in any subject to teach English, social studies, mathematics, and science. The only requirement is that a public school or school district or a private choice school determines that the individual is proficient and has relevant experience in each subject they teach. Traditional licensure requires educators in middle and high school to have a bachelor’s degree and a major or minor in the subject they teach, plus completion of intensive training on skills required to be a teacher, and successful passage of skills and subject content assessments.
“Additionally, the JFC motion would require the DPI to issue a teaching permit for individuals who have not earned a bachelor’s degree, or potentially a high school diploma, to teach in any subject area, excluding the core subjects of mathematics, English, science, and social studies. The only requirement would be that the public school or district or private voucher school determines that the individual is proficient and has relevant experience in the subject they intend to teach. For both provisions in the JFC motion, the DPI would not be able to impose any additional requirements. This may preclude the fingerprinting and background checks required of all other licensed school staff. The standard also is lower than that currently required for teachers in choice and charter schools, who must have at least a bachelor’s degree.
“We are sliding toward the bottom in standards for those who teach our students,” said State Superintendent Tony Evers. “It doesn’t make sense. We have spent years developing licensing standards to improve the quality of the teacher in the classroom, which is the most important school-based factor in improving student achievement. Now we’re throwing out those standards.”
“Currently, all 50 states require a beginning teacher to have a bachelor’s degree for traditional licensure, with a narrow exception for career and technical education teachers (Georgia). The states have differing standards for alternative routes to licensure, generally requiring major content coursework or a test in lieu of coursework for individuals to be eligible for an alternate route to earn a teaching license.
“Wisconsin has several routes for career changers, who want to teach our elementary and secondary school students, to earn a teaching license through alternative programs,” Evers noted. “Emergency permits allow them to work under supervision while completing educator preparation program requirements. Each alternative route program ensures that candidates are supported and are ready to do the job independently when they complete alternative licensing requirements.”
Under provisions of the omnibus motion, the leaders of 424 public school districts, 23 independent public charter schools (2R charters), and potentially hundreds of private choice schools would determine who is qualified to teach in their schools. Current provisions of the JFC motion would restrict these licenses to teaching at the district or school that recommended the individual for licensure.
“Learning about how children develop, managing a classroom and diffusing conflict among students, working with parents, and developing engaging lessons and assessments that inform instruction — these are the skills our aspiring educators learn in their training programs,” Evers said. “Teaching is much more than being smart in a subject area.
“This motion presents a race to the bottom,” Evers said. “It completely disregards the value of the skills young men and women develop in our educator training programs and the life-changing experiences they gain through classroom observation and student teaching. This JFC action is taking Wisconsin in the wrong direction. You don’t close gaps and improve quality by lowering standards.”
It makes you wonder if the “reformers” in Wisconsin plan to deregulate other professions, so anyone can be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever they want, without professional education.
A group of 40 district superintendents in Néw York banded together to denounce Cuomo’s teacher evaluation system. They said that the law should be suspended as it would be bad for education.
Every superintendent should speak up. Cuomo’s plan is not research-based. It is harmful to teachers and harmful to students as well.
Three years ago, the Dallas Independent School District hired Mike Miles as its superintendent. Miles, a military man, had been trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. When he arrived, he set a series of targets that he expected to reach as a result of his leadership. One was to see a significant increase in test scores in three years. He declared that he would drive change by bold leadership.
The test scores were just released for Dallas. They are flat. Some declined.
Miles has removed many principals; teacher turnover has soared under his leadership.
STAAR test results released Friday by Dallas ISD offer little evidence of systemic progress under the leadership of Superintendent Mike Miles.
Compared with last year, the passing rate dropped for eight of 11 exams in grades three through eight. On three exams, passing rates increased by 1 or 2 percentage points. The results are for tests taken in English.
Similarly, compared with results from 2012 — the school year before Miles arrived — a higher percentage of students failed this year in eight of 11 exams.
Miles and his supporters had promised broad academic gains and said that this year’s results — the third State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness exams under his leadership — would prove his reform efforts had taken hold. But if STAAR is a good measure of achievement, those gains haven’t materialized despite numerous changes in the district.
Miles, however, expressed optimism about the latest scores in a written statement Friday.
“The results indicate progress and stability in most of the exams compared with the previous year. … The modest gains of our STAAR results this year confirm how I have been describing our last three years of work: That our staff has been focused on establishing the foundation on which we can build,” said Miles, who came to DISD in July 2012.
Well, this is a new definition of progress. It is called “progress and stability” and “establishing the foundation.” Of course, there is always next year. Or the one after that one.
MaryEllen Elia, who was fired as Superintendent of Hillsborough County a few months ago, was unanimously endorsed by the Néw York State Board of Regents yesterday.
Valerie Strauss wrote about her selection here. She has the support of the Republican establishment in Florida (she was a member of far-right Governor Rick Scott’s transition team), as well as the support of teachers’ unions in Florida and Néw York.
Parent activists are wary of Elia because of her past support for high-stakes testing. To win their confidence, she must clarify her views about testing, about the Opt Out movement, about detaching test scores from teacher evaluations, about merit pay, and about Common Core.
In this interview, she reiterates her support for high-stakes testing, the Common Core, and using test scores to evaluate teachers. When asked her reaction to parent resistance to testing, she emphasizesd the need for better communications with parents. I don’t think that “better communications” will pacify parents who are fed up with the overuse of testing. At some point, hopefully soon, Commissioner Elia must recognize that parents know what they are doing, and they disagree with the Regents’ policy of plunging into the Common Core, high-stakes testing, and test-based accountability.
Commissioner Elia must understand that the problem is not a failure to communicate, but a genuine difference of opinion about how to educate children. The leaders of the Opt Out movement are not misinformed; they are very well informed indeed. Will she punish children who refuse the tests next year? Will she collaborate with parent leaders? Will she listen to parents and hear them? Will she use her influence to persuade the Regents and the Governor to reduce the importance of standardized tests? If she doubles down on Governor Cuomo’s testing agenda, she will energize the Opt Out movement. Parent leaders are disappointed by the lack of transparency in the selection process as well as the implicit message that the Regents did not listen to them. They will continue to speak out in the only way they can be heard, by refusing to submit their children to the tests.
Josh Starr, as superintendent of Montgomery County, took a strong stand against high-stakes testing. He won national acclaim, including being named to the honor roll of this blog. Montgomery County has been a national model for its Peer Assistance and Review program for teacher evaluation, which does not include test scores. Despite all this, the Board did not renew his contract. Josh Starr recently became leader of Phi Delta Kappa International.
The school board has chosen Larry Bowers, the school system’s business manager, as its interim superintendent.
Meanwhile, Maryland–long a Democratic stronghold–elected a Republican governor, who recently appointed two people to the state board. They are, of course, supporters of charters and reformsters.
This comes from Michael Hynes, one of the best superintendents on Long Island, Néw York, epicenter of the Opt Out movement:
Public Schools Work- We Need to Focus Below the Iceberg
Everyone in American education hears the relentless and consistent criticism of our schools: Compared to schools in other nations, we come up short. But the evidence on which that judgment rests is narrow and very thin.
A January study released by the Horace Mann League and the National Superintendents Roundtable, “School Performance in Context: The Iceberg Effect,” challenges the practice of ranking nations by educational test scores and questions conventional wisdom that the U.S. educational system has fallen badly behind school systems abroad.
The study compared six dimensions related to student performance—equity, social stress, support for families, support for schools, student outcomes, and system outcomes—in the G-7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) plus Finland and China. They then examined 24 “indicators” within those dimensions.
Of the nine nations, the United States remains the wealthiest with the most highly educated workforce, based on the number of years of school completed, and the proportion of adults with high school diplomas and bachelor’s degrees.
“Many policymakers and business leaders fret that America has fallen behind Europe and China, but our research does not bear that out,” said James Harvey, executive director of the National Superintendents Roundtable.
Despite high educational levels, the United States also reflects high levels of economic inequity and social stress compared to the other nations. All are related to student performance. For example, in American public schools today, the rate of childhood poverty is five times greater than it is in Finland. Rates of violent death are 13 times greater than the average for the other nations, with children in some communities reporting they have witnessed shootings, knifings, and beatings as “ordinary, everyday events.”
Some key findings:
• Economic Equity: The United States and China demonstrate the greatest gaps between rich and poor. The U.S. also contends with remarkably high rates of income inequality and childhood poverty.
• Social Stress: The U.S.reported the highest rates of violent death and teen pregnancy, and came in second for death rates from drug abuse. The U.S.is also one of the most diverse nations with many immigrant students, suggesting English may not be their first language.
• Support for Families: The U.S. performed in the lowest third on public spending for services that benefit children and families, including preschool.
• Support for Schools: Americans seem willing to invest in education: The U.S. leads the nine-nation group in spending per student, but the national estimates may not be truly comparable. U.S. teachers spend about 40 percent more time in the classroom than their peers in the comparison countries.
• Student Outcomes: Performance in American elementary schools is promising, while middle school performance can be improved. U.S. students excel in 4th grade reading and high school graduation rates, but perform less well in reading at age 15. There are no current studies comparing the performance of high school graduates across countries. All nations demonstrate an achievement gap based on students’ family income and socio-economic status.
• System Outcomes: The U.S. leads these nations in educational levels of its adult workforce. Measures included years of schooling completed and the proportion of adults with high-school diplomas and bachelor’s degrees. American students also make up 25 percent of the world’s top students in science at age 15, followed by Japan at 13 percent.
“Too often, we narrow our focus to a few things that can be easily tested. Treating education as a horse race doesn’t work,” said HML President Gary Marx.
American policymakers from both political parties have a history of relying on large, international assessments to judge United States’ school performance. In 2013, the press reported that American students were falling behind when compared to 61 other countries and a few cities including Shanghai. In that comparative assessment—called the Program for International Student Assessment—PISA controversially reported superior scores for Shanghai.
The study doesn’t oppose international assessments as one measure of performance. But it argues for the need to compare American schools with similar nations and on more than a single number from an international test. In a striking metaphor, the study defines test scores as just “tip of the school iceberg.”
A fair conclusion to reach from the study is that while all is not well in the American classroom, our schools are far from being the failure they are painted to be. Addressing serious school problems will require policymakers to do something about the huge part of the iceberg that lies below the waterline in terms of poverty and economic inequity, community stress, and support for families and schools. We must stop blaming public schools and demonizing educators. The problem is not at the tip of the iceberg, it is well below the surface.
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Michael Hynes is the superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District and member of the National Superintendent’s Roundtable
Governor Mike Pence signed the bill to permit the state board to elect its own chair, which currently is the state superintendent Glenda Ritz. This nonsense is billed as a “reform.” The children of the state will learn more now that the board appoints the chair.
Of course, this is nothing more than a continuation of Pence’s vendetta against Ritz, who won more votes than he did in 2012.
Given that history, she is a natural candidate to run against him in 2016.
Go, Glenda!
Jesse Ruiz, the acting superintendent of Chicago public schools, suspended the controversial $20.5 million no-bid contract to SUPES Academy. Superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett has taken a leave of absence while the contract is investigated because she worked for SUPES before she took the leadership role in Chicago. However, Ruiz voted for the contract and defended his vote.
The story begins:
Acting Chicago schools boss Jesse Ruiz announced Wednesday that the district was suspending payment on a $20.5 million no-bid contract at the center of a federal criminal probe, but he also defended his own vote for the 2013 deal in his role as vice president of the Chicago Board of Education.
Speaking at the first board meeting since news of the investigation broke last week, both Ruiz and board President David Vitale sought to calm concerns over their support of the controversial contract with an executive-training company tied to schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. She took a leave of absence Monday amid the federal probe, and Ruiz was chosen to become acting CEO.
Vitale said the school system followed specific procedures for reviewing a “sole-source” contract, which includes an extra layer of review to ensure standards are met, and the 6-0 vote for the deal with the SUPES Academy came after Chicago Public Schools “management” made the case for the “relatively unique” agreement.
When the deal was approved, there was “a great deal of public comment and concern about the nature of the contract,” he said. The board also was aware that Byrd-Bennett had worked for SUPES, Vitale has said.
“Shortly after the entering of this contract with SUPES Academy, in one of my meetings with the inspector general at that time, he and I agreed that there was enough noise around this issue that it is something that he should look into,” Vitale said during comments at the meeting.
Ruiz agreed with Vitale that the board followed its process and got answers to its questions before approving the deal.
“Given the information we had at that point in time, and given the information that we were provided as board members, I stand by that vote,” Ruiz told reporters before entering an executive board session where his appointment as interim CEO was formally approved.
Steve Cohen and David Gamberg are highly respected superintendents on Long Island. In this post, they explain why so many parents object to the current climate of high-stakes testing. With leaders like Cohen and Gamberg, who think that students need and deserve a real education, you can understand why Long Island is the epicenter of the Opt Out movement in New York and perhaps in the nation. Their article appeared in the Suffolk Times-Review, a local newspaper on Long Island; I should not quote so much of it, but it is such a powerful article that I could not resist. Open the link and read it all. Both of these superintendents, by the way, are already members of the blog’s honor roll.
They begin:
A mere four years ago, and for decades prior, one could not find any substantial evidence of students opting-out of standardized testing. At first glance, the current, heated, conflict over state testing and the “opt-out” movement appears to be a dispute between those who believe in and those who dispute the value of state tests. But this conflict goes deeper. It is a conflict about what is good for children and adolescents, about how children learn and thrive, and about how to raise young people to enter into and contribute to their communities as mature members of a democratic society.
Those who support testing contend that facing tests, and the concomitant adversity that one might experience (even if the test is developmentally inappropriate) are a part of life. To do otherwise is considered weak, and represents a failure to develop the “grit” necessary to fully engage in life’s challenges. For these people, it is inconceivable that locally developed assessments — perhaps even more purposeful and useful assessments — could accomplish that very same goal. Living in a culture of fear as we do, many people believe that it is necessary to impose carefully guarded secret tests from above to make sure that we hold incompetent adults — untrustworthy teachers and administrators — accountable for the abject failure of some children who graduate from our public schools….
They write that the so-called reformers, like Governor Cuomo and the Legislature, are fixated on basic skills and compliance with the demands of the state. What they care very little about is the broader, civic and humane purposes of education.
Broad learning in the arts as well as in the sciences, in literature as well as in history, economics, psychology, plus athletics, independent study and community service, is a notion that seems to be beyond the scope of this version of school improvement. Indeed, to reformers, failure to create a “live to work” system of public education will mean that the next generation will not be able to “compete” with young people in other countries for good jobs. In particular, these education reformers believe that African-American, Hispanic, and poor children generally are most at risk if these reforms are not adopted immediately — despite the cruel fact that these tests have increased the “performance gap” between poor and middle class children. People who believe in this “reform” conception of public education insist that current state tests are absolutely necessary to help children learn what they need to know.
Many defenders of current state tests also find it morally reprehensible to break the rules, even if the rules support a broken system. To be an agent of change, and seek to be in favor of a better system is considered wrong and virtually un-American to these people. The system is what it is, and everyone should be quiet and obey the rules. Our founding fathers, who were patriots, would have had a hard time understanding why they risked their lives to establish our democracy if they believed that adherence to the official way of doing things could not be challenged. We would suspect that the likes of Washington, Franklin and Jefferson would do far more than simply opt-out of tests.
People who reject these ideas believe they have no other way to express their dislike of this conception of public education than to deny reformers the “data” needed to keep education reforms moving ahead, by refusing to have their children take these tests. The governor and the Legislature have ignored the deeply felt beliefs of hundreds of thousands of parents who believe that public education is too complex, and too important to the future of their children, to be characterized adequately by a wooden, mechanical conception of childhood development.
They believe that education must be more than the crimped enterprise of getting young people ready for future jobs that may well not even materialize. People who “opt” their children out of these tests believe that public education should not deny young people broad exposure to the deep intellectual and moral heritage of modern democratic society; it should not dismiss local traditions of providing community service; it should not ignore the immense variety among young people’s interests, abilities and needs. Underlying the “opt-out” movement is the belief that there are many highly successful school systems around the state that have taught children to read, write and learn mathematics at the highest levels for decades, while also providing these children with serious exposure to science, history, various arts, athletics and a host of meaningful community experiences. Underlying the “opt-out” movement is recognition of the reality that helping poor children cannot be done by testing them. Underlying the “opt-out” movement is the belief that teachers by and large have contributed greatly to the high-level achievements of countless public school students. Underlying the “opt-out” movement is the belief that a simplistic and suffocating approach to improving education is bad for children — all of them. People who reject these “reform” ideas wonder why the reformers themselves send their children to private schools that work more or less the way hundreds of successful public schools work.
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