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Arne’s Frankenstein Still Lives

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2018 //
11

New York and other states continue to be saddled with the toxic gift bestowed (i.e., imposed) as part of Arne Duncan and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top. When New York applied for Race to the Top funding, it agreed to pass a law making test scores a “significant” part of teacher evaluations. It did. The law has been a source of ongoing controversy. It is completely ineffectual–every year, 95-97% of teachers are rated either Highly Effective or Ineffective. Parents rebelled because their children were put into the awkward position of determining their teachers’ ratings, and many objected to the pressure. The result was the Opt Out Movement. Andrew Cuomo was gung-ho for evaluating teachers by test scores, assuming that it would identify the “bad teachers” who should be terminated, and he insisted that test scores should be 50%, no less, in rating teachers. When the Opt Out movement claimed 20% of all eligible students in 3-8, Cuomo appointed a commission to study the issues and asked for a four-year moratorium on use of the scores to evaluate teachers. The moratorium ends next year.

This is an excellent analysis of the mess in New York by Gary Stern, a first-rate reporter for Lohud (Lower Hudson Valley) News.

He writes:

New York state’s teacher evaluation system is a lot like Frankenstein’s monster.

It was a high-minded experiment that turned out ghastly in 2011, scaring the heck out of teachers and their bosses. The monster was repeatedly cut up and sewed back together in search of something better, but just got nastier. Many parents, fearing for the well-being of teachers, rebelled with the educational equivalent of pitchforks and torches: Opting their kids out from state tests.

As a result, a moratorium was put in place in 2015, through the 2019-20 school year, on the most controversial part of the system — the attempted use of standardized test scores to measure the impact of individual teachers on student progress.

The monster was tranquilized, and things quieted down.

Now a bill in Albany, which looks likely to pass, is being hailed by NYSUT and legislators as the answer to putting Frankenstein out of his misery. The bill (A.10475/S.08301) would eliminate the mandatory use of state test scores in teacher (and principal) evaluations, referring to math and ELA tests for grades 3-8 and high school Regents exams. School districts that choose alternative student assessments for use in evaluating teachers would have to do so through collective bargaining with unions.

But the evaluation monster would still live, perhaps in a semi-vegetative state, seemingly hooked up to wires in the basement of the state Education Department.

NYSUT, which represents 600,000 teachers and others, likes this deal. But groups representing school boards and superintendents are antsy. They don’t want teachers unions involved in choosing student assessments. And they say that the bill could lead to more testing, since students will still have to take the 3-8 tests and Regents exams.

Untangling this mess is not for the faint of heart. Even Dr. Frankenstein might look away…

The evaluation system was devised at the height of the “reform” era, when federal and state officials wanted to show that public schools were failing. Gov. Andrew Cuomo prized the evaluation system as a way to drive out crummy teachers. But the whole thing fell flat. As one principal told me, “If I don’t like a teacher, should I root for their students to do poorly on the state tests?”…

As the system is currently stitched together, about half a teacher’s evaluation is based on how students do on various assessments. Most teachers don’t have students who take state tests, so their evaluations are based on a hodgepodge of student measurements. A recent study of 656 district plans across New York, by Joseph Dragone of Capital Region BOCES, found more than 500 different combinations of student assessments in use.

To game the system, more and more districts are applying common measurements of student progress to teachers across grades or schools or even districtwide. Get this: Dragone found that 28 percent of districts use high school Regents exams, in part, to evaluate K-2 teachers.

What’s the value of all this? Primarily, to comply with state requirements for a failed system.

He concludes that no one knows how to fix this mess. It is not enough to stitch up Frankenstein one more time.

But there is an answer.

Repeal the entire system created in response to Race to the Top demands. It failed. Race to the Top failed. Why prop up or revise a failed system?

Let districts decide how to evaluate their teachers. Why does the state need to prescribe teacher evaluation? What does the Legislature know about teacher evaluation? Nothing. Districts don’t want “bad” teachers. Let Arne’s Frankenstein go to its deserved grave.

Categories Duncan, Arne, New York, Opt Out, Teacher Evaluations, VAM

New York: The Teacher Evaluation Mess in the Legislature

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2018 //
47

Recently, gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon issued a press release calling for the repeal of the state teacher evaluation system, which links teacher evaluation to state test scores of their students.

Almost immediately, the State Assembly (in Democratic control) announced that it was writing a bill to revise test-based teacher evaluation. The Assembly bill passed overwhelmingly, but it was a sham. Instead of repealing test-based teacher evaluation, it said that districts could use the test of their own choosing to evaluate teachers, so long as the test was approved by the State Commissioner. That does not repeal test-based evaluation, and critics warned that there might be “double-testing,” once for the state tests, another time for local tests.

Now that the bill has moved to the State Senate, the Republican leader John Flanagan has said he will slow down movement on the bill because no one wants “double testing.”

In the one instance where the state’s teacher evaluation system was brought to a court, by lawyer Bruce Lederman on behalf of his superstar wife, Sheri, a fourth grade teacher on Long Island, the judge said that the system was “arbitrary” and “capricious” and threw out her rating.

When the system was first adopted, Governor Cuomo wanted 50% of a teacher’s rating to be based on student scores. In 2013-2014, when the first results of the rating system were reported, 97% of the state’s teachers were rated either “effective” or “highly effective.” In New York City, in the first year, 93% were rated in the two highest categories. By 2016-2017, 97% of New York City’s teachers were also rated either “effective” or “highly effective.”

Chalkbeat reviewed the controversy over the state teacher evaluation system and wrote:

The battle lines were redrawn again in 2015, when state lawmakers — led by Gov. Andrew Cuomo — sought to make it tougher for teachers to earn high ratings. The new system allowed for as much as half of a teacher’s rating to be based on test scores.

But that plan was never fully implemented. Following a wave of protests in which one in five New York families boycotted the state tests, officials backed away from several controversial education policies.

In late 2015, the state’s Board of Regents approved a four-year freeze on the most contentious aspect of the teacher evaluation law: the use of students’ scores on the grades 3-8 math and English tests. They later allowed districts to avoid having independent observers rate teachers — another unpopular provision in the original law.

In short, the Opt Out movement caused the state to call a moratorium even as Governor Cuomo and the legislature were demanding tougher evaluations.

Given the fact that the test-based evaluation system has not worked (97% of teachers are doing just fine, thank you), given the fact that a full-blown court challenge presented as a class action is likely to get the whole system declared invalid, and given the fact that there is a growing teacher shortage, given the fact that the American Statistical Association declared “value-added” evaluation” inappropriate for individual teachers, why not repeal test-based evaluation altogether?

Let school districts decide how to evaluate the teachers they hire. Let them decide whether to adopt peer review, principal observations, or some combinations thereof.

The current system is useless and pointless. It does not evaluate teachers fairly. It is expensive. It attaches high stakes to tests for teachers. It has no research to support it.

When in doubt, throw it out!

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Hoax, New York, Teacher Evaluations

EdNext: How Not to Rank Teacher Preparation Programs

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2018 //
33

Education Next is a conservative journal that can be counted on to support education reform in all its manifestations.

However, today it is releasing a new study finding that the most ineffective way to rate teacher education programs is by the test scores of students taught by their graduates. As we have often said, VAM (value-added measurement), beloved by Arne Duncan, is a sham. The now discredited rule was promulgated by the Obama administration.


Ranking teacher-prep programs on value-added is ineffective

New analysis finds program rankings based on graduates’ value-added scores are largely random

Last year Congress repealed a federal rule that would have required states to rank teacher-preparation programs according to their graduates’ impact on student test scores. Yet twenty-one states and D.C. still choose to rank programs in this way. Can student test performance reliably identify more and less effective teacher-preparation programs? In a new article for Education Next, Paul T. von Hippel of the University of Texas at Austin and Laura Bellows of Duke University find that the answer is usually no.

Differences between programs too small to matter. Von Hippel and Bellows find that the differences between teachers from different preparation programs are typically too small to matter. Having a teacher from a good program rather than an average program will, on average, raise a student’s test scores by 1 percentile point or less.

Program rankings largely random. The errors that states make in estimating differences between programs are often larger than the differences states are trying to estimate. Program rankings are so noisy and error-prone that in many cases states might as well rank programs at random.

High chance of false positives. Even when a program appears to stand out from the pack, in most cases it will be a “false positive”—an ordinary program whose ranking is much higher (or lower) than it deserves. Some states do have one or two programs that are truly extraordinary, but published rankings do a poor job of distinguishing these “true positives” from the false ones.

Consistent results across six states. Using statistical best practices, von Hippel and Bellows found consistent results across six different locations—Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Washington State, and New York City. In every location the true differences between most programs were miniscule, and program rankings consisted mostly of noise. This was true even in states where previous evaluations had suggested larger differences.

When measured in terms of teacher value-added, “the differences between [teacher-preparation] programs are typically too small to matter. And they’re practically impossible to estimate with any reliability,” say von Hippel and Bellows. They consider other ways to monitor program quality and conclude that most are not ready for prime time. But they do endorse reporting the share of a program’s graduates who become teachers and persist in the profession—especially in high-need subjects and high-need schools.

To receive a copy of “Rating Teacher-Preparation Programs: Can value-added make useful distinctions?” please contact Jackie Kerstetter at jackie.kerstetter@educationnext.org. The article will be available Tuesday, May 8 on educationnext.org and will appear in the Summer 2018 issue of Education Next, available in print on May 24, 2018.

About the Authors: Paul T. von Hippel is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and Laura Bellows is a doctoral student in public policy at Duke University.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Obama, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

Mercedes Schneider: Bill Gates, Hypocrite

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2018 //
41

 

Mercedes Schneider takes apart Bill Gates and his monumental hypocrisy and arrogance. 

She documents his predilection for experimenting on other people’s  children, as he did with the Commin Core, and his penchant for carelessly destroying other people’s  lives, as he did with the ineffective teacher evaluations.

She notes that he recently announced an initiative to fix poverty, but is not investing much money, as compared to the billions he wasted on education forays.

Bill Gates has funded studies to belittle class size reduction, though in his own schooling and in that of his children, small classes were crucial.

He has given advice lately, sharing advice about how to raise children. He says you should love them unconditionally and pay no mind to their grades or test scores. Nice for his children, whose elite schools would never follow Gates’ education ideas. But what about the teachers who got fired because their students didn’t try or their parents didn’t care?

And last, to really see how out of touch he is, read about the “modest” bequests he plans to leave them.

 

Categories Class size, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations

NY Educators: Don’t Fall for the Old Okeydoke

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2018 //
8

 

Marla Kilfoyle, teacher and executive director of the Badass Teachers Association, wrote this article.

She warns teachers not to fall for the line of bologna (baloney, not “Bali net,” thanks autocorrect!)  that they will hear from Andrew Cuomo as he seeks their votes. They will be tempted, but only if they forget that the BATs and other concerned teachers have been fighting Cuomo and his bullying tactics for the past several years.

She writes:

“As NYS teachers we will be embarking on an important choice this primary season.

“We have the opportunity to vote for a truly progressive candidate on September 13, 2018 – Cynthia Nixon.

“To learn more about Cynthia Nixon go here https://cynthiafornewyork.com/meet-cynthia/
Join me as an Educator for Cynthia – sign up here https://actionnetwork.org/forms/educators-for-cynthia

“I am a NYS teacher, and I am warning my brothers and sisters in New York….

“Don’t fall for the Old Okeydoke this primary season.

“So what is the Old Okeydoke? It is when a trap is set, but a victim still walks right into it.

“Believe me teachers, Cuomo, and others, are setting a trap for you – don’t walk into it.”

Her post reviews Cuomo’s history of ridiculing and demoralizing teachers. How fast can a leopard change his spots?

 

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers

New Mexico: State Commissioner Makes Power Grab to Grade Teacher Education Institutions

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2018 //
14

 

New Mexico is one of the lowest performing states in the nation on the NAEP. It ranks about 49th in the nation. It also has the highest child poverty rate in the nation. Unfortunately the state has a Republican governor who has swallowed the Jeb Bush formula of high-stakes testing, test-based evaluation of teachers, and privatization of schools as the answer to the state’s problems. New Mexico education has not improved at all during the reign of the Bush acolytes.

Hannah Skandera was the State Secretary of Education for seven years. She has been replaced by TFA alum Christopher Ruszkowski. He has just proposed taking control of the state’s teacher education institutions and having sole power over whether they should continue to be allowed to prepare teachers. 

The Secretary-designate is proposing to assert authority that now resides with the legislature.

New Mexico’s teacher evaluation model–one of the most punitive in the nation (test scores are 50% of a teacher’s grade)–are currently suspended while a judge considers whether they are valid.

Being a true “reformer,” Ruszkowski wants to impose letter grades on teacher education programs.

Given the persistent failure of the state’s Public Education Department over the past eight years, it would be a mistake to allow its leader to control teacher education in New Mexico.

The state Public Education Department is pushing to have more direct authority over teacher development programs, including taking on the oversight duties now provided by national accreditation groups.

But some are questioning whether the proposal is within PED’s authority.

By this time next month, PED wants a rule in place that allows it to rate educator preparation programs – which ultimately license teachers – through site visits and a scorecard system.

PED Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski said he thinks they would end up evaluating about 12 to 15 New Mexico institutions, such as the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Highlands University and New Mexico State University, if the rule goes through.

The proposed evaluation system mirrors PED’s teacher evaluations and school grading efforts. Both systems have generated controversy in public school districts statewide.

PED’s proposal would allow the agency to decide whether a teacher education program may remain in operation, regardless if the institution is private or public. An institution can appeal a revocation but ultimately PED has final decision-making power, according to the rule.

Rule requirements

PED’s proposed requirements include: The program’s pedagogy, or instruction in teaching methods, has to align with PED standards; teachers in training would undergo observations by PED; the institution would be required to store documentation of the observations for at least five years; and teacher trainees would be evaluated using methodology of NMTEACH, which is the state teacher evaluation system.

PED would annually score the programs, rating them on an A to F scale and evaluating their effectiveness through factors like acceptance rates of candidates into the program, how they do on performance and licensure tests and how those who complete the programs are rated in NMTEACH.

Right now, teacher preparation programs are being reviewed by national accrediting bodies like the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education or the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

But Ruszkowski said the measures those organizations provide aren’t rigorous enough and they don’t review the programs frequently enough.

“The PED has the ultimate decision-making authority over teacher preparation programs that impact K-12 education directly,” Ruszkowski said. “And what states did historically is they took the NCATE or the CAEP and used it as a rubber stamp of approval.”

While UNM declined to comment, the university has previously called NCATE the “gold standard for teacher preparation.”

If PED’s new rule goes into effect, institutions already offering teacher prep programs will have to reapply under the new standards.

Instead of imposing letter grades of institutions of higher education, New Mexico needs fresh thinking about teaching and learning. It should start by throwing out the failed Florida model of test and punish.

Categories New Mexico, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

Breaking News:Cynthia Calls for Repeal of Cuomo’s Failed Teacher Evaluations!

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2018 //
21

 

This just in! Cynthia Nixon calls for repeal of test-based evaluation of teachers. This law was passed to meet the non-evidence-based demands of Race to the Top. It has been a complete failure in New York. The American Statistical Association said in 2014 that individual teachers should not be evaluated by the test scores of their students. Highly flawed and inaccurate!

 

For Immediate Release
April 26, 2018
Contact: press@cynthiafornewyork.com

Cynthia Nixon Calls for Repeal of Cuomo’s Failed APPR Teacher Evaluation System

Diane Ravitch joins other educators in launching ‘Educators for Cynthia’ to elect a bona fide public education advocate who prioritizes learning, not testing in New York schools

BUFFALO, NY — On the eve of the New York State United Teachers Representative Assembly in Buffalo, Cynthia Nixon, candidate for governor, called on Andrew Cuomo today to immediately repeal the teacher evaluation system he championed. Known as the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), Cuomo’s teacher evaluation system relies on high-stakes testing to evaluate teachers. Education historian Diane Ravitch and dozens of New York educators are rallying behind Cynthia Nixon’s demands with the launch of Educators for Cynthia. Signers include teachers, principals, school board members, superintendents, SUNY and CUNY professors, and former NYSUT statewide officers.

At the time APPR was enacted, Cuomo described it as “one of the greatest legacies for me and the state.” But it helped spur 25 percent of parents to opt out of state tests and was roundly denounced by educators and advocates. Cuomo has since tried to distance himself from the APPR, but it remains on the books, including requirements for additional standardized tests that serve no educational purposes other than to grade teachers.

“A couple years ago Andrew Cuomo described teacher evaluation based on high stakes testing as one of his greatest legacies, now he is hoping that parents and teachers have forgotten all about it,” Cynthia Nixon said. “Enough of the delays and excuses Governor Cuomo, it is time to repeal the APPR now.”

“Cynthia Nixon has a vision that will put education on the right track by refocusing New York schools on the dignity of teaching and the joy of learning,” said Diane Ravitch, education historian. “She will provide the resources our children need to succeed. Andrew Cuomo’s policies have disrespected teachers as a profession and undermined the education of our children.”

The “Educators for Cynthia” group cites additional education reform priorities Cynthia supports including: providing students a rich and balanced curriculum rather than one oriented around standardized tests; ensuring equitable school funding by fully funding Foundation Aid; and delivering fair and full funding for SUNY and CUNY to expand opportunity and improve quality.

“Our public school teachers must be treasured and lifted up for the hard work they do every day in the classroom educating our children. Instead, Andrew Cuomo has vilified and punished teachers, underfunded our neediest schools and deprived students of the educational opportunities and social and emotional supports they need, and placed SUNY and CUNY on a starvation diet which undermines the quality of higher education and decreases opportunities for students who need a leg up,” Cynthia said. “As governor I will make public education from pre-K through college a top priority, our children and our future depends on it.”

“Andrew Cuomo is the king of test and punish education reform,” said Marla Kilfoyle, a teacher in the Oceanside Schools. “He insisted that teachers had to be evaluated based upon standardized tests even though all the evidence said it was bankrupt idea. He has refused to repeal his own failed policy and Cynthia Nixon is a breath of fresh air. She has a strong record on standing up for our public schools and teachers and I am proud to support her.”

Anyone interested in joining Educators for Cynthia can do so at http://cynthiafornewyork.com/educators.

###

 

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Rick Hess: The Pendulum Is Swinging Against the Bush-Obama “Reform” Era

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2018 //
45

 

Although I often disagree with Rick Hess, I think he is the most insightful of the reformers and the nicest as well. He has a code of civility, and he never descends into mud-slinging or name-calling, unlike others in the reform camp.

In his latest article, I was surprised and delighted to see his acknowledgement that the pendulum is swinging away from the Bush-Obama reforms. He tacitly admits, as few other reformers do, that the era of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has failed, and (as John Merrow said in his latest post) “the air is humming,” and something great is coming. The current federal law (Every Student Succeeds Act) is a stripped-down version of NCLB, still insanely test-focused, in my view. Under ESSA, despite its grandiose name, there is no hope, none, that “every student will succeed.”

Rick looks at the wave of teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky (with more likely to happen) and draws five lessons.

First, “Teachers are immensely sympathetic actors. For all the gibes, harsh rhetoric of the accountability era, and tsk-tsk’ing occasioned by polls in which people say they don’t want their kids to be teachers, the reality is that people really like teachers. In surveys, no matter how much talk there is about “failing” schools and problems with tenure, teachers are trusted and popular.” Although he doesn’t say it, I will: People trust teachers more than hedge fund managers or billionaires.

Second, “The Trump era has made it tougher for GOP officials to plead “fiscal restraint.” For years, GOP governors and legislators have said there is no more money, but the national GOP has just added billions to the defense budget, over a trillion dollars to the national deficit, and cut taxes for corporations by more billions.

Third, the reform movement must shoulder a significant part of the blame for demonizing teachers, demoralizing them, and building a reservoir of rage. “Along the way, teachers came to look and feel like targets, rather than beneficiaries, of “school reform,” which may be why bread-and-butter demands from teachers are ascending as the guts of Bush-Obama school reform are sinking to the bottom of the “discarded school reform” sea.”

Fourth, teachers’ strikes and walkouts are succeeding because they have broad appeal.

Fifth, he sees the current moment as a good time to rethink compensation, pensions, and staffing. In the minds of reformers, this could be converted into their usual mindset: merit pay, performance pay, replacing pensions with savings plans, etc. As the Kentucky walkout showed, teachers will not sit still while their retirement benefits are whittled away. Part of the appeal of teaching is the expectation that one will not retire to a life of penury after a career of low-paid service.

This is one of the most hopeful articles I have recently read about the pendulum swing that almost everyone knows is coming.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Hope, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teachers

John Thompson: The Oklahoma Teachers’ Walkout: What We Learned

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2018 //
6

John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, reflects on the recent statewide walkout and the lessons learned.

 

The nine-day Oklahoma teacher walkout was the result of two risky, ideological experiments. As the National Education Association’s Jason Walta explains, the work stoppage also previews the dilemmas that are likely to become more frustrating if the U.S. Supreme Court does what is expected and issues an antiunion decision in Janus v. AFSCME .

https://acslaw.org/acsblog/teachers-walkout-without-bargaining-rights-%E2%80%93-why-it-matters-for-janus

The first theory which drove teachers out of their classrooms was “Supply Side economics.” Oklahoma replicated the extreme budget cutting that Thomas Frank documented in What’s the Matter with Kansas. Income tax cuts that were tilted in favor of the rich cost the state $1 billion per year. The 43rd richest person on the planet and Trump supporter, Harold Hamm, has further enriched himself by ramming though a reduction of oil Gross Production Taxes (GPT) from 7 percent to 2 percent. Consequently, by 2016, the state agencies that provide the most important social and medical services had been cut by one-quarter to one-third of their 2009 levels.

https://okpolicy.org/the-cost-of-tax-cuts-in-oklahoma/

https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2018/04/02/harold-hamm-the-enemy-of-oklahomas-public-educational-funding-fight/

Secondly, the resulting education cutbacks began as corporate school reform was imposed. In 2009, I was surprised to see how many legislators were bringing a New Yorker Magazine to an interim committee on education policy. It featured Steve Brill’s article on the New York City “Rubber Room,” which claimed that value-added teacher evaluations were a valid and reliable tool for firing “bad” teachers. The legislators believed Brill’s flawed reporting and they bought into the corporate school reformers’ self-proclaimed plan which included the replacement of Baby Boomer teachers with twenty-somethings.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-room

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2011/08/grading_the_education_reformers.html

I emailed Brill and learned he didn’t really understand what value-added models could or could not do, and it became clear that he had not properly cross-examined the reformers’ claim that effective teaching, alone, could close the achievement gap. When completing his book, Brill had to make a dramatic change in the pro-reform narrative. Its hero, a 26-year-old with supposedly superhuman stamina and commitment named Jessica Reid, grew too exhausted to continue at her charter school. Today’s worn-down teaching profession is still enduring the effects of schools being “deputized”” as the agents for overcoming poverty.

https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/from-whence-come-ideas-for-reforming-teaching-practices/

Oklahoma joined almost all of the rest of the nation in passing legislation that allowed it to compete for federal Race to the Top funds. Oklahoma’s grant wasn’t funded, but as in more than forty other states, teachers’ due process rights were compromised. The state spent millions of dollars on standardized testing, computer systems for keeping track of test score increases, and for using an unreliable and invalid statistical model for firing teachers. Veteran teachers (and their higher salaries) were often pushed out so newbies could be socialized into bubble-in accountability.

http://newsok.com/article/3432650

Reformers didn’t bother to inventory the capacity that would be required to implement such a half-baked agenda. They simply imposed huge workloads on teachers and administrators trying to comply with dubious mandates. Unions were hard-pressed to merely minimize the damage done.

The experiment failed, and the law was repealed, but the money and energy squandered in the reckless experiment are gone forever.

And that brings us to the ways that the Oklahoma walkout and other teacher revolts in “Right to Work” states preview a new resistance for a post-Janus world. Harold Meyerson recently recalled his old wisecrack, “‘China has strikes but no unions; America has unions but no strikes.’” These teachers’ rebellions show that the United States is “becoming more like China every day.”

http://prospect.org/article/what-teacher-strikes-mean

The Oklahoma walkout epitomizes what could be great and what is worrisome about the new era of political activism which is likely to counter Janus. It was a grassroots uprising, organized on social media. As the National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen Garcia says, this is the “education spring.”

Teachers are challenging a system that had been created by the decades-long campaign to shrink government to the size where it can be strangled in the bathtub. Oklahoma unions and other traditional advocates for progressive causes are stymied by the 3/4ths legislative majority which is required to raise taxes. And term limits mean that the legislature lacks institutional memory. Most lawmakers weren’t in office in 2010 when the fateful decisions were made to gut the progressive tax system and to impose corporate school reform on educators.

In the long run, interactions between a youthful teaching profession and the newbies in the legislature are likely to produce better outcomes. Both groups are now frustrated, but they should recall the advice American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten offered on the first day of the walkout. Weingarten said that in every job action, there is “always a moment of truth.” She also said that it is “as important to find a way back in as it is to find a way out.”

At the end of the first week, it looked like a way back to work had been found. The legislature passed $40 million in additional taxes. When combined with the already agreed upon $6100 average pay raise, 95% of the teachers’ demands would have been met. But the fervor of the teachers at the Capitol meant that union leaders couldn’t call off the work stoppage. Besides, plans had already been made for the next week.

On Sunday, a prayer vigil at the Capitol drew hundreds of supporters. Monday’s crowd was far bigger than the 30,000 to 35,000 people who came to each of the first week’s events. Thousands of education supporters marched from Edmond, Del City, and Norman. The next day, marchers arrived from Tulsa. On Thursday, the Moore schools reopened but hundreds of teachers stayed out of class and marched to the Capitol. Had the walkout ended after one week, teachers could have proclaimed an unambiguous victory, but those and other consciousness-raising accomplishments would not have happened.

Many rank-in-file teachers are frustrated with the decisions to return to school, but several key points must be emphasized. First, it took both the threat of a walkout and an initiative petition to raise the Gross Production Tax to persuade the legislature to increase the GPT to 5%. Now, energies must be devoted to initiatives that would raise it all the way back to 7%, as well as defeating an initiative that would defund the pay increase. Both efforts have great potential for building unity among education allies and dividing their opponents. (The same applies to the need for citizen actions to end the constitutional requirement for a 75% majority to raise taxes, and to curtail extreme gerrymandering.)

http://oklahomawatch.org/2018/04/13/ballot-questions-could-boost-teacher-pay-or-put-raises-at-risk/

Moreover, none of these victories would have been possible without the support of local school boards and district administrations, not to mention students and parents. As it became clear that no new money would be appropriated, teachers needed to support their allies in keeping the rest of the school year from degenerating into chaos.

http://www.oklahoman.com/article/5590781?access=17a8dbf82012571d5b94781d849851c5

Just as important, teachers should remember the needs of state employees who pulled out of the walkout just before the OEA announced its end. The Oklahoma Public Employees said, “Recent discussions focus solely on education funding and exclude public safety, veterans’ services, mental health, protective services or any other state agency services.” Given the legal and political complexities of the job actions, that mistake probably was inevitable. But, educators must refocus on the overall needs of their students and families.

http://newsok.com/article/5590683?utm_source=NewsOK.com&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=ShareBar-Twitter

http://newsok.com/state-agencies-say-they-have-funding-needs-too/article/5589886

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/02/07/harmful-tax-cuts-helped-fuel-oklahomas-budget-woes

Finally, while understanding that this new, evolving activism won’t always be pretty, we should listen to former teacher, Sen. J.J. Dossett (D-Owasso) who says that teachers had been apathetic but tens of thousands of them became activists. Led by teacher-candidates, hundreds of additional candidates filed for office last week, leaving almost no Republicans unchallenged. So, teachers should avoid recriminations, celebrate a victory, and focus on November.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Failure, Oklahoma, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Unions

New Mexico: What I Said in Santa Fe

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2018 //
21

 

I was invited to speak in Santa Fe about the state of education by the Lannan Foundation. Jesse Hagopian, the great teacher activist and test critic from Garfield High School in Seattle, was the interlocutor, who arranged the invitation, introduced me, and led a discussion afterwards.

Here is a summary of the talk.

New Mexico is a purple state with a Republican Governor. The governor brought in Hanna Skandera, an associate of Jeb Bush, to lead the state education department. Skandera introduced every element of the corporate reform program. None of it worked. New Mexico vies with Mississippi and Louisiana for the lowest NAEP scores in the nation. It also has the highest child poverty rate in the nation, at 36%, worse than child poverty in Mississippi. But nothing was done to reduce poverty over the past decade. Instead of doing anything about poverty, medical care, or hunger,  Skandera and Governor Martinez pushed test-based teacher evaluation, charter schools, and school grades. The ultimate endorsement of the vaunted Florida model that Betsy DeVos applauds. The result? Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Mexico, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations
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