Archives for category: Teacher Evaluations
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When Teachers Said “NO” to Race to the Top

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2012 //
23

Anthony Cody reports that teachers in Sacramento and Fresno rejected participation in Race to the Top.

They reject the program’s heavy emphasis on testing and basing their evaluation on test scores.

Cody wonders why President Obama insists that Race to the Top is not “top down.” Of course, it is top down. It reflects what the Obama administration wants, not what teachers believe is right for their students.

Why does President Obama says he opposes “teach to the test” when his signature program compels teachers to teach to the test?

Why does President Obama claim that Race to the Top is “working” and getting results?

It is not working, it is being imposed. And it has no results other than demoralized teachers.

Categories Federal Waiver, Obama, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

ALEC Triumphant in Louisiana

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2012 //
10

I wrote a post about radical legislation in Pennsylvania that will authorize the Governor to create a charter commission with power to overturn local decisions. This legislation was written by the corporate-funded organization ALEC.

The Louisiana legislature passed the radical ALEC agenda last spring. Teachers lost tenure; unqualified people can become teachers. Test scores determine teachers’ careers. More than half the state’s students are eligible for vouchers, with some going to fundamentalist schools. Charters will pop up everywhere. Students can take their tuition money to online schools that get poor results, or to any snake-oil salesman that hangs out a shingle and pretends to be an educator.

Everything comes out of the minimum foundation funding for public schools, which is supposedly illegal, but who cares? Lots of new opportunities to make a buck in Louisiana or any other state that passes ALEC model legislation.

A reader in Louisiana notes that the proposed governor’s commission, stripping local boards of their decision-making powers, has already passed in his state:

This legislation was passed in Louisiana last spring. Don’t let this happen to Penn -teachers get the word out to fight this. This December our Board of Education will present the first list of applicants to fall under this new provision and they have shown that they decry true accountability. My school district,St. Tammany Parish, is the highest performing large school district in the state with highest average ACT score in the state and above the national average. We have never allowed charters but we are now expecting to be invaded. One prospective charter operator is advertising on Craig’s List for personnel to open an “international school.” He is a former instructor of Muslim studies at the Air Force Academy (5years) from Edinburgh, Scotland. Where do these charter promoters come from and how do end up here.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Louisiana, On-Line Education, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure

The Best Shanker Blog on Misuse of Testing

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2012 //
5

Matthew DiCarlo, the lead author of the Shanker Blog, is a smart social scientist who analyzes research and data with care, never with ideology or an axe to grind.

We have had one area of disagreement in recent years. I have become sick of the misuse of testing, I no longer believe in test-based accountability. Matt sees value in testing and accountability.

Today he has a blog that is very powerful on this very subject. He calls it “Assessing Ourselves to Death.” Read it.
It is outstanding.

I couldn’t have said it better myself (although he still leaves some room for test-based accountability, while I still maintain that TBA is unworthy and creates perverse incentives for score inflation, cheating, curriculum narrowing, etc., all of which destroy educational values).

Categories Accountability, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Hey, Arne, Read This

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2012 //
16

In an earlier post, a parent expressed frustration that her child’s teacher never explained how awful the testing is, how it was stealing time from instruction and was of little or no value.

Many teachers wrote to say that without tenure, they can’t take any risks, can’t upset administrators, can’t speak up without endangering their jobs.

This parent has a different take. I wish Arne Duncan would read this and realize that he is destroying teacher morale and professionalism in schools across the nation. His policies are misguided at best, deceptive and harmful at worst.

I spoke to the teachers at my sons’s school. They are EXHAUSTED. They hate the testing, they are fearful for their jobs but they are even more fearful that their beloved principal will be replaced if they don’t follow these crazy mandates. They are on a watch list now due to NCLB mandates ( special ed failure rate had dipped). This is the BEST school in the whole district- national ranking for newspaper, mock trial, debate, the highest SAT scores in the district, the highest number of AP passing exams score in the district and is ranked in the country. These fantastic teachers, who are dedicated to special needs students and needs of special students, are being crucified by the weekly lesson plans, the state oversight by under-aware and under trained ‘professionals’. These teachers HATE the tests being implemented by this VAM measure that is their prize for winning RTT. They are ridiculous tests that have no merit but the teachers who give their all to the kids in the class and before and after are flat out EXHAUSTED by these VAM measures.

Burning out teachers, who are seasoned and fantastic professionals, for no educational reason at all. That is why parents don’t know.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Can Someone Explain? Mr. Gates? Secretary Duncan?

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2012 //
27

State after state is imposing new teacher evaluation systems that have never worked anywhere else; new pay structures that no one understands; eliminating collective bargaining rights; removing tenure to make it easier to fire teachers.

All of this is allegedly to “improve” the teaching profession.

But this is what is happening on the ground. Bill Gates, if you are reading this, can you please explain? Arne Duncan, this is what you brought about through your Race to the Top, perhaps you could explain.

Can anyone explain how these measures improve the teaching profession?

I’m a first grade teacher in Indianapolis. We cannot even get anyone to explain to us what the new pay structure is for our school district. We know we will no longer be given pay increases…..we’ve been told nothing about bonus pay, or starting salaries. Our union has no power since our legislature stripped it in this last session. I understand that we want to hold teachers accountable, but I think it is not unreasonable to expect that I be at least told what my pay structure will be so I know what to work towards. I’ve earned a masters degree, two separate certifications and have 16 years of experience in inner city schools. I do what I do because I love it and I make a difference. I’m tired of being demonized and demoralized in the press because I want to know whether or not I am going to be able to continue to support my family. These new evaluation systems are so complicated and at the same time vague and ambiguous. I’m in the process right now of writing my state approved forms for my administrator for part of my evaluation and I’m overwhelmed by what I must now do. People believe all of this paperwork and bureaucracy is going to make better teachers, but in reality it is driving people from the profession. College enrollment in education programs has dropped dramatically over the last 5 years. Who would want to be a teacher in this climate? I don’t know about Chicago and DC, but in Indianapolis, we are all frustrated and worried about the future of our schools.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Indiana, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

What Happened When an Engineer Became a Teacher

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
1

A reader writes in response to an earlier post:

I too started with degrees in physics and engineering (and later an M.Ed. that you will hear about). By choice, I walked out of an engineering job, and a few days later into a high-school classroom several hundred miles away as a full-time science teacher (they probably wouldn’t let me do that nowadays). I never found the job hard, just fun and exhausting. That first year they gave me five classes and four preparations. The other teachers in the science department looked at me strangely when I told them that – I was the new guy, I had never taught before: two preps were desirable, three was considered the maximum and difficult, four was tantamount to suicide. They waited for me to collapse. It took until February. And I was designing the curriculum for each course that I taught on a day-to-day basis: Physics Level I, Physics Level II, Chemistry Level I, and Chemistry Level II. I was out for a week with flu probably brought on by exhaustion. After that I learned to pace myself a little better. You see I was also taking a course at night toward earning my M.Ed., which was a requirement in my contract, and when spring semester had started at the University I was hosting student interns into my classes so they could earn their teaching certificates! I did that because I could earn enough tuition credits to pay for my M.Ed. I continued teaching for another 15 years at all levels (elementary through college), including teaching a graduate-level course to elementary school teachers at the University on how to make computer-based instructional videos with software I developed on the fly. This was about 35 or 40 years before Khan Academy… there’s more, but you get the picture. Now, I have some advice for people who want a single-point statistic to measure teacher performance …………. I’m sorry, they won’t let me print that in a nice blog like this.

Categories Curriculum, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Arne Duncan Feels Your Pain

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
27

In a speech at the National Press Club, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reached out to the nation’s teachers to assure them that he understands how they feel.

He understands that change is hard, especially when almost every state and district is imposing untested, experimental and possibly destructive methods of evaluation on them.

The end game, he is sure, will be higher test scores.

Of course, no one should be evaluated by a single score.

Truly, he understands. Message: I care.

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

Bill Moyers on ALEC

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
4

Because I was traveling in Texas over the weekend, I didn’t see Bill Moyers’ report on ALEC. I watched it last night, and I hope you will too.

If you want to understand how we are losing our democracy, watch this program.

If you want to know why so many states are passing copycat legislation to suppress voters’ rights, to eliminate collective bargaining, to encourage online schooling, to privatize public education, watch this program.

ALEC brings together lobbyists for major corporations and elected state officials in luxurious resorts. In its seminars, the legislators learn how to advance corporate-sponsored, free-market ideas in their state. Its model legislation is introduced in state after state, often with minimal or no changes in the wording.

Watch Moyers show how Tennessee adopted ALEC’s online school bill and how Arizona is almost a wholly owned ALEC state. Watch how Scott Walker followed the ALEC template.

Moyers could do an entire special on ALEC’s education bills. ALEC promotes the parent trigger, so that parents can be tricked into handing their public schools over to charter chains. ALEC promotes gubernatorial commissions with the power to over-ride the decisions of local school boards to open more charters. ALEC promotes vouchers. ALEC, as he noted, promotes virtual charter schools (Pearson’s Connections Academy and K12 wrote the ALEC model law). ALEC has model legislations for vouchers for students with special needs. ALEC has a model law to allow people to teach without credentials. ALEC has legislation to eliminate tenure protection. ALEC has model legislation for educator evaluation.

It is all so familiar, isn’t it?

ALEC wants nothing less than to privatize public education, to eliminate unions, and to dismantle the education profession.

Categories ALEC, Education Industry, For-Profit, K12 Inc., On-Line Education, Parent trigger, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Tennessee, Testing, Unions, US Education

The Ultimate Insult to Louisiana Teachers

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
14

John White, the State Commissioner of Education in Louisiana, has low regard for experience. After all, he became a state commissioner despite never having been a principal or a superintendent or having any other notable administrative experience. He did, however, teach for two years as part of Teach for America.

Acting on his convictions that experience doesn’t matter, he appointed Molly Horstman, a 27-year-old with two years of TFA teaching in New Orleans to take charge of teacher evaluations for the state of Louisiana. Horstman graduated from college in 2007 and now she will be in charge of deciding how to evaluate teachers who have been in the classroom as long as she has been alive. The fact that she has no experience evaluating teachers is irrelevant.

Critics note that Horstman allowed her teaching certificate to lapse. Experienced teachers are outraged. This is just one more insult–although some call it the ultimate insult– hurled by state bureaucrats at people who have made a career in the classroom. What more can the Jindal administration think up to discourage and insult the state’s teachers?

Jersey Jazzman, one of the best bloggers in the universe, read this story and he was incensed. Read his take, which is as usual spot on.

If you ever want to know what is happening in Louisiana, this is the blog that gives the inside scoop, written by Michael Deshotels.

Categories Louisiana, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

US Dept of Ed: More Millions for Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
12

The Gates Foundation has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into teacher evaluation programs.

The US Department of Education has used its billions in Race to the Top funding to push for teacher evaluation programs.

The spigot is still open!

The big winner of the latest grants is the District of Columbia, which presumably already has Michelle Rhee’s IMPACT program. But nonetheless, it just won another $23 million of our taxpayer dollars.

Millions more went to Los Angeles and to charter schools. The teachers’ union in LA still has not agreed to accept test-based evaluations. Seems someone there has read the research and knows how useless this stuff is.

Arne Duncan is certainly priming the pump where it matters least.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education, Unions
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