Archives for category: Teacher Evaluations
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Indiana: Thousands of Teachers Will Rally on November 19

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2019 //
13

Thousands of teachers from across Indiana will rally in Indianapolis on November 19, seeking better pay and more resources for their students.

Indiana has one of the most reactionary state governments in the nation.

Over 100 districts will close or switch to e-learning for the day.

The state’s largest school district, the Fort Wayne Community Schools, announced that it would close because so many teachers will be joining the protest at the State Capitol.

Many will wear buttons remembering our dear Phyllis Bush, a founding member of the board of the Network for Public Education, a teacher activist and founder of the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education, who died eight months ago but left behind hundreds and thousands of admirers inspired by her passion for public education. Phyllis’s wife, Donna Roof, and her many former students and friends will be at the rally on November 19, remembering the dedication, love, and wit that Phyllis brought to her role as a teacher and as an advocate for public schools.

 

Categories Education Reform, Indiana, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teachers

Florida: Teachers Reject Governor DeSantis’ Bonus Plan

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2019 //
5

The Florida Education Association rejected Governor Ron DeSantis’ bonus plan. Bonus plans have a long history of failure.

 

Nov. 14, 2019                                        CONTACT: Joni Branch, (850) 201-3223 or (850) 544-7055

FEA reacts to DeSantis bonus plan announcement

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Education Association (FEA) was disappointed to learn Thursday that what Gov. Ron DeSantis envisions as a way to properly compensate experienced teachers is another bonus plan.

“Teachers and all school employees should be paid fair, competitive salaries,” said FEA President Fedrick Ingram. “Our educators do not want another bonus scheme, especially not one built on the back of a flawed school grading system. Bonuses don’t help you qualify for a mortgage; they can’t be counted on from year to year. We know that all too well here in Florida, where adjusting the current bonus plan is almost an annual event.”

The bonus plan announced Thursday and DeSantis’ minimum teacher salary proposal provide no benefit to many of the school employees who provide essential services to students. Despite the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission’s call for more support in addressing mental health needs in our schools, the plans do not appear to account for guidance counselors, school psychologists, social workers and other mental health professionals. The plans as outlined also leave out thousands of other employees, including pre-K teachers, librarians, nurses, teacher’s aides, bus drivers, custodians, office personnel and food-service staff.

But the basic fact on bonuses is that they do not work. Merit pay and bonus structures for instructional personnel have been tried again and again both in this country and this state, for decades, without proven success. Florida has tried six bonus programs in the past 13 years. Meanwhile, we face a severe teacher shortage along with shortages of other school employees. Why do we continue to throw money at a failed concept? State dollars would be better spent on an effective strategy for recruiting and retaining educators — overall salary increases.

To overcome years of disinvestment in our public schools, the Florida Education Association is calling for a Decade of Progress, starting with a down-payment of $2.4 billion for public education in the next state budget. Florida currently ranks 43th nationally in funding for public education.

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The Florida Education Association is the state’s largest association of professional employees, with more than 145,000 members. FEA represents pre K-12 teachers, higher education faculty, educational staff professionals, students at our colleges and universities preparing to become teachers and retired education employees.

 

FEA | 213 S. Adams St. Tallahassee, FL 32301 | 850.201.2800 | Fax 850.222.1840
Send an email to unsubscribe@floridaea.org to opt-out from receiving future messages. Only the individual sender is responsible for the content of the message, and the message does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Florida Education Association or its affiliates. This e-mail, including attachments, may contain information that is confidential, and is only intended for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed.

 

Categories Education Reform, Florida, Merit pay, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Unions

Denver Area: Teacher-Backed Candidates Sweep All But One School Board Races

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2019 //
5

Candidates backed by teachers for local school boards in the Denver area (including Denver) won all but one race.

Candidates supported by the teachers’ unions swept school board elections in Denver, Aurora, Douglas County, Littleton, Adams County, Cherry Creek, and Jeffco. The only candidate to lose was in Jeffco.

The “reformers” bold experiment in teacher-bashing has come to an end, at least for now.

Now it is time for the Colorado legislature to eliminate former state senator Michael Johnston’s failed educator evaluation law, which bases 50% of evaluations on test scores. The law was declared a failure even by its supporters but remains on the books. It did not identify “bad” teachers and it did not produce “great teachers, great principals, or great schools,” as Johnston promised in 2010 when his law was passed.

Reformer Van Schoales wrote in Education Week two years ago:

Colorado Department of Education data released in February show that the distribution of teacher effectiveness in the state looks much as it did before passage of the bill. Eighty-eight percent of Colorado teachers were rated effective or highly effective, 4 percent were partially effective, 7.8 percent of teachers were not rated, and less than 1 percent were deemed ineffective. In other words, we leveraged everything we could and not only didn’t advance teacher effectiveness, we created a massive bureaucracy and alienated many in the field.

The problem, he said, was implementation. Every failed reform is dogged by poor implementation. That’s what they said about the Soviet Union and the Common Core.

When the Waltons paid for an analysis of their failure to pass a referendum to expand charter schools in Massachusetts in 2016, their advisors told them that teachers are trusted messengers. The public likes teachers and believes them. They are more credible than out of state billionaires. The Waltons, too, concluded that the problem with their message was poor implementation, not a rejection by the public, which values its public schools (I go into greater detail in my new book SLAYING GOLIATH, which will be published January 21.)

 

 

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Denver, Education Reform, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Unions, VAM (value-added modeling)

How a Minnesota Foundation Wasted $45 Million on a Failed Plan to Reform Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
26

Rob Levine, a Resistance-to-Privatization blogger in Minneapolis, reports here on the failure of the Bush Foundation’s bold “teacher effectiveness” initiative, which cost $45 million. All wasted.

The foundation set bold goals. It did not meet any of them.

Levine writes:

Ten years ago the St Paul-based Bush Foundation embarked on what was at the time its most expensive and ambitious project ever: a 10-year, $45 million effort called the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative (TEI). The advent of the TEI coincided with the implementation of a new operating model at the foundation. Beginning in 2009 it would mostly would run its own programs, focusing on three main areas: .

  • “developing courageous leaders and engaging communities in solving problems”
  • “…supporting the self-determination of Native nations”
  • “…increasing the educational achievement of all students”

Bush foundation president Peter Hutchinson told a news conference that the initiative would “increase by 50 percent the number of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who go to college.”

The Teacher Effectiveness Initiative was the foundation’s real-world application of its broad educational philosophy. Peter Hutchinson, the foundation’s president at the time, told a news conference announcing the plan that the initiative would “increase by 50 percent the number of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who go to college.” How was this miraculous achievement to be done? By “[enabling] the redesign of teacher-preparation programs” at a range of higher educational institutions where teachers are educated in the three-state area.

The foundation also said that, through “Consistent, effective teaching” it would “close the achievement gap.” It would achieve these goals by “producing 25,000 new, effective teachers by 2018.”

Not only was the Bush Foundation going to do all these things, but they would prove it with metrics. It contracted with an organization called the Value Added Research Center (VARC) to expand its Value Added Model (VAM) to track test scores of students who were taught by teachers graduated from one of its programs. The foundation, which paid VARC more than $2 million for its work, would use those test scores to rate the teachers ‘produced’ – even giving $1,000 bonuses to the programs for each ‘effective’ teacher.

10 years later: Fewer students in college, ‘achievement gap’ unchanged

By just about any measure the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative was a failure. Some of the top-line goals were missed by wide margins. The promise of 50% more college students in the tri-state area over the 10 years of the project? In reality, in Minnesota alone the number of post-secondary students enrolled actually dropped from almost 450,000 in 2009 to 421,000 in 2017 – a decline of about six percent.

Just one more example of the complete and utter failure of the hoax of “reform,” which was always about privatization and union-busting, not improving schools or helping students.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Meet the Democrats Who Support the Betsy DeVos Agenda

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2019 //
62

 

Every year since 2014, Democrats who fervently support the privatization of public schools have gathered at a conference they pretentiously call “Camp Philos.”

https://campphilos.org/

Check the agenda of meetings present and past.

There you will see the lineup of Democrats who sneer at public schools and look on public school teachers with contempt.

These are the Democrats who support the DeVos agenda of disrupting and privatizing public schools.

They are meeting again this year, and they will slap each other on the back for supporting school closures, charter schools, high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students, and hiring inexperienced teachers.

They have the chutzpah to call themselves “stakeholders,” although none of them are teachers, parents of public school students, or have any stake in the public schools that enroll 85-90% of all American students. Exactly what do they have a “stake” in?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Democrats for Education Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hypocrisy, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Michael Bennett Releases His Education Agenda, Praised by Arne Duncan

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2019 //
39

Are you longing for a return of Race to the Top and its principles of high-stakes testing, competition, and charter schools? Then Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado is your man. He released his plan today in Iowa and it won praise from Arne Duncan. Try to forget that Race to the Top and George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind were virtually the same. Try to forget that both failed, having inflicted disruption on American schools for 20 long and fruitless years.

Warren has thus far been silent on K-12 Education. Sanders has released a thoughtful and comprehensive proposal called the Thurgood Marshall plan, which pledges tripling the funding for Title 1, dedication to desegregation, and a moratorium on new charter schools.

Bennett’s announcement:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, September 6, 2019
CONTACT:
Shannon Beckham, 602-402-8051,
press@michaelbennet.com

ICYMI: Michael Bennet Joins Iowa Teachers, Parents, and Preschoolers to Unveil
Comprehensive Education
Agenda

DES MOINES, IA — Michael Bennet on Thursday joined teachers, parents, and preschoolers
in Iowa to unveil the most comprehensive education agenda of any candidate, declaring “equal must be equal” if America’s children are to reach their full potential. The plan was welcomed by education experts, including former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who said Bennet “understands this work in a way few can, because he has lived it.”

Read more about Bennet’s events in Iowa and the reaction from education experts below.

Read the full plan at
MichaelBennet.com/Education.

Bennet started the day by dropping off school supplies at the Jesse Franklin Taylor Early
Childhood Education Center in Des Moines before hosting a roundtable discussion with educators and touring preschool classrooms.

Later, Bennet met with a group of Iowa teachers and school board members to hear about the challenges they are facing in their classrooms.

He then joined 2017 Iowa Teacher of the Year Shelly Vroegh to host a town hall forum at Central Campus in Des Moines, where students are receiving the career and technical training that is a core element of Bennet’s education plan. He answered questions from parents, teachers, and advocates about how his experience has informed his agenda.

WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: “I was lucky enough to lead CPS when Michael Bennet was doing the same in Denver—I learned a lot from him. Maybe more importantly, I have seen his heart for the children and communities that need the most help. He understands this work in a way few can, because he has lived it.”

Executive Director of Next100 Emma Vadehra:
“Senator Bennet understands the connection between opportunity and education from
his time successfully running a major urban school district. He knows what works and what doesn’t, and I’m glad he continues to make educational equity a major focus of his campaign, from high-quality early learning to meaningful college and career opportunities, and everything in between.”

Former Senior Policy Advisor to the Under Secretary of Education Michael Dannenberg: “Whereas
Donald Trump strives and thrives on dividing America, Bennet is campaigning on a vision where folks come together at the local level, since Washington can’t seem to, on a goal everyone can support—ensuring that every child, every young person gets a real chance at living the American Dream. He’s putting forth an agenda that strives for unity, embraces decentralized pragmatic problem solving, and is directed at progressive goals with accountability attached—it’s quintessential Michael Bennet.”

Education Research Alliance for New Orleans Director Douglas Harris:
“It’s the best education plan I’ve seen so far.”

WHAT THE PRESS IS SAYING

Education Week:
“Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet criticized his opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday, saying they’ve focused too much on ambitious proposals to forgive student debt and not enough on yawning inequality in the nation’s K-12 education system. Bennet…imagines a ‘new American Dream’ built on regional and state-federal partnerships to ensure children meet milestones of well-being and opportunity. Among those milestones: Children should be able to read by 3rd grade, and they should be able to enter college without needing remediation.”

Des Moines Register: “When asked about the issues facing American education, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet tends to stray from the popular college tuition discussion and instead focuses on a constituency that won’t earn him an Iowa caucus vote. Preschoolers. … ‘The burden…is carried most by the kids.’”

Associated Press:
“Besides free, universal preschool and free community college, Bennet says he wants to eventually have debt-free public colleges. In K-12 schools, Bennet wants to increase federal spending to reduce local education disparities that lead to wealthy areas getting more school dollars than poorer ones.”

The Hill: “[Bennet] unveiled a sweeping education plan that would offer ‘every child’
an opportunity to ‘flourish’ by 2028 and promises free preschool and community college. Bennet, a former superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, said he’s introducing the plan to rectify historic racial and wealth disparities in the public education system.”

Forbes:
“Bennet’s plan includes early childhood and K-12—which is notable given the silence on K-12 issues amongst most campaigns—but his higher education plan is in strong contrast to candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders…This plan could help Bennet stand out in the field with a detailed plan addressing education from early childhood all the way to higher education.”

Iowa Starting Line:
“Understanding the economic impact and problems with our education system highlight Bennet’s background, with time in the education and business sectors. It’s also what makes him not a single-issue candidate; he understands how this single, important issue interacts with other issues and circumstances.”

WHO TV:
“‘My sense traveling around Iowa is that you are suffering from the same thing we
are in Colorado which is just a complete under investment in the public education system,’
Bennet said, ‘We
are not investing the way that our parents and grandparents invested in us. It’s not even close.’”

CBS 2: “Bennet highlighted the importance of early childhood
education during his roundtable with educators in Des Moines, but he spent little time talking about about his education policy—instead insisting that he get input from those experiencing it first-hand.”

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Categories Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Jeannie Kaplan: “Education Reform” Was a Hoax from the Start

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2019 //
38

 

Jeannie Kaplan was twice elected to the school board in Denver. She has long been active in civil rights and education issues. She has been a persistent and vocal critic of school closings, choice, and boasting about paltry gains in test scores. She was ignored by the “Reformers” like Michael Bennett and Tom Boasberg. As “Reform” money poured into Denver elections, the grassroots candidates she favored were defeated time and again, and Denver’s school board became unanimous for disruption.

When she recently read a blunt admission by her fellow Coloradan Van Schoales that “reform as we know it, is over,” she was astonished, outraged, and not amused.

Here is her response.

She summarized it in the title of her post: “OMG, ICYMI, SMDH.”

For a translation, open the link.

She begins:

Soooooo…it appears   “The education reform movement as we have known it is over.”  This from none other than “education reformer” extraordinaire, Van Schoales,  writing in the May 6, 2019 Education Week: Education Reform as We Know It Is Over.  What Have We Learned? Along his way to becoming the president of Colorado’s own reform-oriented “oversight” committee, A+ Colorado , Van has worked at Denver’s Piton Foundation and Education Reform Now (ERN), the advocacy arm of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).  He has also been integrally involved with starting and supporting local charter schools and drafting statewide education reform-oriented legislation. When Denver media has needed a quote to support “education reform” outcomes, whom have they called?  Not Ghost Busters!  No, their go-to guy has been Van Schoales. So his partial about face in his recent post in Education Week is quite surprising.  In his words:

 “There are three primary reasons that education reforms failed to live up to our expectations: too few teacher-led reforms, a lack of real community support from those most impacted, and a lack of focus on policy change for public schools across the board, not just the lowest of low-performing schools.” 

Gee.  Who knew?

If I weren’t so darn mad, I’d be shedding tears of laughter.  If we hadn’t fought and fought and fought against “education reform” for the last 15 years, foretelling the recent conclusions of ed reformers,” the whole education reform movement could be viewed as a bad joke.  If we the taxpayers hadn’t spent hundreds of millions of dollars and if we the people hadn’t lost at least a generation of students and teachers to the chaos and churn and complete lack of common sense of “education reform,” we could all be lifting a glass of whatever to toasting “we told you so.”  If only the past 15 years could have been a bad dream, and we could all be like Dorothy and wake up in our safe places, wiping out the nightmare. But alas, that is not the case. And even with these mea culpas coming from unexpected places, most reformers are still unwilling to fully accept the disasters they have wrought upon community after community, most of which just happen to be populated primarily by people of color.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Hoax, Teacher Evaluations

Boston Picks a New City Superintendent

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2019 //
6

 

The board of the Boston Public Schools selected Brenda Cassellius as its new superintendent. She is the former state superintendent in Minnesota, where she served from 2010 until last January. She is an educator, not a refugee from the corporate world, so that’s a good sign.

The board hopes she will repair relationships that frayed during the brief tenure of Tommy Chang. It is also hoping she will raise test scores,  stop the decline of enrollment, and close achievement gaps.

That is a tall order for any superintendent, and Cassellius would be wise to set her sights on realistic and achievable goals. She will need to obtain new state resources to improve struggling schools, for example, by using research-based methods like reducing class sizes for the students who need e trap attention and support.

”Reformers” like to set public schools up to fail by setting unrealistic goals that they can’t reach in their charters except by kicking out kids they don’t want. The public schools must enroll everyone, including the kids pushed out by charters.

One troubling note. In interviews, Cassellius identified one of her “victories”:

She pointed out that while she served for eight years as education commissioner, she pulled together the state’s teachers union and the administrator and school board associations to craft a new teacher evaluation system. The process included trade-offs, including a major concession by teachers: the use of student test scores in their performance reviews, a practice that teachers nationwide tend to oppose.

Does she know that test-based evaluation has been discredited over the past five years? Does she know that the Gates-funded program to try this methodology in three urban districts and four charter chains was evaluated by AIR and RAND and found to have no effect, other than to discourage teachers from teaching high-needs students, who are likely to reduce their ranking? It did not raise test scores or graduation rates, did not close achievement gaps, and did not weed out “bad” teachers. Teachers oppose it because it is unfair and ineffective.

Cassellius does not arrive spouting Reformer ideology. That’s a good sign. Bostonians must work together to support their public schools and to restore confidence in them. If she can do that, she will succeed.

Categories Accountability, Boston, Education Reform, Funding, Minnesota, Teacher Evaluations

Teachers! Please Help Tim Slekar with His Research into the Reasons for the Teacher Shortage!

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2019 //
16

Tim Slekar, dean of Edgewood College in Wisconsin and consummate education activist, is writing a book about the teacher shortage and he needs your help if you are or were a teacher.

He wrote:

Attention Teachers. According to the media we are facing a teacher shortage. I disagree. We have a teacher exodus that is the result of 30 + years of “accountability.”
I need your voices.
Can you take a moment and answer these questions and send them to me on email (timslekar@gmail.com). Anonymity is promised. But I want to tell your story.
1) Why did you go into teaching?
2) What has changed during your time as a teacher?
3) Are you being asked to do things that do not benefit kids? Name some.
4) Have you thought about leaving teaching? Have you left teaching? Why?
5) What would it take to remoralize you and stay in the profession and or make you want to get back into it?
Please respond using this survey.

We are far from perfect
But perfect as we are.
We are bruised, we are broken
But we are god damn works of art!
Rise Against

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

New Mexico: New Democratic Governor Eliminates A-F School Grades

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
56

One of Jeb Bush’s signature initiatives–and possibly the stupidest–was giving schools letter grades of A-F.

Schools are complex institutions with many individuals engaged in their work, some doing better jobs than others, some essential, some not. No complex institution should be graded A-F. No individual child should be graded with a single letter, A-F. Imagine if your child came home with a report card that held only one letter, A-F. As a parent, you would be outraged. You would know that she was good at this, not so good at that, that there were many ways of describing her efforts and abilities and skills and work. How dumb it is to grade an entire school with a single letter.

Yet the Florida model of testing, accountability, choice, punishments, and rewards goes wherever there are rightwing zealots who want to destroy public education.

New Mexico had the misfortune of electing a Republican governor who wanted to be just like Jeb. She hired a non-educator, Hannah Skandera, as the state’s commissioner of education (Skandera had worked for Jeb), and she tried to import the Florida model. After seven years, Skandera left, and New Mexico saw zero improvement in education by any metric.

Fortunately Susana Martinez was replaced by a Democratic governor, former Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has been removing every trace of the Florida model. In January she eliminated the state’s disastrous teacher-evaluation system and the hated PARCC tests, which had been imposed by Martinez’s executive orders.

Yesterday, with the stroke of a pen, she repealed the state’s A-F grading system. The state’s Public Education Department must now devise a new accountability system to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. The bill now under consideration in the legislature calls for a “dashboard showing how each of the state’s public schools are faring in terms of graduation rates, student proficiency outcomes, reliance on federal Title I funds and the progress of English-language learners.”

Of course, this too appeals to the idea that parents are consumers, not citizens bound to work together for better public schools.

New Mexico has extremely high levels of child poverty, the second worst in the nation after Mississippi. Standards, accountability, and choice doesn’t cure that. It also ranks at the very bottom of NAEP, close to the other poor states. The Florida Model pretends that poverty doesn’t matter. Skandera’s failure proved that it does.

Here is the system that is being dropped:

The state currently grades schools on a complex range of measures, including graduation rates, student performance on standardized tests, student attendance and parental involvement in schools. Advocates believe these grades provide a clear picture of how schools are performing and encourage communities to help struggling schools. Critics say the formula is so confusing that the grades are of little use. They also complain that the system relies too much on standardized test scores.

Several years ago, a group of Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists said even they struggled to make sense of the complicated grading system.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Common Core, Education Industry, Florida, New Mexico, Teacher Evaluations
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