Stand for Choldren endorsed five Republican candidates in Colorado, and all five lost!
A friend in Denver reports:
“In addition to going for Obama tonight, Colorado stood up to Stand for Children. All 5 Democratic candidates where SFC supported Republican opponents won, albeit one by 115 votes.
“Maybe they have overstepped their “power.” And earlier in the day I heard the Colorado Executive Director of said organization resigned.
“Now back to getting public education back.”
Linda Darling-Hammond and Edward Haertel of Stanford University explain why value-added assessment doesn’t work and how inaccurate it is.
Will John Deasy listen? Will the Gates Foundation listen?
Will the Los Angeles Times, which published their article, stop seeking names to publish inaccurate data about teacher “effectiveness”?
A group called Education Voters of Idaho refused to disclose its donors until required to do so by a court order.
The biggest donor is a businessman who is an investor in K12, the online charter corporation ($250,000); the second biggest donor is Mayor Michael Bloomberg ($200,000).
EVI promotes the anti-union, anti-teacher, privatizing policies of state superintendent Tom Luna. Supporters of public education are seeking to repeal the Luna laws, which are deceptively called “Students Come First.” The phrase echoes Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and Joel Klein’s Children’s First.
Luna has received heavy funding from technology corporations, and his laws mandate the purchase of a laptop computer for every student, and every student must take two online courses for graduation. They eliminate tenure and seniority. They require that student test scores count for 50% of every educator’s evaluation, including district superintendents, principals and teachers. All educators will have a one or two year contract. They initiate bonus pay based on test scores for all educators. Teachers will not get a written explanation if the principal decides to fire them.
A sample of one of the laws:
School districts no longer have to prove a financial emergency before reducing teacher numbers. School boards can reduce teacher numbers at their discretion but cannot consider seniority when deciding who to eliminate.
Long ago there was an organization called Stand for Children that advocated for children and their public schools. Unfortunately, the organization jumped on the money train and joined the corporate reform movement. Now it is flush with cash. It still pretends to care about children but it uses its clout to strip teachers of any rights and to advocate for privatization. It is anti-teacher, anti-union, and anti-public education. Some of its former supporters now refer to the organization as Stand on Children.
In Colorado, where there is a heated contest for control of the Legislature, Stand on Children removed the mask. It has endorsed five Republicans who support privatization. Corporate money is bolstering the GOP campaigns, along with Stand on Children and Wall Street hedge fund groups devoted to privatization of Colorado’s public schools.
If you live in Colorado, please support these five Democrats:
Evie Hudak (SD 19)
Andy Kerr (SD 22)
Daniel Kagan (HD 3)
Brittany Petterson (HD 28)
Max Tyler (HD 23)
Public education advocates also urge a NO vote on Bond 3B, which allocates disproportionate funding to charter schools while neglecting the needs of students who are poor, black, and Hispanic and attending overcrowded schools.
Opponents of the bond say:
• A zip code shouldn’t determine the quality of a child’s education. This bond reinforces that race and class still largely determine which children are prioritized depending on where they live.
• Though SW Denver’s low-income children have suffered years of chronic overcrowding, there is little money allocated through the bond to address the needs of the 12 SW Denver schools which are over 100% capacity.
• Lincoln High School will remain overcrowded. Lincoln is the only high school designated by the district for English Language Learners. Many students must travel from throughout the district to attend this program.
• Charter schools will get millions of taxpayer dollars at the expense of neighborhood schools. Nearly 40% of non- technology monies will go to select charter schools. Of the $119M for new facility capacity, $80.6M will go to charter schools directly or through co-locations.
• Nearly $40 million or 32% of the new facility bond funds will go to Stapleton even though there is space in nearby schools. Manual High (4.4 miles from central Stapleton) and George Washington High (4.9 miles) have a combined 1500 open seats, and Smiley Middle School (2 miles) has 381 open seats. The planned location of the proposed Stapleton high school, at 56th and Spruce St, is 3.8 miles from central Stapleton.
• The amount to build a Stapleton high school is more than all bond monies allocated for the high schools of East, George Washington, North, South, Kennedy, Lincoln and TJ combined.
TeachPlus is one of those Gates-funded teacher organizations that is supposed to provide a different perspective on teaching than the teachers’ unions. It can be counted on to advocate for the interests of new teachers who allegedly want merit pay, don’t care about job protections, and want to be judged by the test scores of their students. The teachers for whom it seems to speak are part of the New American Economy, where jobs are short-term, not seen as part of a career.
TeachPlus has just conducted a survey of teachers. Its first startling discovery is that “For the first time in almost a half-century, teachers with ten or fewer years experience comprise over 50% of the teaching force. We refer to these teachers as the New Majority.” This “new generation” of teachers–unlike, we may suppose, the older generation of veterans–have “high expectations for their students and a strong desire to build a profession based on high standards.”
The “new generation” wants student growth to be part of teacher evaluations (the veterans do not); the new generation wants students growth to count for at least 20 percent of their evaluation (the veterans do not); the new generation wants to change compensation and tenure so younger teachers (themselves) can get higher salaries (the veterans do not). The veterans want licensure tests to cover the skills needed in the classroom (the new generation does not).
Both generations agree they need more time to collaborate with their peers. Both agree on the importance of clear and measurable standards.
And here is the interesting part:
Both agree that current evaluations are not helpful in improving practice (what are current evaluation? Using test scores to measure teacher quality.)
Both agree that a longer school day would not be helpful “to support students more effectively.”
Both agree that increasing class size to pay some teachers more would be a mistake.
The takeaway: Teachers, young and old, agree and disagree on various “reform” proposals.
On two issues they are united: They do not see the value of a longer school day, and they do not want larger class sizes in exchange for higher pay.
But a matter that should concern us all: Current “reform” policies are driving experienced teachers out of the nation’s classrooms. This cannot be good for anyone. It is certainly not good for the young teachers, who need senior teachers to help them improve.
How can a profession become “great” by demoralizing and ousting those who know the most?
Who would go to a hospital in an emergency and insist on being treated by an intern, not a senior physician?
Who would want their legal affairs to be handled by a lawyer who just graduated law school if they could get a senior partner instead?
When will President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and all the other people driving current policy realize that they are inflicting harm on the nation’s education system?
Jonathan Raymond, superintendent of the Sacramento City school district, has some lessons for New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Friedman recently raved about the success of Race to the Top, claiming that it was preparing students for the high-skill jobs of the new economy.
Raymond says this is wrong. Race to the Top is divisive and subjects schools to derision.
It is top-down, heavy-handed and undermines the collaboration needed to make genuine improvement.
States that promise to comply with Duncan’s heavy handed mandates are “winners” while those making progress without Duncan’s script are losers.
He adds:
Meanwhile, school districts that are making real, tangible strides to increase student learning are left behind in this “race.” In Sacramento City Unified, we are turning around seven low-performing schools (called Priority Schools) through research-proven strategies for raising student achievement. Six of the seven schools have shown dramatic increases in student achievement and dramatic improvements in school culture and climate. These strategies include relevant professional development for principals and teachers; collaborative teacher planning time; data analysis and inquiry; and building strong family and community engagement. With federal funding, we could take this pilot program to scale statewide. California districts could build on each other’s successes and the gains of districts across the country. This is exactly what federal dollars should be spent on.
Yet Race to the Top’s scripted approach effectively discounts these reforms because they do not fit into the neat categories created by the prescriptive program. Moreover, forcing school districts to compete for badly needed resources is like offering a starving man food but only if he agrees to whatever strings may be attached. This is certainly the choice that school districts like ours face in California.
Chris Lehman has written an excellent post pulling together solid data about the “reformers'” solutions and the issue that refuse to address: poverty.
What is the problem in U.S. education? What is the cause of low test scores? Is it bad teachers, as the reformers claim?
Or is it poverty, where the U.S. leads the advanced nations of the world?
Can school reform cure poverty? Has it?
If you don’t address the causes, you will never solve the problem of low academic performance.
Nice job, Chris.
The United Teachers of Los Angeles has steadfastly refused to allow its members to be evaluated by the test scores of their students. Unlike the district leadership, UTLA understands that scholars have found that value-added assessment is inaccurate, invalid and unstable. By this method, excellent teachers may be labeled “ineffective,” and poor teachers who teach to the test may be labeled “effective.”
Despite intense pressure by the Los Angeles Unified School District leadership and the federal government, UTLA has insisted that its members should be evaluated by evidence-based methods, not by “value-added assessment” that has not been proven to work anywhere.
UTLA refused to sign off on the district’s request for $40 million in Race to the Top funding, which would have subjected its members to value-added assessment.
UTLA recognizes that accepting $40 million for RTTT would eventually cost the district hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with the federal government’s mandates. This has been the experience of other districts, where teachers have been laid off and class sizes have increased solely because of compliance with RTTT requirements.
Because it has remained true to principle, because it insists on evidence-based evaluation, because it insists on honest accounting for the public’s dollars, UTLA is a hero of public education and joins the honor roll.
The Los Angeles Times (!) has an outstanding article by reporter Teresa Watanabe about the new teacher evaluation system. It is based on growth in test scores and on computer modeling. The focus is on one teacher who seems to do all the right things: last year, he got a good rating but not this year. What changed? Nothing.
The United Teachers of Los Angeles has been fighting the LAUSD’s efforts to impose this flawed system on all teachers.
Eventually, after we have spent billions of dollars on these mechanical systems, the policymakers will figure out that the experts were right: the ratings reflect who is taught, not teacher quality.
Remember: no other nation in the world is judging teacher quality this way. This is our own nutty idea. It’s main accomplishment: demoralization of teachers.
Valerie Strauss has a good post by Michael Pons about vouchers in Chile. The main effect seems to have widened the divide between rich and poor.
One correction I would offer to Pons. The testing and accountability framework for federal policy (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top) is no better than the voucher approach (Romney). In fact, the testing and accountability framework sets the stage for vouchers by the following scenario:
1) set an impossible goal of 100% proficiency or every child must raise his/her scores every year to the extent that the computer predicts
2) grade every school A-F based on test scores
3) convince the public that American education is failing because it can’t meet unreasonable targets
4) privatize the schools that are graded C, D or F
This is actually a process, not a choice of one policy or the other.
Choosing between NCLB/RTTT or vouchers is like choosing whether you prefer to be hung or shot.
The testing regime is part of the privatization plan.
