!
It is illegal for teachers to strike in Mississippi but they are considering a strike anyway.
Legislators offered them a paltry $1,500 raise while setting aside $2 million for vouchers.
The eyes of the nation are on Mississippi.
Strike!
The legislators won’t pay you any mind unless you put on your red T-shirt, make a sign, and gather at the State Capitol.
Don’t agonize, organize!
Strike!
The Superintendent of Sarasota County in Florida notes that the state is offering bonuses of $9,000 to “highly effective” teachers, and two-thirds of teachers in his county are “highly effective.” The actual number, he says, might be even higher.
The ratings are based mainly on test scores, although most teachers don’t teach the subjects tested annually. Bonuses do not count towards pensions.
Surely, the Governor doesn’t want to give big bonuses to most teachers.
Florida ranks about 46th in the nation in teachers’ salaries.
The Governor and State Commissioner Richard Corcoran announced their plans to the state’s 67 Superintendents.
Prior to the opening session of the Legislature, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed three education-related executive orders on key topics — the elimination of Common Core standards, a Jobs of the Future initiative and improved safety and security in our schools.
In addition, Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran noted priorities for his office that include teacher bonuses as part of the Best and Brightest program; tuition forgiveness programs for new teachers; Base Student Allocation (BSA) increases and a continued commitment to the Safe Schools program.
Sarasota County Schools…are closely monitoring proposed changes to the Best and Brightest bonus program that has significant impact to teachers in our school district. Currently, the Best and Brightest program provides annual bonuses of $800 for teachers earning an “effective” rating and $1,200 for “highly effective” teachers. In addition, there is another $6,000 for highly effective teachers with an SAT or ACT score at the 80th percentile and above.
Governor DeSantis has proposed to replace the current program with a single $9,000 bonus for highly effective teachers serving at a school whose state grade rose by at least 1 percent and eliminate the SAT/ACT requirement.
Although there are many drawbacks to compensating teachers using bonuses, a $9,000 bonus to recognize the best teachers in our school district is a significant reward. It is clear the state wants to circumvent the collective bargaining process by offering these bonuses, which are not subject to collective bargaining.
The school district and the teachers union are charged with developing a Teacher Evaluation System that identifies teachers as highly effective, effective, developing/needs improvement or unsatisfactory. The state would then use these marks to compensate teachers with a bonus according to their score.
In 2017-18, approximately 67 percent of our teachers were rated highly effective based on the current evaluation system. There are many more teachers in our school district worthy of a highly effective rating; however, the current evaluation system rates them lower.
If the union were to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement and work with district leaders to develop a new and improved evaluating system before the end of the school year, more teachers would be eligible for the $9,000 bonus this year as recommended by the governor — that’s a significant bonus!
Sarasota County Schools is blessed to have incredibly dedicated teachers who work to inspire our students every day. They deserve to be recognized and compensated to the fullest extent possible based on state requirements.
I am hopeful the school district and union officials can come to the table soon as both contracts are set to expire at the end of this school year. The goal is to reward our teachers and classified staff for their hard work and dedication.
In addition, I hope we can join forces to effect positive change in Tallahassee as the Legislature works to create fundamental adjustments to the education system.
I look forward to continued conversations with state leaders, school superintendents and the union to help our A-rated school district be even more effective for our students, staff and community.
Dr. Todd Bowden is the superintendent of Sarasota County Schools.
Writing in Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog in the Washington Post, Fed Ingram explains why Florida has a massive teacher shortage. Ingram was Miami-Dade County’s Teacher of the Year in 2006 and he is now president of the Florida Education Association.
He writes that conditions for teachers are so bad that the state is experiencing a “silent strike” as teachers leave.
Halfway through this school year, more than 2,200 vacancies hobble Florida’s public schools. In 2018, the Florida Board of Education identified critical teacher shortages in English, mathematics, reading, general science, physical science and other subjects.
Recent graduates of schools of education ignore Florida recruiters at job fairs. Many educators who began teaching careers here are leaving our classrooms with no plans to return. We’re experiencing a “silent strike.”
Children living in districts that are not fully staffed are likely to wind up in with an overworked substitute in an overcrowded classroom or with a teacher untrained in the subject she or he has been hired to teach…
The Sunshine State ranks 45th in the nation in teacher pay with salaries $10,000 less than the national average. Meanwhile the cost of living here is 10 percent higher than in the rest of the United States.
Facing high costs and low pay, Florida’s teachers often work second jobs. Many teachers with advanced degrees wait tables or drive for Uber — and some teachers sell their own plasma to make ends meet.
It’s no secret that shortsighted policies have starved Florida schools of much-needed funds for years on end. Bogus schemes to use short-term bonuses to make up for long-term deficits in salaries for Florida teachers haven’t worked either.
Money isn’t the only problem. Too many politicians treat public schools and the people who work in them as punching bags. When the profession is attacked daily; when the contribution teachers make to students and communities goes unrecognized; when bureaucrats who’ve never spent a day in a classroom tell teachers how to do their job — then it becomes difficult to attract and retain dedicated and qualified education professionals.
The state’s leaders seem dimly aware of these problems but their priority right now is expanding voucher programs and increasing charter schools. In voucher schools–most of them religious–teachers do not need a college degree or certification. The current omnibus bill, SB7070, relies on bonuses not salary increases and seeks to lower standards for teachers to boost the supply of teachers. These are all incredibly bad ideas, but Florida is run by people who really don’t care about education or teachers or the future of the state. This, after all, is the state that Betsy DeVos considers a model for the nation because of its vouchers, its charter schools, its high stakes testing, its school report cards, and….its low salaries for teachers. Education on the cheap.
The Florida Legislature is getting set to modify its “best and brightest” teacher bonus, which gave incentives to students who had high SAT/ACT scores in high school. Almost every teacher in the state gets some bonus, which is not pensionable. Average teacher pay in Florida is among the lowest in the nation, ranked 42nd.
Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel wrote:
More than 11,200 Florida teachers will earn bonuses of $7,200 each in the next month through the controversial “best and brightest” program state leaders now want to revamp, state figures show.
The 11,286 teachers earned “highly effective” ratings at their public schools — and had ACT or SAT scores in the top 20 percent when they applied to college — making them eligible for the highest awards in Florida’s Best and Brightest Teacher and Principal Scholarship program.
Nearly 81,000 other teachers are to get bonuses of $1,200 for their “highly effective” evaluations, and another 67,600 deemed “effective” are to get about $700, officials said. About 670 new teachers with the high ACT or SAT scores will get bonuses of $6,000, according to the tally released by the Florida Department of Education.
Combined, more than 171,000 teachers — or about 91 percent of Florida’s classroom instructors — will get at least one of the bonuses. And 557 principals will get bonuses worth $4,000 or $5,000, with those working at a high-poverty school earning more. The state will spend more than $233 million on the payouts.
The bonuses are to be paid by April 1, though the exact pay dates will vary by school district.
The Orange County school district had the most top-award winners in the state — 1,241 — as it did last year.
The release of information on bonus winners comes as lawmakers look to redo the program, which many have criticized for tying awards not only to classroom success but also to old college admissions exam scores.
The Florida Senate’s education committee on Wednesday approved a multi-pronged bill (SB 7070) that would do away with the test-score requirement and create a revised program that would aim to recruit teachers in high-demand subjects, retain good teachers and reward top classroom performers. Gov. Ron DeSantis has urged lawmakers to delete the test score requirement, which he said “didn’t make sense.”
But many teachers want the state to instead earmark more money for public education so teachers can get pay raises, not one-year bonuses.
“Tell the Senate Ed Committee to fund salaries not bonuses,” read a tweet posted Tuesday by the Florida Education Association, the statewide teachers union. It called the bill a proposal that “introduces yet another bonus scheme instead of investing in educators & neighborhood public schools.”
John Thompson writes from Oklahoma:
The Tulsa World’s headline nailed the big picture, “‘Staggering’: 30,000 Oklahoma Teachers Have Left Profession in the Past Six Years, Report Shows.” The World’s Michael Dekker cites State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister who explained, “The loss of 30,000 educators over the past six years is staggering — and proof that our schools must have the resources to support a growing number of students with an increasing number of needs.”
These huge losses occurred in a state which employed only 50,598 teachers in 2017-18.
Hofmeister addressed the immediate problem, “Steep budget cuts over the last decade have made the teaching profession in Oklahoma less attractive, resulting in a severe teacher shortage crisis and negative consequences for our schoolchildren.” The analysis, 2018 Oklahoma Educator Supply and Demand Report, by Naneida Lazarte Alcala, also touched on the ways that the lack of respect and the decline of teachers’ professional autonomy contributed to the massive exodus from the classroom.
The report showed that Oklahoma’s annual attrition rate has been 10 percent during the last 6 years, which was 30 percent more than the national average. This prompted an increase from 32 emergency certifications in 2012 to 2,915 in 2018-19. As a result, the median experience of state teachers declined by 1/5th in this short period.
Given the challenges faced by the Oklahoma City Public School System, it is noteworthy that the highest turnover rate in 2017-18 (almost 25 percent) occurred in central Oklahoma. Over 11 percent of teachers in the central region are new hires.
It should also be noted that charter schools have the highest turnover rate (almost 42 percent), even higher than that of middle schools.
I kid my colleagues in middle school. But there is a serious point. Choice advocates have had success in their political campaign to defeat traditional public schools, but their turnover rate is another sign that the oversupply of charters shows that privatization isn’t a viable, educational alternative to neighborhood schools.
But the financial cutbacks were not the only cause of the crisis. Alcala cites a survey of teachers who have left Oklahoma schools; 2/3rds said that increased compensation would not be enough to bring them back to the classroom. Citing reasons that were beyond the scope of the report, 78 percent said that the quality of the work environment had declined, and nearly half said it had deteriorated a great deal.
On the other hand, the report suggested aspects of teaching conditions that merit further examination. It cited research on the negative effects of teacher turnover on student achievement, especially for low-income students. This stands in contrast with research cited by accountability-driven, competition-driven school reformers who argue that turnover isn’t necessarily bad. After all, they invested heavily in trying to identify and dismiss low-performing teachers.
The SDE study cited the value of low student-teacher ratios in terms of raising student achievement, especially for low-income students. It also noted the national pattern where education degrees have “notoriously” declined, as well as the drop in graduates in Oklahoma teacher preparation programs.
And that brings us to the unintended results of features, as opposed to bugs, in the corporate school reform movement which peaked during this era. Reformers who lacked knowledge of realities in schools misinterpreted research on California schools which supposedly said that class size reductions don’t work, and then ignored the preponderance of evidence on why class size matters. Reformers often blamed university education departments for poor student test scores, and experimented with teacher preparation shortcuts. Some reformers even said what many others felt about wanting to undermine the institution of career teaching.
To understand the decline of working conditions for teachers, the teacher strike in Denver, as well as those in Oklahoma and other states, must be considered. Senator Michael Bennet, the former superintendent of the Denver schools, called for incentives in urban schools by twenty-somethings who would work for 7 to 9 years. His hugely expensive and complicated incentive system provoked the recent strike.
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1105/01/sotu.01.html
It should have been obvious that teacher churn is bad for students, who need trusting relationships with educators who love them. A decade ago, however, edu-philanthropists and the federal government essentially imposed a rushed and risky experiment on schools in Oklahoma and across the nation. These noneducators praised the gambles as “disruptive innovation.” But they incentivized primitive teach-to-the-test malpractice and drove much of the joy of teaching and learning out of schools.
Evidence that excellent teachers were being “exited” by a flawed statistical model used in these teacher evaluation systems was ignored. Since these policies incentivized the removal of highly paid veteran teachers during the budget crisis prompted by the Great Recession, Baby Boomers were often targeted. This resulted in schools such as Upper Greystone, an elementary school with 24 certified staff, which had 21 teacher vacancies at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year.
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2015/04/05/cognitive-dissonance-and-segregated-oklahoma-schools/
During the 1990s, education experts frequently warned that Baby Boomers would soon be retiring, and sought ways for veteran teachers to pass on their wisdom. During the last decade, however, corporate reform made the staggeringly serious mistake of undermining teachers’ autonomy in order to force educators to comply with their technocratic mandates. Veteran teachers were rightly seen as opponents to their teach-to-the-test regimes, and often they were pushed out of the profession so they wouldn’t undercut the socializing of young teachers into opposing bubble-in accountability.
Even if we had not made another unforced error and dramatically cut education spending, failed reforms would have wasted educators’ time and energy, damaged teachers’ professionalism, and sucked much of the joy of teaching and learning out of classrooms. When the retirement and the pushing out of Baby Boomers, funding cuts, and drill-and-kill pedagogy came together during and after the Great Recession, this staggering exodus of teachers was triggered.
Valerie Strauss sums up why the teachers’ renewed strike in West Virginia is different. It is not about pay. It’s about a fight for the future of public education. The teachers were fighting not only the local supporters of privatization. They were fighting the Koch brothers and ALEC.
Strauss writes:
This time, it wasn’t about pay.
West Virginia teachers walked off the job across the state Tuesday to protest the privatization of public education and to fight for resources for their own struggling schools.
It was the second time in a year that West Virginia teachers left their classrooms in protest. In 2018, they went on strike for nine days to demand a pay increase, help with high health-care costs and more school funding — and they won a 5 percent pay hike. On Tuesday, union leaders said that, if necessary, they would give up the pay hike as part of their protest. They are fighting legislation that would take public money from resource-starved traditional districts and use it for charter schools and for private and religious school tuition.
“Teachers are willing to forsake their raises for the proposition that public education must be protected and that their voices must be protected,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who went to Charleston, W.Va., for the strike Tuesday. “This was absolutely an effort to defund public education, and teachers fought it.”
Barely four hours into the strike, with hundreds of teachers packed into the statehouse, the Republican-led House of Delegates voted down the state Senate’s version of the omnibus education bill — despite pressure to pass it from conservative and libertarian groups, including some connected to the Koch network funded by billionaire Charles Koch.
It was not clear whether the House vote would put the bill to rest for good, but the episode underscored a growing determination among teachers around the country to fight for their public schools.
“I am DONE being disrespected,” Jessica Maunz Salfia, who teaches at Spring Mills High School in Berkeley County, W.Va., wrote in an open letter (see below) on Monday about why she was going to protest Tuesday.
West Virginia teachers remain at the forefront of a rebellion by educators throughout the country who began striking last year over meat-and-potatoes issues such as pay and health-care costs. But that movement has morphed into something broader: a fight in support of the U.S. public education system that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos once called “a dead end.”
In state after state, teachers are saying the same things: Pay matters, but the future of public education matters more. Privatization is intolerable, whether by charters or vouchers.
No compromise with privatization!
BREAKING BAY AREA NEWS: In a news conference this afternoon, the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association union set a strike date of Thursday, Feb. 21. Please see OEA news release below…..
Mike Myslinski
Headquarters Communications
California Teachers Association
408-921-5769 (cell)
NEWS RELEASE
February 16, 2019
Oakland Education Association
272 East 12th Street
Oakland, CA 94606
Contacts:
–OEA President Keith Brown on cell at 510-866-8280.
–Mike Myslinski with CTA Communications on cell at 408-921-5769.
On Twitter: @oaklandea, #Unite4OaklandKids, #WeAreOEA, #RedForEd, #WeAreCTA
OEA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oakland Education Association Sets Strike Date
of Thursday, Feb. 21, to Fight for Oakland Schools
Priorities Remain – Smaller Class Sizes, More Support for Students,
Living Wages and a Halt to Destructive School Closures
OAKLAND – To stand and fight for the quality schools that all Oakland students deserve, educators in Oakland Unified School District will go on strike on Thursday, Feb. 21, the president of the 3,000-member Oakland Education Association (OEA) announced at a news conference today where he was flanked by parents, students and teachers standing in solidarity.
“Bargaining with the district has not — in two years — produced an agreement that will pay teachers enough to allow them to stay in Oakland, or make class sizes more conducive to teaching and learning, or provide our students with the supports they need to thrive,” OEA President Keith Brown said. “The only option that Oakland teachers, parents and students have left to win the schools Oakland students truly deserve, and to take control of our school district back from the control of billionaire campaign donors, is for the 3,000 members of the Oakland Education Association to go on strike.”
In key areas such as salaries and hiring more counselors to support students, a new report by a neutral state-appointed fact-finder comes somewhat closer to what educators are demanding than what the district is offering, but still does not go far enough, Brown said. The new report is non-binding. It’s release means that educators can legally strike.
For example, the report by fact-finder Najeeb Khoury recommends 6 percent in retroactive raises – 3 percent in 2017-18 school year and 3 percent this year – but no guaranteed raise for 2019-2020, while the last final offer by the district was only 5 percent over three years. Oakland educators are seeking 12 percent over three years to help halt the district’s teacher retention crisis. The report also supports hiring more counselors and reducing the student-to-counselor ratio from 600:1 to 500:1. OEA had sought a 250:1 ratio.
Years of district neglect, overspending at the top, and the unregulated growth of the charter industry have starved Oakland schools of necessary resources, OEA President Brown said. One in five Oakland educators leaves the district each year due to low pay, leaving nearly 600 classrooms without an experienced teacher last school year. Class sizes are high, and students are without full-time nurses and an adequate number of counselors. Yet, OUSD received $23 million in additional revenue this year, and receives 25 percent more funding per student than the average unified school district statewide, Brown said.
“There is only one party in our bargaining with Oakland Unified School District that is pushing to improve our public schools for 36,000 Oakland students, and that is the Oakland Education Association,” said Brown. “It is time for the Oakland school board and our superintendent to make a choice – are they on the side of the billionaires who fund their campaigns and are pushing for more draconian budget cuts and school closures that will further hurt our kids, or are they on the side of teachers, students, and parents fighting for the schools Oakland students deserve?”
In an open letter to Oakland teachers, parents and students on Friday, Brown declared, “We are in a struggle for the soul of public education in Oakland, and billionaires can’t teach our kids.” He criticized school board members who were backed by billionaires for pushing a competition-based “portfolio” model for Oakland that “has led to a patchwork of privatization, school closures, and unimproved student outcomes in districts like New Orleans, Newark and Detroit.”
Brown said the fact-finder supports OEA’s bargaining goals by finding that the district’s “teacher retention crisis is much worse than the state average and must be addressed, that lower class sizes will help improve educational outcomes for students, and that more supports for students are possible. Further, the report affirms that the unchecked growth of charter schools is creating a systemic inequity that is starving our public schools of the resources they need to thrive.”
The entire fact-finder’s report is posted on the union’s website: www.oaklandea.org. The full and comprehensive OEA presentation to the fact-finder – titled “Remedying Educational Malpractice,” with extensive data supporting the union’s positions – is also posted on the website and can be foundhere.
Oakland educators plan to strike for smaller class sizes, more school counselors and nurses to adequately support students, and living wages to allow educators to stay in Oakland. Teachers are also calling for a halt to a billionaire-backed plan to close up to 24 neighborhood schools in primarily African American and Latinx Oakland neighborhoods. In addition to being disruptive and destabilizing for students and communities, school closures will also lead to further loss of students to charter schools – privately managed, but publicly funded schools that make up 30 percent of student enrollment in Oakland, and are already costing Oakland schools over $57 million a year, according to a key study.
The OEA union announced Feb. 4 that 95 percent of educators who took part in a strike authorization vote cast ballots in favor of allowing their union leaders to call a strike, if necessary, and strike preparations are continuing. The OEA Executive Board backed the strike option.
There is a groundswell of community support for Oakland educators. OEA is a co-sponsor of theBread For Ed campaign that has raised more than $46,000 to feed students in a district where an overwhelming number of children are low-income and depend on free or reduced-price meals during school. The OEA Membership Assistance Fund has raised more than $20,000 through a Go Fund Me drive. In addition, over 25 Bay Area CTA teachers’ union chapters have donated more than $20,000 to the Membership Assistance Fund as well.
The OEA is affiliated with the California Teachers Association, which coordinated a statewide#RedForEd day of action at public schools on Friday, Feb. 15, to show support for Oakland educators in their fight for the quality schools all students deserve – see more information here. The Oakland showdown comes after many recent teacher strikes around the nation about protecting public schools and students, including the successful January strike in Los Angeles Unified School District by more than 30,000 members of the United Teachers Los Angeles union.
Oakland educators have been working without a contract since July 2017 and are the lowest-paid in Alameda County.
The news conference today was broadcast live on the Oakland Education Association Facebook page and is archived there:https://www.facebook.com/OaklandEA/
“We will strike with our parents, whose overwhelming support in the last few weeks has been felt by every single teacher in Oakland,” said OEA President Brown, who is a teacher at Bret Harte Middle School. “We will strike for our students, we will strike for educational justice, we will strike for racial justice, and we will strike for the future of public education in Oakland. Our students, families, and community are the center of everything Oakland educators do, and we are all in the fight for the schools Oakland students deserve together.”
###
The Oakland Education Association represents 3,000 OUSD educators, including teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, therapists, substitutes, and early childhood and adult teachers. OEA is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3 million-member National Education Association.
Wesley Null, vice provost for undergraduate education at Baylor University, and I wrote this piece for the Dallas Morning News.
Texas legislators are revising the state’s school finance laws. We wanted to put before the public the importance of paying teachers well.
Some legislators are enthusiastic about what they call “outcomes-based funding,” which would send more money to affluent districts and less money to needy districts. This would be a huge mistake for obvious reasons. It’s reverse Robin Hood.
Long ago, Texas had visionaries in the legislature who understood that the future of the state relied on having a strong public education system. Current legislators think they can use charters as a substitute for adequate funding.
In 1948, those visionaries proposed a dramatic increase in state funding and equalization. Gilmer and Aiken persuaded their colleagues to raise the state share of funding to 75-80% of costs. This year, the state share will fall to 39%, shifting the burden of financing schools to localities, which favors the richest districts.
We wrote:
The heart of any school is the teacher. The only way to ensure that every Texas child receives a quality education is to place a well-educated, well-prepared teacher in every classroom. That truth will never change.
The attractiveness of teaching, however, continues to decline. The results are tragic. Labor Department statistics reveal that public educators are leaving the profession at the highest rate in 20 years. Low pay and disrespect are key factors in this alarming decline.
The Texas Legislature this session will have the job of remedying the state’s public school finance system. As historians of education, we think some background is helpful.
The last time Texas overhauled public school finance was immediately following World War II. The need for change was great. Many young Texans had been denied the opportunity to serve during the war because of their poor level of education. Such news was embarrassing to Texas leadership.
Compulsory attendance laws existed, but they had many loopholes. Only 65 percent of school-aged children attended school. Only 40 percent of adults had a high school education. Many school buildings were dilapidated and dangerous.
School finance was based on a census count of how many school-aged kids lived in a county regardless of whether those students attended school. Consequently, funds were commonly distributed but no education took place. Pay for teachers was embarrassingly low, leading to difficulties with recruitment and retention.
Fortunately, Texas had leaders who were driven by foresight and determination. Named in honor of legislators Claud Gilmer and A.M. Aikin, the Gilmer-Aikin Laws modernized Texas education. They revolutionized school finance, substantially increased pay for teachers, rebuilt dilapidated buildings, and redesigned teacher education and certification.
Please read it all!
We will have more commentary on the Denver teacherss’ strike. Here, Fred Klonsky reminds us of the much-ballyhooed, but ultimately failed merit pay called ProComp, that substituted merit pay for adequate salaries.
Don’t pay attention to Democratic Senator Michael Bennett, who claims to favor the teachers but was superintendent of the Denver public schools who launched corporate reform and lost many millions in tricky financial deals while he was in charge. He was anti-union when he was superintendent and is a big supporter of VAM.
Denver teachers are likely to go out on strike, CNN reports, due to absurdly low salaries.
They can’t afford to live in the city where they teach.
A city and state that refuses to pay a decent middle-class wage to its teachers doesn’t care about its children or its future.
Of course, Denver is the city that Corporate Reformers admire because it has adopted the “portfolio model” of charters intermingled with public schools, instead of paying its teachers appropriately.
CNN reports:
For 14 months, teachers in Denver have been negotiating with Denver Public Schools for more pay. On Saturday, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association said talks had broken off and they’ll walk on Monday.
Diane Ravitch's blog 