Archives for category: Teacher Shortage
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North Carolina: State Mandate to Reduce Class Size Will Cost Loss of Thousands of Teachers

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2017 //
29

The legislature in North Carolina never tires of finding new ways to mess up their state’s once-greatly admired public schools.

By mandating class size reduction across the state without providing additional funds, districts will be required to send pink slips to thousands of teachers of music, arts, physical education, and teacher assistants.

“We’re not dealing with widgets. We’re dealing with people’s lives and their livelihoods,” says Katherine Joyce, executive director of the N.C. Association of School Administrators (NCASA), an organization that reps public school district leaders at the legislature.

The uncertainty puts at least 5,500 teaching jobs statewide in jeopardy as districts scramble to reallocate resources, according to the NCASA.

That doesn’t include teacher assistant positions, particularly crucial jobs in low-performing schools and districts jettisoned by the thousands in cash-starved districts since 2008. Without major legislative concessions in the coming weeks, K-12 leaders expect many more T.A. jobs will be on the chopping block this year.

One bipartisan-supported reprieve to the looming class size order, House Bill 13, gained unanimous approval in the state House in February, but despite advocates’ calls for urgent action this spring, the legislation has lingered in the Senate Rules Committee with little indication it will be taken up soon.

Sen. Bill Rabon, the influential eastern North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, did not respond to Policy Watch interview requests, but his legislative assistant said this week that Rabon’s committee will not consider any House bills until the General Assembly’s April 27 crossover deadline….

Regardless, public school leaders say the state’s drive to reduce class sizes comes at a particularly arduous time for districts. With North Carolina teacher pay mired among the lowest in the nation, K-12 experts are reporting major teaching shortages and plummeting interest in teaching degrees in the UNC system.

The legislature, dominated by a super-majority of ultra-conservative Republicans in both houses, is doing its level best to harass teachers and drive students to charter schools and vouchers. Under the guise of “reform,” more teachers and programs will be cut.

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, North Carolina, Teacher Shortage, Teachers

Tulsa Teacher: “I Resign. I Can’t Afford to Live on This Salary”

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2017 //
14

Here’s another story of a teacher who is leaving. She can’t live on her salary.

“Local schools are facing their new spring rite of passage — waves of resignation notices from teachers leaving Oklahoma for higher-paying jobs out of state.

“Shelby Eagan was recruited here from Missouri four years ago, but she wasn’t a hard sell.

“Oklahoma is home. My mom was born here, my grandma lived in Bristow. When I was a kid, we came here once a month and sometimes from Bristow, we’d come to the ‘big’ city — Tulsa,” Eagan said. “I planned on staying.”

“She strengthened those ties with a master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma and by establishing herself at Tulsa’s Mitchell Elementary School, 733 N. 73rd East Ave.

“She volunteered her own time to provide 20 to 30 less-fortunate students with dance instruction — in acrobat, tap and ballet — and this year, her colleagues even voted her the site’s teacher of the year.

“What derailed her plans?

“The realities of living on an Oklahoma public school teacher’s take-home pay and ever-declining school budgets.

“I get $2,000 a month. I had a tire go out and a health scare this year that required me to get a procedure unexpectedly,” Eagan said. “I’m 28 years old, but I did the only thing I could do. I called my mom and dad. I shouldn’t have to call my mom and dad for money — I’m a professional with a master’s degree, and I’ve been working four years.”

“Eagan said when she traveled with a group of Tulsa teachers to visit with lawmakers at the Capitol just before spring break, she shared her decision to move to Kansas City to earn $10,000 more.

“One representative tried to tell me that the cost of living in Oklahoma was so drastically different than Missouri, that it wasn’t worth it. But it’s the exact same cost of living,” she said, shaking her head. “I guess that makes for a good story to tell themselves so they don’t have to do anything differently.”

Categories Oklahoma, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage

New Study: Why Teachers Created a New Genre: The “I Quit” Letters

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2017 //
34

There is a photograph circulating on Twitter of a teacher recruitment fair in Michigan, in a large room with many tables staffed and ready for recruits. But the room is empty. It is a sad picture, dramatizing the effect of the current policy atmosphere on the profession.

Please note that the empty job fair was held in Michigan. That is Betsy DeVos’s home state. Apparently in her dream school of the future, computers will replace teachers. That has long been the gospel of Jeb Bush. If you harass teachers enough, they will go away and everyone can go digital.

A new study was just released by two professors at Michigan State University analyzing what they call a new genre: the teacher resignation letter.

I have posted many resignation letters on this site. They are usually anguished, sometimes angry, always sorrowful. They come from people who had a calling to teach, but could not stand the demands on them by administrators nor the frequency of high-stakes testing. Working in a climate that requires compliance and subservience, one that expects you to abandon your professional ethics, is not appealing for most professionals.

I have posted many such letters. The one that got the most overwhelming response was written by North Carolina teacher Kris Neilsen. It was published October 27, 2012, and received 165,000 views. Nearly 900 people commented on it. It went worldwide.

Here is the report on the teacher resignation letter as a genre:

In a trio of studies, Michigan State University education expert Alyssa Hadley Dunn and colleagues examined the relatively new phenomenon of teachers posting their resignation letters online. Their findings, which come as many teachers are signing next year’s contracts, suggest educators at all grade and experience levels are frustrated and disheartened by a nationwide focus on standardized tests, scripted curriculum and punitive teacher-evaluation systems.

Teacher turnover costs more than $2.2 billion in the U.S. each year and has been shown to decrease student achievement in the form of reading and math test scores.

“The reasons teachers are leaving the profession has little to do with the reasons most frequently touted by education reformers, such as pay or student behavior,” said Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education. “Rather, teachers are leaving largely because oppressive policies and practices are affecting their working conditions and beliefs about themselves and education.”

Consider, for example, the open resignation letter of Boston elementary school teacher Suzi Sluyter, which was posted on a Washington Post blog:

“In this disturbing era of testing and data collection in the public schools,” she wrote in part, “I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children learn and what a teacher ought to do in a classroom to build a healthy, safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children.”

Sluyter, who had taught for more than 25 years, concluded the missive: “I did not feel I was leaving my job. I felt then and feel now that my job left me. It is with deep love and a broken heart that I write this letter.”

Such feelings of abandonment were common in the resignation letters, the researchers said in one of the studies. That paper, published in the April issue of the journal Linguistics and Education, is titled “With regret: The genre of teachers’ public resignation letters.” Dunn’s co-authors were Jennifer VanDerHeide, MSU assistant professor of teacher education, and MSU doctoral student Matthew Deroo.

Another study indicates that by posting their resignation letters online, educators are gaining a voice in the public sphere they didn’t have before. That paper, which will appear in the May issue of the journal Teaching and Teacher Education, was co-authored by MSU doctoral students Scott Farver, Amy Guenther and Lindsay Wexler.

“All of the teachers’ resignation letters and their later interviews [with researchers] attested to the lack of voice and agency that teachers felt in policymaking and implementation,” the study says.

Dunn said administrators must allow teachers to engage in the development of curriculum and educational policies so they do not feel like they have no choice but to resign (and then publicly declare it) in order to get their voices heard.

The third study, forthcoming in Teachers College Record, suggests the public resignation letters combat the “teacher blame game” and the prevalent narrative of the “bad” teacher. These are common claims – whereby teachers are blamed for school and societal failures – used by conservative education reformers to advance accountability measures to evaluate teachers, Dunn said.

But the resignation letters, rather than painting educators as disinterested and lazy, illustrate their intense emotion. “The letters are filled with emotion, with regret, and with an overarching personal and professional commitment to the best needs of the children,” the study says.

Ultimately, Dunn said, policymakers should heed teachers’ testimonies and support a move away from efforts to “marketize, capitalize, incentivize and privatize public education, in order to do what is best for children, not for the bottom line.”

“In the absence of such moves, teachers’ working conditions, and thus students’ learning conditions, are likely to remain in jeopardy.”

Here’s the paper to which the Michigan State article refers:
(accessible for free if you qualify in certain categories, or if you
pony up $35 if you don’t):

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0898589817300487

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Privatization, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Tim Slekar to Wisconsin Legislators: Stop the War on Teachers

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2017 //
16

Tim Slekar is dean of education at Edgewood College in Wisconsin and a veteran teacher educator. He has watched and fumed and protested and spoken out as Governor Scott Walker and his puppet legislature wage war on public education and on teachers.

He wrote an angry letter protesting their latest plan to introduce “flexibility” into the credentials of teachers. He says they are using Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” to create a crisis, then step in and impose solutions that make the problems worse. They are both creating a teacher shortage and establishing the conditions to ruin teaching as a profession. What the legislature and the governor really want is to cut the cost of education by driving away professional teachers.

Here is a part of his letter; read it all.

Dear Teacher Education Colleagues,

I cannot support any license changes until the conditions causing teachers to leave the classroom and the conditions discouraging young people from entering the profession drive the policy discussions.

There is absolutely no evidence that changing license developmental ranges will do anything to stop the exodus of teachers or make teaching more attractive to our students. This situation is a perfect example of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine and allowing the so called “shortage” narrative to drive policy in this manner is shortsighted and, ultimately, harmful – and it must stop!

We (teacher educators) must advocate for what’s BEST for our children and our communities. Changes in certification and license structures is a distraction at best, but much more likely it is a deliberate move to deprofessionalize teacher education.

We should not be complicit in this action despite the urging of some K-12 administrators and their desire for license “flexibility.” In fact we should remind our K-12 administrative colleagues that school principal licenses and superintendent licenses are under siege in other states. Pennsylvania has already created a “pipeline” into the superintendency that allows lawyers and MBAs to bypass state administrative license requirements (ALEC inspired).

Also, as academics we also have an obligation to use evidence and research to drive decision making and the evidence is clear: creating a deregulated pathway to the classrooms of our most vulnerable children will create even more inequity then we have now.

We should also revisit our friends over at ALEC to understand that deprofessionalizing teaching is model legislation being pushed across the country in an effort to weaken our public schools.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13054/cashing-kids-172-alec-education-bills-2015

Attacking Teacher Credentials and Teachers Unions

In addition to directing money away from public schools to private and non-union institutions, ALEC’s efforts also make running those schools a lot cheaper for the corporations and private entities involved. ALEC has been engaged in a relentless attack on teachers, their credentials, and the organized voice of teachers–unions.

Categories Teacher Shortage, Teachers

California Teachers Form Statewide Alliance to Fight for Real School Reform

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2017 //
29

Teachers organizations from across the state of California have formed an alliance to fight for genuine School reform.

CALIFORNIA: 8 Teacher Union Locals Unite Against the Trump/DeVos Agenda, Fight for Public Schools through Collective Bargaining, Community Power

United around common struggles and a shared vision, The California Alliance for Community Schools is a groundbreaking coalition of educator unions from 8 of the largest cities in California, representing more than 50,000 educators. The alliance officially launches tomorrow, Thursday March 23 and includes: Anaheim Secondary Teachers Association, Oakland Education Association, San Bernardino Teachers Association, San Jose Teachers Association, San Diego Education Association, United Educators of San Francisco, United Teachers Los Angeles and United Teachers Richmond.

All 8 unions are uniting around statewide demands, through local bargaining as well as legislation, for more resources in schools, charter school accountability, lower class sizes and other critical improvements. Most of the locals are in contract bargaining or are interested in organizing around these key issues. The alliance plans to expand to include other labor and community partners.

As California faces a statewide teacher shortage, school districts issued more than 1,750 pink slips for educators last week. Trump released his proposed federal budget, which slashes funds for disadvantaged children, afterschool programs, teacher trainings and other vital services. Trump wants to spend $1.4 billion to expand vouchers, including private schools, and would pay for it from deep cuts to public schools. Voters in California have twice rejected voucher plans.

“We are reaching a state of emergency when it comes to our public schools,” said Hilda Rodriguez-Guzman, an Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment member and charter school parent since 1994. “We must support and reinvest in public education. I join educators in the fight for well-resourced, transparent, accountable, and democratically run schools, at the bargaining table and beyond.”

All 8 unions will use the power of bargaining and statewide organizing to fight for:

Lower class sizes

Resources for high-needs schools and students

Shared decision-making at local school sites, critical to student success

Charter school accountability

Safe and supportive school environments

The first significant step is the launch of the bargaining platform and petition, which includes statewide demands and specific contract demands for each local union. The petition reads:

“As educators in large urban school districts across California we face many of the same challenges. We are particularly concerned about disinvestment in schools and communities, especially those with the greatest needs; educational policies that discourage authentic teaching and learning; and the rapid expansion of privately managed and unregulated charter schools at the expense of our neighborhood schools.”

We applaud the work of these unions, who are fighting back the Trump/DeVos agenda and standing together with their students and communities to reinvest in public education.

To find out more, contact each union for more information:

Anaheim: Grant Schuster, CTA State Council Representative on ASTA Executive Board, schusters3@charter.net, (562) 810-4035

Los Angeles: Anna Bakalis, UTLA Communications Director mailto:abakalis@utla.net, (213)305-9654

Oakland: Trish Gorham, OEA President, oaklandeapresident@yahoo.com, (510) 763-4020,

San Diego: Jonathon Mello, mello_j@sdea.net, (619) 200-0010

San Francisco: Mathew Hardy, Communications Director, mhardy@uesf.org, (415) 513-3179

Richmond: Demetrio Gonzalez, UTR President, president@unitedteachersofrichmond.com, (760) 500-7044

San Jose: Jennifer Thomas, SJTA President, jthomas@sanjoseta.org, (408) 694-7393

San Bernardino: Ashley Alcalá, SBTA President, ashleysbta@gmail.com, (909) 881-6755
—

THE CALIFORNIA ALLIANCE FOR COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
We are a coalition of California parents, community, educators, and students united in our commitment to transforming public education in ways that contribute to a more just, equitable, and participatory society.

Together, we are fighting for well-resourced, community-centered, publicly funded and democratically run schools that prepare our students with the intellectual, social, and emotional skills necessary for success in a changing and often turbulent world.

Our Platform for The Schools All Our Students Deserve

1. Low Class Sizes: Quality instruction for all our students depends on limiting the number of students in a class. Lowering class sizes improves teaching and learning conditions leading to growth in student achievement and positive social interactions.

2. Adequate Resources for All Schools with Additional Resources for Our High Needs Schools and Students: All schools and students deserve adequate levels of funding and support, including but not limited to quality early childhood education programs, lower class size, lower Special Education caseloads, additional educators, after-school tutoring, counselors, nurses, certificated librarians, and other resources to address our students’ academic, emotional, and social needs. Schools and students with the highest need should receive additional funding and support. Site based governing bodies consisting of democratically selected staff, parents, students, and community partners should be responsible for deciding how such additional supports are to be used.

3. Shared Decision-Making at Our Local Schools: The needs of a school are best addressed by the members of the school community. Site based governance by democratically selected stakeholder representatives is a critical component for school and student success. Districts and unions should provide joint trainings to fully empower these bodies.

4. Charter Schools Accountable to Our Communities: All schools receiving public money must be held accountable and be locally and publicly controlled. Unfortunately, many privately run, under-regulated charter schools drain needed resources from neighborhood schools, are not fully transparent in their operations, and fail to provide equal access to all students. Common sense standards and adequate oversight are necessary. New charter schools should not be approved without ensuring accountability and transparency and without a comprehensive assessment of the economic and educational impact on existing public schools.

5. Safe and Supportive School Environments: All students at publicly funded schools, regardless of ethnicity, gender, economic status, religion, sexual orientation, and immigration status, have a right to an academically stimulating, emotionally and socially nurturing, and culturally responsive environment that recognizes and addresses the many stresses that affect student performance and behavior. Adequate trainings and supports for restorative justice programs must be provided as an alternative to punitive disciplinary programs.

Categories Arts Education, Budget Cuts, California, Class size, Early Childhood Education, Funding, Real Education, Teacher Shortage, Teachers, Unions

Mercedes Schneider: When Tenure Is Abolished, Teachers Leave

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2017 //
40

Mercedes Schneider reviews a new report from the Education Research Alliance in New Orleans. The bottom line: When Louisiana eliminated tenure, teacher turnover increased.

Louisiana Research: When Tenure Ends, Teachers Leave.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Removing job security encourages attrition. Other research has shown that instability and teacher churn are not good for teaching and learning.

Schneider writes:

“In 2012, the Louisiana legislature passed Act 1, commonly known as the “teacher tenure law.” Moreover, the Louisiana State Department of Education (LDOE) has translated Act 1 into an evaluation system whereby 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation is connected to “student learning”– the bottom line of which is student test score outcomes.

Act 1 began in 2012 as House Bill 974. The reason it is called Act 1 is that the 2012 Louisiana legislature rammed it though as the first act, with calculated speed, amid an atmosphere dripping with then-Governor Bobby Jindal’s business-and-industry-backed intention to bring “accountability” in the evaluating of the state’s teachers.

Once 2012 hit, Louisiana teachers began considering how and when to leave the profession. And each year beginning with 2012, Louisiana’s teacher workforce has experienced a noticeable exit of many experienced, seasoned teachers who otherwise would not have likely chosen to leave the profession so soon.

Thus, it comes as no surprise to me that a February 22, 2017, study by the Education Research Alliance (ERA) for New Orleans has found that based on teacher data from 2005 to 2012, Louisiana teachers did indeed begin leaving at a more notable rate, with those retirement-eligible comprising the greatest number of exiters.

Having 25+ years of employment, this group also happened to be the most experienced.

Moreover, it should come as no surprise that schools graded “F” lost the highest number of teachers in the post-Act-1 exit.”

The most experienced teachers left. The leavers disproportionately taught in high-needs schools. Can the state replace? The state seems to have succeeded in creating. A teacher shortage in hard-to-staff schools.

Categories Jindal, Bobby, Louisiana, Teacher Shortage, Teacher Tenure

Sarah Blaine Explains Why John King’s Regulations on Grading Teacher Education Are Wrong

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2016 //
17

John King inherited a lot of very bad ideas from his predecessor Arne Duncan. One of them is the belief that teacher education programs can be judged by the test scores of the students taught by their graduates. King recently issued regulations cementing the regulations that Duncan began fashioning a few years back. It would be asking too much to expect anyone at the U.S. Department of Education to rethink their failed policies of the past 7 1/2 years.

Fortunately we have a commentary from lawyer Sarah Blaine that explains why the King-Duncan regulations are nonsense. They will increase the nation’s teacher shortage and demoralize those who spend their days trying to teach children.

In the original post, I called this “Arne’s Worst Idea Yet.” Now it is John King’s “worst idea yet.”

It has no validity. It will worsen the problems it is intended to solve.

Sarah Blaine called this proposal “asinine.” Read her entire post.

Here is an excerpt:

“Now, please bear with me. Out here in lawyer-land, there’s a slippery concept that every first year law student must wrap her head around: it’s the idea of distinguishing between actual (or “but for”) causation and proximate (or “legal”) causation. Actual causation is any one of a vast link in the chain of events from the world was created to Harold injured me by hitting me, that, at some level, whether direct or attenuated, “caused” my injury. For instance, Harold couldn’t have hit me if the world hadn’t been created, because if the world hadn’t been created, Harold wouldn’t exist (nor would I), and therefore I never would have been hit by Harold. So, if actual or “but for” causation was legally sufficient to hold someone responsible for an injury, I could try suing “the Creator,” as if the Creator is somehow at fault for Harold’s decision to hit me.

Well, that’s preposterous, even by lawyer standards, right?

The law agrees with you: the Creator is too far removed from the injury, and therefore cannot be held legally responsible for it.

So to commit a tort (legal wrong) against someone else, it isn’t sufficient that the wrong allegedly committed actually — at some attenuated level — caused the injured’s injury (i.e., that the injury would not have happened “but for” some cause). Instead, the wrong must also be proximally related to that injury: that is, there must be a close enough tie between the allegedly negligent or otherwise wrongful act and the injury that results. So while it would be silly to hold “the Creator” legally responsible for Harold hitting me, it would not be similarly silly to hold Harold responsible for hitting me. Harold’s act was not only an actual or “but for” cause of my injury, it was also an act closely enough related to my injury to confer legally liability onto Harold. This is what we lawyers call proximate (or legal) causation: that is, proximate causation is an act that is a close enough cause of the injury that it’s fair — at a basic, fundamental level — to hold the person who committed that injurious act legally responsible (i.e., liable to pay damages or otherwise make reparations) for his act. [As an aside to my aside, if this sort of reasoning makes your head explode, law school probably isn’t a great option for you.]

Well, it appears that Arne Duncan would have failed his torts class. You see, Arne didn’t get the memo regarding the distinction between actual causation and proximate causation. Instead, what Arne proposes is to hold teacher prep programs responsible for the performance of their alumni’s K-12 students (and to punish them if their alumni’s students don’t measure up). Never mind the myriad chains in the causation link between the program’s coursework and the performance of its graduates’ students (presumably on standardized tests). Arne Duncan somehow thinks that he can proximally — fairly — link these kids’ performance not just to their teachers (a dicey proposition on its own), but to their teachers’ prep programs. Apparently Arne can magically tease out all other factors, such as where an alumna teaches, what her students’ home lives are like, how her students’ socio-economic status affects their academic performance, the level of her students’ intrinsic motivation, as well as any issues in the new alumna’s personal life that might affect her performance in the classroom, and, of course, the level of support provided to the new alumna as a new teacher by her department and administration, and so forth. As any first year law student can tell you, Arne’s proposal is asinine, as the alumna’s student’s test results will be so far removed from her teaching program’s performance that ascribing proximate causation from the program to the children’s performance offends a reasonable person’s sense of justice. [Not to mention the perverse incentives this would create for teaching programs’ career advising centers — what teaching program would ever encourage a new teacher to take on a challenging teaching assignment?]”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Shortage, Testing

Karin Klein: Why Reformers Were Wrong about Teachers

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2016 //
25

Karin Klein wrote education editorials for the Los Angeles Times for years. She now writes freelance, and she wrote this sensible article for the LA Times.

So-called reformers have advocated their view that the way to improve schools is to fire “bad” teachers. The way they would identify “bad” teachers is by whether the test scores of students went up or down or stayed flat. Reformers seldom acknowledged that test scores reflect family income far more than teacher quality.

This hunt for bad teachers has proved fruitless, as scores have misidentified good and bad teachers, good teachers are demoralized by an idiotic way of evaluating their work, and there are teacher shortages now in many districts, as good teachers leave and the pipeline of new teachers has diminishing numbers.

Linda Darling-Hammond once memorably said, “You can’t fire your way to Finland.”

Karin Klein agrees.

One day, when the current era of test-based evaluation is evaluated, reformers will be held accountable for the damage they have done to teachers, students, and public education. That day will come.

Teachers need help and support to become better teachers.

There is no waiting line of great teachers searching for a job.

School districts must work with the teachers they have, making sure they are encouraged and mentored. And paid well.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

Utah: New Teachers No Longer Need Training or Experience

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2016 //
73

In a bold move to address the state’s teacher shortage (caused by low salaries), the state board of education removed all requirements for new teachers other than a college degree and passing a test in subject matter.

Will Utah soon allow barefoot doctors too, you know, the doctors without training or experience?

“Times have changed” — not everyone wants to return to school for a teaching degree, said Superintendent Sydnee Dickson.

An existing path gives permits to school district employees after one to three years of practice teaching and college classes. The new license, heavily criticized since being approved by the state board in June, is available immediately to applicants with bachelor’s degrees who pass a subject test.

The elected panel over Utah’s school districts and charter schools voted unanimously in favor of the measure at its monthly meeting Friday, but will consider tweaks to the policy that several Utah teachers and their unions have decried as an insult to their profession.

Vice chairman Dave Thomas said the move was made in part to address a teacher shortage and has largely been misunderstood.

“I don’t view this as an attack on traditional teachers,” Thomas said.

Utah Education Association President Heidi Matthews urged the board to reconsider, saying the state’s affluent districts could benefit, but low-income students would lose out. The rule could overburden schools without enough time or money to hire more mentor teachers to train the novice instructors, she said.

“It’s a human-rights issue.”

Board member Joel Wright said schools aren’t on the hook to grant the new licenses if they don’t want to. Under the new policy, administrators are allowed to tailor requirements for a license.

“This is a critical step,” Wright said, in giving individual districts control.

The board rejected a proposal from board member Brittney Cummins, of West Valley City, who sought to require that teachers-in-training be hired at a district or charter before receiving a license.

Mercedes Schneider points out that veteran teachers are expected to mentor the newbies for three years, but this may drive the veterans out of the classroom by giving them additional responsibilities without pay.

Utah is on a downward trajectory.

Categories Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching, Utah

Kansas: Governor Brownback’s Radical Experiment in Destroying Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2016 //
10

People of Kansas: Tomorrow is your chance to vote for legislators who support your community’s public schools!

Vote for the candidate who pledges to oppose Governor Brownback’s tax cuts. Vote for your public schools.

Kansas has become a textbook case of conservative incoherence. Conservatives are supposed to “conserve,” but in Kansas and elsewhere they are destroying traditional institutions. Governor Sam Brownback has cut taxes to stimulate business and cut school budgets. Public schools that were once the pride of their community are struggling to stay afloat. You can be sure that in the wings are charter entrepreneurs and peddlers of vouchers.

The battle is being waged in affluent suburbs, which value their public schools yet elect conservative legislators who slash their budgets. The election this fall will see challenges to many of those legislators.

Kansans are faced with a stark choice: good public schools or lower taxes.

Small-government Republican conservatives face a political backlash in Kansas because of the state’s budget problems and battles over education funding, and the epicenter is in sprawling Kansas City suburbs where residents have cherished public schools for decades.

But the Democrats and GOP moderates hoping to lessen the grip Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s allies have on the Legislature must contend with a political paradox in Johnson County, home to those affluent suburbs. Its voters regularly approve bonds and property tax increases for schools while electing conservative legislators who’ve backed the governor’s experiment in slashing state income taxes.

More than two dozen conservative Republican legislators face challengers in Tuesday’s primary, including 11 in Johnson County, the state’s most populous. Challengers there have made education funding a key issue.

“You could rely on one thing, and that was public education,” said Gretchen Gradinger, a lawyer and Johnson County native who moved back from Missouri two years ago so her young son could attend the public schools she knew growing up. “For 60 years, you could rely on one thing.”

Kansas has struggled to balance its budget since the Republican-dominated Legislature heeded Brownback’s call in 2012 and 2013 to cut personal income taxes as an economic stimulus. He won a tough re-election race in 2014, but his popularity has waned with the state’s ongoing budget woes.

Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court could rule by the end of the year in an education funding lawsuit on whether legislators provide enough money to schools to fulfill a duty under the state constitution to finance a suitable education for every child. The State Board of Education is recommending phasing in an $893 million increase in aid over two years.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Kansas, Teacher Shortage
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