Archives for category: Teacher Tenure
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Peter Greene Bids Farewell to Michelle and Answers Campbell

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2014 //
13

Peter Greene writes a farewell letter to Michelle and dissects Campbell Brown’s talking points.

Peter speculates on Michelle’s departure and hopes she understands why she provoked the reactions she did::

“Maybe education was providing too few rewards and too much tempest. People have called you some awful names and said some terrible personal things about you, and though I have called you the Kim Kardashian of education, I don’t condone or support the ugly personal attacks that are following you out the door. But I understand them– you have done some awful, awful things, and I’m not sure that it’s ever seemed, from out here in the cheap seats, that you understand that teachers and students are real, live human beings and not simply props for whatever publicity moment you are staging. I’m not saying that you deserve the invective being hurled at you; I am saying that when you poke a bear in the face repeatedly, it eventually gets up and takes a bite out of you.”

As Michelle leaves, stage right, she hands off the baton as leader of the campaign against “bad teachers” to Campbell Brown, who explained her goals in an opinion piece. Since she is not an educator, he feels he must explain that her effort to take away tenure from “bad teachers” will take away tenure for ALL teachers. He asks how she will judge the quality of teachers. If she really wants to protect those who are caring, dependable, and inspiring, how can she be sure that these are the same teachers whose students get higher scores?

Ultimately, he wants know how removing employment protections will attract more “great” teachers to the classroom.

Campbell would do well to listen to Peter.

Categories Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure

Breaking News: Michelle Rhee Will Step Down as CEO of Students First

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2014 //
40

Joy Resmovits of Huffington Post reports that Michelle Rhee is stepping down as leader of StudentsFirst, a group she founded in 2010. She is likely to remain a board member. She recently changed her name to Michelle Johnson.

“StudentsFirst was launched on Oprah’s TV talk show in late 2010 and immediately set ambitious goals, such as amassing $1 billion in its first year and becoming education’s lobbying equivalent to the National Rifle Association. Its policy goals focused on teacher quality, teacher evaluations, school accountability and the expansion of charter schools. But the group has failed to achieve some of its major goals. After revising its fundraising goal to $1 billion over five years, the group only netted $62.8 million in total: $7.6 million in its first year, $28.5 million in its second year and $26.7 million between August 2012 and July 2013. The group also has seen much staff turnover, cycling through at least five prominent spokespeople since 2010.

“After the group began, it saw some legislative and electoral successes. It claims credit for changing more than 130 education laws in many states. It has released report cards ranking states on their education policies, supported candidates through political action committees, and lobbied state legislatures and governors on reform issues.”

Although Rhee always claimed to be a Democrat, most of her group’s campaign contributions went to conservative Republicans. Last year, StudentsFirst honored Tennessee State Representative John Ragan as “education reformer of the year,” despite the fact that he was co-sponsor of the infamous “don’t say gay” bill). She opposed unions, tenure, and seniority, and she supported vouchers and charters. She was a leader of the privatization movement as well as the movement to evaluate teachers by test scores. Ironically, her successor in the District of Columbia announced yesterday the suspension of test-based evaluation of teachers, a move supported by the Gates Foundation.

Resmovits speculates that former CNN news anchor Campbell Brown will become the face of the movement to strip due process rights from teachers. StudentsFirst, however, is unlikely to have the national visibility that it had under Rhee’s controversial leadership.

Categories Charter Schools, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Unions, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Who Is Campbell Brown?

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2014 //
25

Mercedes Schneider checks out the origins and development of Campbell Brown, who is now threatening to take Michelle Rhee’s place as the leader of the anti-union, anti-teacher campaign. Mercedes hails from Louisiana, and so did Campbell. Campbell came from a very poor town called Ferriday. But she wasn’t poor. Her father served in the State Senate and as Secretary of State. She didn’t go to public schools. She went to some fine private schools. Off to college, then she marries Dan Senor, and take a look at her beautiful Vera Wang wedding dress. Let’s say it. She’s pretty. She’s privileged. She has had a very good life indeed. But it really troubles her that teachers are protected against vindictive principals or students who make false accusations or parents who object to the books they teach. This is intolerable to Campbell Brown. She is special. To her, teachers are not.

Categories Louisiana, Teacher Tenure

David Sirota: Why Campbell Brown Refuses to Disclose Names of Donors

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2014 //
16

In her appearance on the Steven Colbert show, anti-union activist Campbell Brown refused to identify the names of her donors. One of her organizations is called, ironically, the Parents Transparency Project.

Veteran journalist David Sirota writes:

“As Brown keeps the identity of her financial backers under wraps, her organization describes itself as a group “whose mission is to bring transparency” to education policymaking.

“Politico has reported that under current law, Department of Labor rules require unions to “disclose more than many political groups about their internal operations,” funding and expenditures. By contrast, many political groups seeking to limit teachers unions’ workplace rights and replace traditional public schools with privately run, union-free charter schools have been able to keep the identity of their benefactors shrouded in secrecy, though periodic leaks have shed at least some light on the funders.”

“For example, the most prominent opponent of the teachers union, Students First, has rejected requests for a list of its donors. Yet thanks to a Pennsylvania lobbying disclosure law, the Huffington Post in 2012 was able to report that “New Jersey hedge funder and Romney backer David Tepper and the Texas-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation [are] among the largest donors” to the organization. Additionally, the board of Students First includes hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, News Corp. education-technology executive Joel Klein, and Dan Senor, Brown’s husband, who previously served as the Bush-appointed spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Likewise, in New Jersey, WNYC reported that a group called the Committee For Our Children’s Future spent millions on ads promoting Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s education agenda, while the funders of the ads remained anonymous. WNYC later reported that television station filings revealed that the group used the “same ad buyers Christie used for his 2009 campaign for governor,” and that the contact address for the group could “be traced back to Kevin F. Feeley, a Christie donor whose son has worked for Christie as an intern.” The radio station also reported that the documents linked the ads to a Republican consulting firm that had done work for former GOP presidential nominee John McCain. Christie has pushed for more privately run charter schools in New Jersey.”

Who are these shadowy groups who hide their names as they seek to eliminate academic freedom for teachers? Why do they never explain why teachers in our highest performing schools are as likely (or more likely) to have due process rights as teachers in low-performing schools? In an era when media pundits and celebrities claim to be experts about how to reform schools while teachers’ voices are silenced, you can bet we are headed in the wrong direction.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Unions

Paul Karrer: Tenure Gives Teachers Freedom to Teach

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2014 //
23

Paul Karrer was the 2009 North Monterey LULAC Teacher of the Year. He has taught in Korea , Samoa , England , Connecticut , and is currently a fifth-grade tenured teacher in Castroville Elementary School, Castroville California.

In this article, Karrer explains why tenure is necessary: it protects teachers from the latest fad or misguided mandate.

He writes that teachers are subject to “a revolving door of insipid, untried, never-ending contradictory education philosophies, a steady departure of administrators, over-filled classrooms, diminishing resources, increased poverty, non-related, high-stakes academic testing, and the constant insertion by non-educators of mandated, mantra-driven education policy.

“Veteran teachers have seen: No Child Left Behind, no science, Race to the Top, math this-and-that, reading fluency and whole-word recognition, phonics, bilingualism and language acquisition, and now, Common Core.

“What did teachers get? Substandard pay and tenure. Yet tenure is what allows veteran teachers the freedom to check the insanity of injurious reform.

Categories Teacher Tenure

Lloyd Lofthouse on the Vergara Ruling

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2014 //
25

Lloyd Lofthouse is an experienced educator and commentator on the blog:

“In the Vergara trial—I think the verdict was bought and paid for in some way—the judge’s verdict was based on unproven theories that a few incompetent teachers would ruin a child’s ability to earn an education. The numbers presented in one theory were one to two percent of teachers could be incompetent—not “are incompeten” but “could be incompetent” because of classroom observations of one man over a period of years.

First, how many teachers can one person observe long enough to form a valid judgement and how long should each observation be? What if the teacher was having a bad day and the other 179 instructional days were perfect?

Anyway, let’s look at a few numbers based on the 2011-12 school year in California:

There were 6,220,993 students enrolled and attending 10,296 public schools. Another 438,474 attended 1,019 Charter schools.

There were 300,140 teachers in the public schools. If we go with the 1 to 2 percent observational guesstimate, that means 3,001 to 6,223 teachers might be incompetent, but there are 10,296 schools, so that means thousands of schools don’t have even one incompetent teacher, but the teachers in those schools risk losing legal due process rights that would allow them to challenge any accusations made against them that they were incompetence.

In other words, 292,917 to 297,139 could be fired for any reason at any time and there would be no way for the teacher to defend the accusations made against them.

If the Vergara ruling survives, every teacher in California would all be at risk of being fired at any moment by an administrator who could be incompetent or be stooge owned by the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, TFA, etc who had walking orders to get rid of as many teachers as possible and replace them with younger, less incompetent teachers.

It’s obvious that Bill Gates is in charge of deciding how many teachers should go, because it is his “rank and yank” system that is part of the Common Core agenda and all anyone has to do is look at the arbitrary numbers Bill Gates set in place at Microsoft to judge how many had to be incompetent and go to be replaced by another crop who had to prove their competence. That anal arbitrary nubmer that Gates must have pulled out of his crotch was 25% with no evidence to support the fact that so many Microsoft employee were actually incompetent.

In conclusion, it’s obvious where this is going. If President Obama’s partner in crime, Bill Gates, has his way, eventually 25% of public school teachers—not just the one to two percent who are alleged to be incompetent without any evidence to support that claim— would have to lose their jobs annually all based on standardized test scores.

If you read the recent headlines, Microsoft will lay off 18,000 workers this year in addition to 12,500 associated with the Nokia Device and Services team it acquired earlier this year. Microsoft has almost 130,000 employes across the world—the number losing their jobs is almost 24%.

How many teachers in California stand to lose their jobs annually and have to be replaced using the Gates “rank and yank” system? The answer is about 75,000 annually. At that annual rate, every four years, California’s public schools would get rid of 300,140 teachers for a complete possible turnover in every school.

This is all based on two unproven theories—with crucial evidence—that both are horribly wrong headed and when implemented they create nothign but havoc and chaos.

What are the odds of one of those 6.2 million students ending up in a classroom with one of those estimated 3,001 to 6,223 so-called incompetent teachers with no proven, accepted, valid method to judge the teacher properly?

Does anyone have an answer?

What about the odds of a teacher ending up with incompetent students who have dysfunctional, incompetent parents? Does anyone have a theory for that number? I think we could start with the number of children living in poverty and/or who have severe learning disabilities.

These numbers might help: California’s child poverty rates for Latinos (31.2%) and African Americans (33.4%) are much higher than the rates among Asians (13.2%) and whites (10.1%). The child poverty rate in families where neither parent has a high school diploma is high in California (48.5%).

http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=721

In addition, it might help to compare the poverty rates with the on-time high school graduation rates in California (2011-2012):

Asian/Pacific Islander 90%
White 86%
Hispanic 73%
Black 66%

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-high-school-graduation-rates-by-race-ethnicity.html

Categories Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Grassroots Parent Groups Criticize “The Real Campbell Brown”

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2014 //
10

The Alliance for Quality Education and New York Communities for Change, both of which fight for equitable funding of schools in low-incoe communities, have created a website called it “The Real Campbell Brown.”

Although Brown was a CNN anchor, she was not known to the parent groups that have fought for economic and social equity for minority children for many years.

Categories Teacher Tenure

What Do Celebrities and Superstars Know about Teaching?

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2014 //
61

I worry for the future of our society when I see that education policy is being shaped by people who know nothing–nothing–about education. They never taught in a school. They never studied education. They know nothing about research. They are ignorant of the history, politics, and economics of education. Yet they feel that their Big Name empowers them to influence legislation and court decisions about the working conditions in schools. They make breezy pronouncements about “bad teachers” without indicating that they know any teachers at all. Let’s face it: If you are a Hollywood star or a superstar lawyer, how many teachers are likely to be in your social circle? How many hours do you think the celebrities have spent as volunteers in their local public schools? Do they know what they are talking about? Imagine television talk shows inviting celebrities to talk about how to treat patients who have certain diseases. Shouldn’t you know something about a subject before you present yourself on national television as qualified to comment? Television talk shows today are our great social equalizers: Those with genuine expertise will get equal time with those who are totally ignorant. What does Britney Spears think about tenure? George Clooney? Kim Kardashian? Beyonce? Other nations leave these issues to educators, but not us!

 
Here is Jersey Jazzman’s brilliant analysis of the latest outbreak of Celebrity Opinion on summer TV talk shows.

 

Is there any evidence that firing experienced teachers raises student achievement? Well, actually, no.

 

JJ says that abolishing tenure so that schools with large numbers of at-risk students may be taught by inexperienced teachers is one of the most inequitable ideas of our time.

 

Why not staff our schools with celebrities? Give them a chance to show what they can do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Teacher Tenure

Ken Previti: In Defense of Whoopi Goldberg

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2014 //
249

I the past few days, Twitter has been a twitter with tweets acclaiming or denouncing Whoopi Goldberg for her comments opposing tenure on “The View.” Ken Previti says that it is not reasonable to criticize Whoopi because she clearly doesn’t know much about what tenure is and why teachers defend it. It is a guarantee of a hearing, of due process, if a boss wants to fire you. Teachers earn tenure over a period of 2, 3, or 4 years. Many teachers don’t have tenure. Unions don’t grant tenure, administrators do.

Are our schools overrun with bad teachers? No. The latest evaluation plans typically find that 95% or more of teachers are effective or highly effective.

Critics of tenure never acknowledge that about 40% of new teachers don’t last more than four or five years. Teaching is a hard job, and tenure is a guarantee that you won’t be fired. For arbitrary or capricious reasons. You get a hearing, where an independent arbitrator considers the evidence. This protects teachers from students who make false accusations, from parents angry that the teacher didn’t raise their child’s grade, from community members who don’t want teachers to mention evolution, climate change, or certain literary classics. Tenure protects teachers from being fired because the district wants to hire cheaper teachers; it protects teachers from being fired to make a job for a city councilman’s daughter; it protects teachers from being fired because of their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, or their looks.

Ken Previti says, don’t blame Whoopi: educate her. Reach out to her on Twitter or Facebook. Help her understand.

Categories Teacher Tenure

On Esquire Blog, Charles P. Pierce Explains What Campbell Brown Wants

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2014 //
64

Charles P. Pierce posted an astonishing piece about Campbell Brown on the Esquire politics blog that delves into her devotion to transparency, except where her donors are concerned. I cannot reveal the title of his article because it would violate one of the very few rules of this blog. I do not use certain four-letter words of ancient origin on the blog, nor do I permit others to do so. So, if you want to know what Pierce titled his article or what he said about Campbell Brown, open the link.

Categories Teacher Tenure
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