Archives for category: Teacher Tenure
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Teacher: When Test Scores Measure Nothing

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2014 //
27

A teacher writes to challenge the claim that teachers are never fired and to explain why it is wrong to judge teachers by test scores:

“Teachers do get fired. 3 in my own school in recent memory. Tenure only provides teachers the right to due process before they are let go for poor performance. And, how do you judge me on my students’ performance? I’m a special education teacher. I teach students with autism, with mental illness like schizophrenia, with dyslexia, with ADHD. I work just as hard as the AP Stats teacher down the hall. Guess what? A student getting electric shock treatments three times a week doesn’t have very good ACT/SAT scores. Neither does a student with autism with limited language skills. Neither does a child who reads letters upside down and backwards. Neither does a chronically truant child. Or one who comes lives in a home with drug addicted parents. Or who has post traumatic stress due to sexual abuse or parents who fight day and night. All of these things affect test scores, and all are beyond teachers’ control.”

Categories Special Education, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching

Gary Rubinstein: Juking the Stats in the Vergara Case

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2014 //
13

The well-publicized Vergara trial in Los Angeles has put a spotlight on teacher tenure and seniority.

The plaintiffs’s lawyers say that the “best” teachers are unfairly assigned to teach white students.

Gary Rubinstein looks at the claims and finds them statistically dubious.

For one thing, they are based on value-added measures, which are themselves of dubious scientific validity.

For another, those testifying for the plaintiffs–notably Tom Kane (who is known for his work for the Gates Foundation)–knows that the math behind his claims is shaky.

He notes that Kane testifies that 5.4% of Latino kids get “ineffective” teachers (as measured by VAM), when only 5% should get such teachers.

Hmmm. Not what one would identify as a smoking gun of discrimination.

The defendants should get a mathematician to punch a hole in these assertions.

Categories Teacher Tenure

A Balanced, Sane Explanation of the Issues in the Vergara Case

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2014 //
5

Ben Spielberg here explains the issues in the Vergara case, the litigation attempting to eliminate due process and seniority for teachers in Los Angles, and likely, for California. This is a big case for those trying to destroy unions and any rights for teachers.

Ben’s analysis is the best I have seen to date. He includes recommendations for improving the laws.

Categories Accountability, Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure

News Flash! NC County School Board Will Defy State Law

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
43

The school board in Guilford County, North Carolina, voted unanimously tonight to defy state legislation denying “tenure” (career status) to experienced teachers.

According to the latest news reports:

“GREENSBORO — The Guilford County School Board unanimously supported a resolution challenging the state’s new tenure law and asking for relief from laws requiring them to offer contracts to certain teachers in exchange for their tenure.

Teachers in the audience stood and clapped as the board’s vote appeared on a TV screen. Then board members and district staff stood and clapped for teachers.

Board members said the law is unconstitutional, its wording unclear. They also said the legislation “represents yet another thinly veiled attack on public education and educators.

Updated 7:11 p.m.

GREENSBORO — Senate leader Phil Berger said he is “deeply troubled” by reports that the Guilford County Board of Education will vote tonight not to follow provisions of the state teacher tenure law.

In a letter sent to Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green, Berger said that by ignoring the law, board members are failing to “recognize and reward excellent teachers.”

Board members are expected to vote to not choose certain teachers to award new contracts, as required by law.

About six of the 11 board members already have indicated they support that vote.

Tonight, teachers wearing red for public education, packed the board room and central office. About an hour before the meeting started, teachers — some from out of state — chanted and held signs protesting recent legislation affecting education.

Several teachers spoke during the public comment period of the meeting, thanking board members for their expected voted.

“Right now educators are facing a death of a thousand cuts,” said teacher Todd Warren, who has spoken out about raising pay for all teachers.

Amy Harrison, a special education teacher at Reedy Fork Elementary, thanked the board and told them every teacher at her school has signed a petition pledging to decline the new contracts.

Categories North Carolina, Teacher Tenure

Who Is Behind the Vergara Attack on Due Process in California?

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
33

Who is paying for and supporting the lawsuit claiming that due process for teachers harms the civil rights of students?

Until now, all we knew was that the case was bankrolled by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named David Welch.

That much is true, but Welch also has an advisory board that includes Russlyn Ali, who served as an assistant secretary to Arne Duncan, now working for the supposedly liberal Education Trust; and even more disturbing, Ted Mitchell of NewSchools Venture Fund, who was nominated by President Obama to be the #2 official in the U.S. Department of Education. Also on the board is Ben Austin of Parent Revolution.

The anti-due process group, anti-union group is running a well-honed PR campaign. The California Teachers Association has decided not to compete in the PR war.

” Remarkably, this one-sided communications war has been initiated by a single person – Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch, the founder of the nonprofit organization Students Matter, which brought the suit – and provides a case study of what impact a single individual can have if he has the resources, or access to them, to take action based on his beliefs.

“California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel says his organization, representing more than 300,000 teachers, has no intention of trying to counteract what he described as a campaign funded by the bottomless pockets of the “billionaires boys club….”

“The organization is a relative newcomer to the California education policy landscape. The organization has no staff on its payroll, or even its own office. Instead it is run out of its communications firm’s office in Los Angeles. Its sole purpose, as described on its website, is “sponsoring impact litigation to promote access to quality public education. Welch’s net worth is unknown, although public reports assert that he receives more than $2 million in annual compensation from the Infinera Corporation, which he founded.

“For weeks leading to the opening of the trial on Jan. 27, media outlets have received a stream of emails and announcements about the pending proceedings.

“An email sent out on the weekend before the trial opened provided possible tweets – complete with scripts, hashtags and Twitter handles – with a half dozen to draw from. Here’s one: Let’s get back to basics, starting with a great teacher in every classroom! I support @Students_Matter #VergaraTrial

“Students Matter called a news conference a few days before the trial opened, and on opening day yet another news conference was held during the lunch break with all nine students who are listed in the suit as plaintiffs in the case, along with Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy who has testified on their behalf.

“On the morning the trial opened, Students Matter emails sent at 5 a.m. by the communications firms landed in media outlets’ inboxes. Before 8 a.m. that day a news release appeared on Yahoo News with the headline “California Students Get Their Day in Court: Groundbreaking Education Equality Trial Begins Today.”

Win or lose, the goal of the campaign seems to be to smear the union and teachers.

Is it surprising that a soon-to-be-confirmed high-level official in the Obama administration is part of the anti-teacher team?

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure, U.S. Department of Education

Ladd and Fiske: Destroying Public Education in North Carolina

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
32

Helen F. Ladd of Duke University and Edward B. Fiske, former education editor of the Néw York Times, lambasted the Governor and Legislature of North Carolina for their calculated program to destroy public education in the state.

Only two years ago, Ladd and Fiske drafted a “vision statement” for the state board of education, describing how public education could better serve the children and the state.

But in the last year, Governor McCrory and the General Assembly have attacked the foundations of public education, underfunded the schools, and attacked the teaching profession.

They write:

“If one were to devise a strategy for destroying public education in North Carolina, it might look like this: Repeat over and over again that schools are failing and that the system needs to be replaced. Then make this a self-fulfilling prophecy by starving schools of funds, undermining teachers and badmouthing their profession, balkanizing the system to make coherent planning impossible, putting public funds in the hands of unaccountable private interests and abandoning any pretense that the goal is to prepare every child in our state to succeed in life.””

“We do not know what motives have driven McCrory and other Republican leaders to enact their education agenda. We do know that their actions look a lot like a systematic effort to destroy a public education system that took more than a century to build and that, once destroyed, could take decades to restore.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, North Carolina, Supporting public schools, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

The Two Faces of John Deasy

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
19

When the Los Angeles School Unified School District was sued by lawyers claiming that due process for teachers harms the civil rights of minority students, one of those who testified FOR the plaintiffs and AGAINST the district was Superintendent John Deasy. The high-powered lawyers are paid by a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur.

The goal of the lawsuit is to remove the single most important protection that teachers have: freedom from arbitrary and capricious firing, and the right to a fair hearing before an independent arbitrator. This is not a right lightly awarded (or should not be); it is awarded by administrators after two years of teaching in the Los Angeles district. It is the responsibility of leaders to make sound judgments about teachers based on observation and to deny tenure to any who are “grossly ineffective,” or “ineffective” in any sense. In other jurisdictions, the probationary period is three or four years. Some states allow teachers to be fired at will. That seems to be Deasy’s goal.

The story begins:

“Last week’s testimony in the Vergara v. California trial raised many an eyebrow when Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent John E. Deasy testified on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit whose defendants had originally included LAUSD.
Despite its supporters’ protests to the contrary, Vergara is widely seen as a frontal attack against statutory guarantees of due process and seniority rights for state teachers. The suit is the brainchild of Students Matter, a Bay Area nonprofit created by wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch and partly financed by L.A. billionaire Eli Broad.

“Under friendly direct examination by plaintiff attorney Marcellus McRae, the superintendent offered testimony that supported the suit’s contentions that the way in which teachers are fired, laid off and granted tenure has an adverse impact on the overall quality of the teacher workforce and illegally discriminates against low-income and minority students.
At one point Deasy’s apparent eagerness to anticipate McRae drew an instruction from Judge Rolf M. Treu for the superintendent to wait for the question before supplying the answer.

“Deasy readily agreed that due process laws complicated dismissals of “grossly ineffective teachers” and damaged the morale of the profession. “Morale is absolutely affected,” Deasy insisted, before attacking the state’s teacher seniority policies.
He also denied any connection between student performance and poverty. “I believe the statistics correlate,” he said, “but I don’t believe in causality.”

“Deasy’s performance as a friendly witness should not have come as a complete surprise, however. The day after the suit was originally filed against the state and the L.A. school district in 2012, then-defendant Deasy took the unusual step of issuing a press release endorsing the lawsuit’s aims. (Deasy, through a spokesperson, declined to comment for this article.)
For the city’s public school teachers and longtime education policy observers, the spectacle of the L.A. school chief siding with a lawsuit against the very system he is paid to uphold has become a familiar feature of Deasy’s fractious, two-and-half year tenure.”

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure

Los Angeles Lawyer: How to Fire a Teacher

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2014 //
72

Ron Lapekas, an attorney in Los Angeles, submitted the following comment to the blog about the Vergara trial, in which plaintiffs claim that tenure (due process) for teachers violates the civil rights of students. The case of the plaintiffs is funded with millions of dollars by a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who thinks that teachers should be fired at the will of their employer without hearings or evidence. Lapekas was a teacher before he became an attorney:

This is a show trial in which Deasy, purportedly testifying in “defense” of LAUSD, is trying to provide evidence in support of the plaintiffs to justify his own failed “leadership”. Notice that he was called as the first witness by the plaintiffs. His testimony about the difficulty of dismissing teachers is, to be blunt, false. The primary reason poor teachers are difficult to fire is because administrators like Deasy are incompetent.
Deasy is an example of an administrator who has been out of the classroom too long — and it is questionable whether he ever should have been in one in the first place. Indeed, his teaching experience is scant and completely unrelated to the challenges of LAUSD.
Deasy’s Resume shows the following:
TEACHING EXPERIENCE – SECONDARY SCHOOL
1983-1986 Science Teacher and Resident Dormitory Counselor, Coach for Track and Cross Country: LaSalle Military Academy, Oakdale, Long Island, New York – Population: 800 Students
So, Deasy brings his three years of “experience” teaching at a private military academy that has 100% control over the students it admits to LAUSD and orders teachers to do a better job. Of course, Deasy’s orders would be easier to follow if he had any clue about the challenges of actually teaching in a troubled LAUSD school.
Deasy’s “management style” is consistent with his background in military academies. He appears to believe that giving orders will produce results. Thus, he orders teachers to “be effective”; however, such an order can’t be followed until teachers are given the power to order their students to learn. Oops — learning isn’t part of Deasy’s business model for a successful school — only “objective” results from “data driven” models can determine if a teacher is “effective.”

Like most incompetent managers, Deasy blames subordinates with generalized accusations. However, without specific allegations, teachers are unable to respond because there are no objective means to evaluate improvement — except for standardized testing. And the circle goes round and round ….
The press coverage describes the kinds of teachers who need to be fired as those who fall asleep, read newspapers in class, and show YouTube videos. For these transgressions, one needs to ask “where is the administrator who did not see this in the two year probationary period?” If the teacher has tenure, where is the administrator who did not see this and document it?
Lastly, Deasy’s testimony that teachers are difficult to fire is contradicted by the evidence. Testifying that teachers are “grossly ineffective” is a conclusion, not evidence. Indeed, this trial is an example of how LAUSD substitutes its beliefs for facts. Furthermore, there are several instances where the charges against a teacher have failed to satisfy the three member panel called the Commission on Teacher Competence that dismissal is warranted. However, Deasy usurps the function of the School Board and unilaterally orders that the teacher will not be returned to the classroom.
In conclusion,
I believe that “ineffective teachers” — such as inexperienced and minimally qualified but well intentioned Teach For America” graduates — should be provided an opportunity to improve to meet objective standards of competence.
I believe that any teacher with tenure who fails to meet objective standards should be provided the opportunity to improve as provided by the California Education Code. If the teacher fails to meet objective standards within the 45 or 90 day period provided, he or she should be dismissed in accordance with law.
And I believe that any teacher who acts inappropriately with a student and every incompetent administrator who disregarded complaints from parents and students or was unable to identify such behavior should be fired.
Lastly, I offer a suggestion to help obtain evidence: Cameras in every classroom. I had them in mine. When my principal questioned me, I told him they were legal because everyone knew they were being video recorded. When he said that they might catch me doing something improper, I responded: “If I do, then I should be caught.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Teacher Tenure

I Am Bummed Out: Rhee Will Speak in Minneapolis Instead of Debating Me

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2014 //
106

As readers of this blog know, Michelle Rhee promised to debate me at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania last spring.

The date was set, at her request, on February 6.

Then she demanded a second, and I agreed. (Her second was going to be Rod Paige.)

Then she demanded a third, and I agreed.

Then she said she couldn’t find a third, and she canceled.

Now I learn she is speaking to the Chamber of Commerce in Minneapolis on February 6, where she will bring the message that the way to have great schools is to fire teachers and use test scores as the absolute judge of students, teachers, principals, and schools.

She is speaking during the day so it is not likely that there will be teachers or students present.

I wish she would debate me. I would even accept a fourth or a fifth. We could each bring a team and mud-wrestle.

But no basketball. She would bring you-know-who, and I am not that tall.

Come on, Michelle. Just do it.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Testing

Deasy Testifies on Both Sides of Tenure Lawsuit

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2014 //
28

John Deasy, superintendent of the Los Angeles public schools, testified that it was outrageously expensive and time-consuming to fire a tenured teachers, but also acknowledged that good administrators don’t grant due process rights to ineffective teachers. Further, he took pride in the number of teachers to whom he denied tenure as well as the number he removed.

Categories Los Angeles, Teacher Tenure
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