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NC: How to Waste Taxpayer Dollars on a Useless Bonus Plan

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2014 //
10

Governor McCrory has had a new idea.

Given the terrible morale of teachers in his state and the exodus of veteran teachers, it is important for the state to act quickly to support its teachers.

But that is not his idea.

 

He wants to use Race to the Top dollars to pay $10,000 each to 450 teachers across the state.

Since merit pay and bonuses have not had a positive effect anywhere else, consider this just a way of getting rid of RTTT money fast.

He previously announced a plan to pay new teachers more, which will be a boost for the TFA that the far-right governor and legislature are bringing to the state, but he has no plans to raise the salary of experienced teachers.

The proposal sounds similar to a plan McCrory floated last summer, when he announced his intention to use $30 million of Race to the Top funds for an Education Innovation Fund that would reward 1,000 top teachers with $10,000 stipends. That proposal was met with criticism by State Board of Education members at a meeting shortly after his announcement.

In September, NC Policy Watch reached out to Gov. McCrory’s education advisor, Eric Guckian, to see if the Education Innovation Fund was on the table. While the name seemed to have changed by then, policymakers were still moving forward with the idea.

“The goal of the Governor’s Teacher Empowerment Network is the same as the Innovation Fund was, to get the money in teachers’ pockets,” said Erin Gray, Guckian’s assistant. “However, the process of how the teachers receive this money is different. We want to be able to reward as many teachers as possible with this network and produce innovative [sic], master, leader teachers to not only benefit from the extra pay, but will be active to reform schools and lead other teachers.”

Today’s announcement about the GTN comes at a time when the state’s entire teacher workforce has not received a raise since 2008, with the exception of a 1.2 percent pay increase in 2010. Recently ranked 46th in the nation in teacher pay for the second year in a row, North Carolina is also dead last in teacher salary growth over the past decade.

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2014/03/24/mccrory-announces-plan-to-give-450-teachers-10000-bonuses-with-race-to-the-top-funds/#sthash.USLAC2Vj.dpuf

 

 

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

What Makes a Great Teacher? This Is What Students Think

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2014 //
22

Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, and the National
Council on Teacher Quality think they know what makes a great
teacher. A great teacher is the one whose students got higher test
scores this year than last year. A great teacher, they think,
brooks no excuses. In the no excuses charter schools, the teachers
snap their fingers and demand immediate compliance with commands.
Nicholas Ferroni, who teaches teenagers, decided to ask his
students what they think make a great teacher. He wrote about what
they said on Huffington Post. Here
are their answers. The answers that occur most
frequently are “caring,” “dedicated,” “kind.” No one mentions test
scores. Who do you remember as your greatest teacher? What did he
or she do that made them the best?

Categories Students, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

NC Loses Another NBCT Teacher

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2014 //
22

Governor Pat McCrory and the Legislature in North Carolina are doing their best to get rid of the state’s’s star teachers, and they are succeeding.

The state is losing large numbers of experienced teachers, because of low salaries. Teachers’ salaries have been flat for six years and are now 46th in the nation.

This National Board Certified Teacher quit, and she wrote a letter to the governor to explain why.

A 13-year veteran, Melissa Taylor wrote:

“To Whom It May Concern,

It is with great sadness that I submit my written notification of resignation from my teaching position with Wake County Public School Systems effective 3/14/14. I have found it more and more difficult to pay my bills every month and continue to fall further and further into debt, not to mention the feeling of absolute disrespect that I feel every time a new “expectation” is mandated for our classrooms while all of our resources are being taken away. I had no choice but to search for a job that will allow me to provide for my family and to pay back the thousands of dollars in college loans that I took to be a teacher. I find the condition of our education system in NC to be heartbreaking. It seems that our leaders and law makers have completely forgotten what is the most important thing here, the kids! We are failing our students, our teachers and our future. Please accept this letter as my official resignation from Wake County Public Schools.

Sincerely,

Melissa Taylor, M.Ed, NBCT”

Do you think Governor McCrory cares? Or will he gladly full her job with a TFA who will leave before vesting for a pension?

Categories North Carolina, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching

Massachusetts Kindergarten Teacher: I Quit

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2014 //
48

I am really sorry to have to publish posts like this. I don’t want to see any teacher quit, especially the veteran teachers who are needed to help new teachers learn the ropes. And yet, there is a massive outflow of teaching talent from our public schools, caused by the soul-deadening testing regime that has throttled creativity and independent thought among teachers and students like. The spirit of standardization is alive in the land, and teachers feel they are under assault if they do not conform and comply. Some just can’t do it. I urge them to stay and fight, for the sake of the children, but for many teachers the conditions have become intolerable. I know that the modal year of teaching experience has dropped from 15 in 1988 to only one or two today; that is a frightening statistic. I have been in schools where no one had more than five or six years of experience. That is awful. Some education schools report a dramatic decline in enrollments. At some point, we must attribute the deliberate attacks on the teaching profession to the so-called reform movement that holds teachers “accountable” for everything wrong in the lives of children. Researchers state without question, even conservative researchers like Eric Hanushek, that the influence of family far exceeds that of the teacher, yet reformers have turned teachers into their targets while doing nothing to improve the lives of children or families.

This article was published on Valerie Strauss’s blog “The Answer Sheet” at the Washington Post. As Strauss writes, “Susan Sluyter is a veteran teacher of young children in the Cambridge Public Schools who has been connected to the district for nearly 20 years and teaching for more than 25 years. Last month she sent a resignation letter ( “with deep love and a broken heart”) explaining that she could no longer align her understanding of how young children learn best in safe, developmentally appropriate environments with the testing and data collection mandates imposed on teachers today.”

Read Sluyter’s entire letter. It begins like this:

When I first began teaching more than 25 years ago, hands-on exploration, investigation, joy and love of learning characterized the early childhood classroom.  I’d describe our current period as a time of testing, data collection, competition and punishment. One would be hard put these days to find joy present in classrooms.

I think it started with No Child Left Behind years ago.  Over the years I’ve seen this climate of data fascination seep into our schools and slowly change the ability for educators to teach creatively and respond to children’s social and emotional needs.  But this was happening in the upper grades mostly.  Then it came to kindergarten and PreK, beginning a number of years ago with a literacy initiative that would have had us spending the better part of each day teaching literacy skills through various prescribed techniques.  ”What about math, science, creative expression and play?” we asked.  The kindergarten teachers fought back and kept this push for an overload of literacy instruction at bay for a number of years.

Next came additional mandated assessments.  Four and five year olds are screened regularly each year for glaring gaps in their development that would warrant a closer look and securing additional supports (such as O.T, P.T, and Speech Therapy) quickly.   Teachers were already assessing each child three times a year to understand their individual literacy development and growth.  A few years ago, we were instructed to add periodic math assessments after each unit of study in math.  Then last year we were told to include an additional math assessment on all Kindergarten students (which takes teachers out of the classroom with individual child testing, and intrudes on classroom teaching time.)

Every year, the mandates grew more academic and less child-friendly. The demand for standards and assessments grew more insistent, more detailed, more onerous:

There is a national push, related to the push for increased academics in Early Childhood classrooms, to cut play out of the kindergarten classroom.  Many kindergartens across the country no longer have sand tables, block areas, drama areas and arts and crafts centers.  This is a deeply ill-informed movement, as all early childhood experts continuously report that 4, 5 and 6 year olds learn largely through play.  Play is essential to healthy development and deep foundational learning at the kindergarten level.  We kindergarten teachers in Cambridge have found ourselves fighting to keep play alive in the kindergarten classroom.

Last year we heard that all kindergarten teachers across the state of Massachusetts were to adopt one of a couple of in-depth comprehensive assessments to perform with each kindergarten child three times a year.  This requires much training and an enormous amount of a teacher’s time to carry out for each child.  Cambridge adopted the Work Sampling System, which is arguably a fine tool for assessment, but it requires a teacher to leave the classroom and focus on assessment even more, and is in addition to other assessments already being done.  The negative impact of this extensive and detailed assessment system is that teachers are forced to learn yet another new and complicated tool, and are required to spend significantly less time in the classroom during the three assessment periods, as they assess, document evidence to back up their observations, and report on each child.  And it distracts teachers yet again from their teaching focus, fracturing their concentration on teaching goals, projects, units of study, and the flow of their classroom curriculum.

Conditions for teaching kindergarten children grew increasingly oppressive. Finally, on February 12, Susan Sluyter submitted her resignation letter. She concluded it in this way:

I was trying to survive in a community of colleagues who were struggling to do the same:  to adapt and survive, to continue to hold onto what we could, and to affirm what we believe to be quality teaching for an early childhood classroom.  I began to feel a deep sense of loss of integrity.  I felt my spirit, my passion as a teacher, slip away.  I felt anger rise inside me.  I felt I needed to survive by looking elsewhere and leaving the community I love so dearly.  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.

The so-called reform movement is destroying the lives of teachers and hurting children. It must be stopped. Soon, our classrooms will be filled with temps who come to teach for a few years, knowing only one thing: test scores matter most. None of the reformers would do this to their own children. Why do we let them do it to Other People’s Children–and to ours? This madness must end.

 

 

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Are You Attending American Education Research Association Meeting in Philadelphia?

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2014 //
13

If the answer is yes, please come to one or both of the two
sessions where I am speaking on April 3. I will give the
John Dewey Society lecture at the
Convention Center, 100 Level, Room 114, from 4-7 pm. (Lots of time
for discussion). My topic: “Does Evidence
Matter?” Fair warning: The room holds only 600
people. Before the Dewey lecture, I will join Philadelphia parent
activist Helen Gym and Carl Grant of the University of Wisconsin
(chair) in a special Presidential session from 2:15 to 3:45,
on the same level in Room 121B The
title of the session is: Rising to the
Challenges of Quality and Equality:
The Promise of a Public
Pedagogy If you join me at the early session,
you will have to race with me to the lecture, and the room may be
full.

Categories Accountability, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Education Reform, Research, Teachers and Teaching

Peter Greene: Why Standardized Testing Sucks

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2014 //
40

Peter Greene here explains what most teachers know about standardized testing. It is a monumental waste of time and money. It doesn’t reflect what students were taught or learned.

He writes:

“Standardized testing is completely inauthentic assessment, and students know that. The young ones may blame themselves, but students of all ages see that there is no connection between the testing and their education, their lives, anything or anyone at all in their real existence. Standardized test are like driving down a highway on vacation where every five miles you have to stop, get out of the car, and make three basketball shot attempts from the free throw line– annoying, intrusive, and completely unrelated to the journey you’re on. If someone stands at the free throw line and threatens you with a beating if you miss, it still won’t make you conclude that the requirement is not stupid and pointless.

“And so the foundation of all this data generation, all this evaluation, all this summative formative bibbitive bobbitive boobosity, is a student performing an action under duress that she sees as stupid and pointless and disconnected from anything real in life. What are the odds that this task under these conditions truly measures anything at all? And on that tissue-thin foundation, we build a whole structure of planning students’s futures, sculpting instruction, evaluating teachers. There is nothing anywhere that comes close in sheer hubritic stupidity.”

The only point he overlooks is that standardized testing mirrors socioeconomic status and distributes benefits and sanctions along the SES curve.

Categories Standardized Testing, Teachers and Teaching

Teacher: When Will We Be Able to Think of Children Again?

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2014 //
13

This teacher explains: She loves teaching. She loves her
students, but she wants the high-stakes testing and the Race to the
Top to stop. She knows that her students are set up to fail. It is
all so wrong, so mean-spirited, so cruel. This is what she knows:
“I am a NYS certified public school teacher teaching 3rd grade in
an economically disadvantaged school district in rural upstate New
York. I happen to be one of the unfortunate teachers in a “test
grade” and am in fear of loosing my job, my livelihood, and the one
thing I used to enjoy waking up to every morning (my students)!!!!!
I went into teaching to teach precious little minds to learn and
not fear the consequences if they do not get something. “That has
all changed in the last several of years as state and federal
politics have stepped in to tell us how poorly our students are
doing. We, as teachers, are so under pressure to make a round peg
fit into a square hole with these new core standards. The people
who write these tests and demand that all students achieve at the
same level have never stepped foot into a classroom to see the
diversity of the students we work with everyday. “Last year during
the first year of the common core testing, I had students who were
crying because they did not understand the question, did not have
time to finish under the allotted time, or were just simply
overwhelmed by the complexity of the test. Is that why I became a
teacher, no it is not! I teach because I want to see my students
learn, but as more and more pressure comes down on us as teachers
so too does it in our students! “There has to be a time when we
stop thinking about the race to the top and start thinking about
the children we are supposed to be encouraging to want to learn!
The only thing we are doing with these common core state tests is
setting them up for failure and in the same process making teachers
look like they are not doing their jobs. “I’m tired of people who
have never stepped foot into a classroom telling me that I am not
“effective” because my 8 year old students can’t pass a test that
even a college graduate has difficulty completing!!!!!!! Whether I
am effective should not depend on how my students do on a three day
test, it should be based on whether they show growth from beginning
to end, just like they should not be considered as not meeting an
impossible state mandated goal in a three day test!!! Enough is
enough, let us get back to teaching and let our kids be kids,
after-all your childhood only lasts so long!!!!!”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Race to the Top, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Houston: A Teacher Struggling to Survive in a “Model” District

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2014 //
48

Rachel Fairbank is a first-year teacher in Houston. She
always wanted to be a teacher. She was inspired by her own
teachers. But
she is drowning in paperwork, busywork, mandates, and
directives. She doesn’t know if she will make it. The
district does nothing to support her as a new teacher. Houston was
honored by the Broad Foundation as the most improved urban district
in the nation (reprising its Broad award from a decade ago–HISD
seems to have improved, then stopped improving, and is now
improving again). Houston is everything that Broad admires: it
gives performance pay; it fires teachers. It believes in carrots
and sticks. But the story Rachel tells is of a district that
disrespects teachers. Across the nation, teachers are leaving the
profession. Veteran teachers are leaving, new teachers are leaving.
How much longer can this continue without seriously damaging the
education profession and hurting children? She writes:
Every morning, as I gear up for another day, I wonder if
this will be the day that I become another one of the teachers who
burns out and quits. Sometimes I feel like I am running a race
against time, waiting to see what will happen first – adapt to the
demands of the job or burn out? I went into
teaching because I know – in a very tangible fashion – just how
much of a difference teachers can make. My teachers pushed me to
realize my potential. I am the youngest of
seven children, born into a family with few resources. I worked my
way through college, graduating without my parents’ financial
assistance, without taking out loans and while maintaining a
cumulative 3.6 average at Cornell University, a top-tier university
well-known for its rigor, and later receiving a fistful of
acceptances from top graduate programs….The truth is that there simply aren’t
enough hours in the day to do everything that is required of me.
There is always something, whether it’s a training requirement or
writing tests or preparing my lessons or grading papers or
counseling struggling students. Some things get finished. Most
things do not. My working life is an uneasy
calculation between the most pressing need and the requirements
that I hope can remain unfinished. Sometimes I feel like I am
always on the verge of failure, one tiny slip or miscalculation
away from either being fired or failing my students.
I find myself longing for fewer students or fewer classes
or fewer training requirements, all in the hopes that I can hunker
down and concentrate on becoming a good teacher. An effective
teacher. In the recent report issued by the
Broad Foundation, which honored the district in the fall as the
nation’s top urban school system, the foundation makes the
following observation about HISD:
“High-performing personnel are rewarded through
performance pay, and ineffective personnel are exited. The district
links teacher evaluations to student performance, providing bonuses
to top performers. Every teacher in the district is placed into one
of four performance tiers. Before 2009, the district did not
differentiate its teachers, and only 4 percent of teachers had
growth plans. Today, all teachers in the bottom quartile are on
growth plans and top teachers mentor others.”
I look around me and I see teachers who are overworked
and stressed. To be given a staggering workload – and then to work
at a job that is increasingly more insecure – is to work in an
environment that callously churns through employees.
HISD makes a point of noting that ineffective teachers
are forced to leave the district. What I wonder is how many of
these teachers who leave are truly ineffective and how many are
made ineffective simply due to the overwhelming
workload? When I think back to the teachers
who made the greatest impact on me, very few were the new teachers.
Most of them were veteran educators who had the experience and
skill necessary to make a lasting impact. Will I make
it?

Categories Houston, Teachers and Teaching

Report: Shocking Loss of Teachers in Louisiana Due to State Incompetence

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2014 //
17

Rodolfo Espinoza reports that Lafayette, Louisiana, is experiencing a major exodus of teachers who have resigned because of confusing and conflicting directions from the state bureaucracy. Espinoza is president of the local teachers’ association.

He writes:

Lafayette is in a crisis of employee resignations and early retirements. Changes in state policies spearheaded by unqualified state leaders, combined with the failure of our local district to advocate for its employees have left teachers overwhelmed and frustrated.

Since 2012, 556 teachers have left our system. Resignations are far outpacing retirements with 343 teacher resignations compared with 184 retirements since 2012. In 2012 alone, teacher resignations doubled from 81 to 164.

Bureaucracy created by the current data-driven accountability system is a major source of teachers’ frustrations. The state and districts are consumed by a school letter grade, the formula for which constantly changes under State Superintendent John White and BESE. For example, high schools are now judged on the ACT scores of all students, regardless of whether or not they are going to attend college. We now require students to take not only the ACT but also the “Practice ACT” plus hours of ACT test prep. This numbers game does little to help struggling students academically or emotionally. It is yet another mandate that allows adults sitting in offices to say they are helping “the kids” and holding schools accountable, while Johnny still can’t comprehend what he’s reading. This year in Lafayette, a typical sophomore will take 25 district and state standardized tests, consuming 25 percent of the school calendar for the sake of “data.”

The outcome: A predictable school letter grade that punishes schools and the personnel who serve at-risk populations.

 

At some point, even Louisiana has to worry how they will replace the teachers who have retired and resigned. And who will want to become a teacher when working conditions are so poor and teachers are treated so poorly by the state education department.

Categories Education Reform, Louisiana, Teachers and Teaching

Linda Darling-Hammond Testifies in Vergara Trial

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2014 //
33

A friend who observed the proceedings in the Vergara trial sent me the following notes, based on the testimony of Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond. She is probably the nation’s leading expert on issues related to teacher recruitment, preparation, retention, and support. Her testimony, based on many years of study and experience, was devastating to the plaintiff’s case.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s testimony

Overview

Yesterday, expert witness Linda Darling-Hammond, a renowned scholar and Stanford professor, has refuted the main arguments of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Darling-Hammond, whose insights come from both research and experience, stated that measures based on student test scores do not identify effective teachers, that two years is enough time to identify teachers who should be counseled out of the profession, and that extending that period beyond two years would harm students.

Excerpts

On what a good evaluation process looks like.

“With respect to tenure decisions, first of all, you need to have – in the system, you need to have clear standards that you’re going to evaluate the teacher against, that express the kind of teaching practices that are expected; and a way of collecting evidence about what the teacher does in the classroom. That includes observations and may also include certain artifacts of the teacher’s work, like lesson plans, curriculum units, student work, et cetera.”

“You need well-trained evaluators who know how to apply that instrument in a consistent and effective way.

“You want to have a system in which the evaluation is organized over a period of time so that the teacher is getting clarity about what they’re expected to do, feed back about what they’re doing, and so on.

In California – note related to the tenure decision, but separately – there is a mentoring program that may be going on side-by-side; but really, that does not feed into the tenure decisions. It’s really the observation and feedback process.”

On the problem with extending the tenure beyond two years

“It’s important that while we want teachers to at some point have due process rights in their career, that that judgment be made relatively soon; and that a floundering teacher who is grossly ineffective is not allowed to continue for many years because a year is a long time in the life of a student.

“So I think that having the two-year mark—which means you’re making a decision usually within 19 months of the starting point of that teacher – has the interest of allowing a – of encouraging districts to make that decision in a reasonable time frame so that students aren’t exposed to struggling teachers for long than they might need to be.”

Other reasons why two years is enough

“My opinion is that, for the first reason I mentioned earlier—the encouragement to make a judgment about a grossly ineffective teacher before many years go by is a useful reason to have a shorter tenure period – or pre-tenure period.

“But at the end of the say, the most important thing is not the amount of time; the most important thing is the quality and the intensity of the evaluation and support process that goes on for beginning teachers.

On the benefits and importance of having a system that includes support for struggling teachers

“Well, it’s important both as a part of a due process expectation; that if somebody is told they’re not meeting a standard, they should have some help to meet that standard.

The principal typically does not have as much time and may not have the expertise in the content area that a mentor teacher would have. For example, in physics or mathematics, usually the mentor is in the same area, so the help is more intensive and more specific.

“And in such programs, we often find that half of the teachers do improve. Others may not improve, and then the decision is more well- grounded. And when it is made, there is almost never a grievance or a lawsuit that follows because there’s ben such a strong process of help.

“The benefits to students are that as teachers are getting assistance and they’re improving their practice, students are likely to be better taught.

“And in the cases where the assistance may not prove adequate to help an incompetent teacher become competent, the benefit is that that teacher is going to be removed from the classroom sooner, if, sort of, they allowed the situation to just go on for a long time, which is truncated by this process of intensive assistance….

“The benefits to districts are that by doing this, you actually end up making the evaluation process more effective, making personnel decisions in a more timely way, making them with enough of a documentation record and a due process fidelity, that very rarely does there occur a problem after that with lawsuits; which means the district spends a little bit of money to save a lot of money and to improve the effectiveness of teaching for its students.

On peer assistance and review (PAR) and other mentoring programs

“A PAR program and other programs that mentor teachers typically improve the retention of teachers; that is, they keep more of the beginning teachers, which is where a lot of attrition occurs. But they do ensure that the teachers who leave are the ones that you’d like to have leave, as opposed to the ones who leave for other reasons.”

On firing the bottom 5% of teachers

“My opinion is that there are at least three reasons why firing the bottom 5 percent of teachers, as defined by the bottom 5 percent on an effectiveness continuum created by using the value-added test scores of their students on state tests, will not improve the overall effectiveness of teachers….

One reason is that, as I described earlier, those value-added metrics are inaccurate for many teachers. In addition, they’re highly unstable. So the teachers who are in the bottom 5 percent in one year are unlikely to be the same teachers as who would be in the bottom 5 percent the next year, assuming they were left in place.

“And the third reason is that when you create a system that is not oriented to attract high-quality teachers and support them in their work, that location becomes a very unattractive workplace. And an empirical proof of that is the situation currently in Houston, Texas, which has been firing many teachers at the bottom end of the value-added continuum without creating stronger overall achievement, and finding that they have fewer and fewer people who are willing to come apply for jobs in the district because with the instability of those scores, the inaccuracy and bias that they represent for groups of teachers, it’s become an unattractive place to work.

“The statement is often made with respect to Finland that if you fire the bottom 5 percent [of teachers], we will be on a par with achievement in Finland. And Finland does none of those things. Finland invests in the quality of beginning teachers, trains them well, brings them into the classroom and supports them, and doesn’t need to fire a lot of teachers.”

Categories California, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching
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