Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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The Vergara Trial: Harvard Expert Takes Stand

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2014 //
14

The Vergara trial is an effort by a wealthy tech entrepreneur to win a judgment that any due process rights for teachers harms the civil rights of minority students.

The defense (the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers) called Harvard professor Susan Moore Johnson to testify. Johnson is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the teaching profession. Plaintiffs’ lawyer attempted to rattle her by asking narrow questions about California law and pointing out that she had studied only one district in California, as though the laws there operate in a vacuum. Here is an account from a corporate reform source.

In contrast, the following was sent by a colleague with access to the trial transcript:

“Diane –

“I wanted to let you know that Susan Moore Johnson testified on Tuesday at the Vergara trial. Her testimony was rock star stuff because of her credentials and I thought it’s worth sharing with you for your blog. The plantiff’s tried to say that she wasn’t very qualified to testify because she had only studied a few districts in California directly in the course of her work on the issues that the trail was about. They also admitted that income inequality, poverty and other issues were at play in high poverty schools but they said those things are irrelevant because they only want to focus on taking away teachers rights. You can see some quotes below.

“In Vergara v. California, evidence won the day. Dr. Susan Moore Johnson took the stand on February 18 and 19, using a lifetime of experience and research to back up her testimony that due process allows teachers to do their best work.

“Some highlights from her testimony:

“Due process allows teachers to do their best work: “It’s essential that the people who work with students, primarily the teachers, are able to do their best work, and that means that the conditions of their work have…to ensure that they have the resources they need, the time they need and the conditions they need to teach well.”

“Better working conditions mean greater student improvement: “When we took the data from the surveys and identified the schools that were rated as very favorable working environments, favorable working environments, unfavorables, and we linked that to student achievement using a student growth measure which is used in the state of Massachusetts, we found that student improvement was greater in schools where teachers reported better working conditions.”

“Laws around tenure, seniority and due process help retain good teachers: “Teachers remain in schools where there are strong and effective principals who deal fairly with them and with students and create environments where they can do their best work. Teachers want to be able to teach effectively, and schools that enable them to do that are schools where they will stay. And that’s regardless of the income level of the school.”

“Interestingly, during her testimony, the plaintiff’s lawyer admitted that there were other factors of inequity at play. He said, “”[T]here are other things that can contribute – like racism, etc. That is not relevant.”

“Bottom line:

“Parents, teachers and students are fed up with the inequities that too often plague our classrooms. Schools are under- and unfairly funded. Classrooms are overcrowded. Segregation is still a reality, decades after Brown v Board of Education. Some kids come to school hungry. Others leave with no home to go to.

“If those who brought this case really cared about making a difference for kids, they’d be working with trachrs and parents to find and implement evidence-based solutions – early childhood education, small classes, project-based learning, wraparound services, professional development, fair funding formulas and more.

“Blaming teachers’ work conditions for the inequities in public education is a misdirected, ideological argument.”

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

What Matters Most in Teaching Can’t Be Quantified

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2014 //
29

Another great column from Myra Blackmon in the Athens (Georgia) Banner-Herald, explains the education industry and its obsession with data.

She writes:

“Some folks believe that if you can’t quantify something, it isn’t worth bothering with. People in power are often so obsessed with the data, the numbers, and the profits they often lose sight of the people behind the information.

Such is the case with the massive educational “evaluation” being pushed by so-called reformers. Many of these high-level reformers — Bill Gates, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others — know little or nothing about teaching and learning in our public schools. Bill Gates’ children attended Lakeside Academy in Seattle, where tuition approaches $30,000 a year. One of Michael Bloomberg’s daughters was featured in a documentary “Born Rich” about growing up with tremendous wealth.”

PS: the editors should note that Bill Gates put $200 million into the Common Core standards, not $200,000 (which would be chicken feed for Gates).

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pearson, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Anthony Cody: What Bill Gates Will Tell the NBCTs, and Why They Should Not Believe Him

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2014 //
29

Anthony Cody is steamed that Bill Gates was invited to be a keynote speaker for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. He knows that Gates will praise them and make them feel good.

But, beware, he says.

No one has done more to damage the profession of teaching than Bill Gates. Cody cites word-for-word the insulting and vacuous comments Gates has made in print and in lectures that undermine teacher professionalism.

No one has done more to foist an obsession with standardized testing on the nation’s children than Bill Gates.

As Cody observes,

“I know that the level of saturation that Gates and his money has achieved make his influence almost like the air that we breath. For that reason, it is all the more important to have a sober assessment of this reality. Scientist Carl Sagan wrote some years ago,

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

“Bill Gates is a charlatan as far as education is concerned. He has discarded the expertise of educators as if it were trash, because it did not align with his concept of how learning ought to be measured and improved. In its place, he has fostered a worship of almighty data. He will come to the National Board singing the praises of accomplished teachers, because he wants to bring leading educators to his side, even as he devalues their expertise and autonomy.”

Now, if he agrees to subject his own children to the same data-driven regime he is imposing on the nation’s children, we might take him seriously. But we won’t hold our breath for that to happen.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Mark Weber: The Mess That Cerf Leaves Behind in New Jersey

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2014 //
14

Mark Weber, who blogs as Jersey Jazzman, here describes the legacy of Chris Cerf’s three years as State Commissioner of Education in New Jersey.

Cerf has announced that he is leaving to join Amplify, the education division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which is headed by Cerf’s former boss Joel Klein. Cerf was deputy chancellor in New York City when Klein was chancellor. Together, they will sell hardware and software to the nation’s schools on behalf of Murdoch.

Weber sums Cerf’s legacy thus:

More state control.
More emphasis on standardized testing.
More inequitably funded districts.
More inexperienced district leaders.
More intensely segregated districts.
More unfunded mandates.
More demoralized and burned out teachers.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, New Jersey, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

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

Bruce Baker Has a Problem with “Simple, Ignorant Solutions & Simulations”

By dianeravitch
February 14, 2014 //
21

A respected researcher recently pointed out to me that there is a vast divide between most economists of education–who devoutly believe (it seems) that whatever matters can be measured, and if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t matter–and education researchers, who tend to think about the real world of students and teachers.

Here is an excellent example of the divide.

Bruce Baker takes issue with the currently fashionable idea that education can be dramatically improved by identifying the “best” teachers, giving them larger classes, and getting rid of the loser teachers.

Or, as he puts it:

“The solution to all of our woes is simple and elegant. Just follow these steps.

Step 1: Identify “really great” teachers (using your best VAM or SGP) who happen to be currently teaching inefficiently small classes of 14 to 17 students.

Step 2: Re-assign to those “really great” teachers another 12 or so students, because whatever losses might occur in relation to increased class size, the benefits of the “really great” teacher will far outweigh those losses.

Step 3: Enter underpants Gnomes.

Step 4. Test Score Awesomeness!”

He has a suggestion: Why not try the same at the fancy private and public schools?.

“One might assert that affluent suburban Westchester and Long Island districts with much smaller average class sizes should give more serious consideration to this proposal, that is, if they are a) willing to accept the assertion that they have both “bad” and “good” teachers and b) that parents in their districts are really willing to permit such experimentation with their children? I remain unconvinced.

“As for leading private independent schools which continue to use small class size as a major selling point (& differentiator from public districts), I’m currently pondering the construction of the double-decker Harkness table, to accommodate 12 students sitting on the backs of 12 others. This will be a disruptive innovation like no other!”

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Research, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Ex-KIPP Teacher: Why I Could Not Teach Like a Champion

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2014 //
64

In this post, Rebecca Radding explains why she was asked to leave at the end of her third year as a Teach for America teacher in a KIPP school in Néw Orleans.

She could not teach like a champion.

She writes:

“I was never much of a champion, to be honest. KIPP defines a successful teacher as someone who keeps children quiet, teaches children how to answer each question on a test composed of arbitrary questions, and then produces high scores on this test. Mind you, I was teaching Pre-K and then kindergarten at a KIPP school in New Orleans—and these were still the metrics by which I was being evaluated. Since my definition of a successful early childhood classroom looked very different from silence and test prep, I had to figure out how to survive. I lasted three years.”

“By year three it had become very, very difficult for me to hide my disdain for the way the school was managed. In the previous two years, I’d fought hard for the adoption of a play-based early childhood curriculum, only to see it systematically dismantled by our 25-year old assistant principal. When this administrator told us that our student test scores would be higher if we used direct instruction, worksheets and exit tickets to check for their understanding, I lost my shit. I’m sorry, but five year olds don’t learn that way.

“I was fired a week later. Well, to be fair, I was told that I *wasn’t a good fit*—most likely because I talked about things like poverty and trauma and brain development, and also because at that point I knew significantly more about early childhood education and what young children actually needed to grow and develop than the administrators who ran the school. And that made me a threat.”

She goes on to explain what it means to “teach like a champion” and why she found it increasingly impossible to comply.

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Pre-K, K, KIPP Charter Schools, Teachers and Teaching

A Message from North Carolina Representative Rick Glazier

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2014 //
20

This just in, following my speech at the Emerging Issues Forum in North Carolina, whose extremist Governor Pat McCrory and General Assembly have passed laws diminishing the status of teachers and promoting vouchers and charters.

“Your speech to the IEI Forum was extraordinary and really sparked immense discussion on the floor of the Forum and later this afternoon. It cogently summarized the dramatic and destructive effect of the Republican policies of this last session, which has led us to 49 th in the nation in teacher pay, 46th in state spending on education, the abrogation of career status for teachers while offering only 25% of teachers a long term contract no matter how many on merit deserve them, elimination of mentor pay and all professional development funds, termination of our nationally recognized Teaching Fellows Program, massive cuts to teacher assistant positions, student support services, administrative capacity, textbooks and supplies; and the creation of a new voucher system and all but unregulated charters, unmoored from their original purpose and accountable supervision, soon to litter every corner of the state. Five years ago our commitment to public education was the envy of most of the nation; today, we are the example of all that is wrong with the term “reform” of public education by those who, in reality, too often seek to abandon it, and a betrayal of our children and their educators in the process. Thank you for your inspiring words and being a part of moving our state’s citizens to reconsider the ideological overreach that has imperiled public education in North Carolina.”

Representative Rick Glazier.

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

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

Peter Greene on #evaluatethat

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2014 //
25

Peter Greene, who teaches high school English in Pennsylvania, here reviews the Twitter outburst with the hash tag #evaluatethat.

The campaign on Twitter began as a way to point out that teachers do far more important things for students than get measured on standardized tests. And it grew.

Greene points out that people in many occupations go beyond their job descriptions.

So what is the point of #evaluatethat?

He writes:

“It goes back to what’s wrong with “college and career ready.” Because it is not enough to be good at your job. You need to be good at life. You need to be good at being a human in this world, and that is so much more than a job.

“I’ve maintained for years that teaching is a kind of guerilla warfare, that many of us are fighting in the underground, doing what we can in spite of the authorities. Under the current wave of reformy stuff, this is more true than ever. Education is occupied territory, and we are members of the resistance, not powerful enough to directly oppose the forces that have taken control of our home. Instead, we save who we can when we can, chip away at the occupiers, and work toward the day when we can send them packing.

“In the meantime, we have to do what we can to stay in contact with the rest of the underground and remind ourselves what we represent, what we fight for. I don’t think #evaluatethat will change much. I think people who are imagining that occupiers will slap their heads and say, “Yes, yes, I’ve been so blind” are kidding themselves. But for the rest of us, knowing that we are not alone, that other people get it, that other people are also standing up for what is best and brightest, that we are not crazy for thinking that we are in a classroom to help nurture and grow real human people and not to just collect data, read a script and do some test prep– I think knowing that is golden. Evaluate that, indeed.”

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching
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