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The Staff at Sunburst Elementary School: We Love Our School!

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2017 //
28

If you wonder why people become teachers and remain in the classroom, watch this video created by the teachers at Sunburst Elememtary School in Glendale, Arizona. They are having fun! They have a culture of happiness. Not every public school is happy. But those with a strong culture are like families. Watch this family of teachers cavorting for the joy of it.

By the way, I googled the school and saw that they had made many videos. I also saw that it was a diverse school, with small class size, all teachers certified, and no teacher with less than three years experience. Also, it closed the achievement gap between white and Hispanic children. Maybe the secret is joy.

Categories Arizona, Humor, Justice, Teachers

Marc Tucker Debates Checker Finn on Teacher Quality

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2017 //
56

I know the headline is off-putting to teachers. The teachers who read here do not like being condescended to by “experts” who can’t do what they do everyday: teach 25-40 students.

Nonetheless, I am interested in hearing your reaction to this discussion.

Mark Tucker specializes in studying what top-performing nations do. He and Linda Darling-Hammond have prepared a report called “Empowered Educators,” which maintained that raising teacher preparation would transform the profession. Checker Finn criticized the report.

This article is Marc Tucker’s response to Checker Finn.

He begins like this:

On June 6, NCEE and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education will jointly release a new international comparative study of teacher quality, Empowered Educators, conducted over three years on four continents by a team of researchers headed by Linda Darling- Hammond. On May 24, Checker Finn published a blog critiquing Empowered Educators. In this blog, I respond to the points Finn made in his critique.

Finn begins by saying that he has no quarrel with the quality of the research: “There’s no reason to doubt the accuracy of their accounts and explanations.” Nor does he quarrel with the crux of the findings: “…teaching in those places is more professional, more respected, better compensated, more highly trained, more sensibly structured as a career, and overall more effective than in the United States.” He admires, he says, “…what Finland, Ontario, and Singapore have pulled off.”

So what’s not to like? In a nutshell, Finn thinks there is no chance that these ideas, policies or practices can be implemented in the United States. Why? He gives us five reasons. I’ll tell you what they are and respond to each in turn.

First, teaching is a mass occupation, the single largest occupation in the American workforce. So it is obvious to Finn that there is no prayer of getting our teachers from the upper reaches of the distribution of high school graduates, as the top performers do. He says the reason we have this vast workforce is that schooling is provided by great bureaucracies, school principals are middle managers rather than full-fledged institutional leaders and teacher’s unions insist on treating all teachers in the same way.

But schooling in the top-performing countries is provided by much more centralized bureaucracies than you will find anywhere in the United States, typically with a reporting line that runs from the top civil service professional in the ministry through that person’s direct reports, through their direct reports in the regions and provinces, to their direct reports in the districts to the principals to the teachers. Now that is a bureaucracy!

We have nothing like it. We do have much more bureaucracy at the district level in our larger suburbs and big city districts than the top-performing countries do, but we would not need anything like that number of people in the central office if we had the kind of highly educated and very well-trained teaching force the top performers have. Finn is right in saying that managing first-class professionals requires people with different skills than the typical school principal. It’s a different job. But countless American firms have helped their front-line managers transition from techniques appropriate to the management of blue-collar workers to managing professionals. Peter Drucker wrote a whole book about that transition. Why can’t our school system managers go through a similar transition? As a matter of fact, NCEE is deeply engaged in helping districts do that right now and it is going very well. ce
The clincher for Finn is that teacher’s unions insist on treating all teachers the same way. But Lily Eskelsen García, the NEA’s President, is on record as being deeply committed to the idea of teacher career ladders of the kind that Darling-Hammond and her team found in Singapore. As far as we know, the AFT is also open to the idea.

I am reminded of Pasi Sahlberg’s provocative article in The Washington Post, where he asked the question:

“What If Finland’s Great Teachers Taught in U.S. Schools?”

He reviews what makes Finnish schools excellent, then answers his own question:

I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning. Actually, I have met some experienced Finnish-trained teachers in the United States who confirm this hypothesis. Based on what I have heard from them, it is also probable that many of those transported Finnish teachers would be already doing something else than teach by the end of their fifth year – quite like their American peers.

Conversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland—assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish—stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.

Categories Education Reform, Teachers

D.C. Schools: A Miracle or a Tragedy?

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2017 //
29

This is a case of cognitive dissonance. Or, when presented with two sharply contrasting narratives, whom do you believe?

Tom Toch started a think tank in D.C., FutureEd, which is funded by foundations such as Walton, Bezos, and Raikes (Jeff Raikes previously led the Gates Foundation).

In its latest bulletin, the lead article by Tom Toch says that the policies put in place by Michelle Rhee and her successor Kaya Henderson are “revolutionizing teaching” and are “a model for the nation.”

But at the same, an article in the Washington Post says that certain D.C. schools are experiencing a spike in teacher resignations in mid-year.

Ballou High School has lost 28% of its teachers since the school year began.

“In most DCPS schools, the faculty is stable. Of 115 schools in the system, 59 had two or fewer resignations after teachers reported to work, the data showed.

“But a handful were hit hard.

“Raymond Education Campus in Northwest lost 13 teachers, which accounts for a quarter of its faculty. Columbia Heights Education Campus in Northwest lost 11 teachers, or 10 percent. H.D. Woodson High in Northeast lost 10 of its 50 teachers, or 20 percent.

“No school has suffered more turnover than Ballou High. It lost 21 teachers from August through February — 28 percent of its faculty. Many of the resignations occurred in the math department, current and former teachers say.

“Several former Ballou teachers told The Post they did not want to leave mid-year and felt bad about the consequences for students. But they said a number of problems drove them to leave, from student behavior and attendance issues to their own perception of a lack of support from the administration. They also raised questions about evaluations. Some veterans said that in previous years they had received high marks from administrators, but this year they were given what they believe are arbitrarily low evaluation scores…

“Ballou has about 930 students, and all qualify for free or reduced-price lunch because they live in poverty. Many come from homes where their parents didn’t go to college. The school ranks among the city’s lowest-performing high schools on core measures. Its graduation rate in the last school year, 57 percent, was second-lowest among regular high schools in the DCPS system.

“In 2016, 3 percent of Ballou students tested met reading standards on citywide exams. Almost none met math standards.

“The school was reconstituted in the 2015-2016 school year, its second shakeup in five years. Reconstitution means the teachers and staff all had to reapply for their jobs…

“Monica Brokenborough, a music teacher and the school’s union representative, sent a letter this month to the D.C. Council, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson raising concerns about the staff vacancies.

“Students simply roam the halls because they know that there is no one present in their assigned classroom to provide them with an education,” Brokenborough said. “Many of them have simply lost hope…

“In her message to city officials, Brokenborough included handwritten letters from students who described feeling unprepared for their Advanced Placement exams and fearful that their prospects for college will be hampered by not having a teacher in key classes.

“Iyonna Jones, an 18-year-old senior, said in one of the letters that security guards tell the students lingering in hallways to go to class, but she has a substitute teacher in her math class and doesn’t feel she is getting the instruction she needs.

“We should just stay home, because what is the point of coming to school if we are not learning and have no teachers,” she wrote.”

A national model? Not yet.

Categories District of Columbia, Rhee, Michelle, Teachers

New Jersey: Democrats Enable Christie to Quash Dissent on the State Board of Education

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2017 //
32

Darcie Cimarusti, a school board member in New Jersey, reports with disgust that Democratic legislators are helping outgoing Governor Chris Christie punish and replace independent members of the State Board of Education.

http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2017/05/dont-like-chris-christie-blame-democrats.html?m=1

Christie, whose poll ratings now hover around 20%, proposed new deregulations for charter school teachers, which would allow uncertified teachers in charters.

The state board voted 5-2 against Christie’s bad idea (with one abstention).

Christie wants to replace three of the five board members who stood up against him, including the president and vice-president of the board.

The Democratic leader of the State Senate, Steve Sweeney, is faithfully supporting Governor Christie’s vengeful power play.

Why? Democrats in New Jersey rolled over for Christie at his last election, abandoning their own candidate, the well-qualified Barbara Buono, who preceded Sweeney as President of the State Senate.

Now they are on the verge of ousting three board members who dared to insist that all teachers should be qualified and credentialed.

Why are powerful Democrats in New Jersey enabling the lame-duck Governor Christie to oust board members who dared to stand up for the importance of having qualified teachers in every public school classroom?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Jersey, Scandal, Teachers

Laura Chapman on Eric Hanushek

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
15

When Laura Chapman read Some DAMPoet’s poem, “Economists are Like Weathermen,” she responded with an informative comment. I know Eric (Rick) well. We served together for years on the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on Education. I wrote a bit about Rick in “Reign of Error,” and pointed out that his work has long applied econometrics to education. He was featured as an expert voice in “Waiting for ‘Superman'” where he reinforced the film’s message that public education is failing, choice are better, bad teachers cause low scores, and the best way to raise test scores is to fire teachers who can’t raise test scores. He has testified as an expert witness in court cases against increased funding for schools. I quoted at length from one of his articles in which he claimed that firing the bottom 5-7 teachers and replacing them with average teachers would cause a leap in test scores that would make us equal to Finland. The Gross Domestic Product would then soar by $112 trillion, just because of those higher test scores.

Laura writes:

Don’t get me started. The creep of econometric thinking into education has gone beyond reason, and the reason is this: Economists are addicted to scores on tests as indicators of anything that catches their fancy–school quality, teacher quality, instructional quality, cognitive skills, worker skills, state ranking in economic growth, national ranks in productivity, the fate of the nation’s economy.

On March 9, 2017, The Wall Street Journal published an Op Ed by economist Eric A. Hanushek titled “American Teachers Unions Oppose Innovative Schools—in Africa with the subtitle “Bridge Academies show promising results in Kenya and Uganda, but unions see them only as a threat.”

It begins “No longer content to oppose educational innovation at home, the unions representing America’s teachers have gone abroad in search of monsters to slay.

For nearly a decade, Bridge International Academies has run a chain of successful private schools in the slums of Kenya and Uganda. A for-profit company, Bridge has shown that it’s possible to provide high-quality, low-cost primary education to poor children in the developing world….” https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-teachers-unions-oppose-innovative-schoolsin-africa-1489099360

Readers are at least informed that Dr. Hanushek s a consultant for Bridge International Academies. The WSJ is an advertorial for Bridge, well place to attract even more investors to this not so low cost system of education with all questions and answers delivered on computers.

Hanushek has been VAMing teachers since his dissertation, about 1968. He is a frequent contributor of dubious statistics to legal cases that blame teacher unions for students who are “underperforming.” Like Chetty he is a serial publisher of inferences about the fate of the economy based on student test scores.

I do not doubt that he and many economists are well-trained statisticians, but if economists who pontificate about schools could not rely on test scores as the coin of their realm, they would probably be out of the education business business.

Here is a sample of the amazing inferences that can be made when you rely only on formulas to think about schools. Quote:

“Our primary analysis relies on these estimates of skills for students educated in each of the states. Minnesota, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Montana, and Vermont make up the top five states, whereas Hawaii, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi constitute the bottom five states. The top-performing state (Minnesota) surpasses the bottom-performing state (Mississippi) by 0.87 standard deviations.

Various analyses suggest that the average learning gain from one grade to the next is roughly between one-quarter and one-third of a standard deviation in test scores (Hanushek, Peterson, and Woessmann (2013), p. 72).

Thus, the average eighth-grade math achievement difference between the top- and the bottom-performing state amounts to about three grade-level equivalents – highlighting the problem of relying exclusively on school attainment without regard to quality. ”

From Hanushek, Eric A., Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. 2013. Endangering prosperity: A global view of the American school. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

These three economists are also responsible for the use of standard deviations to assert that this or that intervention or comparison of schools yield a gain of “days of learning,” or months, or years. Those inferential leaps are really absurd.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers, Testing

Good News: Vergara-Copycat Lawsuit Tossed Out by Judge in New Jersey

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2017 //
11

A judge in New Jersey threw out a lawsuit intended to remove teachers’ seniority rights. This is the third loss for the corporate reformer groups that have tried to use the courts to strip away teachers’ job security. The “reformers” blame teachers and unions for low test scores while ignoring overwhelming evidence that poverty is the proximate cause of low scores.

The first was the Vergara lawsuit in California, where a group called “Students Matter,” founded by a Silicon Valley billionaire, claimed that teacher tenure (due process of law) denied poor children equal opportunity. The plaintiffs won in the lowest court. They lost on appeal. And they lost again when they appealed to the states’ highest court.

A group found by former TV personality Campbell Brown called the Partnership for Educational Justice filed copycat suits in other states. One was tossed by a lower court.

Earlier this month, a judge in New Jersey dismissed a legal challenge to teacher seniority rules.

Rachel Cohen of The American Prospect reports on the corporate reformers’ latest defeat in court:

“Another legal effort to weaken teacher job protections through the courts has been dismissed, this time in the Garden State. On Wednesday afternoon, a New Jersey Superior Court judge tossed the latest case, ruling that the plaintiffs—six parents from Newark Public Schools—failed to prove that seniority-based layoffs harmed their students.

“Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), a national education reform group that aims to challenge teacher job protections across the country, funded the New Jersey lawsuit. Originally filed in November, the case marked the third time PEJ has gone after tenure provisions. Their first case filed in New York in 2014, is currently before the state Supreme Court. In October, a Minnesota district judge dismissed PEJ’s second suit, filed there in 2016. That case has since been appealed.”

Campbell Brown’s news site, The 74, reported the outcome of the case.

“A New Jersey judge swiftly dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday that challenged state rules requiring school districts to base teacher layoffs on seniority regardless of performance in the classroom.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary C. Jacobson told a Trenton courtroom that the plaintiffs had failed to establish how seniority-based layoff rules known as “last in, first out” were harming their children.

“I don’t see any link other than speculation and conjecture between the LIFO statute and the denial of a thorough and efficient education to these 12 children,” Jacobson said.

“The lawsuit, HG v. Harrington, was filed in November on behalf of a dozen Newark students, claiming that “last in, first out” mandates governing teacher layoffs violate their right to a “thorough and efficient” and “equal” education system under the state Constitution.

“The complaint was sponsored by The Partnership for Educational Justice, a national education reform nonprofit founded by 74 co-founder Campbell Brown. Named defendants include the New Jersey State Board of Education and Newark Public School District.

“The American Federation of Teachers and the New Jersey Education Association, considered “intervening” defendants in the case, filed the motion to dismiss.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Jersey, Newark, Teacher Tenure, Teachers

Andrea Gabor: Why Are the Few Veteran Teachers of New Orleans Demoralized?

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
9

Andrea Gabor reviews research produced by the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans about veteran teachers, those who taught before Hurricane Katrina and returned.

“ERA’s analysis provides an important before-and-after-the-storm glimpse of the city’s schools from a unique perspective—the small group of pre-Katrina teachers who returned to teaching following the storm, and who have remained in the classroom for over a decade. As New Orleans looks forward, the views of these returning pre-Katrina teachers are key; they are the survivors.

“In the wake of the mass firings following the storm, the teachers who returned to New Orleans and were still teaching at the time of the study, in the 2013/2014 school year, almost surely represent the city’s most experienced educators—and those with the closest community ties. While teachers with greater than 20 years of experience made up nearly 40 percent of the teaching force before the storm, that number has dropped to about 15 percent, according to another ERA study. Conversely, the number of inexperienced teacher with less than 5 years experienced now make up the majority of teachers, up from about 30 percent before the storm….

“Indeed, important characteristics of New Orleans reforms, including a high-rate of school closings and at-risk students cycling through multiple schools, are more likely to adversely impact high school students who, unlike their younger peers, are more likely to resist no-excuses culture of the non-selective New Orleans charters, and eventually to drop out. New Orleans also has done a terrible job of keeping track of kids who “fall between the cracks.”

“Education reformers like to say that “teachers are the single most important” school variable in a child’s education. As with so much else in the ed-reform debates, this is misleading. For surely, school stability and culture, which is controlled by school leaders—in the best cases, by cadres of teacher leaders—is as important as the role of individual teachers. School culture also helps determine just how much influence teachers have over curriculum, discipline and other policies. In my research, both quality education and teacher job satisfaction are highly correlated with schools that include teachers in such key decisions.

“In New Orleans, with a teacher cadre plagued by high turnover and sparse classroom experience, veteran teachers should be treasured. That so many say they have less job satisfaction than during the pre-Katrina years, suggests that they are not, which is surely a failing with implications far beyond just teacher morale.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Teachers

Arizona Acts on Teacher Appreciation Day

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2017 //
16

From a reader:

“The Arizona Legislature (Republican majority) just passed a bill to allow the hiring of uncertificated teachers. They also just opened up the voucher system to ALL students. Furthermore, they gave teachers a measly 1% raise. Arizona is 49th out of the 50 states in teacher pay and funding per pupil.”

Categories Arizona, Teachers

Steven Singer: Teacher Appreciation Week is a Pathetic Joke

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2017 //
7

Steven Singer tells us what he thinks of Teacher Appreciation Week: It stinks!

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, America!

All over the country, millions of educators can look forward to a free burrito. Or maybe an Arby’s sandwich. Or a complimentary donut.

Because we REALLY appreciate teachers here.

What a pathetic joke!

I don’t mean to seem ungrateful.

I’ll redeem my coupon at Chipotle. I’ll take that Roast Beef Classic. I’ll grab that Dunkin’ Cruller.

But let’s be honest. These cheesy buy-one-get-one coupons don’t demonstrate appreciation. They’re guilt.

They’re a manifestation of the feeling that we SHOULD appreciate teachers, but don’t. Not really.

Not for one week, not for one day!

Why else would we begrudge them a middle class income? Why else would we provide them with so few resources and so much responsibility? Why else would we bar them from making any meaningful decisions about how their students should be taught yet hold them accountable for everything their students do?

Appreciate teachers? We don’t LISTEN to them. We don’t RESPECT them. Many of us don’t even LIKE them.

Thanks for the appreciation, folks. A middle-class income would be a good way to show real appreciation.

Stopping legislators from telling teachers how to do their job would be another.

Telling think tanks who know best to stuff it would be another.

Categories Teachers

Mercedes Schneider: A Word about Teacher Appreciation Week: the Words That Really Count

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2017 //
1

Mercedes Schneider prepared to be a professor. She got her doctorate in research methods. She got a job as a professor. But she wanted to teach kids. So she left her university position and returned to Louisiana to teach high school English.

In this post, she explains what Teacher Appreciation Week means to her.

She describes psychic rewards that the suits will never know. She describes the psychic rewards that the guys in the air-conditioned, plush think tanks will never experience.

Categories Teachers
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