Archives for category: Teachers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Indiana: A Score Card for Advocates of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2014 //
5

A concerned parent activist in Indiana sent this message:

 

 

As election campaign promises are being made, carefully consider any candidate who claims he or she will “reward our best teachers.”
“Rewarding our best teachers” is a purposely deceptive claim. In fact, after replacing traditional pay scales with merit based schemes in 2011, State Republicans immediately reduced funds from the “Teacher Performance Awards”. Originally budgeted at $11 million, the Republican controlled house voted to reduce this fund 82%. Across the state teachers evaluated as effective have been told, “there is no money for ‘rewards’.”
Many teachers today earn less money than they did in 2011, yet the 2014 Indiana Republican Platform claims “Retaining and Attracting Young Talent” is a top priority. The state continues to lose some of its best and brightest teachers to other professions.Talented youth entering college are being told, “You do not want to go into education.”
This year’s election must be about education. Voting for legislators or senators who claim to “reward our best teachers” is to vote for a promise that has already been broken.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

In 2011, Senate Bill 0001 (SB0001) passed, eliminating teacher contracts and requiring what evolved into the RISE evaluation. Those who supported this idea claimed it would reward effective teachers. In reality, most teachers saw that their pay froze.

 

Once this plan was implemented, districts searched their coffers for funds in which to “reward” effective teachers but found them drained by these same state senators who also slashed educational funding.

 

In essence, SB0001 did just the opposite of what it was intended to do. More quality teachers have left the profession than ever before. Most teachers, even those who have been dubbed highly effective since this evaluation was put in place, find themselves making substantially less money than they did in 2011.

 

Further, school districts in financially struggling areas that needed support the most found themselves losing teachers to more affluent districts that could bolster their funds through referendums. SB 1, whether intentional or not, gives effective and highly effective teachers real cause to hesitate to seek challenging assignments—which, in the end, hurts students who need quality teaching the most.”

 

Finally, many politicians supporting this type of merit pay claim this election year they will focus dollars on the classroom. However, the RISE evaluation has created such red tape for schools that they have had to hire more administrators for this accountability or pull resources out of the classroom to manage.

 

Sadly, six senators who supported this measure and are up for reelection this year stand unopposed. That makes the four races where senators who supported SB0001 even more important. If you vote in one of the four senate districts below, please show your support for public education by voting for the challenger.

 

In State Senate District 47, Sen. Ronald Grooms voted for SB0001.
Vote challenger Chuck Freiberger

 

In State Senate District 45, Sen. James Smith voted for SB0001.
Vote challenger Julie Berry.

 

In State Senate District 41, Sen. Greg Walker voted for SB0001.
Vote challenger AndyTalarzyk.

 

In State Senate District 29, Sen. Michael Delph was absent, but supports policies like SB0001.
Vote Challenger J.D. Ford.

Categories Indiana, Supporting public schools, Teachers

Two Bonuses in Louisiana

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2014 //
20

Mercedes Schneider was rated a “highly effective” teacher. She received a bonus of $427. 76. She gave it to a friend who is raising an autistic child.

A fourth-grade teacher at Pierre Capdeau Charter School in Louisiana got a bonus of $43,000 for raising her students’ test scores by 88%. The bonus is about 75% of her annual salary. A kindergarten teacher got even larger gains but her bonus was only $4,086 because the kindergarten scores don’t count for the state rankings.

The school is rated a D by the state. Last year it was graded D-.

Categories Louisiana, Merit pay, Teachers, Testing

Missouri: Very Rich Extremist Puts VAM on State Ballot

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2014 //
83

This is the worst constitutional amendment to appear on any state ballot in 2014.

missouriballotissue

It ties teacher evaluation to student test scores. It bans collective bargaining about teacher evaluation. It requires teachers to be dismissed, retained, promoted, demoted, and paid based primarily on the test scores of their students. It requires teachers to enter into contracts of three years or less, thus eliminating seniority and tenure.

This is VAM with a vengeance.

This ballot resolution is the work of the far-right Show-Me Institute, funded by the multi-millionaire Rex Sinquefeld.

He is a major contributor to politics in Missouri and to ALEC.

The Center for Media and Democracy writes about him:

“Sinquefield is doing to Missouri what the Koch Brothers are doing to the entire country. For the Koch Brothers and Sinquefield, a lot of the action these days is not at the national but at the state level.

“By examining what Sinquefield is up to in Missouri, you get a sobering glimpse of how the wealthiest conservatives are conducting a low-profile campaign to destroy civil society.

“Sinquefield told The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that his two main interests are “rolling back taxes” and “rescuing education from teachers’ unions.”

“His anti-tax, anti-labor, and anti-public education views are common fare on the right. But what sets Sinquefield apart is the systematic way he has used his millions to try to push his private agenda down the throats of the citizens of Missouri.”

Categories Missouri, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, Unions

Philip Kovacs: My Son’s Teacher is a Witch!

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2014 //
16

Philip Kovacs brought his kindergarten child to school, and his teacher was dressed as a scary witch, dispensing candy, really terrifying!

Kovacs thinks what would be even more frightening would be to see people dressed as bankers (or hedge fund managers or tech billionaires), as destroyers of teachers and public schools.

“Witches, ghouls, goblins, astonishingly real zombies, the teachers were in full gear, dressed to distress the children they’d spent all day with. The principal and staff were there as well, greeting parents, shaking hands, occasionally jumping out of darker corners to the delight of students and parents alike.

“The mainstream media would have the American public believe that teachers are THE problem with our public schools. That they are the witches conjuring up the destruction of America’s competitive edge.

“I’d say the people to fear are the banksters, and if you want to scare the bejeepers out of thinking adults this year dress up as one of those. You’ll need a suit and a deck of cards. When people ask about the cards tell them you are gambling with their pensions. Tell them you’ve been “all in” since the beginning.”

He adds:

“No, I’m not afraid of the witch, but the people peddling fear of teachers scare the life out of me. If their voices continue unchallenged, we shouldn’t expect our best and brightest to enter the profession. You can’t spend millions of dollars hating on teachers and expect future prospects to want to become one.

“And if we continue to pile on the hate, to invoke “fear of teacher,” we will truly have something to be afraid of, a nation where the most qualified avoid teaching like the plague because we’ve made teachers the enemy.”

Next time you want someone to care for your children, call David Welch, tech zillionaire, or Bill Gates,Campbell Brown, or Arne Duncan. Would you?

Categories Teachers

The Massachusetts Teachers Association Blasts State Plan re Evaluations

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2014 //
16

Yesterday, I posted about the plan by Massachusetts to strip teachers of their licenses if their evaluations were poor.

As it happened, the Massachusetts Teachers Association had already issued a forceful response to this misguided proposal. President Barbara Madeloni posted this as a comment on the blog. It was released on October 27:

MTA to BESE: How can anyone in good conscience connect an employment evaluation to licensure?

In response to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s proposed changes to initial licensure and relicensure, MTA President Barbara Madeloni and Vice President Janet Anderson sent the following letter to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester. More information and recommended actions are forthcoming.
October 27, 2014

To: Members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Education

From: Barbara Madeloni, President, Massachusetts Teachers Association
Janet Anderson, Vice President, Massachusetts Teachers Association

Re: Changes Proposed by DESE to initial licensure and relicensure

On Monday, October 20, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released proposed changes to requirements for both initial licensure and relicensure. A day later, the DESE held its first “town hall” hearing about these proposals. These hearings were facilitated by the Keystone Center, but DESE staff were present.

While there are many questions to ask about these proposals that would allow us to gain some clarity of meaning (e.g., what does “grit” mean as a requirement for initial licensure?), the primary question is: How can anyone in good conscience connect an employment evaluation to licensure when these are entirely different areas of authority and oversight? We know of no other profession in which licensure is contingent on employment evaluation. More insidiously, the employment evaluations include student learning outcomes, thus connecting relicensure to student test scores.

“ How can anyone in good conscience connect an employment evaluation to licensure when these are entirely different areas of authority and oversight?”

We are asking the commissioner to rescind these recommendations in whole for the following reasons:

1. The DESE is advancing policy options that almost exclusively base license advancement and license renewal on the summative performance ratings in the educator evaluation framework and the student impact rating derived from MCAS growth scores and District-Determined Measures. This is a misuse of measures of student learning and is counter to the DESE’s own assertions about how student learning measures would be used.

2. As a professional organization representing approximately 80,000 licensed preK-12 practitioner-members, the MTA does not support either the design principles or the policy options outlined in this document. To connect licensure to evaluation is a serious breach of lines of authority and responsibility. The state’s determination of having met requirements to teach should not and cannot extend into performance on the job, which falls under the authority of school administrators. Further, linking performance evaluations to licensure puts all educators on notice: Be careful what you say and do or you risk not only your job, but also your ability to teach or administer in Massachusetts schools.

3. The MTA does not support short-track preparation programs that allow unqualified and underqualified individuals to enter classrooms as teachers of record without the requisite knowledge and skills to be “classroom ready” on day one. Too often, these underqualified individuals enter high-poverty, low-performing schools, thus contributing to existing achievement gaps and the inequitable distribution of highly effective practitioners.

4. The MTA decries the use of $550,000 in public funds to pay private vendors for this project. The process employed by these vendors shows little or no interest in engaging in meaningful dialogue about what is and is not effective in the current licensure and relicensure processes. Educators report that they have attended tightly controlled “town halls” in which the outcome seems predetermined and voices of dissent are not welcome. We need meaningful opportunities for input into the development of licensure regulations.

We urge the commissioner and the board in the strongest possible terms to heed the overwhelming opposition to these proposals from the people most directly affected and to act immediately to withdraw the policy options currently being considered.

Categories Massachusetts, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Testing

Is Katie Osgood Dangerous?

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2014 //
32

Katie Osgood is a special education teacher in Chicago who has worked for years with children in high need. She has been critical of Teach for America on her blog for sending inexperienced recruits to work in schools with vulnerable students who should have experienced teachers.

She wrote a comment on this blog today about TFA’s leaked memo on how to respond to critics:

“In TFA’s memo, they cite me BY NAME, as a “known detractor”. So, apparently your tax dollars are also going to spying and unsuccessfully debunking tweets/blog posts from a simple special education teacher in Chicago. I have no media team or PR strategy, I’m just writing the truth of TFA and its devastating impact on my city. I am pretty upset how TFA has singled me out and targeted me. I feel violated and even unsafe given the vast power and resources TFA has at its disposal.”

Categories Special Education, Teach for America, Teachers

Brian Ford Writes a Letter to the Editors of TIME

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2014 //
11

Brian Ford, teacher and author, wrote this letter to the editor of TIME magazine, in response to the demeaning cover about teachers as “Rotten Apples” who cannot be fired. The cover said that “tech millionaires” had figured out how to deal with those teachers.

 

Ford writes:

 

To the Editors of Time Magazine:

 

 

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” – Malcolm X

 

I hope Malcolm X was wrong about media controlling ‘the minds of the masses,’ but the Time cover on teacher tenure with the phrase ‘Rotten Apples’ emblazoned across it shows that his other points were spot on. Irresponsible media can accuse with impunity, they can treat as hereos tech millionaires who lambast teachers by not only encouraging the use of, but use the courts to compel the use of techniques such as ‘Value-added measurement.’

 

Having written extensively on VAMs, I am aware of what a troubled and inaccurate method it is. I am not going to enter into all the reasons –I have a book about that–, but the “flood of new academic research on teacher quality” is dubious at best, deliberately misleading at times, often relying on a single study of a single school in a single year and then generalizing that to all schools everywhere in all years. Furthermore, this research is often miscategorized and misrepresented by advocates for a quick fix. But there is no quick fix – the problems of our schools are rooted in social pathologies, not teacher quality.

 

It is concentrated poverty, not teacher quality that plagues our system – or, more accurately, those parts of the system which serve the poorest quarter of our population. Even Eric Hanushek of Stanford, who is known for saying we need to “replace the bottom five to eight percent of our teachers in terms of effectiveness,” stresses that “an average teacher is quite good in our schools” and would rate well against teachers anywhere in the world. And almost no one suggests what seems obvious – that tenure draws people into the teaching pool who might go elsewhere, thus very likely making the average teacher significantly better.

 

On the other side, the so-called fixes would make things worse, much worse. What none of the advocates admit is this: it narrows the curriculum. The ‘value’ measured is not that that of character or creativity, but is based on standardized tests and how students perform on them. It has nothing to do with their dreams or aspirations, on their unique gifts or their personal histories and, as one might expect, since the advent of high stakes tests in the early 1990s, young people have had documented declines in creativity. Administrators and teachers are pressured to teach students to do well on the short list of skills the tests measure, not on how to have a meaningful life.

 

Those tests are themselves narrow in many ways, but in one way they are not: they are sweeping in their ability to make money. Pearson education has a nearly half a billion dollar contract to provide testing services in Texas. As for venture capitalists, the money has gone up 30-fold, from $13 million in 2005 to $389 million in 2011. As former Massachusetts Governor William Weld said some years ago, the “fundamentals are all aligned for a great number of people to make a whole lot of money in this sector.”

 

Weld finished his statement, “and do well by doing good.” That is always the claim. Dismantle the public system to serve the students. This is done in the strangest way — teacher autonomy declines and long term professionals are pushed out not because they are ‘bad,’ but because they have higher salaries. The problem is that far too many advocates of this position are trying to make room in the budget for their own payments; ranging from Rupert Murdoch to purveyors of virtual education to TFA to Pearson to the Gates-funded, Michelle Rhee-founded organizations the New Teacher Project, have an interest, financial and professional, in labeling the system as failing.

 

Add to this those with political interests to do the same, from the Bushes to Chris Christie to Scott Walker to Kevin Johnson, and you have a potent force able to craft messages that are in their own interests, but not those of a democratic nation the most important foundation of which is its public education system.

 

 

Sincerely,
Brian Ford
brianford58@yahoo.com
646 713 8285

 

 

Sources:
First, my own book, Brian Ford, Respect For Teachers or The Rhetoric Gap and How Research on Schools is Laying the Ground for New Business Models in Education, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475802078

 

Eric Hanushek speaking, “Class Size and Student Achievement,” Diane Rehm Show, 8 March 2011; accessed June 2011 at http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-08/class-size-and-student-achievement.

 

Luke Quinton & Kate Mcgee, “What’s in Texas’ $500 Million Testing Contract with Pearson?” KUT.ORG News, Austin, Texas, July 16, 2013; accessed October 2014 at http://kut.org/post/what-s-texas-500-million-testing-contract-pearson.

 

Stephanie Simon,”Private firms eyeing profits from U.S. public schools,” Reuters, New York, 2 August 2012; accessed October 2014 at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/usa-education-investment-idUSL2E8J15FR20120802

 

Kyung Hee Kim, “The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance
Tests of Creative Thinking,” Creativity Research Journal, 2011, Vol. 23:4, pp. 285-295.

 

Weld quote was from Walsh, Ed Week, 19 Jan 2000, p. 13

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers

Wisconsin Teachers Send a Warning to Their Colleagues in Illinois about Bruce Rauner

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2014 //
17

Teachers in Wisconsin warn public sector workers in Illinois: Billionaire Bruce Rauner will be your Scott Walker.

Categories Illinois, Teachers

What Does TIME Have Against America’s Teachers?

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2014 //
49

Valerie Strauss recapitulates the TIME magazine cover story. She notes that the AFT petition in opposition to the TIME cover has collected 50,000 signatures ( it is now up to 70,000). Strauss compares this current cover to the one featuring Michelle Rhee as the one who was likely to “transform education.” She didn’t. The achievement gap in D.C. remains the one of the largest (possibly THE largest) in urban America. And she also proved that it is not impossible to fire tenured teachers; she fired hundreds of teachers and principals.

 

Why pick on teachers? Is it because it is a female-dominated profession? Is it part of the tech millionaires’ dream of replacing live teachers with laptops and tablets?

 

TIME agreed to print some responses.

 

One was written by Randi Weingarten of the AFT, and I think she got it exactly right. We need to focus on recruiting, retaining, and supporting teachers. Schools in stressed districts are not getting the funding they need for the children they serve. We must do more to combat and reduce poverty and segregation.

 

Another was written by Lily Eskelsen Garcia of the NEA, and it has just the right tone of amazement and outrage:

 

A fabulous friend recently said to me, “I’m just so tired of the new national pastime – Beat up a Teacher.” She had seen the nasty cover of Time with a court gavel about to smash an apple (a good one by the way). She had seen the title she knew was a lie: It’s nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. But I think what pushed her over the edge was the subheading: A group of Silicon Valley investors wants to change that.
The irony drips. The Wolves of Wall Street woke up one day and decided simultaneously that all the problems with American education could be solved by…firing teachers. Seriously? My dear friend could not even muster outrage. She was just tired. She saw prestigious Time as next up to bat in a long line of cheap swings at teachers. Time could have written about any number of ways to improve our schools–restoring school funding, actually ensuring equity, and ending the insane and costly No Child Left Behind testing regime, which has replaced real classroom instruction with tests, tests, and more tests. Instead, Time decided to write about tenure. They came to the astonishing conclusion that the one critical reform we must make is to make it easier to fire teachers.

 

 

 

 

Categories Teachers

Philadelphia: Helen Gym Rebukes SRC for Canceling Teachers’ Contract

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2014 //
2

Helen Gym, Philadelphia’s leading activist for public education, complains that the School Reform Commission wrongly canceled the teachers’ contract while failing to fight for funding from the state.

She writes:

“Recently, I visited my brother-in-law at Radnor High School and was privileged to see him teach his ninth-grade English/civics class. When I walked in, his students were engaged in a debate about Plato and the notion of dissent versus rule of law in Athenian society. The students had finished reading John Stuart Mill and were getting their first papers back for revision. It was October 2nd.

“A few days later, I attended a parent meeting at Central High School, one of the city’s premier institutions. Dozens of ninth graders had spent their school year with substitute teachers who changed every week. The substitutes were put in place to relieve teachers leading classrooms with 40, 50, or even more students. For these ninth graders, school didn’t really start until October 8th, when permanent teachers were finally assigned to them.

“This is what a teacher’s contract was supposed to prevent.

“And it’s why the School Reform Commission’s move last week to tear up that contract is about far more than the dishonest suggestion of “shared sacrifice” and health care contributions.

“In an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer last Sunday, SRC Chair Bill Green asked you to believe that the SRC made a necessary move to reverse devastating budget cuts from the last two years. It’s disappointing that some of his central facts are plain wrong (just read this Public School Notebook article on the inaccuracies by the SRC and District). It’s ironic that Green claims any measure of high ground, when the SRC ambushed its own staff and the public in a backdoor move meant to limit public dialogue.

“As a member of City Council, Bill Green was both vocal and active in helping us document the devastating impact of the state purposefully underfunding Philadelphia’s public schools. The District could have sued for full, fair funding. They chose not to. Instead they are in court suing to offset Harrisburg’s failures by taking money from the very people we depend on to care for our children and keep their schools open and safe – and grossly overstating the difference the money will make.”

Read the article for the links and more about the looting of the Philadelphia public schools.

Read more at http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/10/21/helen-gym-response-bill-green-src-inquirer-op-ed/#A62jCHzpgzq18oCe.99

Categories Philadelphia, Teachers, Unions
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »