unionsCaroline Bermudez is senior writer and press secretary at Education Post, Peter Cunningham's pro-reform rapid response war room created to help Tell the Reformsters' Story. And this week Bermudez took to Real Clear Education to complain that "Uninformed, Irresponsible Journalism Is Killing Needed Education Reform."
Bermudez wants to call out the anti-reform narrative, the "amalgamation of all the myths spewed forth against education reformers." These pieces are "political propaganda as nuanced as a jackhammer drilling into concrete." But those pieces come from people like Valerie Strauss and Jeff Bryant who, she implies, are eminently dismissable, but it makes her really sad when the New Yorker publishes film critic David Denby's "hollow critique" of the general anti-teacher tenor of education reform. And he did it without any data!! Or reliable evidence!! Bermudez's indignation would be more compelling if "No data or reliable evidence" were not the reformster movement's middle name. Can we talk about how Common Core arrived without a stitch of evidence to its name, not even for the very idea of using national standards to improve education, and it's still prancing around naked today? Or the kind of fake research regularly churned out by groups like TNTP or NCTQ?
But Bermudez is not here simply to register her righteous shock and blah-blah-blah over a major magazine pointing out what millions of teachers already know. She would also like to take a moment to mock all articles that disagree with the reformsters. She calls the anti-reform pieces "endemic" and notes that reformsters "utter familiar groans" when they come across these articles that so often "repeat the same sound bites."
And then she lists the things she's tired of hearing:
1. Education reformers disrespect teachers.
2. Reformers solely blame teachers for educational failure.
3. Poverty goes unacknowledged by reformers.
4. Public education is fine. Reformers are hysterical.
5. Charter schools privatize public education.
6. Reformers reflexively hate unions.
So, I guess the good news is that she has been listening, kind of? The bad news is that Bermudez does not offer any research, data or arguments in response to any of these alleged criticisms. But education reformers do disrespect teachers, from their idea that anybody from the right background can become a teacher with five weeks of training, to their insistence that bad teachers are the root of educational evil, to their steady attempts to reduce teachers to simple "content delivery clerks."
Of course, almost no reform critics claim that reformers only blame teachers (and that includes the article she linked to, which also doesn't claim that), just as no serious reform critic claims that reformsters don't acknowledge poverty at all. There are some good conversations to be had about poverty, its effects as an obstacle to education, and how to deal. But Bermudez is hell-bent on overstating her case in order to make a point, so she says silly things like claiming that pro-public education writers say that public ed is fine and that reformsters are hysterical (once again, the article she links to, which actually has a good deal of charts and data, doesn't actually say what she suggests it says).
Not all of her points are overstatements. Lots of pro-public ed writers point out that charter schools privatize public education, which is kind of like pointing out that the sky is blue and water is wet. I don't think I've read all that many reformsters who even try to claim otherwise.
Union hatred? Well, yes. DFER hates unions with the hot, shiny hatred of a hundred suns. Vergara, Friedrichs, Baby Vergara in New York-- all lawsuits brought by big-money reformsters to roll back the union, just like the arguments about removing tenure and other job protections, all rooted in a general philosophy that a school leader CEO should be free to make choices without having to deal with a union. maybe her point is that reformsters don't hate unions "reflexively," but after lots of thought and careful consideration. Fair enough.
Of course, she also doesn't argue that any of these oft-repeated points is wrong. Just that they're of-repeated.
Bermudez has some specific recommendations. "Ambitious, valuable journalism" does not, for instance, use terms like "corporate reform." Not that she thinks reformsters should never be critiqued:
While our opponents believe we prefer to live in an echo chamber, we
would much rather have our work analyzed—even challenged—thoughtfully
and without an obvious agenda.
So says the woman who handles PR for a website launched with $13 million dollars from Eli Broad and other reformsters in order to make sure that they get their message out there.
The irony is that I actually know several thoughtful reformers with whom it is possible to have thoughtful, productive conversations. But they generally don't open by making unsupported mis-statements of pro-public education arguments. Bermudez is not trying to start a conversation; like many reformsters before her, she is arguing that the other side should by and large be silent.
She is also promoting the old subtext that Education Post and some others are fond of-- the notion that pro-public ed folks are some large, well-coordinated conspiracy, passing talking points back and forth and creating swarms that make it hard for the beautiful truth of reformster policy to be heard, and occasionally infecting real journalists with their mean propaganda. I'll give her credit-- she at least doesn't accuse all pro-public ed writers of being tools or paid shills of the teachers unions. You haven't really arrived in the pro-public ed writing world until you've been accused of being a union shill.
I always want to ask the paid reformsters mouthpieces like Bermudez-- just how much do you believe this stuff. If you were not a paid PR flack for this site, how much of your time and effort would you devote to your cause. Because I'm sitting here tapping one more blog post out for free in the morning hours before I head to work (all day rehearsal-- it's school musical season here). In a couple of months the Network for Public Education will have its third annual convention and some of us won't be there because we can't afford it and nobody pays us to go. Sometimes I just don't think that folks like Bermudez get that we are neither well-funded or well-organized-- we just believe that we see something that has to be called out and resisted. I have no idea how much Bermudez is paid to be Education Post's PR flack, and I don't know how much she got to write this particular article, but I'm responding to it for free.
Of course, Bermudez is not arguing against bloggers so much as decrying that a real paid journalist is picking on ed reform, but she tries to dismiss Denby by lumping him in with the rest of us, by treating all anti-reform writing as if it's one big piece of fluff. But at no point in her piece does she explain where she thinks Denby-Bryant-Strauss-Ravitch-Heilig get it wrong. Maybe coming up with the research and data to support such a view would just be too rigorous, or maybe such work has no place in a pro-reform screed. But if Bermudez knew more about teaching, maybe she'd remember that a good technique for teaching is to model the behavior you want to see.
Showing posts with label Vergara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vergara. Show all posts
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Time's Tenure Story
Time's cover story by Haley Sweetland Edwards is the tale of David Welch's crusade to provide school CEO's with more power to control their workforce. I'm sure there will be much reflection on this article in the days ahead, but here's my quick read over lunch reaction.
It comes close to being a balanced reporting of the story. Public education advocates will find that it goes to easy on Welch. Reformsters will find that it is a bit too transparent and doesn't fully capture Welch's awesome heroism.
You'll want to read the whole thing for yourself, but here are some highlights that jumped out at me.
On Vergara: It was the first time, in California or anywhere else, that a court had linked the quality of a teacher, as measured by student test scores, to a pupil’s right to an education.
Yes. It was the court that created that linkage. The plaintiffs did not, the research does not, and reality does not. But the court did.
It is a reflection of our politics that no one elected these men to take on the knotty problem of fixing our public schools, but here they are anyway, fighting for what they firmly believe is in the public interest.
Edwards strikes this note several times, and I give Time credit for at least including the observation. But the Real Big Story here is not the tenure wars. The real big story here is that a bunch of unelected amateurs with large piles of money have decided that they should go ahead and take over previously-democratic portions of the public sector. Perhaps the editors at Time lack the balls to pick that angle, or perhaps they simply judged that the angle would not generate the kind of clicks and sales that a tenure wars angle would.
I don't really fault Edwards. The elements of the story, the reporting, are all here. But for whatever reason, we've decided not to treat the derailing of democracy by some Very Rich Guys as the main story here.
[Update: When I wrote this earlier today, I was just looking at the cybercopy of the article. I've since seen the cover, on which Time editors have put "Rotten Apples" in big bold letters. To see the cover, one would expect a massive hatchet job on teachers inside, so I guess that answers the question about how Time editors are inclined to slant Edwards's article. That just leaves the question of whether Time editors are philosophically inclined to give teachers a big punch in the face, or they just think that punching teachers in the face is mostly likely to draw a large paying crowd. Either way, I'm not impressed. If you are also unimpressed, please use this link to an AFT action to let Time know how unimpressed you are or email feedback@time.com.]
Edwards does try to draw a line between technocrat gazillionairs of today and the robber barons of yesterday, but doesn't really stick the landing on the distinction between them. The Carnegies and Rockefellers worked mostly to create new institutions such as library systems and colleges; but today's "philanthropists" are busy engineering hostile takeovers of the public institutions that were already in place.
Welch remembers asking a big-city California superintendent to tell him the one thing he needed to improve the public-school system. The answer blew Welch away. The educator didn’t ask for more money or more iPads. “He said, ‘Give me control over my workforce,'” Welch said. “It just made so much sense. I thought, Why isn’t anyone doing something about that? Why isn’t anyone fixing this?”
In this version of the story, that is the extent of Welch's research. His next move was to start getting legal advice because "if children are being harmed by these laws, then something, somewhere, is being done that’s illegal."
Edwards does not cloak any of Welch's moves in gauzy idealistic terms. Welch hires a PR firm to start Students Matter, an astro-turf group tasked with 1) ginning up support and money and 2) finding "a team of lawyers who were willing to reverse engineer a lawsuit on the basis of an untested legal theory on behalf of plaintiffs who didn’t yet exist."
The retelling of the Vergara story includes this line:
Happily for Welch’s lawyers, their innovative argument happened to coincide with a flood of new academic research on teacher quality that could serve as evidence in court.
One does not have to be a raving conspiracy theorist to note that the happy coincidence was the result of "research" funded by Welch's fellow technocrats and reformsters, much of it begun at about the same time that Welch started shopping for lawyers.
One major dropped ball for Edwards-- she does not discuss the major holes in the Veraga plaintiff arguments (including WAG statistics).
Edwards quotes, of all people, Mike Petrilli and Michael McShane on the problems of Vergara and government intervention. It's up to McShane to point out that measuring "grossly ineffective" is problematic. Edwards cherry-on-tops with the note that the teacher described as "ineffective and undeserving of tenure" was also a Pasadena Teacher of the year.
Edwards goes on to note that there's an irony that Vergara hinges on the ability to identify poor teachers just as we're all figuring out that we don't have that ability. She notes the current "outright mutiny" over high stakes testing and provides a quick guide to the studies showing that VAM is garbage science.
The close is a bit chilling:
David Welch says he’s undeterred. While he’s received an informal crash course in the unforgiving politics of education reform in this country in the past year, the back-and-forth doesn’t interest him. “I look at this as my responsibility to help and improve the society I live in,” he says. “And I’m willing to fight that battle as long as I have to fight that battle.”
Welch would do well to remember that the society he lives in is a democratic one, where it's not up to a rich and powerful amateur to just commandeer a public service because he has some ideas-- ideas that or no better-informed or professionally supported than the ideas of any average non-billionaire shmoe. Nobody elected Welch to do any of this. And nobody thinks that the best way for America to work is for us to have a democratic system that can be shoved aside by any rich guy on a crusade.
Edwards article is a plus in that it pulls back the curtain (at least part way) on much of what has actually happened in the Vergara assault on tenure without gauzing it up or calling it pretty names. She misses, however, the full implications of the "control over the workforce" quote. The assault on tenure makes much more sense in the context of continued attempts to de-professionalize teaching and turn it into a low-paying, short-term, easily replaceable line of work. She missed that entirely.
Edwards could certainly have turned a more critical eye on the Vergara plaintiff's case, and she stops short of calling out some of the larger issues. On top of the rich-guy-buys-democratic-institution problem, Edwards also glosses over much as "political" issue; the tenure wars are "political" only to the extent that they represent the use of political power to smash another part of public education.
Should this be a country where anybody, regardless of his lack of professional background, can set education policy for the entire nation just because he wants to and just because he's rich? That would be a really good question to start some reporting. Edwards almost raised it-- but not quite.
In other words, Edwards has presented a reasonably fair and accurate part of the picture-- but it's only part of the picture.
It comes close to being a balanced reporting of the story. Public education advocates will find that it goes to easy on Welch. Reformsters will find that it is a bit too transparent and doesn't fully capture Welch's awesome heroism.
You'll want to read the whole thing for yourself, but here are some highlights that jumped out at me.
On Vergara: It was the first time, in California or anywhere else, that a court had linked the quality of a teacher, as measured by student test scores, to a pupil’s right to an education.
Yes. It was the court that created that linkage. The plaintiffs did not, the research does not, and reality does not. But the court did.
It is a reflection of our politics that no one elected these men to take on the knotty problem of fixing our public schools, but here they are anyway, fighting for what they firmly believe is in the public interest.
Edwards strikes this note several times, and I give Time credit for at least including the observation. But the Real Big Story here is not the tenure wars. The real big story here is that a bunch of unelected amateurs with large piles of money have decided that they should go ahead and take over previously-democratic portions of the public sector. Perhaps the editors at Time lack the balls to pick that angle, or perhaps they simply judged that the angle would not generate the kind of clicks and sales that a tenure wars angle would.
I don't really fault Edwards. The elements of the story, the reporting, are all here. But for whatever reason, we've decided not to treat the derailing of democracy by some Very Rich Guys as the main story here.
[Update: When I wrote this earlier today, I was just looking at the cybercopy of the article. I've since seen the cover, on which Time editors have put "Rotten Apples" in big bold letters. To see the cover, one would expect a massive hatchet job on teachers inside, so I guess that answers the question about how Time editors are inclined to slant Edwards's article. That just leaves the question of whether Time editors are philosophically inclined to give teachers a big punch in the face, or they just think that punching teachers in the face is mostly likely to draw a large paying crowd. Either way, I'm not impressed. If you are also unimpressed, please use this link to an AFT action to let Time know how unimpressed you are or email feedback@time.com.]
Edwards does try to draw a line between technocrat gazillionairs of today and the robber barons of yesterday, but doesn't really stick the landing on the distinction between them. The Carnegies and Rockefellers worked mostly to create new institutions such as library systems and colleges; but today's "philanthropists" are busy engineering hostile takeovers of the public institutions that were already in place.
Welch remembers asking a big-city California superintendent to tell him the one thing he needed to improve the public-school system. The answer blew Welch away. The educator didn’t ask for more money or more iPads. “He said, ‘Give me control over my workforce,'” Welch said. “It just made so much sense. I thought, Why isn’t anyone doing something about that? Why isn’t anyone fixing this?”
In this version of the story, that is the extent of Welch's research. His next move was to start getting legal advice because "if children are being harmed by these laws, then something, somewhere, is being done that’s illegal."
Edwards does not cloak any of Welch's moves in gauzy idealistic terms. Welch hires a PR firm to start Students Matter, an astro-turf group tasked with 1) ginning up support and money and 2) finding "a team of lawyers who were willing to reverse engineer a lawsuit on the basis of an untested legal theory on behalf of plaintiffs who didn’t yet exist."
The retelling of the Vergara story includes this line:
Happily for Welch’s lawyers, their innovative argument happened to coincide with a flood of new academic research on teacher quality that could serve as evidence in court.
One does not have to be a raving conspiracy theorist to note that the happy coincidence was the result of "research" funded by Welch's fellow technocrats and reformsters, much of it begun at about the same time that Welch started shopping for lawyers.
One major dropped ball for Edwards-- she does not discuss the major holes in the Veraga plaintiff arguments (including WAG statistics).
Edwards quotes, of all people, Mike Petrilli and Michael McShane on the problems of Vergara and government intervention. It's up to McShane to point out that measuring "grossly ineffective" is problematic. Edwards cherry-on-tops with the note that the teacher described as "ineffective and undeserving of tenure" was also a Pasadena Teacher of the year.
Edwards goes on to note that there's an irony that Vergara hinges on the ability to identify poor teachers just as we're all figuring out that we don't have that ability. She notes the current "outright mutiny" over high stakes testing and provides a quick guide to the studies showing that VAM is garbage science.
The close is a bit chilling:
David Welch says he’s undeterred. While he’s received an informal crash course in the unforgiving politics of education reform in this country in the past year, the back-and-forth doesn’t interest him. “I look at this as my responsibility to help and improve the society I live in,” he says. “And I’m willing to fight that battle as long as I have to fight that battle.”
Welch would do well to remember that the society he lives in is a democratic one, where it's not up to a rich and powerful amateur to just commandeer a public service because he has some ideas-- ideas that or no better-informed or professionally supported than the ideas of any average non-billionaire shmoe. Nobody elected Welch to do any of this. And nobody thinks that the best way for America to work is for us to have a democratic system that can be shoved aside by any rich guy on a crusade.
Edwards article is a plus in that it pulls back the curtain (at least part way) on much of what has actually happened in the Vergara assault on tenure without gauzing it up or calling it pretty names. She misses, however, the full implications of the "control over the workforce" quote. The assault on tenure makes much more sense in the context of continued attempts to de-professionalize teaching and turn it into a low-paying, short-term, easily replaceable line of work. She missed that entirely.
Edwards could certainly have turned a more critical eye on the Vergara plaintiff's case, and she stops short of calling out some of the larger issues. On top of the rich-guy-buys-democratic-institution problem, Edwards also glosses over much as "political" issue; the tenure wars are "political" only to the extent that they represent the use of political power to smash another part of public education.
Should this be a country where anybody, regardless of his lack of professional background, can set education policy for the entire nation just because he wants to and just because he's rich? That would be a really good question to start some reporting. Edwards almost raised it-- but not quite.
In other words, Edwards has presented a reasonably fair and accurate part of the picture-- but it's only part of the picture.
Friday, September 12, 2014
TNTP Proposes New Tenure Plan
TNTP, the Reimagine Teaching people and generators of plenty of fancy-looking reformy nonsense, have some more ideas for the post-Vergara world. They have decided to stake out a middle ground on the tenure wars, claiming that we don't need to eliminate it-- just fix it. And to that end, they have eight proposals to create "a more balanced system." It's all in this very fancy "paper," which I am now going to "respond to" in this "blog post."
1. Lengthen the Tryout Period
Awarding tenure after two years is too fast, say the reformsters. Let's make it five years.
Well, let me blunt. If your administrator can't tell whether someone's a keeper or not after two years, your administrator is a dope.
But why five years? Could it be because that will guarantee a more steady turnover, allowing us to pursue our goal of fewer (or none) career teachers, thereby reducing the costs of our school business (goodbye pay raises, and goodbye pension costs). As always, I'm really waiting for fans of the longer tryout period to wrap up their argument with, "...and that's why nobody should hire TFA short-timers ever."
2. Link Tenure to Strong Performance
Today, the only performance requirement for earning tenure is not being fired. In most districts, any teacher who remains on the payroll for a given amount of time is automatically tenure.
First of, depending on what you think constitutes being fired, this is basically saying that the only way to not get tenure is by not getting tenure, which is either very zen or very dumb. At any rate, I can tell you that my own small district has let teachers go prior to awarding tenure. But look-- there's a hugely weird hole in this argument. If your problem is that your district doesn't get rid of teachers during the years they don't have tenure, what possible good will it do to have more years of teachers not having tenure. If your administrators are too dopey to let poor tenureless teachers go, how will you fix that with more tenureless teachers??
Teachers should earn tenure only after showing they can consistently help their students make significant academic progress.
How dopey is this statement? Let me count the ways
1) Do you seriously want to claim that when it comes to your seven-year-old child, the only thing you want out of her teacher is to drag better test scores out of your offspring? That's it? Are you saying that when parents, particularly parents of small children, use the phrase "great teacher" that has no meaning beyond "teacher who got my child to score higher on those tests."
2) You have no idea how to tell if a teacher consistently helped students make significant academic progress. What you mean is, "teacher got standardized test scores to generate, via some invalid disproven VAM method, numbers that look good."
3. Make Tenure Revocable
"Teachers who earn poor evaluation ratings for two years in a row should not be allowed to keep tenure." So this suggestion means either A) tenure should not actually be tenure, which is absurd, or B) teachers with tenure should still be fireable, which is already the case. Next?
4. Focus Hearings on Students' Interests
This one starts out rather bizarrely. The argument is that while "just cause" hearings say they mean the district has to prove a good cause for dismissal, in practice, "districts have been held to a much higher standard." You would think a fancy thinky tank style paper might offer some support for that assertion, but you would be wrong.
TNTP claims that arbitrators often consider the possibility of remediation as a factor, and TNTP says that's like requiring courts to convict only if they think the defendant is both guilty and likely to repeat. It's an odd complaint, given that the justice system is just riddled with places where punishment and rehabilitation wrestle for the upper hand. From the juvenile justice system (predicated strictly on rehab) up to three strikes laws (too many repeats and the punishment increases), the justice system is absolutely loaded with considerations of both rehab potential and recidivism. But TNTP is in a hurry to draw a line between not raising student standardized test scores and becoming a convicted criminal, so there we are.
TNTP wants the hearing to focus on the potential harm to students if the teacher went back to the classroom. So, um, wait-- the arbitrator should consider how likely it is that the teacher will do a bad job again? As the argument ouroboros disappears into its own mouth, TNTP does note that superintendents should come down hard on any principal abusing the process through incompetence or bad intent.
5. Make Hearings More Efficient
Quicker is what we're looking for here. I don't think anybody at all disagrees with the notion of speedy hearings. "I'm so happy that I get to wait even longer to find out what's going to happen to my entire professional career," said no teacher ever. TNTP wants hearings to take a day, because screw complicated situations or a need for either side to present all of their information. But keep the proceedings aimed at producing speedy results? I think we can all get on board with that in principle.
6. Hire Independent Arbitrators
Arbitrators depend on school districts and teachers' unions for their employment, and so might be inclined to keep everybody happy. TNTP suggests using hearing officers such a judges to hear cases, because those guys never come with any biases, and because the court system is bored and empty with hardly any other work to do.
TNTP's complaint is not without merit, but as with much of the tenure argument, it assumes that unions have a real interest in preserving the jobs of bad teachers. That's generally not true. Teachers' unions have an interest in preserving the process, in making sure that there's no precedent by which a district can fire a teacher just because, you know, everybody knows he ought to be fired. The union's interest is in making sure that the district does its homework. That's all. It's not unheard of for unions to be quietly happy that they lost one and that Mr. McAwfulteach is out of there. But the process must be preserved, because contrary to reformster lore, there are not a gazillion bad teachers clogging schools nationwide.
7. Stop Tolerating Abuse and Sexual Misconduct
Well, other than framing this as a "When did you stop beating your wife" fallacy, there's nothing to argue with here.
8. Lower the Professional Stakes for Struggling Teachers
We should be able to fire teachers without taking away their licenses. That way, presumably, principals won't be so reluctant to fire teachers, and they will do it more often because they won't be "concerned about ending the careers of teachers who might perform well in other circumstances."
Which is an odd phrase to throw in there. I'm just trying to imagine a situation in which a tenured teacher deserves to be fired from one school, but would be a great addition at some other school. I'm having trouble.
Unless what we're hypothetically fixing here is the problem of high-poverty schools being career-enders under the reformster system. Because if you teach in a high-poverty school, you will have students whose standardized test scores are low, which means you will be judged to be ineffective, which means you will not get tenure or, perhaps, you will be fired for being ineffective. Given all that, nobody who understood the system would ever take a job in a high-poverty school ever. But if they knew that after they were inevitably fired, they could still get a job somewhere else, that would make it more appealing, maybe?
While TNTP's proposal has some worthwhile components, it still contains the basic outline of a system that throws out tenure and replaces it with a teacher employment system based on test results. That serves the interests of nobody (not teachers, students, taxpayers, citizens, or parents) except for folks who want to reimagine teaching as the sort of job that never becomes a lifetime career.
1. Lengthen the Tryout Period
Awarding tenure after two years is too fast, say the reformsters. Let's make it five years.
Well, let me blunt. If your administrator can't tell whether someone's a keeper or not after two years, your administrator is a dope.
But why five years? Could it be because that will guarantee a more steady turnover, allowing us to pursue our goal of fewer (or none) career teachers, thereby reducing the costs of our school business (goodbye pay raises, and goodbye pension costs). As always, I'm really waiting for fans of the longer tryout period to wrap up their argument with, "...and that's why nobody should hire TFA short-timers ever."
2. Link Tenure to Strong Performance
Today, the only performance requirement for earning tenure is not being fired. In most districts, any teacher who remains on the payroll for a given amount of time is automatically tenure.
First of, depending on what you think constitutes being fired, this is basically saying that the only way to not get tenure is by not getting tenure, which is either very zen or very dumb. At any rate, I can tell you that my own small district has let teachers go prior to awarding tenure. But look-- there's a hugely weird hole in this argument. If your problem is that your district doesn't get rid of teachers during the years they don't have tenure, what possible good will it do to have more years of teachers not having tenure. If your administrators are too dopey to let poor tenureless teachers go, how will you fix that with more tenureless teachers??
Teachers should earn tenure only after showing they can consistently help their students make significant academic progress.
How dopey is this statement? Let me count the ways
1) Do you seriously want to claim that when it comes to your seven-year-old child, the only thing you want out of her teacher is to drag better test scores out of your offspring? That's it? Are you saying that when parents, particularly parents of small children, use the phrase "great teacher" that has no meaning beyond "teacher who got my child to score higher on those tests."
2) You have no idea how to tell if a teacher consistently helped students make significant academic progress. What you mean is, "teacher got standardized test scores to generate, via some invalid disproven VAM method, numbers that look good."
3. Make Tenure Revocable
"Teachers who earn poor evaluation ratings for two years in a row should not be allowed to keep tenure." So this suggestion means either A) tenure should not actually be tenure, which is absurd, or B) teachers with tenure should still be fireable, which is already the case. Next?
4. Focus Hearings on Students' Interests
This one starts out rather bizarrely. The argument is that while "just cause" hearings say they mean the district has to prove a good cause for dismissal, in practice, "districts have been held to a much higher standard." You would think a fancy thinky tank style paper might offer some support for that assertion, but you would be wrong.
TNTP claims that arbitrators often consider the possibility of remediation as a factor, and TNTP says that's like requiring courts to convict only if they think the defendant is both guilty and likely to repeat. It's an odd complaint, given that the justice system is just riddled with places where punishment and rehabilitation wrestle for the upper hand. From the juvenile justice system (predicated strictly on rehab) up to three strikes laws (too many repeats and the punishment increases), the justice system is absolutely loaded with considerations of both rehab potential and recidivism. But TNTP is in a hurry to draw a line between not raising student standardized test scores and becoming a convicted criminal, so there we are.
TNTP wants the hearing to focus on the potential harm to students if the teacher went back to the classroom. So, um, wait-- the arbitrator should consider how likely it is that the teacher will do a bad job again? As the argument ouroboros disappears into its own mouth, TNTP does note that superintendents should come down hard on any principal abusing the process through incompetence or bad intent.
5. Make Hearings More Efficient
Quicker is what we're looking for here. I don't think anybody at all disagrees with the notion of speedy hearings. "I'm so happy that I get to wait even longer to find out what's going to happen to my entire professional career," said no teacher ever. TNTP wants hearings to take a day, because screw complicated situations or a need for either side to present all of their information. But keep the proceedings aimed at producing speedy results? I think we can all get on board with that in principle.
6. Hire Independent Arbitrators
Arbitrators depend on school districts and teachers' unions for their employment, and so might be inclined to keep everybody happy. TNTP suggests using hearing officers such a judges to hear cases, because those guys never come with any biases, and because the court system is bored and empty with hardly any other work to do.
TNTP's complaint is not without merit, but as with much of the tenure argument, it assumes that unions have a real interest in preserving the jobs of bad teachers. That's generally not true. Teachers' unions have an interest in preserving the process, in making sure that there's no precedent by which a district can fire a teacher just because, you know, everybody knows he ought to be fired. The union's interest is in making sure that the district does its homework. That's all. It's not unheard of for unions to be quietly happy that they lost one and that Mr. McAwfulteach is out of there. But the process must be preserved, because contrary to reformster lore, there are not a gazillion bad teachers clogging schools nationwide.
7. Stop Tolerating Abuse and Sexual Misconduct
Well, other than framing this as a "When did you stop beating your wife" fallacy, there's nothing to argue with here.
8. Lower the Professional Stakes for Struggling Teachers
We should be able to fire teachers without taking away their licenses. That way, presumably, principals won't be so reluctant to fire teachers, and they will do it more often because they won't be "concerned about ending the careers of teachers who might perform well in other circumstances."
Which is an odd phrase to throw in there. I'm just trying to imagine a situation in which a tenured teacher deserves to be fired from one school, but would be a great addition at some other school. I'm having trouble.
Unless what we're hypothetically fixing here is the problem of high-poverty schools being career-enders under the reformster system. Because if you teach in a high-poverty school, you will have students whose standardized test scores are low, which means you will be judged to be ineffective, which means you will not get tenure or, perhaps, you will be fired for being ineffective. Given all that, nobody who understood the system would ever take a job in a high-poverty school ever. But if they knew that after they were inevitably fired, they could still get a job somewhere else, that would make it more appealing, maybe?
While TNTP's proposal has some worthwhile components, it still contains the basic outline of a system that throws out tenure and replaces it with a teacher employment system based on test results. That serves the interests of nobody (not teachers, students, taxpayers, citizens, or parents) except for folks who want to reimagine teaching as the sort of job that never becomes a lifetime career.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
No, Education Post Is Not About Conversation
Twelve million dollars buys you a big splash. Many of us have launched blogs; very few of us have had heavy press coverage of the launch.
When Anthony Cody, a nationally known education writer and activist left the nest at Education Week to launch Living in Dialogue, a website that features work from many of the top writers in education policy today, the Washington Post did not dispatch Lindsey Layton to cover the new addition to the education conversation. But when Education Post, a site with a similar format (multiple writers cover education issues) and a similar stated mission (further the education conversation), launched last week, it got the royal treatment in other media outlets.
It's telling that Education Post's logo is a bullhorn. Its intention of providing a new education conversation vanishes immediately in its press coverage. In the Washington Post coverage, Bloomberg guy Howard Wolfson said
There hasn’t really been an organization dedicated to sharing the successes of education reform around the country. You have local success, but it isn’t amplified elsewhere.
Bruce Reed, from the Broad Foundation, is even clearer.
One of the goals of Education Post is to publicize what works in public education.
Reed also offers this characterization of the problem voices in the debate
Most of the people in the organizations we work with are too busy starting schools or teaching kids to spend much time to take part in a policy debate about what they do. They're showing up at 7 in the morning to run a school and grading papers late into the night. They're not blogging vicious comments at the bottom of every education news story that gets written. [emphasis mine]
Just for the record, I get to school at 7 AM and grade papers late into the night and a few other things besides. I still make time to burn bandwidth because education is important to me. Just sayin'.
Education Post is not just about its own website. In Mark Walsh's EdWeek piece on the launch, we find this tidbit
Cunningha, said some of the group's work will be behind the scenes, drafting op-ed articles for policymakers, educators, and others, as well as providing strategic advice. But a more public effort
will involve writing blog posts and responding to public misconceptions.
In the Washington Post piece, it comes out like this
Education Post also will have a “rapid response” capacity to “knock down false narratives” and will focus on “hot spots” around the country where conflicts with national implications are playing out, Cunningham said.
So, not conversation. Now, if reformsters want to put together a site devoted to getting out their message, that fine. When I go to Anthony Cody's site, I expect that I'll find a certain point of view represented, and my policy here at this blog is that I stick to saying things that I believe are true.
But Education Post goes a step beyond a simple bloggy point of view. It's looking a lot more like a well-financed, well-populated political PR rapid response team. And it has already shown its rapid response skills. When I wrote my initial take on the site, I had two twitter accounts associated with the group challenging me by the end of the afternoon, talking points at the ready. The second round of blogs include, along with pieces in praise of standardized testing and the new teacher evaluation models, a piece entitled "I'm All Ears, Jose." It's a response to Jose Luis Vilson, one of the A-list ed bloggers to take an early look at EP, and it reads a little like Peter Cunningham's version of "Was there something you wanted to tell the whole class?"
Again, there's nothing wrong with having a point of view, and nothing wrong with being assertive about it. But these guys are not exploring or conversing; they're selling something, and they are defining "toxic" conversation as words that interfere with their sales pitch. This is not an attempt to have a conversation, but an attempt to shape and control one.
Controlling the narrative is all the rage in these issues. Mercedes Schneider and Paul Thomas have both written recent pieces that show this subtle and powerful technique in action. I say, "So there we were, winning the game with superior skills, when some people got upset, apparently about some foul in the third quarter. We are totally open to discussing that third quarter foul situation," and if you want to engage in the argument about the foul, that's fine with me because we've now sold the notion that my team was winning and that we have superior skill.
EdPost's narrative is that we were all just sitting around, talking pleasantly about how to accomplish great things with these really successful ed reforms, and suddenly the conversation turned ugly and unpleasantly toxic. Now we just need people to calm down so that we can talk about all the great successes of ed reform.
This is disingenuous on two levels. First, it's what people who believe in marketing way too much do. When their Big Poop Sandwich is selling poorly, they work with the assumption that's there's a problem with their messaging and not a problem with trying sell a sandwich filled with poop. Second, they already know when the conversation turned ugly. It was back a few years ago when reformsters refused to listen to any dissenting voices and proceeded to dismiss all critics as cranks and fringe elements and hysterically deluded suburban white moms. Back then a combative tone was okay because they thought they would win that conversation. Now they would like a new choice, please.
There is another secondary story here-- the tale of the former Obama administration figures who have become field operatives for hard-edged reformster promotion. From this PR initiative to the East Coast Vergara lawsuit of Campbell Brown, we're seeing former Obama/Duncan folks resurface as reformster warriors. At the very least, a reminder that it's a mistake to assume that a Democrat is on the side of public education.
Look, I'm all for civil conversation. I count a large number of reformster types with whom I have had plenty of civil exchanges. But those exchanges include honesty and listening and an intention to understand what the other person is saying. Education Post and its extremely well-funded megaphone appear to come up a bit short.
Put another way-- if your neighbor drives a tank into his driveway and parks it next to a few cases of ammo, and then he tells you, "Look! I got a great new sailboat! Pretty soon we'll all be heading out onto the lake together," you'd be right to have a few doubts. Education Post may want to promote itself as a sailboat, but it sure looks like a tank to me.
When Anthony Cody, a nationally known education writer and activist left the nest at Education Week to launch Living in Dialogue, a website that features work from many of the top writers in education policy today, the Washington Post did not dispatch Lindsey Layton to cover the new addition to the education conversation. But when Education Post, a site with a similar format (multiple writers cover education issues) and a similar stated mission (further the education conversation), launched last week, it got the royal treatment in other media outlets.
It's telling that Education Post's logo is a bullhorn. Its intention of providing a new education conversation vanishes immediately in its press coverage. In the Washington Post coverage, Bloomberg guy Howard Wolfson said
There hasn’t really been an organization dedicated to sharing the successes of education reform around the country. You have local success, but it isn’t amplified elsewhere.
Bruce Reed, from the Broad Foundation, is even clearer.
One of the goals of Education Post is to publicize what works in public education.
Reed also offers this characterization of the problem voices in the debate
Most of the people in the organizations we work with are too busy starting schools or teaching kids to spend much time to take part in a policy debate about what they do. They're showing up at 7 in the morning to run a school and grading papers late into the night. They're not blogging vicious comments at the bottom of every education news story that gets written. [emphasis mine]
Just for the record, I get to school at 7 AM and grade papers late into the night and a few other things besides. I still make time to burn bandwidth because education is important to me. Just sayin'.
Education Post is not just about its own website. In Mark Walsh's EdWeek piece on the launch, we find this tidbit
Cunningha, said some of the group's work will be behind the scenes, drafting op-ed articles for policymakers, educators, and others, as well as providing strategic advice. But a more public effort
will involve writing blog posts and responding to public misconceptions.
In the Washington Post piece, it comes out like this
Education Post also will have a “rapid response” capacity to “knock down false narratives” and will focus on “hot spots” around the country where conflicts with national implications are playing out, Cunningham said.
So, not conversation. Now, if reformsters want to put together a site devoted to getting out their message, that fine. When I go to Anthony Cody's site, I expect that I'll find a certain point of view represented, and my policy here at this blog is that I stick to saying things that I believe are true.
But Education Post goes a step beyond a simple bloggy point of view. It's looking a lot more like a well-financed, well-populated political PR rapid response team. And it has already shown its rapid response skills. When I wrote my initial take on the site, I had two twitter accounts associated with the group challenging me by the end of the afternoon, talking points at the ready. The second round of blogs include, along with pieces in praise of standardized testing and the new teacher evaluation models, a piece entitled "I'm All Ears, Jose." It's a response to Jose Luis Vilson, one of the A-list ed bloggers to take an early look at EP, and it reads a little like Peter Cunningham's version of "Was there something you wanted to tell the whole class?"
Again, there's nothing wrong with having a point of view, and nothing wrong with being assertive about it. But these guys are not exploring or conversing; they're selling something, and they are defining "toxic" conversation as words that interfere with their sales pitch. This is not an attempt to have a conversation, but an attempt to shape and control one.
Controlling the narrative is all the rage in these issues. Mercedes Schneider and Paul Thomas have both written recent pieces that show this subtle and powerful technique in action. I say, "So there we were, winning the game with superior skills, when some people got upset, apparently about some foul in the third quarter. We are totally open to discussing that third quarter foul situation," and if you want to engage in the argument about the foul, that's fine with me because we've now sold the notion that my team was winning and that we have superior skill.
EdPost's narrative is that we were all just sitting around, talking pleasantly about how to accomplish great things with these really successful ed reforms, and suddenly the conversation turned ugly and unpleasantly toxic. Now we just need people to calm down so that we can talk about all the great successes of ed reform.
This is disingenuous on two levels. First, it's what people who believe in marketing way too much do. When their Big Poop Sandwich is selling poorly, they work with the assumption that's there's a problem with their messaging and not a problem with trying sell a sandwich filled with poop. Second, they already know when the conversation turned ugly. It was back a few years ago when reformsters refused to listen to any dissenting voices and proceeded to dismiss all critics as cranks and fringe elements and hysterically deluded suburban white moms. Back then a combative tone was okay because they thought they would win that conversation. Now they would like a new choice, please.
There is another secondary story here-- the tale of the former Obama administration figures who have become field operatives for hard-edged reformster promotion. From this PR initiative to the East Coast Vergara lawsuit of Campbell Brown, we're seeing former Obama/Duncan folks resurface as reformster warriors. At the very least, a reminder that it's a mistake to assume that a Democrat is on the side of public education.
Look, I'm all for civil conversation. I count a large number of reformster types with whom I have had plenty of civil exchanges. But those exchanges include honesty and listening and an intention to understand what the other person is saying. Education Post and its extremely well-funded megaphone appear to come up a bit short.
Put another way-- if your neighbor drives a tank into his driveway and parks it next to a few cases of ammo, and then he tells you, "Look! I got a great new sailboat! Pretty soon we'll all be heading out onto the lake together," you'd be right to have a few doubts. Education Post may want to promote itself as a sailboat, but it sure looks like a tank to me.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
To Tim Elmore: Here's What You're Missing
At Growing Leaders, Tim Elmore ends his column "The Cost of Bad Teachers," with a question: "Am I missing something here?"
Yes, Tim, I believe you are. I will, as you request, try to talk to you.
You lead off with a pair of questions:
Can you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO's, who can't lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO, regardless of their unacceptable performance?
First, before the punctuation nazis get in an uproar, yes-- as punctuated, Tim, you just said that all doctors are pitiful and all CEOs are incapable of leading companies. I'm going to suggest that punctuation nazis relax so we can talk about what you clearly meant.
These questions are really beside the point, but I'm weary of the continued assertion that out in the Real World folks win and lose strictly on merit. Because without using imagination at all, I can take you to a world where hospital staffing has way more to do with politics and connections than quality. And I think we can all imagine a world where executives make choices so reckless and irresponsible and arguably illegal that they crash their company and, in some cases, bring the nation's economy to the brink of disaster, and yet these executives get to keep their jobs, get bonuses, and in some cases, receive appointment to highly lucrative government positions.
Again-- none of this really means a thing as far as dealing with less-than-stellar teachers. But I think it would be useful to stop pretending that all other sectors are humming along in perfectly-functioning meritocracies. Pretending that we have established meritocracies before just adds to the illusion that we can do it for schools. In a sense, this is like opening your argument with "Why aren't schools powered by cold fusion generators?"
You go on to refer to tenure as a "job guarantee," and you put it in quotation marks, which tells me that you know you are overstating your case here. Tenure does not guarantee a job for life. It guarantees a teacher due process, and is still a protection against being fired for reasons from benching a school board members kid in sports to campaigning for the wrong party to speaking up against a school policy that is wasting the taxpayers' money.
This suggests that teachers' unions are somehow really devoted to keeping bad teachers in the classroom. I defy you to find me ten union teachers anywhere in public school who would agree with that sentiment.
You go on to cite some stats from the Vergara trial. The "number of bad teachers" estimate turns out to be a fabricated number (as explained by the person who fabricated it). The data about how much money a student loses over a lifetime by having a bad teacher has been debunked many, many times. Here's one example.
You then ask people to reflect on good and bad teachers they had back in school. I agree we can all do this. But as you're drifting back in memory, I want you to take it a step further. Can you remember a good teacher that every single solitary student in the classroom thought was good? Because that's our problem here. One of the teachers cited as grossly ineffective was also a multiple award-winning teacher; follow this link and you can find video of her teaching and students praising her work. But a single student in her classroom has now made this teacher a national poster child for gross ineffectiveness?
That door swings both ways. You and I both can come up with teachers that we thought were terrible. But even though Mr. McDull was uninspiring to me, I'm not so sure that I can swear definitively that he never inspired any other students at all.
My point is not that bad teachers do not exist. My point is that identifying them is far more difficult than you seem to think it is.
You say that often the union won't let schools fire bad teachers. I don't know of any school district in the country where a union has that kind of power. Now, in some large urban districts, the union can certainly make the process and long and costly, and that is absolutely and unquestionably a problem that needs to be solved. But "solving" it by destroying tenure is like solving the problem of ugly drapes by burning down your house.
You invoke supply and demand, and honestly, I have no idea what the heck that has to do with tenure. But you do wheel around to the idea that everybody should add value, and while I would argue that we should not talk about schools as if they were toaster factories, I'll play along for the purposes of this conversation, because even if we use the language of value-added, we come down to a basic problem-- we haven't got a clue how to measure it. Not a clue.
We have folks pitching the idea that we can measure it by looking a student scores on standardized tests. There are (at least) two major problems with that--
1) We don't know how to do it. We especially don't know how to do it for teachers who don't teach the testing subjects or students, but we're now looking at systems that judge teachers based on how students they never had in class do on tests of material that said teacher never taught. IOW, a school where the fifth grade phys ed teacher is evaluated based on third grade reading scores. And even if we want to evaluate the third grade teacher on those scores, are we really prepared to assert that the teacher is 100% responsible for the student scores?
2) Go back to your memory of the great teachers that inspired you. Would you say that getting you to do well on standardized tests really captures what makes you remember them as a great teacher? I didn't think so.
You finish with five statements about human nature that you believe apply here:
1) We are at our very best when we have the opportunity both to succeed and to fail.
I don't disagree. But what happens if we are operating in a system where "success" and "failure" are determined by factors that are completely beyond our control? Does that bring out our best?
2) Without the guarantee of tenure, I will strive to find a job in my strength area.
I'll be honest. I'm not sure what you're saying here. If I don't have tenure, I'll try to get a job matching my certification, because... I don't know. Having tenure in a crappy job that doesn't allow me to excel will somehow discourage me from looking for the chance to have tenure in a great job that suits me perfectly? I'd refer you back to your first point-- I will look for a chance to be my best, and that's a job where my strengths can be used to achieve success. I don't see a connection to tenure here.
3) I have incentive to keep improving when I know I must work to keep my job
And if keeping my job has nothing to do with improving? What if keeping my job means giving the school board member's kid straight A's and the lead in the school play? What if keeping my job means never ever ever questioning my administrators, even when they are making what I believe are professionally irresponsible choices? What if keeping my job means keeping a low profile and being just as bland and boring I can be?
Removing the protections of tenure does not equal "must work to keep my job." In many states and districts, it means something else entirely.
4) I become the best version of myself when I give my very best each day.
Don't disagree. But how is this connected to tenure. Do you really believe that you, personally, would stop doing decent work if you had job security? Because personally, and I try hard to show this to my students, and I think most of them find it true-- doing your best and being your best self is rewarding all by itself. I have just never met the person who I can imagine saying, "Yeah, being my best self feels okay, but not any better than being my most mediocre self, so why bother?"
5) In the end, the students lose and the faculty gains with teacher tenure.
You realize that you didn't really support either of these assertions.
As is often noted, teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. Students benefit from teachers who can keep all their focus on teaching, and not the politicking and CYA needed to hold onto their job in an "at will" setting. Students benefit from a stable school where teachers are not regularly cycled out because they are too expensive. Students benefit from having teachers who are committed to a lifetime of teaching, just as they benefit from maintaining teaching as a profession that is actually attractive to the best and the brightest.
You do not attract the best and the brightest by saying, "We're not going to pay you much-- in fact we'll fire you if we think you're getting expensive. We won't give you much autonomy or chance to gain power and responsibility over your work conditions. And we'll fire you at any time for any reason, including reasons that have nothing to do with how good a teaching job you're doing."
But it's possible that I'm the one missing something. In your vision of a tenureless teaching world, how do you see yourself convincing people to pursue teaching as a career?
Yes, Tim, I believe you are. I will, as you request, try to talk to you.
You lead off with a pair of questions:
Can you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO's, who can't lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO, regardless of their unacceptable performance?
First, before the punctuation nazis get in an uproar, yes-- as punctuated, Tim, you just said that all doctors are pitiful and all CEOs are incapable of leading companies. I'm going to suggest that punctuation nazis relax so we can talk about what you clearly meant.
These questions are really beside the point, but I'm weary of the continued assertion that out in the Real World folks win and lose strictly on merit. Because without using imagination at all, I can take you to a world where hospital staffing has way more to do with politics and connections than quality. And I think we can all imagine a world where executives make choices so reckless and irresponsible and arguably illegal that they crash their company and, in some cases, bring the nation's economy to the brink of disaster, and yet these executives get to keep their jobs, get bonuses, and in some cases, receive appointment to highly lucrative government positions.
Again-- none of this really means a thing as far as dealing with less-than-stellar teachers. But I think it would be useful to stop pretending that all other sectors are humming along in perfectly-functioning meritocracies. Pretending that we have established meritocracies before just adds to the illusion that we can do it for schools. In a sense, this is like opening your argument with "Why aren't schools powered by cold fusion generators?"
You go on to refer to tenure as a "job guarantee," and you put it in quotation marks, which tells me that you know you are overstating your case here. Tenure does not guarantee a job for life. It guarantees a teacher due process, and is still a protection against being fired for reasons from benching a school board members kid in sports to campaigning for the wrong party to speaking up against a school policy that is wasting the taxpayers' money.
Teacher’s Unions have filed an appeal, but parents are not budging.
They want good teachers “in” and bad teachers “out.” - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.bwO6UUjJ.dpuf
Teacher’s
Unions have filed an appeal, but parents are not budging. They want
good teachers “in” and bad teachers “out.” - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Teacher's unions have filed appeals but parents are not budging. They want good teachers "in" and bad teachers "out." This suggests that teachers' unions are somehow really devoted to keeping bad teachers in the classroom. I defy you to find me ten union teachers anywhere in public school who would agree with that sentiment.
You go on to cite some stats from the Vergara trial. The "number of bad teachers" estimate turns out to be a fabricated number (as explained by the person who fabricated it). The data about how much money a student loses over a lifetime by having a bad teacher has been debunked many, many times. Here's one example.
You then ask people to reflect on good and bad teachers they had back in school. I agree we can all do this. But as you're drifting back in memory, I want you to take it a step further. Can you remember a good teacher that every single solitary student in the classroom thought was good? Because that's our problem here. One of the teachers cited as grossly ineffective was also a multiple award-winning teacher; follow this link and you can find video of her teaching and students praising her work. But a single student in her classroom has now made this teacher a national poster child for gross ineffectiveness?
That door swings both ways. You and I both can come up with teachers that we thought were terrible. But even though Mr. McDull was uninspiring to me, I'm not so sure that I can swear definitively that he never inspired any other students at all.
My point is not that bad teachers do not exist. My point is that identifying them is far more difficult than you seem to think it is.
You say that often the union won't let schools fire bad teachers. I don't know of any school district in the country where a union has that kind of power. Now, in some large urban districts, the union can certainly make the process and long and costly, and that is absolutely and unquestionably a problem that needs to be solved. But "solving" it by destroying tenure is like solving the problem of ugly drapes by burning down your house.
You invoke supply and demand, and honestly, I have no idea what the heck that has to do with tenure. But you do wheel around to the idea that everybody should add value, and while I would argue that we should not talk about schools as if they were toaster factories, I'll play along for the purposes of this conversation, because even if we use the language of value-added, we come down to a basic problem-- we haven't got a clue how to measure it. Not a clue.
We have folks pitching the idea that we can measure it by looking a student scores on standardized tests. There are (at least) two major problems with that--
1) We don't know how to do it. We especially don't know how to do it for teachers who don't teach the testing subjects or students, but we're now looking at systems that judge teachers based on how students they never had in class do on tests of material that said teacher never taught. IOW, a school where the fifth grade phys ed teacher is evaluated based on third grade reading scores. And even if we want to evaluate the third grade teacher on those scores, are we really prepared to assert that the teacher is 100% responsible for the student scores?
2) Go back to your memory of the great teachers that inspired you. Would you say that getting you to do well on standardized tests really captures what makes you remember them as a great teacher? I didn't think so.
You finish with five statements about human nature that you believe apply here:
1) We are at our very best when we have the opportunity both to succeed and to fail.
I don't disagree. But what happens if we are operating in a system where "success" and "failure" are determined by factors that are completely beyond our control? Does that bring out our best?
2) Without the guarantee of tenure, I will strive to find a job in my strength area.
I'll be honest. I'm not sure what you're saying here. If I don't have tenure, I'll try to get a job matching my certification, because... I don't know. Having tenure in a crappy job that doesn't allow me to excel will somehow discourage me from looking for the chance to have tenure in a great job that suits me perfectly? I'd refer you back to your first point-- I will look for a chance to be my best, and that's a job where my strengths can be used to achieve success. I don't see a connection to tenure here.
3) I have incentive to keep improving when I know I must work to keep my job
And if keeping my job has nothing to do with improving? What if keeping my job means giving the school board member's kid straight A's and the lead in the school play? What if keeping my job means never ever ever questioning my administrators, even when they are making what I believe are professionally irresponsible choices? What if keeping my job means keeping a low profile and being just as bland and boring I can be?
Removing the protections of tenure does not equal "must work to keep my job." In many states and districts, it means something else entirely.
4) I become the best version of myself when I give my very best each day.
Don't disagree. But how is this connected to tenure. Do you really believe that you, personally, would stop doing decent work if you had job security? Because personally, and I try hard to show this to my students, and I think most of them find it true-- doing your best and being your best self is rewarding all by itself. I have just never met the person who I can imagine saying, "Yeah, being my best self feels okay, but not any better than being my most mediocre self, so why bother?"
5) In the end, the students lose and the faculty gains with teacher tenure.
You realize that you didn't really support either of these assertions.
As is often noted, teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. Students benefit from teachers who can keep all their focus on teaching, and not the politicking and CYA needed to hold onto their job in an "at will" setting. Students benefit from a stable school where teachers are not regularly cycled out because they are too expensive. Students benefit from having teachers who are committed to a lifetime of teaching, just as they benefit from maintaining teaching as a profession that is actually attractive to the best and the brightest.
You do not attract the best and the brightest by saying, "We're not going to pay you much-- in fact we'll fire you if we think you're getting expensive. We won't give you much autonomy or chance to gain power and responsibility over your work conditions. And we'll fire you at any time for any reason, including reasons that have nothing to do with how good a teaching job you're doing."
But it's possible that I'm the one missing something. In your vision of a tenureless teaching world, how do you see yourself convincing people to pursue teaching as a career?
Ineffective faculty members get to keep their jobs, regardless of their
poor performance in the classroom. It’s a “job guarantee” that takes
away incentive for many… - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Ineffective faculty members get to keep their jobs, regardless of their
poor performance in the classroom. It’s a “job guarantee” that takes
away incentive for many… - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Can
you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing
medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO’s, who
can’t lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO,
regardless of their unacceptable performance? - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Can
you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing
medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO’s, who
can’t lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO,
regardless of their unacceptable performance? - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Can
you imagine a world where doctors, who are simply pitiful at practicing
medicine, get to keep their jobs as physicians? Or where CEO’s, who
can’t lead a company into a fair profit margin, get to remain as CEO,
regardless of their unacceptable performance? - See more at:
http://growingleaders.com/blog/cost-bad-teachers/#sthash.b7yFgLWQ.dpuf
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Duncan on Harris v. Quinn
"Collective bargaining is a fundamental right that helped build
America’s middle class. I’ve seen firsthand as Education Secretary that
collaborating with unions and their state and local affiliates helps
improve outcomes for students. The President and I remain committed to
defending collective bargaining rights."
That's not an excerpt. That's the whole thing.
Here's the complete Duncan statement on Vergara.
“For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher. The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students. Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities while providing teachers the support, respect and rewarding careers they deserve. My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward a collaborative process in California that is fair, thoughtful, practical and swift. Every state, every school district needs to have that kind of conversation. At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states. At the same time, we all need to continue to address other inequities in education–including school funding, access to quality early childhood programs and school discipline.”
When you slice baloney thinner, it's easier to see through it.
I ignored Duncan's release on Vergara initially because it seemed so transparently not about Vergara, like a spirited tap dance around a mine. Duncan hits everything except the target, finishing on a quick fade to left field. I would think that he either didn't understand the significance of Vergara, or just didn't want to, but his response to Haris v. Quinn shows he can in fact parse these things.
So Arne, perhaps you could go back and take another look at Vergara and ask what it says about collective bargaining and other employment protections as well as teachers' chance to be represented by a union. Or perhaps you'd like to expand your comment on Harris v. Quinn to explain what you think it means to support and defend collective bargaining rights.
I would hate to think that Harris v. Quinn only woke up the administration because it directly affects unions' ability to serve as a fundraising arm of the Democratic party.
That's not an excerpt. That's the whole thing.
Here's the complete Duncan statement on Vergara.
“For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher. The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students. Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities while providing teachers the support, respect and rewarding careers they deserve. My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward a collaborative process in California that is fair, thoughtful, practical and swift. Every state, every school district needs to have that kind of conversation. At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states. At the same time, we all need to continue to address other inequities in education–including school funding, access to quality early childhood programs and school discipline.”
When you slice baloney thinner, it's easier to see through it.
I ignored Duncan's release on Vergara initially because it seemed so transparently not about Vergara, like a spirited tap dance around a mine. Duncan hits everything except the target, finishing on a quick fade to left field. I would think that he either didn't understand the significance of Vergara, or just didn't want to, but his response to Haris v. Quinn shows he can in fact parse these things.
So Arne, perhaps you could go back and take another look at Vergara and ask what it says about collective bargaining and other employment protections as well as teachers' chance to be represented by a union. Or perhaps you'd like to expand your comment on Harris v. Quinn to explain what you think it means to support and defend collective bargaining rights.
I would hate to think that Harris v. Quinn only woke up the administration because it directly affects unions' ability to serve as a fundraising arm of the Democratic party.
Brown Presents NY Lawsuit Talking Points
In the June 24 NY Daily News, Campbell Brown presented the basic talking points for the newly-manufactured NY road show version of the Vergara trial. Here we go.
A Stirring Anecdote
Her story centers on the Williams family
One of their children... felt so strongly about the lack of instruction she was getting at her Rochester school that she wrote an essay about her experience. Instead of getting help, Jada was confronted about it, and her mom received harassing calls from teachers. Subjected to unfair treatment, Jada eventually had to transfer school.
This "ordeal," says Brown, began with a student's "request for sound teaching."
It's a good story because it underlines exactly what is problematic about this sort of narrative as a model of teacher evaluation. This could in fact be the story of a student who made a reasonable request, wrote an essay about it, and was unfairly hounded by multiple teachers. While I'd like to say that I can't imagine that ever happening, it's certainly not impossible (though the harassing phone calls from plural teachers is hard to imagine).
But this could also be the story of a student who decide she knew better than a trained professional how the teacher should do his job, got called on it, and had the whole thing blow up when the school tried to deal with her insubordination and disrespect.
Either version of the story could be the truth. If we put in student hands the nuclear option of ending a teacher's career, we are certainly, as Brown says she wants to, changing the balance of power. But I'm not sure how we get to excellence in teaching by way of a student smiling and saying, "Mrs. DeGumbuddy, my lawyer and I think you really want to reconsider my grade on this essay."
The Three Basic Underminers
Brown's lawsuit (there really is no need to pretend that this is the students' lawsuit) asserts that three policies of the State of New York undermine the presence of quality teachers in the classroom.
Seniority-- "last in, first out" is bad. It's also a sign of how carefully this is all crafted, because for years I never heard the policy called anything by FILO (first in, last out). But since we need to focus on the young teachers unjustly terminated by this policy, LIFO suits us better.
Tenure-- NY makes teachers wait three years and eighteen observations for tenure. This is the most obvious difference between the New York case and Vergara (California was awarding tenure after less time). This is a hard argument to make-- if an administrator can't tell whether or not she's got a keeper after three years and eighteen observations, that administrator needs to go get a job selling real estate or groceries, because, damn!
On the plus side, I look forward to Brown's accompanying argument that all New York schools should be barred from ever again hiring Teach for America two-year contract temps. If it takes more than three years to determine if a teacher is any good, then clearly TFA is a waste of everybody's time. Do let me know when Brown brings that up.
Dismissals-- Too long, too hard. I'm not in New York, so I don't know the real numbers here. This was the weakest part of the state's case in Vergara-- while you can't rush through these proceedings, there's no excuse for dragging them out for months and years. It's not good for either party.
Brown Is Stumped
Brown's clincher is a sign that either she's playing dumb for rhetorical purposes, or she really doesn't understand schools at all.
...last year, nearly 92% of the state’s teachers outside New York City were deemed effective or highly effective. If this is the case, how can 69% of students fail to show they are proficient in math or English Language Arts testing?
The strictly factual answer of course would be the studies indicating that teachers account for 14% tops of student learning. I don't know if I buy that exact number personally, but it's out there. Certainly it can't be hard for Brown to imagine that some students are capable of sitting in a classroom with an awesome teacher and still not learn from her, either because of distraction, personal issues, or simple defiance.
But the other reason that 69% of NYS students came up short on math and ELA proficiency? Because they were supposed to. Because the NY cut scores (the line between passing and failing) were not set by using some scientific study of what a "sufficient" display of skill would be, but by determining distribution ahead of time. By saying, let's draw the pass-fail line so that 30% are above it, and the rest are below it. You can read a pretty thorough run-down of these tests by Carol Burris and John Murphy here.
And nice touch on calling the fail rate 69% instead of the 70% more commonly reported. 69% sound much more inexact and therefor more "real" than 70%, which in its very tidiness reveals its made-up origins.
I feel bad once again for the prop plaintiffs who are shown in the photo looking out at the crowd, shoulders hunched, like they are seeing a huge raging river that they have to cross. But the Vergara prop plaintiffs were well taken care of, and I'm sure these will be as well. But there is a special corner of hell reserved for adults who use children as tools to further their own agenda.
In the meantime, teachers here in the East can now look forward to a PR blitz tearing down teachers in support of a lawsuit designed to dismantle teaching as a profession. We can only hope the ultimate result will be better than the California version of this traveling circus.
A Stirring Anecdote
Her story centers on the Williams family
One of their children... felt so strongly about the lack of instruction she was getting at her Rochester school that she wrote an essay about her experience. Instead of getting help, Jada was confronted about it, and her mom received harassing calls from teachers. Subjected to unfair treatment, Jada eventually had to transfer school.
This "ordeal," says Brown, began with a student's "request for sound teaching."
It's a good story because it underlines exactly what is problematic about this sort of narrative as a model of teacher evaluation. This could in fact be the story of a student who made a reasonable request, wrote an essay about it, and was unfairly hounded by multiple teachers. While I'd like to say that I can't imagine that ever happening, it's certainly not impossible (though the harassing phone calls from plural teachers is hard to imagine).
But this could also be the story of a student who decide she knew better than a trained professional how the teacher should do his job, got called on it, and had the whole thing blow up when the school tried to deal with her insubordination and disrespect.
Either version of the story could be the truth. If we put in student hands the nuclear option of ending a teacher's career, we are certainly, as Brown says she wants to, changing the balance of power. But I'm not sure how we get to excellence in teaching by way of a student smiling and saying, "Mrs. DeGumbuddy, my lawyer and I think you really want to reconsider my grade on this essay."
The Three Basic Underminers
Brown's lawsuit (there really is no need to pretend that this is the students' lawsuit) asserts that three policies of the State of New York undermine the presence of quality teachers in the classroom.
Seniority-- "last in, first out" is bad. It's also a sign of how carefully this is all crafted, because for years I never heard the policy called anything by FILO (first in, last out). But since we need to focus on the young teachers unjustly terminated by this policy, LIFO suits us better.
Tenure-- NY makes teachers wait three years and eighteen observations for tenure. This is the most obvious difference between the New York case and Vergara (California was awarding tenure after less time). This is a hard argument to make-- if an administrator can't tell whether or not she's got a keeper after three years and eighteen observations, that administrator needs to go get a job selling real estate or groceries, because, damn!
On the plus side, I look forward to Brown's accompanying argument that all New York schools should be barred from ever again hiring Teach for America two-year contract temps. If it takes more than three years to determine if a teacher is any good, then clearly TFA is a waste of everybody's time. Do let me know when Brown brings that up.
Dismissals-- Too long, too hard. I'm not in New York, so I don't know the real numbers here. This was the weakest part of the state's case in Vergara-- while you can't rush through these proceedings, there's no excuse for dragging them out for months and years. It's not good for either party.
Brown Is Stumped
Brown's clincher is a sign that either she's playing dumb for rhetorical purposes, or she really doesn't understand schools at all.
...last year, nearly 92% of the state’s teachers outside New York City were deemed effective or highly effective. If this is the case, how can 69% of students fail to show they are proficient in math or English Language Arts testing?
The strictly factual answer of course would be the studies indicating that teachers account for 14% tops of student learning. I don't know if I buy that exact number personally, but it's out there. Certainly it can't be hard for Brown to imagine that some students are capable of sitting in a classroom with an awesome teacher and still not learn from her, either because of distraction, personal issues, or simple defiance.
But the other reason that 69% of NYS students came up short on math and ELA proficiency? Because they were supposed to. Because the NY cut scores (the line between passing and failing) were not set by using some scientific study of what a "sufficient" display of skill would be, but by determining distribution ahead of time. By saying, let's draw the pass-fail line so that 30% are above it, and the rest are below it. You can read a pretty thorough run-down of these tests by Carol Burris and John Murphy here.
And nice touch on calling the fail rate 69% instead of the 70% more commonly reported. 69% sound much more inexact and therefor more "real" than 70%, which in its very tidiness reveals its made-up origins.
I feel bad once again for the prop plaintiffs who are shown in the photo looking out at the crowd, shoulders hunched, like they are seeing a huge raging river that they have to cross. But the Vergara prop plaintiffs were well taken care of, and I'm sure these will be as well. But there is a special corner of hell reserved for adults who use children as tools to further their own agenda.
In the meantime, teachers here in the East can now look forward to a PR blitz tearing down teachers in support of a lawsuit designed to dismantle teaching as a profession. We can only hope the ultimate result will be better than the California version of this traveling circus.
Monday, June 30, 2014
The Mystery of Excellence
Diane Ravitch's recent columns about Ms. McLaughlin, one of the undeservingly employed terrible teachers of the Vergara trial, underlines one of the central problems of the whole teacher evaluation portion of the reformster dream.
Ms. McLaughlin won awards for teaching excellence not once, but twice in her career. And yet one of the plaintiffs found her to be grossly ineffective. Now, it's possible that there are factors at play here-- the plaintiff was reportedly recruited for the lawsuit by her only "effective" teacher, a teacher who was RIFed and whose job was then taken by Ms. McLaughlin. So, wheels within wheels.
But could it be possible that a teacher so many students found wonderful was a total dog for another teacher? Of course. Because as much as we think we get excellence in this country, excellence is still a mystery.
I don't imagine I'm God's gift to teaching, but I do okay. My feedback from students, both blind and personal, has been good over the years. But there have been years of my career when I was definitely less good, and there have been students who have been sure that I sucked hugely.
I had a colleague years ago whose students were sure they never did a damn thing in her class, that she was confused and disorganized and didn't know what she was doing. Yet those students came to me next, and invariably time after time I would ask a question about X, and they would answer it, and I would ask, "How did you know that?" and they would realize that Ms. McClueless had actually taught them a great deal.
And it's not just teaching. Every successful writer has devoted fans and an assortment of rabid haters. Every boss of a successful company has supporters and employees who would like to see him roasted slowly over a gas grill. And of course there has never been a political leader who was universally hailed as excellent.
How can someone be both excellent and terrible simultaneously? Mostly it comes down to different measures. If we measure strictly on writing skill, Stephenie Meyer is not awesome, but if we measure based on ability to generate revenue, Stephenie Meyer is a genius.
When measuring excellence, we use a wide variety of metrics. Some are irrelevant; my grandmother used to stop listening to any singer who was divorced, because a divorced person couldn't possibly sing well. Some not only accept bias, but embrace it-- if you are not on The Right Side, then everything you have to say must be horribly wrong. And some are just a matter of personal values. I may just want to hire somebody who gets the job done even if he's not very pleasant, while you may be as concerned about getting along with the person as getting the job done.
The problem with identifying teacher excellence has always been that we have a million ideas about what a teacher is supposed to do. Should Pat's kindergarten teacher make sure that Pat is happy and getting along well with others and maintaining a joyful attitude about life no matter how little Pat learns, or should Pat's teacher be making sure that Pat can master sight words even if it makes Pat miserable to do it? And if we're splitting the difference, where do we split it? And that's before we get to all the other expectations-- should my students learn traditional grammar (and how much) or should we spend more time on writing and what part of the canon (if any) should we read? Should my classroom be a free and open place where everything is filled with the spirit of free and open inquiry, or should it be like a tight, well-disciplined machine? And what's the proper balance of being teacher-directed and student directed?
We could play that game all day. You get the idea. We have a gazillion ideas of what an excellent teacher looks like.
Plenty of attempts have been made to use science-ish techniques to break down the traits of teacher excellence. People still disagree. Or rather, people still default to their own idea of what teacher excellence looks like.
The reformsters thought they had a solution. We'll just define an excellent teacher as one whose students get good scores on the Big Test. And now we're going to use Vergara-style lawsuits and new teacher-eval laws to cement that definition. You can have whatever definition of teacher excellence you like. The courts and the legislatures have the last word.
We could talk about why that definition of teacher excellence is small and narrow and not particularly good. But that's been covered. Let's talk about how it's reformsters shooting themselves in the feet again.
Remember how the whole Big Test thing worked:
Reformsters: We will give students a test to show exactly what they learned in the course of the year.
Parents:Well, that sounds like a good idea.
[Students actually take the test]
Parents: Damnl! I didn't realize that was how that was going to work. You want to do it some more?! Oh, hell no.
Reformsters can install new systems of determining teacher excellence, covered with a smoke screen about how this will "protect great teachers" and "guarantee a great teacher in every classroom." But when the random "ineffectives" start appearing and the public is seeing beloved Ms. Awesomesauce being canned because some system that nobody can really explain claims that she's no good, there will be noise. Particularly in smaller districts (we don't all teach in New York City, Chicago and LA) where teachers are well-known in their communities.
Reformsters keep making the same mistake. It's not enough to have a great sales pitch and convincing story about how well your super-duper plan is going to work. At some point, you have to deliver. From the promise of the Awesome Big Test (which was never going to work) to the promise of charter schools (which, operated for something other than profit, could have), reformsters have made promises they failed to keep.
The promise of evaluation-based staffing will be more of the same. When people see how badly it actually work, reformsters will feel the same kind of pushback that has them scurrying for cover on testing (umm... moratorium! yea, that's it!). The truly unfortunate part is that some large number of teaching careers will be derailed and uncountable could-have-been teachers chased away from the profession by the time that pushback happens. Reformsters are shooting themselves in the feet, but a lot of other people are going to get caught in the crossfire.
Ms. McLaughlin won awards for teaching excellence not once, but twice in her career. And yet one of the plaintiffs found her to be grossly ineffective. Now, it's possible that there are factors at play here-- the plaintiff was reportedly recruited for the lawsuit by her only "effective" teacher, a teacher who was RIFed and whose job was then taken by Ms. McLaughlin. So, wheels within wheels.
But could it be possible that a teacher so many students found wonderful was a total dog for another teacher? Of course. Because as much as we think we get excellence in this country, excellence is still a mystery.
I don't imagine I'm God's gift to teaching, but I do okay. My feedback from students, both blind and personal, has been good over the years. But there have been years of my career when I was definitely less good, and there have been students who have been sure that I sucked hugely.
I had a colleague years ago whose students were sure they never did a damn thing in her class, that she was confused and disorganized and didn't know what she was doing. Yet those students came to me next, and invariably time after time I would ask a question about X, and they would answer it, and I would ask, "How did you know that?" and they would realize that Ms. McClueless had actually taught them a great deal.
And it's not just teaching. Every successful writer has devoted fans and an assortment of rabid haters. Every boss of a successful company has supporters and employees who would like to see him roasted slowly over a gas grill. And of course there has never been a political leader who was universally hailed as excellent.
How can someone be both excellent and terrible simultaneously? Mostly it comes down to different measures. If we measure strictly on writing skill, Stephenie Meyer is not awesome, but if we measure based on ability to generate revenue, Stephenie Meyer is a genius.
When measuring excellence, we use a wide variety of metrics. Some are irrelevant; my grandmother used to stop listening to any singer who was divorced, because a divorced person couldn't possibly sing well. Some not only accept bias, but embrace it-- if you are not on The Right Side, then everything you have to say must be horribly wrong. And some are just a matter of personal values. I may just want to hire somebody who gets the job done even if he's not very pleasant, while you may be as concerned about getting along with the person as getting the job done.
The problem with identifying teacher excellence has always been that we have a million ideas about what a teacher is supposed to do. Should Pat's kindergarten teacher make sure that Pat is happy and getting along well with others and maintaining a joyful attitude about life no matter how little Pat learns, or should Pat's teacher be making sure that Pat can master sight words even if it makes Pat miserable to do it? And if we're splitting the difference, where do we split it? And that's before we get to all the other expectations-- should my students learn traditional grammar (and how much) or should we spend more time on writing and what part of the canon (if any) should we read? Should my classroom be a free and open place where everything is filled with the spirit of free and open inquiry, or should it be like a tight, well-disciplined machine? And what's the proper balance of being teacher-directed and student directed?
We could play that game all day. You get the idea. We have a gazillion ideas of what an excellent teacher looks like.
Plenty of attempts have been made to use science-ish techniques to break down the traits of teacher excellence. People still disagree. Or rather, people still default to their own idea of what teacher excellence looks like.
The reformsters thought they had a solution. We'll just define an excellent teacher as one whose students get good scores on the Big Test. And now we're going to use Vergara-style lawsuits and new teacher-eval laws to cement that definition. You can have whatever definition of teacher excellence you like. The courts and the legislatures have the last word.
We could talk about why that definition of teacher excellence is small and narrow and not particularly good. But that's been covered. Let's talk about how it's reformsters shooting themselves in the feet again.
Remember how the whole Big Test thing worked:
Reformsters: We will give students a test to show exactly what they learned in the course of the year.
Parents:Well, that sounds like a good idea.
[Students actually take the test]
Parents: Damnl! I didn't realize that was how that was going to work. You want to do it some more?! Oh, hell no.
Reformsters can install new systems of determining teacher excellence, covered with a smoke screen about how this will "protect great teachers" and "guarantee a great teacher in every classroom." But when the random "ineffectives" start appearing and the public is seeing beloved Ms. Awesomesauce being canned because some system that nobody can really explain claims that she's no good, there will be noise. Particularly in smaller districts (we don't all teach in New York City, Chicago and LA) where teachers are well-known in their communities.
Reformsters keep making the same mistake. It's not enough to have a great sales pitch and convincing story about how well your super-duper plan is going to work. At some point, you have to deliver. From the promise of the Awesome Big Test (which was never going to work) to the promise of charter schools (which, operated for something other than profit, could have), reformsters have made promises they failed to keep.
The promise of evaluation-based staffing will be more of the same. When people see how badly it actually work, reformsters will feel the same kind of pushback that has them scurrying for cover on testing (umm... moratorium! yea, that's it!). The truly unfortunate part is that some large number of teaching careers will be derailed and uncountable could-have-been teachers chased away from the profession by the time that pushback happens. Reformsters are shooting themselves in the feet, but a lot of other people are going to get caught in the crossfire.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
TNTP & The Unreal Lessons of Vergara
TNTP is the less famous faux-reform sibling of StudentsFirst, but like that other batch of corporate reformsters, they can be counted on to articulate their agenda in a more-transparent-than-they-probably-meant-to-be manner. Last week they brought their reformy skills to "The Real Lessons of Vergara," in which Tim Daly and Dan Weisberg reveal some of the huge holes in the reformster agenda.
Their thesis is not all that unreasonable.
Despite all the prophecies of doom during the trial, teachers need not fear this verdict. Everyone agrees that California’s children deserve an education that prepares them for success in college and life, and the state’s constitution guarantees it. Likewise, there is broad consensus that teachers should have reasonable and professional job protections. This case has always been about finding the right balance between the two.
That's what the case has always been about? Because if that's what the case was about, it was remarkably well-hidden by the plaintiffs, who seemed to be pretty intent on just plain wiping out tenure and FILO (as is StudentsFirst). But maybe we can read that piece of revisionist history as a signal that reformsters are willing to back off a bit.
But there are curious versions of alternate reality that run throughout the TNTP piece.
Throughout the trial, the plaintiffs exposed how California’s laws make it nearly impossible for schools to hire and keep outstanding teachers or dismiss teachers who simply aren’t up to the job.
I understand the argument about not being able to fire bad teachers-- but what exactly about California's laws made it hard to hire good teachers in the first place? Or are we suggesting that because young teachers have less job security, they are less likely to apply in California? In which case, the solution is even less job security? I feel as if I'm missing some crucial point here.
Daly and Weisberg suggest there are four key changes needed to properly balance the need for job protection with the need to provide the best teachers. Each one is problematic.
Give Teachers a Longer Tryout
Because the problem with FILO is that we have to fire too many of our best teachers, who are the young ones. So, we need more job protection for young teachers, except that we shouldn't give them any kind of tenure for at least four years. So, we need to not fire young teachers, but we need to make it easier to fire young teachers. Got it?
Keep Due Process, But Eliminate "Uber" Due Process
Oh, the devil is in the details, isn't it, boys. Daly and Weisberg accept that teachers should have protections for, say, outside political activities. The teacher evaluation should be given the benefit of the doubt, but teachers should be able to appeal if they think the process wasn't followed correctly, but teachers should not be able to appeal because they believe the finding of the evaluation is wrong, and the process should be allowed to go on for a while, but not too much of a while.
I actually agree that the process should not be hugely time and money-consuming, but I can only hope that trying to write this one paragraph gave these guys a sense of just how hard it is to write the rulebook that will keep the whole process under control. You can go ahead and say "The hearing process should only take one day" and isn't it pretty to think so, but how exactly do you force that to happen and keep things fair to all parties? Actual justice is messy.
Lower the Stakes of Dismissal
Daly and Weisberg say that a dismissal should not be a career-ender because "a teacher who’s a bad fit for one school might be a great fit for another school" and --gaaahhh-- do you see what you just said there, boys? Because one freaking premise of Vergara was that "bad teacher" and "good teacher" are absolute, solid state conditions and that the school in which a teachers is working is in no way related to the quality of that teacher's work.
The Vergara plaintiffs (and the StudentsFirst anti-tenure agitprop) aren't saying, "The state is failing to match teachers up with the assignments in which they will shine." The message is that there are a bunch of Good Teachers out there and a bunch of Bad Teachers, and the Good Teachers will be great wherever we put them and the Bad Teachers will be bad wherever they work, so we need to fire the Bad Teachers and put the Good Teachers in the classrooms that need them (where they will continue to be Good Teachers). You just blithely threw out the whole thing. Sloppy work, boys.
Let Schools Protect Their Best Teachers During Layoffs
Daly and Weisberg split a new set of hairs here, indicating that a great new teacher might be fired so that the district can keep a teacher who just has just a year or two more seniority. So, not the usual picture of the freshfaced twenty-five year old being thrown into the street by some washed-up fifty-something old fart.
Unfortunately, this new version brings into sharp relief just how corrosive this approach would be to the atmosphere of a school.
Principal: Hey, Chris. This is Pat, the new hire. Pat's almost your age, so I thought you could help Pat get acclimated. Also, Pat's pretty bright, so we think Pat might take your job at the next round of layoffs. Make Pat feel welcome.
Chris: Sure thing. So, Pat, here are some tips. The office really likes it when you show movies all the time. And don't turn your grades in till the last minute; they love that. Just remember-- don't ever ask me for any help or materials, and if you ever get in any trouble, I'll be in my room contemplating my mortgage payment and ignoring you.
Because you can pretend all day that these battles over teacher effectiveness will be washed-up old guy versus fresh-faced newby, but we have studies out the wazoo to confirm what we already know-- when it comes to teacher quality, it's years of experience that make the most difference. So in an effectiveness showdown, it will be young teachers versus young teachers. Unless, of course, management decides to weigh some other factor, like, say, how much the teacher costs the district. Oh, but this is all about getting great quality, not about making schools run cheaply by churning and burning teaching staff. Right?
TNTP always seems a bit more mellow than StudentsFirst, and this piece follows that pattern. There are some softer edges on the anti-tenure argument here, but the center of the argument is still shot full of holes, contradictions, and weaknesses. And that's only if I give them the very huge benefit of a very small doubt that this isn't really all about cutting personnel costs in school by turning into non-career status temp work. I'm not sure any of us know for certain what the lessons of Vergara will turn out to be, but I don't think TNTP is in the ballpark.
Their thesis is not all that unreasonable.
Despite all the prophecies of doom during the trial, teachers need not fear this verdict. Everyone agrees that California’s children deserve an education that prepares them for success in college and life, and the state’s constitution guarantees it. Likewise, there is broad consensus that teachers should have reasonable and professional job protections. This case has always been about finding the right balance between the two.
That's what the case has always been about? Because if that's what the case was about, it was remarkably well-hidden by the plaintiffs, who seemed to be pretty intent on just plain wiping out tenure and FILO (as is StudentsFirst). But maybe we can read that piece of revisionist history as a signal that reformsters are willing to back off a bit.
But there are curious versions of alternate reality that run throughout the TNTP piece.
Throughout the trial, the plaintiffs exposed how California’s laws make it nearly impossible for schools to hire and keep outstanding teachers or dismiss teachers who simply aren’t up to the job.
I understand the argument about not being able to fire bad teachers-- but what exactly about California's laws made it hard to hire good teachers in the first place? Or are we suggesting that because young teachers have less job security, they are less likely to apply in California? In which case, the solution is even less job security? I feel as if I'm missing some crucial point here.
Daly and Weisberg suggest there are four key changes needed to properly balance the need for job protection with the need to provide the best teachers. Each one is problematic.
Give Teachers a Longer Tryout
Because the problem with FILO is that we have to fire too many of our best teachers, who are the young ones. So, we need more job protection for young teachers, except that we shouldn't give them any kind of tenure for at least four years. So, we need to not fire young teachers, but we need to make it easier to fire young teachers. Got it?
Keep Due Process, But Eliminate "Uber" Due Process
Oh, the devil is in the details, isn't it, boys. Daly and Weisberg accept that teachers should have protections for, say, outside political activities. The teacher evaluation should be given the benefit of the doubt, but teachers should be able to appeal if they think the process wasn't followed correctly, but teachers should not be able to appeal because they believe the finding of the evaluation is wrong, and the process should be allowed to go on for a while, but not too much of a while.
I actually agree that the process should not be hugely time and money-consuming, but I can only hope that trying to write this one paragraph gave these guys a sense of just how hard it is to write the rulebook that will keep the whole process under control. You can go ahead and say "The hearing process should only take one day" and isn't it pretty to think so, but how exactly do you force that to happen and keep things fair to all parties? Actual justice is messy.
Lower the Stakes of Dismissal
Daly and Weisberg say that a dismissal should not be a career-ender because "a teacher who’s a bad fit for one school might be a great fit for another school" and --gaaahhh-- do you see what you just said there, boys? Because one freaking premise of Vergara was that "bad teacher" and "good teacher" are absolute, solid state conditions and that the school in which a teachers is working is in no way related to the quality of that teacher's work.
The Vergara plaintiffs (and the StudentsFirst anti-tenure agitprop) aren't saying, "The state is failing to match teachers up with the assignments in which they will shine." The message is that there are a bunch of Good Teachers out there and a bunch of Bad Teachers, and the Good Teachers will be great wherever we put them and the Bad Teachers will be bad wherever they work, so we need to fire the Bad Teachers and put the Good Teachers in the classrooms that need them (where they will continue to be Good Teachers). You just blithely threw out the whole thing. Sloppy work, boys.
Let Schools Protect Their Best Teachers During Layoffs
Daly and Weisberg split a new set of hairs here, indicating that a great new teacher might be fired so that the district can keep a teacher who just has just a year or two more seniority. So, not the usual picture of the freshfaced twenty-five year old being thrown into the street by some washed-up fifty-something old fart.
Unfortunately, this new version brings into sharp relief just how corrosive this approach would be to the atmosphere of a school.
Principal: Hey, Chris. This is Pat, the new hire. Pat's almost your age, so I thought you could help Pat get acclimated. Also, Pat's pretty bright, so we think Pat might take your job at the next round of layoffs. Make Pat feel welcome.
Chris: Sure thing. So, Pat, here are some tips. The office really likes it when you show movies all the time. And don't turn your grades in till the last minute; they love that. Just remember-- don't ever ask me for any help or materials, and if you ever get in any trouble, I'll be in my room contemplating my mortgage payment and ignoring you.
Because you can pretend all day that these battles over teacher effectiveness will be washed-up old guy versus fresh-faced newby, but we have studies out the wazoo to confirm what we already know-- when it comes to teacher quality, it's years of experience that make the most difference. So in an effectiveness showdown, it will be young teachers versus young teachers. Unless, of course, management decides to weigh some other factor, like, say, how much the teacher costs the district. Oh, but this is all about getting great quality, not about making schools run cheaply by churning and burning teaching staff. Right?
TNTP always seems a bit more mellow than StudentsFirst, and this piece follows that pattern. There are some softer edges on the anti-tenure argument here, but the center of the argument is still shot full of holes, contradictions, and weaknesses. And that's only if I give them the very huge benefit of a very small doubt that this isn't really all about cutting personnel costs in school by turning into non-career status temp work. I'm not sure any of us know for certain what the lessons of Vergara will turn out to be, but I don't think TNTP is in the ballpark.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Are Reformsters Under Attack?
I have generally avoided picking on quotes from That Woman that appear in her joint blogventure with Jack Schneider, mostly because I think it's a worthy experiment that deserves some place to breathe. But recently she dropped an extraordinary quote that I can't let pass. It happened in a discussion of unions, specifically discussing the need for bridge-building if any collaboration is going to occur.
You say that would require a cease-fire against the unions; but I'd say that the cease-fire needs to be mutual. Reformers are under attack every day from unions as well.
This is a false equivalency of the rankest kind. Let us look, for instance, at my state of Pennsylvania.
Currently I, as a teacher, am under attack by StudentsFirst. Their national Let's Trash Tenure & FILO tour has been here for a few months, complete with slick advertising, video clips, and well-heeled lobbying.
As a teacher with thirty-some years of experience, I am directly in the cross-hairs of this campaign. StudentsFirst asserts that I need to live with the constant threat of being fired or else I will just default to Lazy Slacker status. They would like career status to be based on PA's version of VAM which includes the results of a bad test and, among other things, points for the number of AP courses my school pays the College Board to teach.
I, on the other hand, have a blog.
So let's look at the fire that needs to be mutually ceased.
Attacks against me from StudentsFirst:
1) Undermine my professional reputation by suggesting I must be lazy, cause I'm old.
2) Threaten me with ending my career at will.
3) Using both 1 and 2 to undermine my co-workers and destabilize my workplace
4) Thereby threatening the educational well-being of the students that I am pledged to serve
Attacks against StudentFirst (and That Woman) from me:
1) Sophomoric mockery
Shall we count my union's actions? Let's stick to the state, because to say that the NEA has attacked reformsters is ludicrous; they have been cheerful collaborators. But PSEA? Perhaps a bit more feisty, but have they done anything that would threaten, say, the continued existence of StudentsFirst, or That Woman's ability to make a living in her chosen profession?
There is a name for this technique in contract negotiations-- it's called stripping, and it consists of answering a proposal with a full-out attack (that simply takes things away that were already there), and then pretending that moderating that attack is "meeting you half way."
Union: We'd like to see a $1/hour raise and the addition of some flex time.
Management: We are going to cut off all workers' arms and legs.
Union: What the hell?!
Management: All right. We'll just cut off the legs. Now we've given something; you have to give, too.
The teachers whose careers have been damaged, whose job protections have been stripped, whose employment and wages are being made contingent on damaging junk science, and the manner in which all teachers are working in an environment that is being made increasingly hostile to us-- that's all the work of reformsters and their huge bankrolls and their connections to power.
How have reformsters been hurt? Which thinky tank consultants have had their jobs put in jeopardy? Which astro-turf group operators have had to worry about feeding their children? Which reformers have been forced to listen to teachers telling them how to do their jobs?
Reformsters and teachers are not locked in some struggle between equally powerful opponents who chose to attack each other. This is a battle between rich and powerful people who are being surprised that the less powerful, less rich, less important people they attacked are trying to fight back. No teacher-- certainly no teachers' union-- started any part of this fight, any more than the defense team at the Vergara trial initiated that bogus case.
Yes, reformsters' characters are being impugned. They should stop making it so easy to do that. And they should stop being surprised that when you attack peoples' lives, professions, the very work by which they support and define themselves, those people will not just roll over and play dead. It's flattering that, for just a moment, a reformster would pretend that what we teachers are doing in our own defense is hurting her somehow. But for more than just that moment, I don't believe it. And if I struggle while your foot is on my neck, I'm not sure less struggling from me is the solution to our problem.
You say that would require a cease-fire against the unions; but I'd say that the cease-fire needs to be mutual. Reformers are under attack every day from unions as well.
This is a false equivalency of the rankest kind. Let us look, for instance, at my state of Pennsylvania.
Currently I, as a teacher, am under attack by StudentsFirst. Their national Let's Trash Tenure & FILO tour has been here for a few months, complete with slick advertising, video clips, and well-heeled lobbying.
As a teacher with thirty-some years of experience, I am directly in the cross-hairs of this campaign. StudentsFirst asserts that I need to live with the constant threat of being fired or else I will just default to Lazy Slacker status. They would like career status to be based on PA's version of VAM which includes the results of a bad test and, among other things, points for the number of AP courses my school pays the College Board to teach.
I, on the other hand, have a blog.
So let's look at the fire that needs to be mutually ceased.
Attacks against me from StudentsFirst:
1) Undermine my professional reputation by suggesting I must be lazy, cause I'm old.
2) Threaten me with ending my career at will.
3) Using both 1 and 2 to undermine my co-workers and destabilize my workplace
4) Thereby threatening the educational well-being of the students that I am pledged to serve
Attacks against StudentFirst (and That Woman) from me:
1) Sophomoric mockery
Shall we count my union's actions? Let's stick to the state, because to say that the NEA has attacked reformsters is ludicrous; they have been cheerful collaborators. But PSEA? Perhaps a bit more feisty, but have they done anything that would threaten, say, the continued existence of StudentsFirst, or That Woman's ability to make a living in her chosen profession?
There is a name for this technique in contract negotiations-- it's called stripping, and it consists of answering a proposal with a full-out attack (that simply takes things away that were already there), and then pretending that moderating that attack is "meeting you half way."
Union: We'd like to see a $1/hour raise and the addition of some flex time.
Management: We are going to cut off all workers' arms and legs.
Union: What the hell?!
Management: All right. We'll just cut off the legs. Now we've given something; you have to give, too.
The teachers whose careers have been damaged, whose job protections have been stripped, whose employment and wages are being made contingent on damaging junk science, and the manner in which all teachers are working in an environment that is being made increasingly hostile to us-- that's all the work of reformsters and their huge bankrolls and their connections to power.
How have reformsters been hurt? Which thinky tank consultants have had their jobs put in jeopardy? Which astro-turf group operators have had to worry about feeding their children? Which reformers have been forced to listen to teachers telling them how to do their jobs?
Reformsters and teachers are not locked in some struggle between equally powerful opponents who chose to attack each other. This is a battle between rich and powerful people who are being surprised that the less powerful, less rich, less important people they attacked are trying to fight back. No teacher-- certainly no teachers' union-- started any part of this fight, any more than the defense team at the Vergara trial initiated that bogus case.
Yes, reformsters' characters are being impugned. They should stop making it so easy to do that. And they should stop being surprised that when you attack peoples' lives, professions, the very work by which they support and define themselves, those people will not just roll over and play dead. It's flattering that, for just a moment, a reformster would pretend that what we teachers are doing in our own defense is hurting her somehow. But for more than just that moment, I don't believe it. And if I struggle while your foot is on my neck, I'm not sure less struggling from me is the solution to our problem.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Arne Tells Teachers To Go To Hell (Again)
Arne has popped up with a statement in reaction to the Vergara tenure-FILO-smashing verdict. You will be shocked to discover that Arne sides with the billionaire backers of this attack on the teaching profession. Let me break it down and translate for you:
For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher.
Arne is going to go ahead and pretend that he believes the bullshit premise of these attacks on tenure-- that somehow tenure and FILO are keeping great teachers from getting to students and not, say, offering some job protection that might make teaching appealing as a lifelong career. Also, ignorance is strength.
The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students.
Arne will also go ahead and pretend that these nine sock puppets actually had something to do with the lawsuit created and bankrolled by billionaire David Welch.
Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities while providing teachers the support, respect and rewarding careers they deserve.
Did Arne have to read this somewhere? Because I'm not sure how he could get through it without puking. Yes, the destruction of job protections will totally show teachers that they are supported and valued. But we're salivating now, because we can create a new framework, one that doesn't involve teaching as a career, or teachers' unions as a political force, or teachers as people who have a voice, or even stick around schools long enough to become a problem.
My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward a collaborative process in California that is fair, thoughtful, practical and swift.
Oh, hell. I know my stock in trade here is supposed to be wit and snark and all, but-- bullshit, Arne. That's just plain unvarnished bullshit. You can't possibly hope any of those things at this moment with a straight face.
Every state, every school district needs to have that kind of conversation. At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states. At the same time, we all need to continue to address other inequities in education–including school funding, access to quality early childhood programs and school discipline.
You know who can't have those kinds of conversations? Teachers who have no job protections. Teachers who have no job protections can only mostly have the kinds of conversations that involve statements like "Yassuh, whatever you say, suh" and "I'm sick of your lip. You're fired."
But then, when you said school districts and states and federal overlords needed to have conversations, you probably meant "conversations without teachers in the room."
God, just when I think the Obama administration has found every conceivable way to signal that they consider teachers vermin to be stepped on and crushed, they find one more way to drive that point home. At this point, I think the GOP would have to run a convicted ax murderer in order for me to vote Democrat in a national election. This is a whole new level of pissing on us while telling us it's raining. This is a whole new level of disregard for the teaching profession-- no, no, that's wrong, because this is not disregard. This is assault. This is deliberate, lying with a straight face, cheering for the dismantling of teaching as a profession.
For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great teacher.
Arne is going to go ahead and pretend that he believes the bullshit premise of these attacks on tenure-- that somehow tenure and FILO are keeping great teachers from getting to students and not, say, offering some job protection that might make teaching appealing as a lifelong career. Also, ignorance is strength.
The students who brought this lawsuit are, unfortunately, just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged by laws, practices and systems that fail to identify and support our best teachers and match them with our neediest students.
Arne will also go ahead and pretend that these nine sock puppets actually had something to do with the lawsuit created and bankrolled by billionaire David Welch.
Today’s court decision is a mandate to fix these problems. Together, we must work to increase public confidence in public education. This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities while providing teachers the support, respect and rewarding careers they deserve.
Did Arne have to read this somewhere? Because I'm not sure how he could get through it without puking. Yes, the destruction of job protections will totally show teachers that they are supported and valued. But we're salivating now, because we can create a new framework, one that doesn't involve teaching as a career, or teachers' unions as a political force, or teachers as people who have a voice, or even stick around schools long enough to become a problem.
My hope is that today’s decision moves from the courtroom toward a collaborative process in California that is fair, thoughtful, practical and swift.
Oh, hell. I know my stock in trade here is supposed to be wit and snark and all, but-- bullshit, Arne. That's just plain unvarnished bullshit. You can't possibly hope any of those things at this moment with a straight face.
Every state, every school district needs to have that kind of conversation. At the federal level, we are committed to encouraging and supporting that dialogue in partnership with states. At the same time, we all need to continue to address other inequities in education–including school funding, access to quality early childhood programs and school discipline.
You know who can't have those kinds of conversations? Teachers who have no job protections. Teachers who have no job protections can only mostly have the kinds of conversations that involve statements like "Yassuh, whatever you say, suh" and "I'm sick of your lip. You're fired."
But then, when you said school districts and states and federal overlords needed to have conversations, you probably meant "conversations without teachers in the room."
God, just when I think the Obama administration has found every conceivable way to signal that they consider teachers vermin to be stepped on and crushed, they find one more way to drive that point home. At this point, I think the GOP would have to run a convicted ax murderer in order for me to vote Democrat in a national election. This is a whole new level of pissing on us while telling us it's raining. This is a whole new level of disregard for the teaching profession-- no, no, that's wrong, because this is not disregard. This is assault. This is deliberate, lying with a straight face, cheering for the dismantling of teaching as a profession.
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