Meet the New NEA Presidents

In election results that surprised nobody anywhere, NEA delegates crowned heir apparent Lily Eskelson Garcia the new presidents of NEA.

Liana Heitin reported on the election for EdWeek, and... well... I'm excited? Bemused? Worried about Garcia's susceptibility to cognitive dissonance.

"I believe Secretary Duncan is sincere..."

"And I absolutely believe he is sincerely wrong," she said in a post-election interview. It's a great statement, sweeping and clear. I'll even give her the desire to step away from vituperative personal political attacks. It is not necessary to prove Duncan is a dim-witted mugwump corporate tool ninnymuggins if we just establish that he's wrong.

Getting specific

Garcia showed her ability to get down to specifics by slamming the ever-popular third grade pass-this-reading-test-or-else policy popular in states where education policy is run by people who don't know any eight year olds. She held up Oklahoma as a specific example (though, as Heitin points out, Oklahoma just threw that policy out, but okay-- it's been a busy day).

And Garcia threw out GERM (the global education reform movement) which is one of the few snappy names for the people variously known as deformers, reformsters, and "reformers" (with ironic quotation marks), linking it specifically to Koch Brothers, ALEC, and "prominent industrialists."

This is your first hint that things are not looking up at NEA. Why pick all our examples from the Evil Conservative Republican Menu while ignoring that plenty of nominally Democratic folks like DFER, She Who Will Not Be Named, and, oh, the well-meaning Arne Duncan, are a big fat part of GERM as well?

And then things go deep into the weeds

When asked about the Gates Foundation, whose influence on education policy is a constant source of debate among educators, Garcia said she applauds the work they've done to promote the Common Core State Standards. "I read those standards, and I love them," she said.

Under which rock has Garcia been hiding? I don't have enough space here to cover every single argument and piece of evidence that makes it clear that opposing testing and loving the Common Core requires a tolerance for cognitive dissonance usually not available without powerful drugs. Just a list of all the GERM organizations funded by a combination of swell honorable Gates money and evil GOP money would be enough to sprain the scroll function on a computer.

Being for the Core and against testing is like loving knives and being opposed to cutting. It is like being a fan of genitals but hating sex. It is like loving airplanes and believing they should never leave the ground. It is like wanting to buy a great instrument and declaring that it's best to never play it. It is like bringing a gorilla into your home and imagining that it will never dirty the furniture. It is like setting the timer on a bomb and being shocked that it eventually explodes. It's like thinking your dog is really pretty but being opposed to dog poop.

Oh, President Garcia, we are going to have some chats here, you and you and I.

Half a Great Communicator

On the subject of her leadership style. "People will know where I stand. There will be absolutely no question. I think that will get me in trouble sometimes."

That may be, but if I may. What tends to get NEA leadership is not the part of communicating where they tell everybody else what they think-- it's the part where they listen.

I'll note here that while DVR had a twitter account that he never used, Garcia appears to have no twitter account at all. The NEA has a real problem with , I don't know, the entire 21st century. I once wrote "Today's NEA is not your father's NEA. It's more like your grandfather's NEA." The union's inability to function in any mode other than the pronouncement-by-press-release and occasional NEA-site essay makes a joke out of its other pronouncements.

I welcome, for instance, NEA's stated intention to help teachers get better at doing their job, to help with professional development. But damn-- you guys can't even operate the twitter! I don't know if I trust you to advise me on how to set up an overhead projector. What the heck are you going to tell a twenty-two year old about how to function as a teacher in today's world when NEA leadership still works in slightly-modified pre-WWII techniques?

So here we go  

It's a bold new era in which NEA declares that we must fight the back end of the Reform Horse and kill it dead, but the front end of the Reform Horse is beautiful and noble and to be cherished and loved. It is possible that NEA actually needs two separate presidents at this point-- one for talking out of the left side of her mouth, and one for talking out of the right side. In the meantime, apparently, President Garcia will serve as both.

[Update: Garcia does a keep a blog, which you can find here, including a further explanation of how she keeps CCSS and testing separate inside her head. I've added it to the blogroll over to your right.]

Duncan Slapped by NEA Rank and File

The NEA resolution calling for the departure of Arne Duncan will be picked apart at great length this weekend. I'm pretty sure that Arne is not looking at his paper this morning thinking, "Well, damn. I guess I'd better resign then." Nor do I think his resignation would accomplish much in practical terms. But it sends a message-- several, actually-- and those are interesting on their own.

Leaving Obama Out of It

Interesting that the resolution calls for Duncan to resign rather than the President to fire him. Reminds me of the Declaration of Independence, which conveniently blamed the British government's misbehavior on the King, quite possibly because some folks wanted to leave the door open to deal with the Parliament (aka the people actually creating the offensive policies). It was a nice piece of political angle-playing, but I'm not sure it did much good.

Sending a Message to NEA Leadership

I've been assured by many folks that Dennis Van Roekel is a heck of a guy, and I have no reason to doubt that, but NEA leadership has blown every call every step of the way. In terms of leadership, they've looked a lot like a drum major who turned left when the band marched right, and now they are scrambling to catch up.

If the NEA ever got turned in the right direction, this was how it was going to happen-- a push-back from the states, refusing to behave as they were supposed to.

The Vergara trial and reactions to it have one more importance on top of all the rest-- it's the first time that NEA leadership and Duncan's office have actually disagreed with each other. I am NOT, please note, analogizing the parties involved, but from a tactical standpoint, Vergara may end up being the reformsters' Little Big Horn-- it looks like a decisive victory, but in the long term, it only serves to rile up the opposition.

I really enjoy the mental picture of Duncan on the phone with NEA leadership saying, "Hey, control your damn people," to which NEA leadership responds by shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Sorry, man, but they're pissed and we can't do anything about it."

The Darkly Cynical Read

I like the idea of NEA leadership reacting with a muted "Oh, bloody hell" when the resolution started to look like it had legs. But the cynical read is that this was not a breakdown of NEA's notoriously careful stage managing of its actions. I note this only because the wording of California's resolution dovetails nicely with the new OMGZ!! Bad Tests!! initiative of the NEA. If I wanted to bleed off some of the rank and file reform rage and make sure that it doesn't accidentally hit the Common Core, this is one way I would do it.

On the other hand, the dovetailing may just be a case of California doing a good job of reading the room.

But Let's Be Hopeful

Even if this was stage managed by NEA (and I have no real reason to believe that it is), it still represents a significant shift. NEA has played with similar crankypants motions before and they both died.

It would be nice if this is seem as proof positive to leaders in DC and NEA conference rooms that the union leadership cannot just deliver members in a nice neat package, all lined up behind whatever the bureaucrats and union officers decide in a quiet conference room. It would be nice if this is more proof that bogus polls and facile reassurances will not make the anger over reformy nonsense simply disappear.

So let's hope that this resolution is a message to all sorts of folks, most specifically NEA leaders and a bunch of folks in DC that teachers have had it with this amateur-hour bullshit trash-and-dismantle approach to our profession and the public education that we've devoted our lives to. Let's continue to make it clear to the folks in DC that we have had it with their assault on American public education. Let's continue to make it clear to the Democratic party it's not true that they don't have to stand up for us because we'll vote for them no matter how many times they attack us. And let's continue to make it clear to NEA leadership that we expect them to represent the teachers of America, and not politicians who keep attacking them.

Hess: Free Press Charter Stories "Unhelpful"

The Detroit Free Press recently ran a huge, extensively researched and reported story on Michigan's charter schools. They concluded, among other things, that charters hoover up a billion dollars with little transparency, that many charters are simply an ATM for family and friends of operators, that even really bad charters have stayed open for decade, and that charters don't do any better at educating students than public schools. It's a great report, and well worth the read.

Frederick Hess, however, is not feeling the love. In his column of July 3, Hess characterized the Free Press report as a "crude, unhelpful slam" on charters. Do his criticisms have merit? Let's take a look.

He leads his response with a quote:

As Chuck Fellows, president of the FlexTech High School Board of Directors, argued in a Free Press op-ed, "Traditional schools spend $11 billion annually and have a graduation rate ranging from 70% to 79%, according to a 2006 Gates Foundation report. Does that mean that $2 billion to $3 billion is wasted each year?"

I realize that we have limited data available, but we all of us need to stop citing school research from seven, eight, ten, twenty years ago. Ten are years are a hundred regular years in terms of how much the culture and function inside a building work.

But we also have to stop using graduation rate as a point of comparison between charter and public schools. When a charter student doesn't graduate from a charter school, all that means is that he goes back on the public school rolls. The only meaningful statistic for measuring charters is cohort completion. Here's 100 students in your freshman class of 2010-- how many of the 100 were handed diplomas at that school in 2014?

But I will make a deal with Mr. Fellows-- I will give him that $2-3 billion to any charter that agrees to take on and keep every one of the twenty-some percent of future non-grads.

Hess then moves on to a quick item by item rebut.

A] Charters are spending less per student than are traditional district schools.

Here's something that I think all smart charter operators know-- not all students cost the same to educate. The per-student costs we see cited are averages. Some students just require the basic services and education, but some students have special needs, special requirements, and special compliance with various regulations. I can drop the per student costs in any school-- all we have to do is cut special services.

B] Even the paper's reporting concludes that charters are doing similarly while spending less money.

So, separate but more or less equal? Of course, we don't know that charters are doing similarly. What we know is that they are generating similar test scores. We don't know if the charters are providing no phys ed, no arts, no music, no food, and a miserable soul-crushing environment-- we just know their test scores are in the ballpark. To be fair, we also don't know if the charter is providing superlative arts programs, either. But-- and I cannot say this enough-- test scores do not even begin to give the full picture of a school.

C) Charter schools have no guarantee. Some crappy ones aren't closed aggressively enough. Charter authorizers and advocates are working on the problem. Are public schools doing the same?

I'm going to go with "yes," although undoubtedly more effectively in some quarters than others. I'll call this one a tie.

D) Responding to the charge that Michigan has more for-profits running schools than any other state. Hess says basically, "So what?" What difference does the tax status make?

I agree that for-profit vs. non-profit in the charter world is a distinction without a difference. People like to assume that non-profit means "losing money for altruistic purposes" when it just means "we don't have to share the money we're raking in with stockholders." I've outlined my argument at greater length elsewhere, by the basic point is this: when every cent I spend providing education in my school is a cent I don't get to put in my own pocket, the students are my opponents, not my customers, and not my reason for being in business. They are just a means to the end of my own $$, and I find it impossible to believe that such a system favors providing quality education.

E) If charter board members were forced out because they asked for financial reports, that is bad. But I'm not sure you got the whole story. But if you did, I hope you're chasing naughty public school board members, too.

Sure.

F] If the law doesn't prevent "insider dealing" or "self-enrichment," and that's a problem, then legislators can and should change the law. But I found the series peculiar in the way the Free Press tried to beat up on charters for doing things that are currently acceptable under Michigan law.

Really? This is feeling kind of graspy. "Currently acceptable under the law" is setting the bar remarkably low. I will not bother to include every objectionable act ever completed that was acceptable under the law, other than to note that the list would include pretty much every instructional choice made by a teacher in a public school and every tax increase ever imposed by a governing body.


Throughout, Hess seems to be struggling with this rebuttal. Hess's conclusion is especially ironic. He points out a fundamental flaw in how the press covers charter schools:

It's that reporters and editors tend to hold choice programs up to some imaginary standard of high-quality, equitable provisions, rather than to the options that actually exist.

Where did people, in the press and elsewhere, get the idea that choice programs would be super-awesome and high-quality? I'm going to go with "from the proponents of choice programs." I don't have the resources to check every single PR and ad campaign out there, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no charter or voucher school ever approached parents or the public or lawmakers by saying, "If you just give us the chance, we will do a completely adequate job that is not particularly better than what your public schools are doing now." (If someone has seen that campaign, please send it along, and I'll retract.)

At a minimum, you might have expected an awareness that the chance to rethink and reimagine K-12 schooling comes with bumps in the road.

Except what we're seeing is not anything that rethinks or re-imagines schooling, other than to imagine schools that don't have to serve certain sectors of the student population, don't have to deal with challenging students, and don't have to account for what they do with public tax dollars. If this is the kind of "re-imagining" we have to do in order to get schools that provide results indistinguishable from the schools we already have, I fail to see the advantage.

Van Roekel, Fordham and Defending the Brand

What a difference a year can make.

A year ago, Dennis van Roekel's message to NEA members was, "Well, if not Common Core, then what in its place?" This year, his message was, "Common who? Hey, look at this toxic testing badness!"

With all the tight aim of a finely-crafted focus-group-tested PR campaign, DVR used the NEARA convention as a launching pad for a campaign to push back hard against The Big Test while also, as Fred Klonsky put it, building a firewall around Common Core.

DVR's keynote seems (full disclosure-- I wasn't in Denver and I am depending on the reports of those who were) a work of exceptionally fine tuning, the kind of careful tap dance that you can't perform without knowing every inch of the dance floor.

He led off with a history of the last several decades of school reform, name-checking the usual rage-inducing suspects (even in a speech, it seems, She Who Must Not Be Named is red meat click bait) without getting lost in details. But somehow a study of the evolution of various ill-fated, teacher-blaming, education-crushing reforms did NOT bring DVR to Common Core. Rather, the evil bad boy of school reform is high stakes testing, first bullying its way into the spotlight and now ruining the entire show.

Look! Look over there, at that Bad Testing!! No no no-- not over here at the CCSS! It's the tests! That's what done it!

DVR outlines four points for getting the accountability train back on track:
1) expand early childhood education to improve school readiness, 
2) redirect resources away from testing companies and toward  improved conditions of learning and teaching,  
3) create high standards for all learners and 
4) take ownership of and responsibility for a quality teacher workforce.

1 is harmless. 2 is an interesting pipe dream. 4 is perhaps the most interesting, representing an intention of the union to finally get involved in teacher quality. And 3, of course, reaffirms the NEA's devotion to the Common Core. Not that DVR ever mentioned the Core. Focus-testing apparently made it clear that it was not a guaranteed applause line. 

No, the purpose of this initiative is two-fold. Attack the tests. Defend the brand.

It helps that the tests deserve attacking. They're a weak target at this point, and they are the backbone, teeth and testicles of the entire CCSS movement. And they are odious, awful, wretched excuses for anything useful. They are every bit as bad as DVR said they are, and that's part of the campaign's strength-- it's based on truth. It just stops telling the truth once we get to the question of why we have these tests in the first place. Because for some reason, the imperative is to protect the CCSS brand.

Gates proposed moratorium on testing is likely the same thing. At all costs protect the brand.

CCSS is a hot air balloon struggling to avoid crashing back to earth, and testing is the overweight guy who may have been our BFF when we took off, but now we need to get rid of anything that is dragging the CCSS balloon down, so over the side with you, buddy.

Likewise, CCSS foes were chortling yesterday to see Robert Pondisco at the Fordham Institute's blog eviscerating a model teaching example from engageNY's Kate Gerson, who demonstrated an example of why Common Core is often associated with students who would rather have their eyebrows plucked bald one hair at a time. Gerson appears to be channeling the worst teaching techniques of the 1960s, and my heart goes out once again to NY teachers who have to deal with this drivel.

But is Pondisco, shooting holes in the Core? Of course not. The Fordham has been relentless in defending the brand-- from everybody and anybody including She Who Must Not Be Named and Arne Duncan himself. The Fordham applies the same technique over and over again-- they spot something egregious or stupid, and instead of making the amateur hour mistake of trying to protect it because it's Core, they get out their knives, carve it up, and declare, "This is NOT Common Core. This is what you get when some idiot does Common Core wrong." They have mastered a not-easily-mastered skill, because defending yourself from your enemies is easy; defending yourself from your friends is way harder.

Look, I welcome NEA attacking tests. As I've written before, the tests are the very worst, most destructive part of the reformy beast. But if we keep supporting the idea of national standards, we are going to keep getting national standardized tests. Railing against the testing while defending the CCSS is like cutting off dandelions and carefully tending their roots.

This circling of the wagons around the Core is good news for those of us in the resistance. For one thing, Core supporters are way over-estimating how easily CCSS can be cut loose and protected from the effects of things like a testing system that was built right into the Core's dna. For another, the fact that they're willing to try is a measure of how much trouble they're in.

And if, a year after defiantly defending it, DVR is ready to go through his last speech without even mentioning the Common Core, there is hope that my national union might be starting to get the beginning of a clue.

Who Would Replace Arne Duncan

This question turned up on twitter again yesterday, and it represents one more popular daydream-- the end of Arne Duncan's tenure as Secretary of Education.

I understand the appeal. Duncan has become the poster boy for reformsters, the face of everything teachers hate about this administration's education policy. When the administration has something annoying or distressing to say about education, it comes out of Duncan's mouth.

But the fantasy of having Duncan go away and be replaced by someone more suitable for the job, such as Diane Ravitch or a person who is actually a teacher, is a fantasy, and it's a fantasy on the order of winning a million dollars in the lottery without having bought a lottery ticket.

I've read the posts and tweets from people who still cheer for Obama. Their fantasy seems to be that someone will storm into the Oval Office, show the C-in-C exactly what his Department of Education has been up to and he will declare, "What?! I had no idea! This will not stand! Get Arne in here so I can fire him!!" And this is not going to happen, ever. Ever. There has never been the slightest reason to believe that the President is not fully aware of what his education policy is, that he is unaware of what Arne is pushing or that he disapproves of any of it.

Duncan is a spokesperson for a product. He doesn't run the company, and he doesn't build the product. When Quaker Oats decided to replace the old, racist sterotypical Aunt Jemima with a newer, more appropriate Aunt Jemima, they didn't change the product inside the package.

The never-ending petitions calling on Duncan's firing or resignation are not completely pointless-- they at least register discontent with the administration's policies. But the answer to the question "Who would replace Arne Duncan" is simple-- someone who espoused the same policies as Arne Duncan.

At some point Arne Duncan will leave public service. He will walk into a well-paying job with some edu-bizness. Maybe Pearson will make him Vice President in Charge of Graphite Writing Utensil Paper Interface Point Enhancement, or maybe he'll become a hood ornament for a chain of charter schools. If that happens before 2017, he'll be replaced by More of the Same (Under Secretary Ted Mitchell would probably be a swell choice). We'd no longer have the benefit of his goofy charm, his basketball stories, or his way with words. But imagining that his departure would lead to a change in policy is like imagining that tennis shoes with cool stripes will make you run faster.

A Duncan departure would have one advantage. It would give the administration the advantage of having a whole bunch of its opponents dancing around and singing "Ding dong, the witch is dead" instead of paying attention to what is actually happening.

Duncan as a spokesperson makes a fine target at which to direct displeasure with the product. But don't  confuse the man with the policies.

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.

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

PARCC Is in Trouble (Updated with Disappointing News)

This story has been emerging in bits and pieces and being reported on as parts of other stories, but it deserves to be mentioned many places, because it has the potential to wreak some serious havoc in this coming school year.

Last year, Pearson won the contract to develop the PARCC test. This may have been because Pearson was the only bidder, and that may have been the case because the contract was written in such a way that only Pearson could possibly bid on it. But although DC-based Americans Institutes for Research did not think they could take on British Pearson in the bidding process, they were ready to take them on in court.

AIR's suit does not just allege that the bidding on PARCC was unfair regarding the test, but that the bidding was rigged to give Pearson an edge for years to come on services that were above and beyond simply providing the PARCC test. Kind of like putting a contract to bid on repaving the driveway in such a way that it also gives the winner a job doing all the building maintenance and cleaning.

A judge agreed to hear the case. More importantly, the judge directed Pearson to put down its pencil and stop working on PARCC until this is sorted out. And that is where things have been sitting since the end of May.

Is it possible that Pearson has some people in a back room somewhere working on a program for training fluffy bunnies that could miraculously turn out to be equally applicable to writing the PARCC, once they're free to do so? That would be the smart move. But do not overlook the possibility that the judge in this case could throw out the entire contract based on a rigged bidding set-up (which, let's be honest, doesn't exactly seem like a huge stretch).

There's a whole other layer of trouble here in that, per Mercedes Schneider's reporting, there's at least one state where some of the Folks In Charge don't seem to grasp what is going on. This means that if you're a PARCC state, not only might you not have a fresh test in place and ready to go, but your leaders may not even have realized that they need a Plan B, let alone started to create one.

Can anybody actually take on Pearson, the behemoth of the education world? That's a good question, but given there is a mountain of money involved stacked high enough to blot out the sun, it's a fair bet that AIR is going to give it the old college try. We've had many attempts to interpret various calls for testing moratoriums; one other possibility is that some folks have looked in their corporate tea leaves and decided it may take us a couple of years just to get a fresh test. In the mean time, the testing system that is the backbone and testicles of the reformster movement is continuing its slow-motion collapse. And that's good news for everyone.

UPDATE As of July 2, it appears that Pearson's Big Bucks Express is back on track. Here's the report of the decision to let them continue.So that's a win. And here's the report of the decision in their favor. And that's the knock-out punch. Pearson's path toward owning all of American education is clear once again.