PA Senate Ed Chair Wants To Trash Education

John Eichelberger has been a Pennsylvania state senator for over a decade, and during those years, he has been no friend to public schools or the teachers who work in them.

Seriously-- this is District 30.

Eichelberger is a Republican upstart who was swept into office on the wave of voter anger over the infamous late-night pay raise of 2005. He was supported by an assortment of conservatives including Pat Toomey. He had previously worked in the insurance biz and as a Blair County Commissioner.He represents Pennsylvania Senate District 30, just one of the many completely gerrymandered districts in Pennsylvania.

In 2011, when Betsy and Richard DeVos were looking to finance a push for vouchers in Pennsylvania, Eichelberger was just the man to take point. Taking point included pushing the narrative that Pennsylvania's schools were a terrible, failing mess. (It's also worth noting that the DeVos push for vouchers included allies who were explicitly in favor of shutting down "government schools" entirely.)

When it comes to the pension problems of Pennsylvania, Eichelberger has argued for fixed contribution pensions-- you get a fixed amount of money chipped in and go play the market with your retirement fund. Good luck to you.

And most recently, Eichelberger has surfaced as the sponsor of the SB 229, a bill recycled from previous sessions and aimed at making sick days a locally-negotiated part of teacher contracts. In other words, putting them on the table as one more thing that can be stripped from a contract. He's also the legislator behind SB 166, the bill that would end paycheck deductions for paying union dues. Is he one of those backseat grandstanding hacks whose bills have no chance of success. Well, no. He's the chairman of the Education Committee.

Some pretty feisty language has been thrown around in response to Eichelberger's bill. Are we perhaps misjudging Eichelberger? Is he actually a friend of education who means well? Does he sincerely think he's looking out for teachers' and students' best interests?

Well, no, it doesn't look like it.

Yesterday Zack Hoopes at The Sentinel reported on a town hall meeting in which Eichelberger made it clear that he would like to stick it to teachers, with fire and barbecue sauce.

This guy. This frickin' guy.

One critic noted that the sick day policy seemed like a tax on employees, not something that would actually help students. Eichelberger doesn't much care. He wants to penalize teachers and union members because they're taking advantage of the system.

So what about that payroll deduction bill? Did Eichelberger have any elegant explanation of why that bill was necessary? Not according to Hoopes.

In response to a question, Eichelberger described SB 166 as “a lead-in to Right to Work,” meaning legislation mandating that employees be allowed to opt out of union membership while still receiving union benefits, obviating the existence of unions themselves.

And when discussing the sick leave bill, Eichelberger at first stuck to the script. School boards asked for this. It gives them more flexibility in negotiating (aka one more thing they can use to leverage giving teachers less and less). But later in the evening, he described the purpose a little more honestly.

But later in Monday’s meeting, Eichelberger indicated that his interest was not in easier bargaining, but in taking away benefits he didn’t feel teachers deserved.

“We’re talking about sick days for people who only work 8½ months. It’s ridiculous,” Eichelberger said, a comment that received an audible, collective groan from audience members.

Yes, if teachers really cared about their work, they would schedule illnesses for themselves and their families during the summer. Because what every parent wants is for their child to be greeted by a coughing, sneezing, germ-laden teacher who can't take the day off.

Eichelberger also revealed that he would like to look at getting rid of some state universities, with Clarion and Cheney likely targets for "the chopping block." Why does he think they are unnecessary? Because now we have lots of community colleges, and those should be good enough. Besides, enrollments down. When asked if he saw any correlation between lowered enrollment, slashed state support for the university system, and increased tuition to make up the difference, he said no, that didn't look like a meaningful connection to him.

Oh, but it gets even better,

Eichelberger also took the occasion to complain about "inner city" education programs that were trying to get minority students into colleges where they just failed anyway, so let's just put them in a nice vocational program instead and be done with it. Yes, that's right. In 2017 an elected state senator is suggesting that there's no point in trying to get black and brown kids to succeed in college, because you know how Those People are.

Like all good reformsters, Eichelberger also wants to effectively destroy tenure and allow school districts to get rid of teachers for purely economic reasons. You know, when schools don't have the revenue any more, just shut them down because it's "a sound business decision." One audience member disagreed:

The mentality is that we need to save money regardless of student demand. It seems like you’re just coming up with new reasons for districts to eliminate positions without taking students into account.

It surely did. And he wasn't done. He also wanted to stump for the new bill ending property tax in Pennsylvania, shifting the burden of school finances from property owners, including and especially business owners, to consumers. Rich folks get a tax break, corporations get a huge tax break, and poor folks get hammered. Seems perfectly fair, and like it will work really, really well and not, say, leave school districts with collapsing financial support.

Did I mention that this guy is now the chair of the senate Education Committee? Start calling your representatives-- the fight for education in Pennsylvania is only going to get worse.

PA: How Much Does Your District Pay in Charter Costs

An extremely handy spread sheet has been circulating lately, and if nothing else, I want to put a link here so that I can more easily find it. If you're in Pennsylvania, you'll want to look at this, too.

Yes, 502 districts is a lot.

The document covers every school year from 2009-2010 through 2014-2015 for every single one of our 502 pubic school districts (yes, that is a high number, but that's another conversation).  It shows how much money left the district to go to charters, broken down by nonspecial education students and special education students (the pay rate is different). I recommend that you browse on your own, but let me hit just a couple of points.

First of all, a bunch of my civilian friends looked at this and said, "How can our district be paying that much in charter costs when we don't have any charter schools here?" The answer is that all Pennsylvania students have access to cyber-charters. Not everybody gets that a cyber school is just another kind of charter-- a highly profitable one in Pennsylvania, where the pay rate for the charter has noting to do with the actual charter costs. Put another way, your district pays the same to send a child to a bricks-and-mortar charter with a real building and heat and light and live teachers in classrooms as it spends to send a child to a cyber school with a computer, an internet hookup, and remote teachers who handle hundreds of students at once.

You can use the data to see how PA charter costs have mushroomed. In 2009-2010, the total charter tuition bill was $805,621,738.88 (I'm dying to know what the 88 cents bought). But five years later, state school districts were shelling out a grand total of $1,486,434,770.88. The 88 cents, at least, hadn't budged.

Where you find districts in financial trouble, you find huge charter payments. This is a sort of chicken-egg death spiral. A district is financially strapped, so charters move in and students move out, taking a bunch of money with them, so that the district is even more strapped and has to cut more services and programs, which makes more students want to leave, which creates more financial strain. I know this contradicts the fairy tale that districts facing charter competition would pull up their bootstraps and get better better better, but it turns out that even bootstraps cost money.

So there's Erie City Schools, a school district so strapped that they seriously considered closing all their high schools, forking over $20 million to charters. Allentown is losing $26 million. And York School District, threatened with complete takeover, lost $22 million. And nobody beats Philadelphia, where the school district handed over $715 million dollars to charter operators.

Meanwhile, well-heeled districts like Mount Lebanon were only losing $381,424.77 to charter operators.

There's a lot of useful local data to be dug out of this spreadsheet built out of PA Department of Education data. Use it to enliven the conversation with people who don't understand the fuss about charters, or those other people who are certain that the local district is in financial trouble because the money's being wasted by administration.

And if you're wondering what keeps all this money flowing, check out this piece about charter lobbying at EdWeek, noting specifically this chart. Hooray, Pennsylvania! We're number one!!:

DeVos: No Real Role for Feds

At Axios (the new "media company" from two former Politico honchos), Johnathan Swan (formerly of The Hill) has a quick moment with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. She uses the opportunity for a bit of a do-over on her confirmation hearing, but it's her thoughts on the federal role in education that are most striking.

Among the things that "Betsy DeVos wishes she had said at her confirmation hearing"

* She would have come up with a better illustration than a grizzly bear. "It was a valid illustration<' she says. But it probably "wasn't the best illustration I could have given."

* Everybody should have to follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Totally. She has "so much compassion for families that have to avail themselves of that law."

* She's apparently okay with her none-answers on equal accountability for all schools that receive federal funding, because that's a concept "with which she'll never agree."

Some other nuggets from the interview include her surprise at getting the call (actually an e-mail from someone with whom she's "worked for a number of years."-- my money is still on Mike Pence). Trump got her excited about the job. She'll consider the department successful if they can get ESSA successfully implemented. She looks to "slim down the department."

What changes does she expect in her tenure? No surprise here-- more charter schools, more private schools, more virtual schools, more schools of "any kind that haven't been invented yet." Left unsaid but clearly implied-- fewer public schools.

The big question comes in big bold letters:

In her ideal world, the federal government has any a role in education?

The answer gets even bigger bolder print, because somebody understands that it's key:


It would be fine with me to have myself worked out of a job, but I'm not sure that — I'm not sure that there will be a champion movement in Congress to do that.

The elaboration is where it gets interesting-- She sees that the feds have had a useful role at certain "important inflection points" in the past, like "when we had segregated schools and when we had a time when, you know, girls weren't allowed to have the same kind of sports teams."  But then the question-- "are there any remaining issues like that where the federal government should intervene?"


I can't think of any now.

So there you have it. Racial and gender bias are completely under control, totally solved, no longer need any sort of federal oversight. There are no states or districts that are trying to maintain any sort of systemic inequity. Nothing to see here. Go home.

In another interview published yesterday at Townhall, she does allow for a slightly more expansive view of federal responsibility. Sort of.

I do think there are some federal roles around ensuring children with special needs and then the anti-discrimination issues at the level they were originally intended. Those are areas in which I think there is a federal role, but I also think there is an opportunity to streamline and simplify a lot of the engagement and involvement the department has had around some of these issues, issues that have continued to mushroom and grow well beyond the core focus of those two important functions and protections.

This is, of course, in keeping with the philosophy that says we no longer need to enforce the Voting Rights Act because all racism has been removed from the management of elections. We don't need affirmative action because that's all fixed, too. I suppose that we can be grateful that DeVos did not suggest there's a federal role for the department in protecting the white boys who are America's new most-oppressed minority.

It is hard to know if she is being disingenuous or off in the billionaire's bubble, all issues of race and gender seem fixed. Either way, this is a clear signal to states that want to pursue policies that allow them to (continue to) underfund schools for Those People will not get any interference from the feds.

Go read the whole piece. Much of it is not news-- we knew DeVos was intent on replacing public school with privatized education, and that she would be happy to see the department go away on her watch. The idea that there are no pressing issues requiring federal oversight  is a new expression of an old DeVosian idea-- there's no need for any sort of accountability in education, leas of all on the federal level. One more sign that things are going to get ugly and advocates of public education, equity, and civil rights had better get activated and organized on the state level.

IOWA: Gutting Unions

The Iowa House and Senate have voted to gut the public service unions of their state.

Under the new bill, Iowa's public service unions (that, of course, includes teachers) may not negotiate anything but wages. Health care, evaluation procedures, and other language items may not be part of contract negotiations. And should those wage negotiations stall, the arbitrator must consider management's ability to pay and may not raise wages beyond either a 3% cap or the cost of living index-- whichever is lower. Which means, of course, that local school boards and other management groups don't actually have to negotiate at all.

The bill also kills the automatic deduction for union dues and requires the union to be recertified before every new contract negotiation.

In short, this bill is aimed directly at busting unions in the state.

The bill was supported only by the GOP (a handful of GOP reps defected to vote against it), and it appeared magically from behind closed doors, like Venus rising from a lily pad, just ten days ago. GOP lawmakers didn't run on a promise to bust unions, there were no big public demonstrations or even spirited calls from friendly astro-turf groups. The GOP won't even identify supporters or sponsors of the bill. The GOP just decided to bust them some unions. Opponents have asserted that this is an ALEC bill, and the whole process certainly smells like ALEC at work, but truthfully, at this point there's no smoking gun-- just assertions. Still, if it walks like an ALEC fat cat, and talks like an ALEC fat cat, it's hard not to conclude it's another ALEC fat cat.

The justifications have been spectacularly lame:

“This bill, I believe heart and soul, is a win for all Iowans and the delivery of a promise from Republicans that we would reform governments to make it more efficient for the people for Iowa,” said Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison and the bill’s floor manager in the House. “Smaller, smarter, innovative government is in this bill.”

Nope. As opponents (like the editorial board at the Des Moines Register) have noted, this will drive down wages, create economic damage especially in rural areas, and expand government bureaucracy. In addition, as laid out in this report from the Iowa Policy Project, it will increase income inequality while eroding pay in the private sector. Most notably, it will make it that much harder for Iowa to convince teachers and health care workers to pursue a career in a state whose legislature is openly hostile to them.

So what's the upside of this for GOP legislators? Not this bullshit that Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix is slinging about:

For years we have been working for fiscal responsibility and pushing for more local control. This bill does that exactly. ... It empowers local school boards. It empowers local officials. It will increase efficiency and innovation at every level of government, giving the taxpayers better services at a lower cost.

Nope. It makes public services cheaper by stiffing the people who provide them, and then reduces the quality of those services by insuring that it will be harder to fill the professions that provide them.

This is not a problem for rich folks, who can always get the best service by simply paying for it out of pocket. But it does keep them from having to shell out good tax dollars to help Those People. Goodness! If they wanted better education, health care, and wages, Those People should have thought of that before they decided to be poor.

Union busting isn't just about destroying the union's ability to stand up for working people. It's also about busting their ability to be a source of money and support for the Democratic Party. As we've seen in many states (and may yet see at the federal level), if you want to establish one party GOP rule, you have to kick out any of the legs on which the Democratic Party stands.

When the bill passed, the gallery was full of Iowans yelling, "Shame," at their legislators, but apparently shame is something that Iowa's GOP is beyond. Sure, all of Iowa may suffer for it, but at least the GOP will hold onto power, so if some rural kids can't get the best health care or education, well, that's a small price to know that guys like Bill Dix can have a cushy job for life, protecting the fat cats of Iowa.

In the meantime, condolences to the teachers of Iowa. So sorry your state Republicans decided to screw you over.

Performance Pay Bombs Across the Pond

I don't know if this will make you feel better or make you feel worse, but our nation is not the only one caught in the throes of bad education reform.

The UK has a performance pay system in which teachers get an increase of pay based on their job performance. Well, if there's money to pay for a raise. Well, if the raise is within the cap of 1% (aka "not enough to keep up with inflation").
 

The UK put this system in place four years ago, incorporating many reformy favorites wrapped in a thick helping of baloney. Said education secretary, Michael Gove:

"I am clear that these changes will give schools greater freedom to develop pay policies that are tailored to their school's needs and circumstances and to reward their teachers in line with their performance." There was, he added, "further work to be done" in deciding the best way to implement the recommendations.

Other supporters laud the system's "flexibility," which as usual appears to mean "the freedom to avoid paying teachers very much money."

Recently a joint survey of 13,000 teachers by the National Union of Teachers and Association of Teachers and Lecturers has suggested that mostly the system just beats teachers down. The UK includes its fair share of members of the Cult of Testing (after all, we're talking about the home of Pearson), but the system also seems to include a healthy slice of bias-- your school's "head teacher" can give you a raise based on whatever they feel like basing it on. It could be worse-- Catholic schools in the UK will also judge their teachers on their spiritual performance. Yikes.

In 2016, according to the survey, one in five teachers received no raise (the Brits actually call it a rise). The system has created a great emphasis on more time-wasting paperwork (because you can't get your raise without a multi-page hoop to jump through). And lots of folks can't get a raise because they have topped out on the scale (I feel you, British teacher brethren and sistern).

As is the case here in the colonies, there is no evidence that this approach actually brings a better education to students in the classroom. There's no reason to believe that teachers are actually holding back their best efforts, just waiting to be bribed sufficiently to wake up and actually try to teach. Nor has there been any attempt to address the Really God District performance pay problem-- if every teacher in my school is really, really good, does somebody go out and collect more money from the taxpayers, or do those great teachers just get a smaller slice of a zero-sum fixed-capacity pie? And if so, doesn't that mean that I have to root for the failure of my teaching colleague, because their success will diminish my performance pay? And wouldn't that the number of excellent teachers I find in my school has less to do with how many teachers are great and more to do with how much money I have available for rewarding those teachers ("Budget's tight this year, so we can only afford for one of you to be great!").

Nor is there any reason to believe that performance pay makes a positive difference where it matters-- in the classroom. Do teachers really think, "Well, I was going to just nap through my job, but since I might get a 1% raise out of this, I guess I'll really try hard."

The teachers in the survey and a UK union leader didn't think so:

Mary Bousted, who leads the ATL, warned that school leaders and teachers are “having to spend far too much valuable teaching and learning time on paperwork and admin to decide pay awards”.

“Performance related pay is threatening collegiate working in schools, demoralising teachers who feel they have been unfairly treated and undermining the valuable contribution that performance appraisal can, and should, make to improving teaching – and pupils will lose out as a result.”

In fact, the UK system is not so much about rewarding excellence as it is about having a system that denies raises. Having a default that nobody gets a raise unless the Right Person decides you need a (very small) one-- well, that certainly can't be helping with the UK's growing teacher shortage crisis. Certainly it's not a legitimate free market approach ("When you can't purchase goods or service for a particular price, then you should just.... refuse to budge?")

Performance pay doesn't work. Never has, most likely never will. And that turns out to be true no matter what country you're in.

I Am Not Hostile To Change

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spoke today to a gathering of Magnet School folks, and opened up by suggesting that "some people" are "hostile" to change.

I just want to be clear. I am not hostile to change. In fact, there are some changes that I would love to see.

I would love to see a change in the rhetoric about failing schools. Instead of declaring that we will "rescue" students from failing schools and offering lifeboats for a handful of students, I'd like to change to a declaration that where we find struggling and failing schools, we will get them the support and resources that they need to become great.

I would love to see a change in how we approach the communities where those schools are located. Instead of pushing local leaders aside so that outsiders who "know what's best" for them can swoop in and impose decisions for them instead of letting them have control of their own community.

I would love to see a change in how teachers are treated. Instead of trying to bust their unions, smother their pay, ignore their voices , and treat them as easily-replaced widgets, I would like to see teacher voices elevated, listened to, respected, and given the support and resources that would lift them up. I would like to see them treated as part of the solution instead of the source of all problems.

I would love to see a change in how we discuss race and poverty, treating them as neither destiny nor unimportant nothings.

I would love to see a change in how we treat public education. I would love to see public education treated like a sacred trust and not a business opportunity. I would love to see us pursue a promise to educate all children-- not just the few that we deem worthy or profitable or best reached by a sensible business plan. Every child.


I would love to see a change in the status quo. Because at this point, the status quo is a public education system that is being smothered and dismantled by people who lack expertise in education and belief in the promise of public education. The education "establishment" has been pushed out and replaced by well-meaning amateurs, profiteers, scam artists, and people who have no desire to maintain the institution that has been the foundation of a robust and vibrant democracy. Reformsters are the status quo, and that is a status quo I would love to change, because they have had their shot, and all of their promises have proven to be at best empty and at worst toxic.

I would love to see us change from test-centered schools, data-centered schools, and revenue-centered schools to schools that are student-centered, that steer by the children at their center.

And all of that is because I welcome the change that I have always welcomed, built for, worked for-- which is the change of young humans into grown, fully-realized, awesome, grown, valuable, living, breathing, completely individual and fully capable adults, the change of each child from an unsure rough draft into the version of their own best self.

No, Secretary. I am not hostile to change at all. I embrace it, welcome it, hope for it and work for it every day. There are many of us out here, and if you imagine we are hostile to change, that is one more thing about public education that you do not understand.

The Proper Use of Mockery

Jimmie Fallon has done it again, and not, I'm afraid, in a good way.

Fallon has now twice included a Betsy DeVos sketch. His show's version of DeVos is bumbling and clueless, the kind of hapless twit who says, in response to questions about her fitness for the job, replies "I am totally got this."

As regular readers of this blog are well aware, I am not above or beyond mockery of certain subjects (I still kind of miss Arne Duncan). I believe that some well-aimed mockery, some pointed satire, can be just the thing for dealing with difficult individuals, offices, or policies.

But mockery, improperly done, can be dangerous.The dangers are twofold.

First, mockery of little piddly things can take our eyes off the ball. the big, ugly, spikey, dangerous ball that we're not paying attention because we're making fun of someone for tying her shoes badly.

The Trump regime has provided more than ample examples. Quick-- name all the bad policies that came closer to fruition while we were making fun of the Trumpinator's insistence that his crowd was the biggest of them all.

Mind you, little things can matter. I've burned up a lot of internet on little things, because little things are often the key details that tell you what someone really thinks, what they really see, what they're really up to. I have parsed the living daylights out of single sentences because words matter and the ones that people choose matter. But attention to detail is only useful when it helps us see the big picture-- not when it takes our mind off the big picture. For instance, did the fumbling of historic/historical tell us anything important about DeVos (or one of her aides)? I don't think so, nor do I think it was mistake that revealed some unusual confusion; it's a mistake that lots of folks make.

The repeated mistakes with spelling and usage constitute a pattern, showing a carelessness about details or exactitude that is not encouraging. But I'd rather pay close attention to what she has in mind for education policy in this country.

Second, and more importantly, misplaced mockery can make the dangerous seem safe.

This is my complaint about the Fallon DeVos-- she's so hilariously incompetent, unable to form sentences or express an intelligent thought, stupid about the ways of math and words. This mockery can be anchored in her fumbled tweets and her lackluster hearing appearance, but it puts a soft fuzzy gloss on the damage she did to Michigan.

Melissa McCarthy's Sean Spicer is a good piece of mockery because, like the Baldwin version of Trump, it bares the ridiculous qualities of its target without ignoring the aggressive, sharp edges. Baldwin's Trump and McCarthy's Spicer are fools, but they are not harmless.

Fallon's DeVos, and SNL's too, though to a lesser extent, is silly and ignorant, but none of her real power for harm makes it into the portrayal. There's no hint of the billionaire heiress who has run roughshod over the Michigan GOP, who has made elected officials fold out of fear of her opposition, who has taken the position that the public schools of Detroit should just be closed (Damn the poor black kids, full steam ahead).

And really-- we already know better. Fallon and SNL both gave Trump airtime in which he could be presented as a clown, but a harmless one. Pre-election night mockery of Trump focused almost exclusively on his most ridiculous qualities in a message that was one part "Isn't he silly" and one part "There's nothing to fear here." Fallon's patting of Trump's famous hair is like a policeman going before a group of school children to stick his head in a stuffed bear's mouth and say, "See how funny this is? I bet you could do the same thing with a real one."

So as much as I love some mockery, I can't really get excited about or amused by mockery that ignores the real claws and teeth of the bear. Sure, DeVos has earned some mockery from defenders of public education, but it really serves her purposes to be portrayed as a bumbling dope who is so clueless she must be harmless. She is not harmless, and seeing that message put out there is not harmless, either.