PA: Tenure Under Attack Yet Again

Okay, Pennsylvania. Here we go again.

Slipped into the byzantine negotiations surrounding this year's Budget-pallooza, some kind soul has re-inserted a favorite reformster method of doing away with teacher tenure.

This is an idea that reformsters have pitched with varying degrees of success in a multitude of states. The idea is to do away with job protections without actually saying so, instead saying that a school district should be able to fire teachers for "economic reasons" and that firing should be based not on seniority, but on teacher evaluation scores.

Usually this is pitched as a law. In 2014, StudentsFirst was pitching it like crazy. Not surprising as the group (which has apparently let the security certificate on its site expire) is the reform group set up by former DC chancellor, She Who Will Not Be Named*, a group that has worked hard to gut public education and tear down the teaching profession. I don't say that lightly-- I've learned to believe that there are reform-minded people with whom I strongly disagree, but who are reasonably honest and sincere in their pursuit of their goal. She and StudentsFirst are no such group-- intellectually dishonest and self-serving, this is a group that has been devoted to tearing down the profession and public education. And they've done it with the happy cooperation of Democrats as well as GOP folks.

These days, post-She, the group's profile has sagged a bit, but in 2014 they were lobbying hard in Pennsylvania. That year, House Bill 1722 was the result. In 2015, the same idea surfaced in Senate Bill 805, and by 2016, the damn thing was still kicking around, though at that point Governor Tom Wolf was pledged to kill it if it landed on his desk.

But now it's back again.

The idea is pretty simple. If your school district wants to cut teachers, it used to have to justify this with reasons like declining enrollment, cut programs, combined schools, and combined districts. You know-- reasons related to education. But the new rule would add "economic reasons" to the list. And in Pennsylvania, with the most inequitable funding system in the country, just about every district in the state can claim "economic reasons."

Then you start cutting teachers based on evaluations. Earlier versions of the law organized teachers by their rating-- awesome, great, okay-ish and sucky-- but I'm not sure how the current proposal reads. PA's evaluation system uses numbers that would allow a more exact stack-ranking, though it would be a joke, as we are also a state where teacher evaluation includes a building score (SPP) and THAT score is 90% based on test scores. Teacher scores are soaked in the widely debunked VAM sauce. Here's what I found when the bill surfaced in 2015:

Here you can see a letter written by the bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Stephen Bloom, back in February. It contains several fine slices of baloney, including this statistic thrown out without any references:
Research demonstrates that under a seniority-based layoff system, the more effective teacher is dismissed roughly four out of five times. 
What research? How is it demonstrated? And why haven't we heard about this before like, say, during the Vergara trial's work of destroying tenure and seniority in California? Those guys were clearly willing to bring up anything they could think of to make their point-- but I don't believe they mentioned this. So I kind of suspect this is not an entirely fact-based statement.

The implications of this kind of policy are many and ugly. Teachers who want job security had better fight their way into a schedule that includes the best test-takers, and collegial sharing of techniques and ideas between teachers would be self-defeating-- if your professional peer has a good year and you have a bad one, it could cost you your job.

Supporters of this law repeatedly frame it as a law to protect excellent teachers, as if Pennsylvania has a problem with schools that are laying off genius first-year teachers left and right while hoary old burnouts take up space. But there's no sign that this is true, in particular no evidence that older teachers are lousy, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. As for chasing off great young teachers-- well, the more common problem in the state is that there are no jobs to hire them into in the first place as budgets are slashed and funding is sucked off by charters.

And seriously-- if PA legislators wanted to make sure that bright young teachers weren't scared away from teaching, they might attempt to fix Pennsylvania's broken funding system, boost funding to where it needs to be, and generally insure that no district had "economic reasons" for firing anybody. After all, if we're only firing teachers because of economic reasons, that means the district is then operating with fewer teachers than it should have. How exactly is that a win for anyone? And how does it "protect" young teachers to know that they will never, ever have job security again? Exactly what about that makes the job attractive?

This is union-busting, profession-gutting legislation that can barely even pretend to do what it claims it will do. The ideal for She-style reformsters is a frequently-churned, easily-fired, low-earning teaching staff that never gets comfortable enough to get uppity or to provide support to the union, and this bill is perfect for those goals.

It's an attack against the teaching profession and public education, and it's back-- again-- on the table in Harrisburg, so it's time-- again-- to call your elected representative and voice your opinion. This thing has passed the Senate, but the whole budget business is such a clusterfarpfignugen that it's hard to know when it will make it to the governor. And this is a far more politically adept move than previous attempts-- I'm guessing the Governor won't trash the whole budget just because it includes a part about ending teacher tenure. Call. Call call call.




*It's been a longstanding policy of this blog not to increase the internet footprint of a woman who is the Kim Kardasian of education

ICYMI: End of July Edition (7/30)

How the heck did that happen? Here's some reading from the week-- and remember, you can amplify the voices of your favorite writers just be tweeting and sharing. So, you know, do that.

Internalizing the Myth of Meritocracy

Another hard-hitting Anderson piece in the Atlantic, looking at how the myth of meritocracy becomes damaging to children of color. Because if I believe that the system is fair and rewards excellence, and I'm not being rewarded, I can only conclude one thing...

Demolishing the Myth of the Grumpy Crusty Veteran

It's true-- veteran teachers might not suck.

The Brave New Word

Somehow I dropped this piece from June, but better late than never. The word is "personalization" and the blog explains why that word is probably bunk.

The Alum-lie

Gary Rubinstein crunches some numbers and uncovers the lies charters tell about their college completion rates.

For Deeper Teacher Learning, Follow the Leader

Now that research has identified seven main qualities of effective professional development, all we have to do is design sessions that include all seven qualities, right? Wrong.

The Charter Effect

While this is specific to Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, it's a very detailed and well-researched look at how charters make enemies as they suck public schools dry.

I Quit

Jennifer Berkshire does some podcasting on her own while her partner is of continent, and this is a powerful look at the growing phenomenon of teachers who quit and what they say on their way out the door.

NJ Charter School Follieshttp: Asbury Park and Patterson Edition

Jersey Jazzman takes a look under the hood to see what's wrong with NJ's charter authorization system.

Why Schools Should Be Wary of Free Ed Tech Products and Start-ups Shouldn't Make Them

Why free ed tech stuff is bad news for everyone-- from Forbes.

Read One Percent Solution

I just finished up Gordon Lafer's book The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time. It's a simultaneously clear and depressing look at what's going on across the country, and how groups like ALEC are working to reshape our very notion of how America works, and what Americans should expect. And for those of us in the ed biz, there's a whole chapter looking at the reform movement.



Lafer's goal is to look at the broad span of corporate lobbying and legislative efforts. He sets out to make sense of the large mess, and his approach is fairly simple. Looking at what corporations and legislators and lobbyists and advocates for certain programs say, one can become confused at what the actual goal is. Lafer's technique boils down to looking at what they do. "Right To Work" is sold as a way to protect the rights of workers-- well, what else would we expect people who want to protect the rights of workers to do, and are these powerful groups doing those things (spoiler alert-- no).

In other words, never mind what they say to the public. What do they actually do (an what do they say to each other when they think the public isn't listening).

The conclusions are not cheering. Lafer sees a pattern or dismantling government, destroying unions, and pushing workers to lower and lower tiers of income and security while directing more and more fruits of the economy to that one percent at the top. All while gutting any political platform from which the rest of this can be fought.

The conclusion that may come as the biggest, most depressing revelation-- Lafer sees a systematic attempt to lower American expectations, to just get average Americans to think that life really shouldn't be any better for US citizens. For me, this insight is a bit of a gut punch. Who in the teaching world hasn't heard, come contract time, the mantra that teachers just get paid too much and if some convenience store worker is struggling on minimum wage and meager benefits, well, then, why shouldn't teachers do the same? We hear that argument over and over, instead of arguing that people at the bottom should be better paid, better treated.

Education merits its own full chapter because Lafer sees there an intersection of all the other threads. There's all this public money that ought to be funneled toward corporate bank accounts. There's the country;s biggest unions, constantly (well, often) acting as a thorn in the side of the one percent and a political counterweight to the GOP. There's the belief in a democratically, locally controlled institution instead of a corporately controlled business. There's a whole nation of people who expect certain things from public education, and the desire to adjust those expectations ever downward. Lafer writes

Wall Street looks at education the same way it regards Social Security-- a huge flow of public guaranteed funding that is waiting to be privatized, if only the politics can be worked out.

And there is high stakes testing as an instrument of the whole business:

Thus, what "slum clearance" did for the real estate industry in the 1960s and 1970s, high-stakes testing will do for the charter industry: wipe away large swaths of public schools, enabling private operators to grow not school by school, but twenty or thirty schools at a time.

Corporate America is manufacturing failure as a way both to improve their own power and control even as they convince folks to settle for less.

Lafer backs all of this with relentless and specific research and evidence.

It is not an uplifting read, but it does provide some clarity and it does help help you realize that you aren't just imagining some of what seems to be going wrong around us. Very readable and accessible, and free of demonization or sensationalism. I recommend you read this book.

Speak Up, Betsy!

One of the many odd features of this week's Adventures in Congressional Fumblebludgery was that at no point did GOP senators try to make a case publicly for any of what they were trying to do.

This is, I suppose, a predictable effect of our post-Citizens United era-- our elected representatives only have to explain themselves to the billionaires who bankroll them. As long as those guys are happy, a multi-million dollar media buy should be able to manufacture consent from the rest of us. They don't actually answer to We Lesser Peons, so why bother trying to talk to us (particularly if the vast majority of us disagree with whatever skullduggery they're up to.)

This same disregard for the Lessers might explain the Curious Case of Education's Silent Secretary. Her lack of interest in growing has been on display back to the moment in her confirmation hearing when she couldn't think of any lesson she'd learned in Michigan (after 30 years of education wonkslammery), and many have noted it along the way. DeVos seems to be a True Believer who operates the department opaquely, keeping her cards close to the vest even as she fails to fill in missing positions in the department, which lets her keep things even more opaque. And on the rare occasion that she speaks to press, it's a ridiculous minimalist deconstructed play on an interview, like her three-question dance with Craig Melvin.

Look, if she needed the rest of us to know or understand what was going on, she'd tell us. But she doesn't owe us any kind of explanation (this is why I'm opposed to the various Trump folks who aren't taking salaries-- it's one more way for them to say that they don't owe the American public anything.)

But DeVos's press-averse non-talkarariness may well also be one more measure of her unfitness for the job.

I called this one way back when. DeVos is not a philanthropist-- she has "donated" in order to buy compliance. She's not an advocate-- her "arguments" in favor of policies have consisted of writing checks.

In other words, while DeVos has always had strong convictions about education, she has never had to actually argue for them and convince others to agree with her. She just writes checks, finds people who see things her way, writes more checks. I wonder if she has ever had a conversation with a politician in which she couldn't close with, "Do you want me to finance a primary opponent?" A lifetime as an heiress married to an even-richer heir has not prepared her to convince other people to agree with her. Or, as Lisa Miller put it in her recent DeVos profile:

Out of Michigan, without her checkbook, DeVos is like a mermaid with legs: clumsy, conspicuous, and unable to move forward.

This is one of the problems with oligarchs-- they know how to command compliance, but not how to earn cooperation. I can believe that DeVos doesn't feel she should have to argue for her preferred policies-- she's right, and that should be the end of it. But I can also believe that she literally does not know how to do it.

It's just one more reason that she never should have been put in the office in the first place. She seems at once the most dangerous and least able of Trump's crew of muckthuggists. The only good news here is that she is poised to be so ineffective that many of her bad ideas will never get off ground. The bad news is that US citizens may end up with a much more privatized education system and never hear a reason why they were subjected to such suckmuggery.

Research Shmesearch

In what will come as practically no surprise at all to people who work in schools, a recent survey suggests that peer-reviewed research does not have much effect on what ed tech products a school district purchases.

The survey (ironically not itself a piece of peer-reviewed research) comes with the unsexy title Role of Federal Funding and Research Findings on Adoption and Implementation of Technology-Based Products and Tools. It's also entirely fitting that the group that produced this, as reported by EdWeek Market Brief,  "emerged from a symposium staged earlier this year by Jefferson Education Accelerator, a commercial project that pairs education companies with school districts and independent researchers; and Digital Promise, a nonprofit that tries to promote the effective use of research and technology in schools." So, a "study" by people who have a stake in the result. In fact, maybe not so much "study" as "market research."

At any rate, the survey covered 515 respondents in 17 states. 27% were teachers, with the rest a mix of administrators and district tech folks.The internet-based survey went out as a link on social media, so not exactly a random sampling here.

The study launched on the notion, "Hey, the government is spending a bunch of money funding studies so it can collect evidence-based stuff on its What Works Clearinghouse website. Do you suppose that anybody in school districts cares about either the results or the standards used?"

The answer, apparently, is "no."

While 41% would give "strong consideration" to a program with peer-reviewed research, only 11% would rule the product out if there were no such research. Respondents were less impressed by "gold standard" research. Hardly anyone in the sample was impressed by non-peer-reviewed research. (Nothing in the study shows if respondents can tell the difference.)

Bonus points to the study for asking if respondents cared if the research were performed on students comparable to their own. It's a good question to ask-- too much "education" research has been performed on subjects of convenience, giving us findings about learning among small samples of college sophomores.

For perspective, we can note that several items were far bigger dealbreakers than peer-reviewed research. A whopping 29% said they would not buy a program unless the data output was accessible. 19% would reject a program if it were not customizeable, or the data were not interoperable with district programs. 16% would reject a program if privacy options couldn't be customized or if the program was not useful for students with disabilities. 13% would rule out a program unless implementation support was available. So all those things-- more important than peer-reviewed research.

Research Lead Dr. Michael Kennedy (University of Virginia) provided some additional interpretation to Ed Week:

“There’s a disconnect between what researchers think is high-quality research and what school districts think,” he said in an interview. Despite school officials’ interest in weighing evidence, for many, their attitude is, “when push comes to shove, I’m buying what I’m going to buy,” said Kennedy.

Emphasis mine, because duh.  The report itself also includes some quotes from respondents indicating that a federal stamp of approval isn't that big a deal.

If the product was developed using federal grant dollars, great, but the more important factor is the extent to which it suits our needs.

Features and functionality are what I look for. Endorsement from the feds is nice icing on the cake – But cake still tastes pretty good with or without that icing.

In other words, district official trust their own eyes first. (Also, mmmm, cake.) Kennedy also points out that the create-research-review process can take so long that the product is obsolete by the time it's recommended. Kennedy also allowed that research can be so narrow that it only "proves" a product works in very specific situations, and if those situations aren't the ones your district is dealing with, what good is the research? Not that vendors don't frequently pitch ed tech with some variation, "Well, if you just change your circumstances and environment and procedures and goals, this product will be just perfect for you."

Which suggests at least one more reason that districts don't pay a lot of attention to research-- it is most commonly encountered as part of a sales pitch. The report discusses these ed tech products in almost neutral tones, as if districts are just deciding which flower to pick from their garden. But in fact what we're talking about is a host of vendors trying to sell a product, and in that context we all know that whatever research is included is there to serve the sales pitch. Is there research suggesting that the Edtech Widgetmaster 5000 has no real effect on student achievement? It's a sure bet that the Edtech Widgetmaster sales rep will not be bringing up those studies.

In short, we all know that everything presented to us is presented to help make a sale. Of course all the research makes the product look good-- because it's chosen by the company selling the product. If a used car salesman tells you the engine in the car you're looking at are just great, are you going to take his word for it, or are you going to look under the hood yourself?

But we're talking about federally-backed research! Surely we can trust the feds to be impartial. Man, I could only just barely type that whole sentence. As the last decade-and-change have shown us, the feds are just as invested in selling their own products and views as any corporation (in fact, they're often busy selling a corporation's product for them).

In the end, a wise school district does not let "But the research!!" drown out the still small voice of "caveat emptor." The report includes recommendations that school districts depend on more research and even that policy makers consider twisting districts' arms in this regard. Since policy makers have consistently ignored the research about vouchers and cyber-schools and Big Standardized Tests, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to jump on this boat (unless their favorite corporation wanted them to force districts to buy the corporate product).

The people who have the best idea of what needs have to be met in a school district are the people who work in that school district. Research is nice, but if you're doing the buying for your district, using your own eyeballs and brain parts and advice from your people is still the best way to approach edtech vendors. When it comes to our own classrooms, we are the experts, and the research that matters most is our own.

Dear E: Impersonal Management

Dear E:

Only a few days till you ship out for your first ever real live teaching job. I envy the excitement you get to feel right now. I've already written you two notes, but here's one more before you hit the road.

Everyone worries about classroom management when they start out. I used to have nightmares about entire classes spinning completely out of control (and by "used to" I mean as recently as last summer-- and this summer isn't over yet). This is normal and natural.

Part of the trick, as I'm sure you've been told, is to focus on what you want them to do, not what you don't want them to do. In other words, I don't make my class stop screwing around so we can get to work; I get to work so that they'll stop screwing around. And I'm fudging the language-- I teach school students just like you will, and we can't "make" them do anything.

Another part of the trick is to earn respect, and it helps to give it. It also helps to know your stuff. I know it's a thing for young teachers to be told that they should be the "lead learner" or a "co-explorer" with students, but I'm pretty sure all that gets you is a room full of teenagers thinking, "Well, if he doesn't know any more than I do, why should I listen to him?" Know your stuff.

But you're a new unknown quantity, and that means in addition to the usual squirrelliness of freshmen, you'll probably be tested. The best thing I know here is what my own co-operating teacher taught me a thousand years ago, and it has held up all this time.

Don't take it personally.

To students, we are not actual people. Oh, some will eventually see us as human beings, but probably not before March or thereabouts, if ever. But mostly we are just the face of the institution, part of the Big Machine.

Complaints about things like the assignments and subject matter are just fried grousing, with a side order of checking to see if we'll come off track. When some student says, "This is just so stupid," about the work we've devoted our lives to, it's easy to hear "You're an ugly, stupid jerk" and respond accordingly. But even when students actually say, "You're a stupid ugly jerk," it's not personal. It's just an attempt to push back against the machine, to see if some sand in the gears might get the machine to leave them alone for even five minutes (because five minutes a teacher spends ranting are five minutes that the teacher doesn't spend trying to make you work).

Taking these things personally and either feeling hurt in your heart or escalating to strike back-- none of that helps.

You know who you are and what you're there to do, and you know how to pursue those goals. And when you're not sure how to handle some part of your teacherly mission, you know how to get the answers you need. Don't let the hasty words of some fourteen-year-old (words that they may not even remember tomorrow) throw you off track. Do listen-- there may be a lot for you to learn about the student-- but don't take it to heart. Don't take it personally. You know what you're doing.

I know it's hard in that first year to be sure that you know what you're doing, but you're a smart capable person, and you've trained for this (and I think we can rule out the possibility that you're hopelessly cocky). You will learn a lot this year, but you already know plenty going in. You've totally got this.

PAG

Why Foot Votes Can't Work

Vote with your feet.

That's the power choice advocates offer to parents, the magic wand that the invisible hand will use to unleash the power of the free market which will in turn make schools awesomely excellent (that last part is optional for some choice advocates who mostly just want to see the free market unleashed and aren't really concerned what happens after that).

There's a huge problem with that. I'm not talking about all the reasons that it's just wrong-- I'm talking about why it won't work.

In a school choice system, parents will not have any leverage for the same reason that fry cooks at McDonalds don't have any leverage-- they are a dime a dozen and easily replaced.

Let's say I'm operating a charter/choice school with 500 seats. Let's say that there are 500,000 students in the county in which I operate. I only need to capture a tiny sliver of the market to stay solvent. If a parent says, "You know, I'm not happy with this school, so I am going to vote with my feet," which of the following strikes us as a more likely response?

A) Charter CEO calls emergency meeting of board and administration. "All hands on deck!" He announces. "Parent #492 is unhappy and withdrawing their child. I need a task force to immediately find out why that parent was unhappy and the form another task force to redesign out instructional programs so that we can keep Parent #492 happy!"

B) Charter CEO says, "Whoop-dee-shit. Somebody go round up one of the other 499,500 students in the county to fill that seat."

In fact, cyber-charters in particular put huge effort into constantly recruiting fresh meat, while making virtually (har) no effort to alter their approach in response to all those foot voters.


A parental foot vote carries no weight. And since parents get their foot votes by trading away actual votes for board members, access to any transparency about school management or finances, and in some cases even simple access to people in charge, it's a lousy trade. The only thing they can do is that bipedal vote thing, and as we've seen, doesn't carry much weight.

"Vote with your feet" is just a nicer way for charter operators to say "Take it or leave it."

 Meanwhile, in places like New Orleans, Florida and North Carolina, legislators continue to aid the invisible hand by cutting the competition off at the knees. The more parents are driven toward charter/choice schools, the less those parents matter, and the easier charter operators have it. So let's systematically gut public education. If people won't venture out of the public school building-- if they won't vote with their feet the way we need them to-- then let's coax 'em out of that building by setting fire to it. Then it doesn't matter where the stampede heads-- as long as we can catch a sliver of it, we're good.

Foot voting is never going to empower parents. In fact, since foot voting requires parents to give up all other forms of leverage, it's an approach that leaves them with nothing but tired shoe leather.